#project: labor day 2018

[fatehbaz]

This April [2021], the Iowa Department of Corrections issued a ban on charities, family members, and other outside parties donating books to prisoners. Under the state’s new guidelines, incarcerated people can get books only from a handful of “approved vendors.” Used books are prohibited altogether [...].

In 2018, the Michigan prison system introduced an almost identical set of rules, and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington have all made attempts to block book donations, which were only rolled back after public outcry. Across the United States, the agencies responsible for mass imprisonment are trying to severely limit incarcerated people’s access to the written word [...].

---

The official narrative is that donated books could contain “contraband [...]" -- the language used in Michigan [...]. This is a flimsy justification that begins to fall apart under even the lightest scrutiny. [...] [Contraband] [...] [is] not originating from nonprofit groups like the Appalachian Prison Book Project or Philadelphia’s Books Through Bars. [....] The old cartoon scenario of a hollow book with a saw or a gun inside just isn’t realistic, and its invocation is a sign that something else is going on.

That “something else,” predictably enough, is profit. With free books banned, prisoners are forced to rely on the small list of “approved vendors” chosen for them by the prison administration. These retailers directly benefit when states introduce restrictions. In Iowa, the approved sources include [B&N] and [B-a-M], some of America’s largest retail chains -- and, notably, ones which charge the full MSRP value for each book, quickly draining prisoners’ accounts. An incarcerated person with, say, $20 to spend can now only get one book, as opposed to three or four used ones; in states where prisoners make as little as 25 cents an hour for their labor, many can’t afford even that.

---

With e-books, the situation is even worse, as companies like [GTL] supply supposedly “free” tablets which actually charge their users by the minute to read.

Even public-domain classics, available on Project Gutenberg, are only available at a price under these systems -- and prisons, in turn, receive a 5% commission on every charge. All of this amounts to rampant price-gouging and profiteering on an industrial scale.

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The rise of these private vendors has also been mirrored by the systematic dismantling of the prison library system. In the last ten years, budgets for literacy and educational resources have seen dramatic cuts, reducing funding to almost nothing [...]. In Illinois, for instance, the Department of Corrections spent just $276 on books across the entire state in 2017, down from an already meager $605 the previous year. (This means, incidentally, that each of the state’s roughly 39,000 prisoners was allotted seven-tenths of a cent.)

Oklahoma, meanwhile, has no dedicated budget for books at all, requiring prison librarians to purchase them out-of-pocket. [...]

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These practices become all the more abhorrent when you consider the impact books can have behind bars. By now, the social science on their benefits is well-established [...]. [O]ther inmates have reported that reading meant “the difference between just giving up mentally and emotionally and making it through another day, week, or year,” countering the dehumanizing effects of their imprisonment. A book can offer a brief, irreplaceable moment of calm in hellish circumstances. [...]

[There is] a shameful pattern in American society, where many people simply don’t think about the incarcerated on a day-to-day basis, let alone sympathize with their worsening conditions. [...] One of the most common arguments for the American carceral system, and its continued existence, is that of rehabilitation. According to its defenders, a prison is not simply a place of suffering, where unwanted populations are sent to disappear. Nor is it a callous money-making machine, intended to squeeze free labor from them in a regime of functional slavery. Instead, prison rehabilitates -- so the story goes. [...] In these terms, the basic legitimacy of mass imprisonment, and its allegedly positive social role, is taken for granted. [...] But the practice of book banning exposes the lie. Not only do American prisons have little interest in education, healing, and growth, but they will actively prevent them the moment there is a dollar to be made or an ounce of power to be secured.

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Text by: Alex Skopic. "The American Prison System's War on Reading". Protean (Protean magazine online). 29 November 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[olowan-waphiya]

Tribal Leaders Sign Historic Co-Stewardship Agreement with National Forest Service in the Black Hills

“This landmark co-stewardship effort will feature storytelling in various formats at the Pactola/He Sapa Visitor Center, educating the larger public and helping current and future generations of Native People connect with their own creation stories and cultural identities.

On June 6, leaders of the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Oglala, Rosebud, and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes gathered in the He Sapa — the Black Hills — to sign an historic Memorandum of Understanding at the newly renamed Pactola/He Sapa Visitor Center with U.S. Forest Service officials. Together, they’re beginning a process of sharing Indigenous cultural heritage with visitors from all over the world. Leaders said that they want to see young, Native children visit the Black Hills and experience the importance of the landscape with a deep understanding of their own heritage.

Previously known as the Pactola Visitor Center, the seasonal facility welcomes more than 40,000 visitors annually from Memorial Day through Labor Day — and approximately another three million people pass through the area each year.

This effort has been several years in the making, though the process hit a snag during the Trump years. When tribal leaders initially proposed the concept to the U.S. Forest Service in 2018, the idea was heard but not taken seriously. Persistence pays, however, and the efforts of many relatives and allies eventually led the Forest Service to agree.

We hope this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s critical that Lakota — and all Indigenous — stories and history be shared from an authentic perspective with those who visit our homelands. To that end, please stay tuned this summer. I can’t tell you too much about it yet, but we’ll soon be launching an ambitious program that can help ensure Native stories are told — and Native tribes are funded — on occupied Indigenous homelands across Turtle Island. “

Via the Lakota People’s Law Project

[kaibutsushidousha]

The Hundred Line - Famitsu interview June 19th 2024

What does the title Hundred Line mean?

Kodaka: The simplest way to describe this game is: student have to live together in a school while fighting to survive 100 days. This "100 days" timeframe became a major keyword, so we decided to express it through the title The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy.

The game has been described as "a tale of extreme x despair produced by the creators of Danganronpa". This "extreme x despair" keyword reminds me of the Concept Art 1 presented September 2018 at the announcement of Too Kyo Games. Caption: Extreme x Despair. A game co-written by Kodaka and Uchikoshi!

Kodaka: As you can imagine, this is the game from Concept Art 1. We finally managed to announce, but at first, The Hundred Line was developed as Too Kyo's first original IP. However, our company isn't capable of self-publishing, so now we're working with Aniplex, on a half-half split on production costs.

When did development start?

Kodaka: Since we founded Too Kyo Games (2017), so that has been 6 or 7 years. At first, Uchikoshi and I partnered with another major publisher to release our game, but unfortunately, the project was canceled...

In a previous interview, you mentioned a title not coming out as planned, but I didn't think you mean an actual cancellation...

Kodaka: I have so much I could talk about on this one, but I don't think the first talk about this game should be about what went wrong, so how about we save it for another day? Haha. Although The Hundred Line's project was canceled for a while, now, after finding what we needed to make it a good game, we rebranded it and restarted our whole internal development cycle.

We were initially fine with it being indie-sized, but as the story and character designs were getting polished, and the concept gained a more solid form, we started thinking we couldn't make our ideal game unless we went bigger. Determined to put our hand to the test... we took a loan.

A loan!?

Kodaka: It wasn't guaranteed that we'd have the working capital to maintain our enlarged development scope even if we sold all of our stocks. We advanced the production with the phantom of debt on our necks while we searched for a new publisher, and that's where I met Aniplex and smoothly sold our pitch.

However, since this game has simulation RPG sections, they said that'd need a third-party developer. For that, they introduced us to the accomplished Media Vision and had them join the dev team. We're also cooperating with Jet Studio, who worked with us before in Danganronpa and Rain Code.

After all that it took to get this game to a presentable state, we of Too Kyo Games consider it a proud symbol of our persistence, or better yet, the culmination and conclusion to the current stage of our careers.

Staking your life on your work has never been so literal...

Kodaka: True, if this game flops, we won't be able to pay our debt. In that sense, this also provides a rare opportunity to the playerbase too. They get to witness how much a single title's sales can influence the future of a creator and company.

That's not the kind of suspense I want as a game fan, haha. Still, with six years of development, is it safe to assume you've been through a fair share of hardships?

Kodaka: I did. That was my first time dealing with a full cancellation. Also, to enable to Too Kyo to continue its work, to partner up with a new publisher, etc, we couldn't continue the development in the direction we were before. We needed to restart on our semi-complete project, and that's already painful labor in itself.

In terms of creative workload, I can't say I was much busier than I was in the Danganronpa V3 days, having to work in the game and the anime at the same time, but in this situation, aside from my directing, writing, and screen composition duties, I'm also Too Kyo Games's president and producer, meaning I have more work outside my craftsmanship... Making the game and managing the funds at the same time would have given most people a mental breakdown (laughs).

It was mentally and financially taxing, but I don't think I'll ever get another opportunity to pour this level of effort into making a game happen. Putting my life on the line was a very valuable experience.

You mean to say you can feel Too Kyo Games's entire soul in the game? On another note, I couldn't find any of the characters from the concept art in the new key visual or the screenshots. Does the restart mean that those characters got shelved?

Kodaka: The game's general concept is still the same, but to put a new, clean start on it, we changed a few things completely. One of them being the character designs. But despite their changed appearances, they maintain the characterization of their predecessors, so you'll see characters similar to what those would have been.

However, the old politician you see in the upper left corner won't be in the game (laughs). He's a character Komatsuzaki made up on the spot for this illustration, so I know as much about who he is as you do. He's doomed to disappear shrouded in mystery.

(laughs) By the way, considering how The Hundred Line is "the tale of extreme x despair", I'm curious about how this keyword "despair" relates to Danganronpa.

Kodaka: The tagline "tale of extreme x despair" is to signify that this is the first game Uchikoshi and I are directing together. It has nothing to do with Danganronpa, but it is a game made leveraging all of my previous experiences. With that plus Komatsuzaki's and Takada's involvement, I consider it a spiritual successor to Danganronpa.

Who from the main Too Kyo Games roster is working in this and what are their roles?

Kodaka: Uchikoshi and I are splitting the directing and writing work, Komatsuzaki is on the character design, Shimadrill is doing the enemy design and the backgrounds, and Takada is in charge of the soundtrack. Also, Uchikoshi and I do screen composition for the scenes we write.

I didn't think I'd have to do the screen composition job here myself, but I'm the best at handling Komatsuzaki's art and Takada's music, so that job is dumped on me. I got a lot of material to work with. Maybe more expression options than Yuma had in Rain Code.

The Danganronpa series also had me personally choosing faces and soundtrack one by one, so I hope the fans of that series enjoy the familiar vibes in the visual novel sections.

The new announcement came with a key visual. Are these characters in uniforms going to be the main cast?

Kodaka: Yes. They're the students of Last Defense Academy and are living in the school for unknown reasons. The students have special powers called Hemoanimas. They normally have their own sets of clothes, but upon activating their Hemoanima, they change into this uniform and fight against their enemies.

Is the white character a mascot?

Kodaka: Yes. He's the squad coordinator character. So his name is just SIREI, from shireikan; commander. By the way, SIREI is the reincarnation of the raccoon illustrated in the key visual. Both forms of this character were designed by Komatsuzaki. I pointed him in a general direction I wanted but overall let him do whatever he wanted. Meanwhile, the students followed the usual process going through a lot of back-and-forth until their completion.

In Danganronpa, their designs reflected their Super High School Level talents. Does The Hundred Line have any kind of keyword or characterization element that informed their designs in the same way the Super High School Level talents did?

Kodaka: Each student masters a different Unique Subject and has a different weapon of choice. That's what their designs mainly reflect. I'll talk more about Unique Subjects and weapons of choice later.

I'm looking forward to the update. Next question. Danganronpa and Rain Code had all-star casts of voice actors. I have expectations for The Hundred Line's cast.

Kodaka: Unfortunately, I can't reveal the actors at the moment, but I will say half of them have performed in previous Kodaka or Uchikoshi game and the other half is people we're both meeting for the first time. But look forward to it, it's going to be as all-star as any previous game. I know the released PV is voiced by the protagonist, but who is voicing him is still confidential.

Will the creatures depicted flying above the main characters be enemies?

Kodaka: Correct. The enemies are unknown entities attacking the school. They're called School Invaders. If you take a really close look at the key visual, you may notice the academy is protected by a pink flame. That's called the Unextinguishable Flame and that's what prevents the School Invaders from attacking 24/7.

When the School Invaders get past the Unextinguishable Flame, the students will need to repel them. The students aren't informed about the academy's or the unextinguishable flame's secrets, nor they know why the School Invaders are attacking. The story progresses as they fight School Invaders day by day unaware of their circumstances.

Do you have anything noteworthy to say about your interactions with Shimadrill regarding his work designing the enemies?

Kodaka: My priority for the character design of the weaker School Invaders was that they had venomous pop aesthetics. At my first discussion with Shimadrill, we arrived at the idea of making their designs intentionally similar to the monsters of a famous game franchise, but we changed plans along the way. Ultimately, we got likable enemies with that pop aesthetic.

Playing aggressively even on the designs, huh? That's the Too Kyo Games I know.

Kodaka: We changed our aim because copying designs was a really bad idea we took too far. Our mindset at the time is that, true to Too Kyo's name, we wanted to make a game that was indeed too crazy. Too Kyo Games is a company that prides itself on its writing, designs, and music.

However, compliance is a lot more important nowadays, so there's a lot more we need to keep in mind. We were defanged by the corporate structure of our partner for the cancelled version of the game. Depictions of violence and dirty jokes that were acceptable in our previous works weren't fine with them. We had to be on our best behavior to adhere to their compliance demands.

Now that I got to remake the game as something else, I can see that not releasing it on its previous state was for the best. Because I couldn't express my strengths in full there.

The Hundred Line was my first collaborative work with Uchikoshi and our first original IP. Making a game that's simply good wouldn't be enough. There'd be no point in starting this over if we couldn't go all-out. We developed The Hundred Line determined to make a game someone with good sense couldn't make. A title to be considered a product of deranged minds. In the sense, we were very lucky to land on a partnership with Aniplex.

Tell me more about what do you mean by "lucky" here.

Kodaka: To leverage the strengths of Too Kyo Games, we're writing a very controversial narrative. Aniplex is being thankfully quite flexible with what we're allowed to depict, as they understand our fortes and respect our vision. For that reason, Uchikoshi and I were able to depict the crazy story we wanted to.

Kodaka, in a previous interview, you expressed determination toward making this game a story that make people question your sanity. A game people wouldn't expect to be possible to make. Would you say managed to fulfill this ambition?

Kodaka: I can't comment about the gimmick without getting into spoilers, so I have no plans to reveal the answer to this before the game's release. Playing the game for yourself should be enough to convey Too Kyo Games's outlandishness. I believe my reason to pair up with Uchikoshi will be equally evident, and it'll be easy to make sense of why this game needed multiple writers and recruiting new hires.

I know perfectly well this is a tasteless request, but can you drop a hint?

Kodaka: Fine, I'll tell you some details after the interview. You're allowed to address what I'll say in your opinion post (laughs).

I appreciate the gesture, but let's see if I'm up for the challenge (laughs)

Tell us what the general gameplay loop is like.

Kodaka: The Hundred Line follows a cycle of 3 parts: a visual novel section, an exploration section, and a simulation RPG section. I already explained at the opener that it's a game where you survive 100 days of combat, but that doesn't mean time will pass uneventfully.

Like in Danganronpa, something will happen each day, and you'll get chances to talk with your schoolmates and deepen your relationships. You'll get Free Time, you'll get training sessions to increase your stats, and you'll be able to get other power ups by sharpening your weapons. The goal in the visual novel and exploration sections is to enjoy life with your schoolmates while also preparing for the enemies that can appear at any moment.

Got it. Now explain the simulation RPG section too, please.

Kodaka: The simulation RPG section has tower defense elements. It's not just about defeating the enemies, you also have to fight defending the school. Also, since the School Invaders come in large flocks, the main gimmick here is that you need to fight on multiple grids of the board at the same time instead of taking it one grid at a time.

Our developer, Media Vision, has a lot of experience in simulation RPGs. We'll disclose more details about the gameplay later, but I'm glad they were able to come up with and implement hype combat ideas (such as unique traits and ultimate moves for each character) in a way that can satisfy the fans of the genre.

You mean to say the simulation RPG sections are going to be solid?

Kodaka: Correct. That said, a lot of people who buy my games are casual gamers, so I always put emphasis on ease of play.

Then first-time simulation RPG players will have nothing to worry about.

Kodaka: Another point of interest is Takada's soundtrack. I requested the battle BGM to have the intensity of an action game. It's inspired by technical rock bands from the 90s, mainly The Chemical Brothers and Boom Boom Satellites. The visual novel sections, on the other hand, have a more sci-fi-adjacent OST to match its strong sci-fi aesthetics.

Tell us a release date and the consoles.

Kodaka: Early 2025, Switch and Steam.

Less than a year before release. Do you think the team can make it?

Kodaka: We're still working on it, but I think we won't have to delay the release. To be honest, The Hundred Line is progressing faster than Rain Code was (laughs). Besides, Too Kyo Games can't afford to delay a game our creators are staking their lives on.

Messages to players and readers usually often saying things like "We're doing our best" or "Cheer for us", but for this title, I can't bring myself to be so casual about it. I feel like I'm issuing a challenge to the players here.

I have a marketing strategy to draw attention to the game, and I'm polishing it to make anyone who buys it say it's a good game, so I'm feeling more of a "Just watch me!" or a "Wait until you see this thing released!" for a closing message.

Giant Kuroda's editorial comment

As outlandish as promised.

That's the interviewer's honest impression on what Kodaka told me about The Hundred Line's gimmick. I [Giant Kuroda] have been the Famitsu interviewer in charge of Danganronpa since Danganronpa 2. I interviewed him pre-release for a game launched in 2012, which means I've been talking to Kodaka for at least 12 years.

Kodaka and his art surprised me many times. In a good way.

Danganronpa 2's final boss. Danganronpa V3's first case culprit, finale, and the secret hidden in the title. Danganronpa 3 simultaneous broadcast of Side:Future and Side:Despair. Rain Code's first case...

The list could go on forever, but The Hundred Line's gimmick is more impactful than of those. I can't deliver a final judgement until I play the game for myself, but depending on what the game has to offer, it could be his uncontested best. That's how much potential I felt in that spoiler. I get the point of staking their lives on it now.

Also, in what's rare for a Kodaka title, the game will be allowed to be streamed relatively far into the story despite earlier spoilers (information subject to change). Kodaka's story-heavy games are a double-edged sword. It's possible for players to feel like they experienced enough by simply watching a Let's Play that spoils all the twists. However, I believe this game actually benefits from unrestricted streaming. But I can't say why. It's a spoiler...

At any rate, this game is Kodaka's and Uchikoshi's first collaborative story, and as Kodaka said, its narrative is a product of deranged minds. I wait with bated breath to the day I can finally play it, and also look forward to reading opinion posts about it online. You can get your hopes up, Kodaka and Uchikoshi fans.

[shaotie]

here's another Leo centric angsty short story I have on ao3, enjoy!

Leo woke up with a gasp from his most recent 'krang-attack' nightmare. But something was wrong.

Seriously wrong.

He kept gasping in one shallow breath after another with sweat pouring off his head - his entire body in fact - in buckets from a spike in his consistent low-grade fever ever since . . . that day.

He gazed around in his dimly lit room, having to blink his bleary eyes a few times from the way the room kept spinning around him and his vision was doubled.

Taking two more labored breaths through his mouth, Leo grasped the blanket tightly in his hand, and thrust it aside to stare down at his badly mangled left leg.

"Augh, damn it!" he hissed out from anger in a barely audible whisper when he was met with exactly the sight he was both expecting and dreading.

The infection in the gash over his shattered knee from when Krang Prime stomped down on it with his mech foot no more than three weeks ago was tinged a much darker (almost black) green than the rest of his turtle skin, and practically his entire leg was swollen three times its normal size.

As the family medic he knew what that meant.

His leg had to go.

- masterpost for my rottmnt ao3 fanfics and art

[simply-ivanka]

A Minnesotan Sizes Up Tim Walz

During his tenure, student achievement has slipped, crime has surged, and state residents have fled.

By Scott W. Johnson - Wall Street Journal

St. Paul, Minn.

Tim Walz has such a bad record as Minnesota’s governor that I was astonished when he landed on Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. As Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has documented, under Mr. Walz Minnesota has become a high-crime state. Student achievement has tumbled as spending on schools has skyrocketed. Per capita gross domestic product has fallen below the national average. Minnesotans have joined residents of New York, California and Illinois in fleeing their home state.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—also on Ms. Harris’s shortlist—made sense to me. Pennsylvania is a key state. Mr. Shapiro seems to be a man of substance and would give liberal Jews a reason to vote for Ms. Harris without a guilty conscience. As a Jewish supporter of Israel, I worried that Mr. Shapiro would give the animus throbbing in the heart of the Democratic Party cover. Indeed, that animus drove a nasty intraparty campaign against him.

But Tim Walz? I’m a conservative Republican. I don’t completely understand Democrats’ ways. As an observer of Minnesota politics, however, I understand how Mr. Walz became governor. Having served six terms in Congress from a rural district, he challenged the endorsed DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate—a liberal metro-area state senator, Erin Murphy—in the 2018 DFL primary. Ms. Murphy was also challenged by another metro-area liberal, Lori Swanson, then state attorney general. With Ms. Murphy and Ms. Swanson dividing the liberal urban vote, Mr. Walz and his far-left running mate, former state Rep. Peggy Flanagan, won the primary with 41%.

On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Among the 70 defendants charged to date, 18 have pleaded guilty. In April the first of the cases to go to trial had seven defendants; five were convicted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried. In all, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the payout of $250 million to reimburse fictitious meals. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering. Mr. Walz tried to blame state district court judge John Guthmann, who in April 2021 handled a case regarding the department’s processing of applications for reimbursements. According to Mr. Walz, Judge Guthmann ordered the state to continue payouts to the alleged perpetrators of the fraud even after the state Education Department discovered it.

In September 2022, Judge Guthmann authorized a news release titled “Correcting media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.” The release concluded: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

In November 2022 Mr. Walz was elected to a second term, and the DFL won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. In the preceding two years the state had accumulated an $18 billion budget surplus. With the DFL in full control, Mr. Walz and the Legislature have spent the $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, education and other programs that will burden the state for years. They have also raised taxes.

Mr. Walz and his DFL colleagues have backed measures establishing Minnesota as a mecca for abortion and a “trans refuge.” The legislation prohibits enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people from other states who seek treatment that is legal in Minnesota. It also bars complying with court orders issued in other states to remove children from their parents’ custody for authorizing hormone treatment or surgery to alter sex characteristics.

Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.

Mr. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor to the site Power Line.

[drypainting]

various comic sketches for different projects (dec 2024 - jan 2025).

my first serious multi-page comic was made 2018 -- both my most recent comic and first were made in january AND made for fanfic. there's seven years' difference between those two but being a fan of other fanworks has not changed at all. more thoughts and past artwork underneath the cut

bits from my first serious comic (2018). i've simplified my process wrt to shading because it took me a whole week of being in front of a screen day-to-night to finish five pages. i also didn't color it, because, fuck, man. i hate coloring. i was burnt out for a whole month before i started drawing again.

these one-pagers (amongst others) preceded the multi-page one by a few months or so. iirc i gave up using screen tones very quickly...

a few thumbnails of two dudes beating each other up hotly. i had good taste as a seventeen y/o, ngl. i did the first page (not seen here) i think a few years later:

(2022) i'm not happy with this, but i accept that my skill in art would never grow in a linear fashion. BUT. i think the composition of this particular part was kinda cool.

(2020) i didn't touch multi-page comics for months at a time. they took up a lot of work and i was frequently exhausted.

this one (2020) was fully shaded but i prefer the lines. i think i was in the process of lining it again but i lost the process when i fucked up the save. i had a whole story and everything-- it was an au stuck in my head for a while, but tbh i quickly lost interest when no one else was into it. the line art is sloppier, but i approached it w a, "finished, not perfect" attitude. at the time i thought i had peaked in 2018-2019 (still do) and my enthusiasm for art was on the decline.

in my past reflections i was so hard on myself. didn't give myself enough grace-- i barely had enough energy and focus to do another one of those labor-intensive multi-page comics of the same quality as the ones i made around 2018.

it's not a standard i hold myself to anymore.

(dec 2024 - jan 2025) i think my interest in art (and by extension, comics) is back on the upswing. i acknowledge that it probably won't stick around forever--my skills and interests wax and wane--but i think i've made peace with my self-criticism. i was very hard on myself as a teenager. this will probably will change in the future too.

but i think that's okay.

there wasn't really a point im trying to make here. i just fucked up really badly today and i'm trying to scrape together some sense of esteem in myself LMAO. it'll be fineeeeeeee.

anyway, i'm proud of all the stuff i've done. i've always wanted to be a mangaka since i was a child. and i still am wanting...

here's julia ortega and chris if you've made it to the bottom. thanks for reading all my shit!!

[sonic-spirit]

I can't sleep. And for two absolutely opposite reasons.

1) Things are fucked. My also trans mates are super worried about That Shithead taking power again, and the unconscionable horrors that are set to ensue. Just. Big, giant "Oh FUCK."

2) But also? I FINALLY finished Zone (episode) 1 of It Doesn't Matter today, and I'm SUUUUPER fucking stoked. Like, a week and a half or so ago, I realized I was in spitting distance to finish it before my birthday if I pushed a bit, AND I MADE IT, and I'm so fuckin' excited! I feel like the floodgates opened, and I have so many things I want to talk and gush about, plans I want to make, tests I want to try to streamline the process...! I started boarding this zone in 2018. I've been cranking on just this zone for 6 YEARS! Finally, I've got the first section of story to show for myself, I finally have the necessary context in place for people to actually have a fucking frame of reference for me to blather on about! This project that's so, so important to me, that I've been writing since my Awakening as Sonic in 2009!!!

Like, it's a lot! And I want to celebrate! My mates, our friend, and I watched it on the big screen in our living room during our "this is our closest hangout day to Sonic's birthday so semi-birthday celebration" today. I've been taking the evening to relax and soak. All I need to do now is put together the credits, and I'm waiting on my friends' response for how they want to be credited because I forgot to ask until midnight their time, so I can't put that together right this moment anyway.

And I'm exhausted. I just spent the day pouring myself into finishing a very personal, labor intensive process, on a day that started with cuddling my weeping mate when the pressure of what we're up against was too much to bear.

But also I'm buzzing, and I want to write all the things and talk about the things and My Thing! Guys! It's actually of a shareable shape, finally! You can See! And I can Tell You Stuff! I want to talk and talk and talk!

But it's 2am, and I need to sleep.

So that's where I'm at right now.

[another-dr-another]

INTERMISSION

A guide to Before the Big Bang

Another Danganronpa Another has no affiliation with LINUJ, and is a stand-alone fan-made work which is unconnected to any other works inspired by LINUJ’s projects.

CONTENT WARNING

Before the Big Bang repeatedly discusses: child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, child labor, and parental death. Suicide, gaslighting, toxic dynamics, ableism, classism, homophobia, and transphobia are present in the story. Substances (drugs, alcohol), religious abuse, and (attempted) child murder are mentioned, but not depicted. The game begins with a scene depicting Before the Big Bang being “booted up”, and struggles with dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization are portrayed; readers who struggle with unreality are advised to exercise caution

IN-UNIVERSE

Another Danganronpa Another: Before the Big Bang! is the first “installment” in the Gods Will duology, the Sun Side of the two games. A scrapped first draft of Danganronpa Another ~ Another Despair Academy, upon trying to launch the completed game… this is all the computer would run. Contains the same characters, with the same names and talents- but it will quickly become clear this is the most they have in common. Class 79-B was set to start their first year at Hopes Peak Academy, but have now found themselves participating in a game of mutual killing. We follow Maeda Yuki as he tries to navigate gifting his classmates during their free time events, keeping the conversation on track during class trials, and ignoring his constant creeping feeling that there’s something he’s missing. 

OUT-OF-UNIVERSE

Before the Big Bang is an AU of Danganronpa Another started on August 23rd, 2019. Colloquially referred to as “Beta AU” after a Danganronpa Distrust AU I was writing in 2018, Another Danganronpa Another deals with the mirrored reflections of the DRA cast- different personalities and behaviors, but something at the core of the character that rings true to their original writing. The original account was deleted in April of 2020, but quickly remade, and while most original posts were lost to the ether, this was handled… by rewriting what had been deleted at a speed of four posts/day. “Rewrite 23” is the tag used for posts which have been rewritten since that happened, so if one post suddenly seems to be a bit more polished than the posts before/after it, check to see if it’s tagged with that- it’s possible it’s a higher quality because it’s more recent!

MECHANICS

At the end of most posts, you’ll be given {two or more} {options} which you can pick between. If no asks are sent in, one of Maeda’s classmates will take matters into their own hands, and make the choice for Maeda. If multiple asks are sent in, majority rules- in the case of an even split, the ask that was sent first takes precedence. Occasionally, you’ll be given the option to freely roam the school, instead of being given options.

As this is a Tumblr ask blog, and not a coded video game, there’s a person reading your asks! So long as I can see what your intent is, I’ll do my best to follow along within the parameters of the game. This applies to both free roam, and to asks selecting options. Maeda may not go for your exact suggestion, but, for example- if it’s time for Free Time Events, and an ask is sent saying “we should go throw hands with Tsu. or we could give him item 104 ig”, Maeda will go spend his FTE opportunity with Tsurugi, and will give him Item #104. Don’t worry about needing to be formal!

HOW-TO

Following the “Start” link below will allow you to read every post, in chronological order. Visiting the Chapter Chrono page (through the “Exit” link) will allow you to read posts in chronological order, starting at the specific chapter you choose. Every post is tagged with “dra”, which is used to read through every post chronologically. A similar format is used to read chapters chronologically, however, these links aren’t currently fully functional. Eventually, you’ll be able to read specifically daily/deadly lifes in chronological order, however, posts from the first two chapters aren’t tagged properly for this. Re-tagging is a work in progress, but chapters as a whole can still be read individually, and the daily/deadly life specific tags are in place for Chapter 3.

Especially beginning in the third chapter, posts can be lengthy, and the work is extensive- though an official word count is currently unavailable, an example: the third chapter's investigation was 36 posts, and over 95k words. Those with the free time to spend a few hours a day to spend on reading can generally get through beta in ~five days. For those who aren’t looking for that sort of undertaking, the current recommendation (as of August 2024, during the third trial) is to use the “Replay” link below, read up until the final introduction, then utilize the Chapter Chrono page (through the “Exit” link), and either begin reading at the start of the third chapter, or the start of the third deadly life. Visiting the Synopsis Page (through the “Exit” link) will provide you with summaries of what happened on different days of the killing game, to catch you up on what you’re missing- without having to read through everything immediately.

LINKS

Tumblr hates showing the extra pages on this blog.

E-Handbook is a navigational page. Meant to model the E-Handbooks in Danganronpa games, this page contains the following.

“Class 79-B” is a navigational page which contains profiles on each of the students. These pages should contain synopses of any completed free time events, but this is a work in progress. “Items” is a page listing how many Monocoins Maeda currently has, the things he’s won from the Mono-machine, and other things he’s received. “School Rules” is a list of the school rules the students must abide by. “Truth Bullets” is a page only available during the deadly life segment. It has descriptions of any truth bullets Maeda has, and links back to the post he got them in.

Exit is a navigational page, which contains bonus pages that don’t align with the E-handbook.

“Help” contains a list of any notes/explanations which are given during the game. Primarily, this consists of trial mechanics. “Synopsis” is a page which summarizes what’s happened so far in the game, breaking it down on a day by day basis. “Account Info” contains a more detailed explanation of the AU, links to other relevant blogs, and contains some other miscellaneous details. “Chapter Chrono” allows readers to revisit specific chapters, and view their posts in chronological order.

Replay allows readers to read the entirety of Before the Big Bang from the first post.

QUESTIONS

Please send any questions to @another-dra-anew! Asks which are unrelated to the ongoing story, but get sent here, will be answered and kept up for a week, before being reblogged to Anew, and deleted from this account.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

BOOKS I READ IN 2023 Here's what I read in 2023. What has now become an annual tradition of sorts!

An unusual year in reading for me. The first half of the year was very slow, and I mostly finished two long books I've been trying to finish for years by William Morris and Robert Musil. Then the PSAC strike, and more time to read. After that, I made a reading plan and stuck to it, trying to read every day at least a chapter of a book on the list. I also ended up re-reading several books this year - transcribing notes at first, I ended up going over the entire book a second time. I also tried to take extensive notes on every new book. I also snuck a few theses I read onto the list - it feels weird not to include a several hundred page work I went over with a fine-toothed comb. Mostly academic books, germane to my own research and writing, but some strong forays into topics I don't normally think about much. Plus some genuinely good 'amateur' history, too.

Re-reads are marked by a plus sign and my most enjoyable or interesting reads are marked with an asterisk.

First Row:

Jesper Vaczy Kragh, Lobotomy Nation: The History of Psychosurgery and Psychiatry in Denmark (2021)

William Morris, The Well at the World's End (1896, Ballantine edition 1975)

Robert Musil, translated by Sophie Wilkins, The Man Without Qualities (1930, Picador edition 2017)*

Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese ’68 (2020)*

Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State (2020) *

Robin Jarvis Brownlie, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939 (2003)

Second Row:

Steve Hewitt, Riding to the Rescue: The Transformation of the RCMP in Alberta and Saskatchewan, 1914-1939 (2006)

Maeve McMahon, The Persistent Prison?: Rethinking Decarceration and Penal Reform (1989)+

Rebecca McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776–1941 (2007)+

Anne Guérin, Prisonniers en révolte: Quotidien carcéral, mutineries et politique pénitentiaire en France (2013)+

Anson Rabinbach, The Eclipse of the Utopias of Labor (2018)

Scott Thompson & Gary Genosko, Punched Drunk: Alcohol, Surveillance and the LCBO, 1927-1975 (2009)

Third Row:

Erin Durham, "In Pursuit of Reform, Whether Convict or Free: Prison Labor Reform in Maryland in the early Twentieth Century." (2018 thesis)

Chester Himes, Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1998)*

Harvey Swados, Standing Fast: A Novel (1971, 2013 Open Road edition)

Charles Upchurch, "Beyond the Law": The Politics of Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain (2021)

Barry Godfrey, David J. Cox & Helen Johnston, Penal Servitude: Convicts and Long-Term Imprisonment, 1853–1948 (2022)

W.J. Forsythe, Penal Discipline, Reformatory Projects And The English Prison Commission, 1895-1939 (1991)

Fourth Row:

Neal A. Palmer, To the Dark Cells: Prisoner Resistance and Protest in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2008)

Frances H. Simon, Prisoners' Work and Vocational Training (1999)

Meera Nanda, Science In Saffron: Skeptical Essays On History of Science (2016)*

Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun (four volumes, 1980-1983, Folio Society edition 2021)+

David J. Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America (2002)+

Kathryn Cooper, "The Infamous Convict Museum Ship Success : an Archaeological Investigation of Material Culture and Identity Formation Processes." (2014 thesis)

Fifth row:

Barry M. Gough, Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast Indians, 1846-1890 (1984)

Edward Jones-Imhotep, The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War (2017)*

Larry A. Glassford, Reaction and Reform: The Politics of the Conservative Party under R.B. Bennett, 1927-1938 (1992)

Don Nerbas, Dominion of Capital: The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914-1947 (2013)

James Naylor, The Fate of Labour Socialism: The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Dream of a Working-Class Future (2016)

Michael Martin, The Red Patch: Political imprisonment in Hull, Quebec during World War 2 (2007)

Sixth Row:

Ruán O'Donnell, Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, Vol. 1: 1968-1978 (2012)*

Ruán O'Donnell, Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, Vol. 2: 1978-1985 (2015)*

Cheryl D. Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935 (2010)*

Clarence Jefferson Hall, A Prison in the Woods: Environment and Incarceration in New York's North Country (2020)

Scott Thompson, "Consequences of Categorization: National Registration, Surveillance and Social Control in Wartime Canada, 1939-1946." (2013 thesis)

H.V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines, and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941 (2005)+

Seventh row:

Chief Thomas Fiddler & James R. Stevens, Killing the Shamen (1985)

Ashley Johnson Bavery, Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America's Northern Border (2020)

Patrick Brode, Dying for a Drink: How a Prohibition Preacher Got Away with Murder (2018)

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart & Michael Quinlan, Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788-1860 (2022)*

Victor Serge, translated by Ralph Manheim, Last Times (1946, 2022 NYRB edition)

Christopher Cauldwell, Studies in a Dying Culture (1938)

[maxrev]

💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other creators to do the same 💕

Oooo, thank you for asking!!

So...a creation I like the MOST is a Mass Effect fanfic I wrote for the Mass Effect Big Bang the first year I participated, back in 2018. It truly was a labor of love and I put my heart and soul into it. I was pretty exhausted after writing roughly 60k words in a month and change lol.

It takes male Shepard (Sheploo) and Kaidan and drops them into a modern day AU where Jon Shepard is dealing with trauma and PTSD after losing his whole platoon in an ambush. He moves to a new place and runs into Kaidan in a grocery store and everything starts there. Many, though not all, the characters from ME are in it with new roles and I loved being able to really make them all fit into a world I created. I based the town off one you might find on the New England coast (eastern coast of the US) and was a lot of fun to flesh out and make real. It was challenging, scary, and yes, even thrilling, to write and I did a TON of research on PTSD, breathing exercises, war, IEDs, the east coast, etc. I really tried to make the reader 'feel' like they were there, like they could imagine actually visiting this place and also experience the depression, the doubt, survivor's guild, etc, Jon Shepard has to deal with - not for the faint of heart lol. Sadly, I don't feel I've ever been able to write anything else as well as this but I have this fic to remind me I HAVE ♥

I had a great beta in @humblydefiant and a wonderful artist in @shotce !!!

Again, thank you :)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

#15yrsago To destroy Al Qaeda, we must end the war on terror: Rand Corporation https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351.html

#15yrsago RIP Harriet Burns, first woman Imagineer https://web.archive.org/web/20080917032505/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/29/state/n164319D19.DTL&tsp=1

#10yrsago Dentist sued over “I own your criticism” agreement vanishes https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/dentist-who-used-copyright-to-silence-her-patients-is-on-the-run/

#10yrsago Randall Munroe finishes “Time,” the 3,099-panel XKCD serial http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/

#5yrsago Why Democratic Socialists aren’t afraid to call themselves “Socialist” anymore https://jacobin.com/2018/07/socialism-democracy-liberals-conservatives/

#5yrsago Why would a company give free tablets to prisons for inmate use? https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2018/07/24/no-cost-contract/

#5yrsago Seattle passes America’s most comprehensive labor protections for domestic workers https://truthout.org/articles/seattle-domestic-workers-win-most-comprehensive-bill-of-rights-in-us/

#1yrago Spending $200b to relocated doomed communities will save $1T https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/29/managed-retreat/#reality-based-communities

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Two Pixar veterans, Angus MacLane and Galyn Susman, are out at the Emeryville studio following layoffs that axed 73 other employees...

MacLane and Susman, most recently, directed and produced last year's LIGHTYEAR, respectively.

Susman's tenure goes way back, all the way back to the first TOY STORY. She is the very woman who, while working at home on maternity leave, kept a backup of *a version* of TOY STORY 2 after the files for the film at the studio had all accidentally gotten deleted. I say *a version* specifically, because this was for the TOY STORY 2 that we never saw. The one that was being developed as a direct-to-video sequel and done by a B-team, that Pixar heads ended up throwing out - deliberately - less than a year before the film's projected fall 1999 release. Even then... Talk about saving the day! In a studio that was, for many years, predominantly a "boys club", she was a prominent woman there and managed to have a long career within those walls: All four TOY STORY movies, MONSTERS INC., FINDING NEMO, RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, etc., she had a hand in.

And now she's no longer there...

MacLane, who helped make TOY STORY 2's epic Lightyear video game opening sequence, who went on to direct TOY STORY OF TERROR!, co-direct FINDING DORY, and direct LIGHTYEAR... Among many other endeavors... Now also gone...

Whatever the reasoning is for these layoffs, they're unfounded. But this is what happens in capitalism-land... A studio faces hardships, or is about to face hardships, they or their parent company land the hammer... And often times, it's the filmmakers and talents and creatives that get hit the hardest.

If you ask me, Susman and MacLane are not at all to blame for the failures of the people on top. Unless they were toxic people to work with for so very long, there - to me - is no good reason to axe them like this. No matter who ordered it, whether it was Bob Iger or Pete Docter. LIGHTYEAR might not have been considered a good movie by many, but it was no less a labor of love than the other movies made at Pixar. MacLane, Susman, the crew, give it their all and they all felt during its 5-year journey from idea to finished picture that they had something going. That they made the right choices, but the late screenwriter William Goldman will always be right about this kind of thing: In that, no one knows anything when a movie is being made, and if a picture hits it big at the box office, it was luck. A good guess. June 2022 was not the right time for LIGHTYEAR, and the world is an ever-changing place... How could the film crew behind LIGHTYEAR have known what 2022 was going to look like when beginning production on that movie circa 2018-2019? It failed to make much of a stir at the box office...The first two months of its existence... Its infancy, never mind that the movie will exist forever and that a movie's life merely begins at its original theatrical release. Nope, its status is defined by existing for two months in a building with big screens. Box office is often fun to predict and watch, but the deification of it... Especially post-COVID-outbreak, is all utterly silly and not really conducive to moviemaking.

This makes me worry about other directors and creatives at Pixar. Peter Sohn, whose new film ELEMENTAL is out in less than two weeks, made his feature directorial debut with THE GOOD DINOSAUR... Which was Pixar's first money-loser, and yet, he locked another picture. I fear, if ELEMENTAL doesn't do well for whatever reason, his long and impactful career at Pixar might be on ice as well... Which is why I don't get why many so-called animation and film lovers online, armchair experts they are, seem so gleeful about its possible floppage, much as they were with LIGHTYEAR last year. In a very condescending "that'll teach'em!" manner...

I don't root for animated movies I dislike to fail, because it's a loss for a team that worked hard for years on, and honestly, we kind of all lose when this kind of thing happens. It hurts employees more than it forces a studio to make the kinds of movies you specifically want to see. Hell, LIGHTYEAR (and ELEMENTAL, knock on wood) flopping could have an adverse affect and make Pixar greenlight nothing but franchise movies and a slew of movies that are required to be something people don't like. They could very well turn around and say "let's make movies for 3-year-olds for here on out, and compete with Cocomelon!" Okay maybe that's an exaggeration, but you catch my drift, right?

I think, ultimately, MacLane and Susman will be fine. Their experience speaks for itself, and other studios would be silly to not hire them, and I wish them well in the endeavors they pursue...

But, this is very saddening news no doubt. Much like director jail, this is obtuse punishment, not at all a reflection on the real meat of the problem: The ever-changing zeitgeist, how Disney themselves handled the release of the film in question, how management up above messed around, how much money was spent...

I know people online like to cut to the chase and say "Well, they should've made a better movie!" THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE made over $1.3b at the worldwide box office, but most of its critical reception has been mixed to negative, and many have called it a subpar movie. That's all subjective, and box office doesn't validate or invalidate a picture. In another universe, movies like INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE or COCO or PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH or ZOOTOPIA would've flopped hard. In another universe, the likes of LIGHTYEAR and GOOD DINOSAUR and STRANGE WORLD and TURBO and RISE OF THE GUARDIANS would've been blockbusters.

You see how silly this all is? Strip away the recognizable IP, pretend this is a world where the Mario franchise never happened: How would THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE had done at the box office? As an original weirdo-cutesy isekai adventure picture about two plumbers and a fantasy world with little mushroom guys and funny turtle bad guys? That could've been a massive flop. Heck, Mario itself literally exists because Nintendo couldn't get the license to adapt Popeye into an arcade game circa 1980, so Shigeru Miyamoto and crew chose a similar concept - a man who uses powerups, a woman to rescue, and a big brute bully - to make a marketable project. Because, what Nintendo games before DONKEY KONG do lots of people know? Is there any pop cultural footprint that RADAR SCOPE left? Or SHERIFF? I thought so... And little did they know what this simple concept-turned-game would metamorphose into some four years later...

No one knows what'll work, and in the world we live in? You gotta make an impression, or else. It's a brutal game, like these big works of art enter an arena and have to survival the initial brawl.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Cinderella and the Secret Prince (2018)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

There's something particularly devastating about watching a bad movie that could’ve been good if circumstances beyond the filmmaker’s control hadn’t mucked things up. Right before the end credits of Cinderella and the Hidden Prince, we see concept art of what the characters should’ve looked like. They look great. As good as anything Disney has put on-screen. I'm certain the voice actors saw these images and got all excited. I can picture the art director/character designer telling their friends and family about this animated fairy tale they were working on and then dying of shame once they saw the final product.

Ella “Cinderella” (voiced by Cassandra Morris) is forced by her wicked stepmother and step-sisters to work as a scullery maid in her own home. When her mouse friends Alex (Chris Niosi), Manny (R. Martin Klein) and Walt (Tony Azzolino) discover an apprentice fairy godmother in the woods (Crystal, voiced by Kirsten Day), Ella gets the chance to go to the royal ball and meets the kingdom's prince. Unfortunately, Olaf (Stephen Mendel) isn’t a prince at all. He’s a puppet of the Wicked Witch (Stephanie Sanditz), who has transformed the real prince into a mouse!

If you’ve had the misfortune of seeing 2012’s Cinderella 3D, this one’s cut from the same cloth. Ugly characters are REALLY ugly but not in an intentional way. The "handsome" prince has his eyes set just a bit too far apart, making him look like he’s a fish man. Cinderella’s mouse friends (well, two are mice, one’s a hamster) are hideous creatures whose size changes from scene to scene. At best, this looks like a bargain-bin knockoff of Tangled. Most of the time, it doesn’t even reach the level of Happily N’Ever After. Some assets were obviously taken from an animation library because you can see their cycles end in the middle of a scene.

Despite the lackluster visuals, you can picture the movie this could've been if it weren’t trying to tell the Cinderella story. When you think of the classic fairy tale, certain elements come to mind: a poor girl forced to do labor, a fairy godmother and most iconic of all… a crystal slipper left behind at midnight. That last one? not in this movie! Instead, we have a quest for a magic ring to restore the not-so-secret prince to his human form. This mission takes over the entire film, which would be fine if it was what we’d signed up for.

As Hoodwinked has taught us, all could've been forgiven if the writing had done some heavy lifting. At several points, it feels like there are scenes missing. One moment, Cinderella and her friends spot a colossal ice mountain all the way across the forest. Seconds later, they’re inside, exploring a cave that looks like it belongs to a completely different film. The characters are thin, unlikeable, or both. At several points, the story contradicts itself. We learn, for example, that the prince was turned into a mouse when he was five years old. When he’s restored to his true form, he suddenly knows how to ride a horse and is an expert swordsman. Did he master these skills when he was a toddler? Then there’s a reveal about the evil witch that makes no sense and an epic conclusion that raises far too many questions. It’s clear some people on the team were trying but they were outnumbered by people who just didn’t care.

You can appreciate a film wanting to take a familiar story in a new, fresh direction but good intentions don't mean anything if the end product is kind of ugly, often annoying and poorly written. Don’t get me started on the one musical number. It’s so bland and generic you'll forget the lyrics as soon as the following line begins. Even for little kids who don’t discriminate, Cinderella and the Secret Prince would be a hard sell. (May 7, 2021)

[mariacallous]

AMMAN, Jordan—Elsa Nodznaya was leaving class at JUGate Academy in December 2021 when she noticed a sleek, maroon-colored bus cutting through traffic. It was a stark contrast to the older, white buses she had watched languish in Amman’s notorious gridlock since she was born. She soon began to learn more about it.

The new vehicle was part of the Amman Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, which had opened earlier that year and combined aspects of bus- and rail-based public transit. Unlike other buses, the BRT’s fleet was granted its own lanes to sidestep traffic. The next day, the 24-year-old Nodznaya decided to buy a BRT pass through an app on her smartphone and test out the new buses herself.

Nodznaya had taken public transportation in the Jordanian capital before. Counterintuitively, what is called “public transit” in Amman has long been a private, for-profit enterprise of taxis, buses, and shared taxis known as “services”—essentially, a network of all vehicles that are not personal cars. Until the BRT, government-run transit did not exist.

Each of Nodznaya’s previous trips within the privatized public transit system had left her anxious, as she endured harassment and robbery. She was also frustrated navigating unreliable bus and service schedules; because Amman’s transit system is privately run, drivers often wait to depart stops until buses are full to maximize profits.

Before taking the BRT, Nodznaya experimented with other types of public transportation, squeezing herself onto Amman’s packed buses and paying high rates to service drivers. “It was awful,” Nodznaya said, recounting the thick air and claustrophobic crowds on the buses.

But from her first ride on the BRT, Nodznaya could see a difference.

“You get on the bus, and there’s space, there’s air conditioning, [there are] cameras, and there’s a limit to how many people can get on,” said Nodznaya, who now takes the BRT as part of her commute to her administrative job at an agricultural company in the Jordan Valley. “You don’t feel constantly worried.”

Jordanian women like Nodznaya are disproportionately impacted by gaps in public transportation access, since they are less likely than their male counterparts to have access to a car. Amman’s transit network is often not a realistic alternative. Over half of the city’s public transit users commute an hour or more per day and spend a significant portion of their income per month on transportation. Congested roadways mean that working women face long commutes and often return well after sunset, a practice stigmatized by many Jordanian families.

These trends have contributed to Jordanian women having one of the world’s lowest rates of labor force participation in the world, at 14 percent, despite their high levels of education. Nearly half of Jordanian women say they have turned down a job due to a lack of transportation, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the Jordanian civil society organization Sadaqa and the German foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

“There are women who limit their outings because they don’t want to sit alone with a taxi driver or they feel the seats are too close together on [private] buses,” said Ayat Husseini, a Fulbright research fellow who studies vulnerable groups’ use of the BRT system, with a focus on refugees.

By cutting down on travel time and increasing safety on public transportation, the BRT has the potential to increase Jordanian women’s personal and professional autonomy. While the system has not been running long enough to gather robust data on how it has impacted women’s labor force participation in Amman, Husseini told Foreign Policy that there is initial unpublished research showing that women feel more comfortable using the BRT than other forms of public transit.

The government-backed BRT buses can carry about 50 passengers each and run every three minutes during peak hours. Tickets on its two major routes cost about half a dinar (approximately $0.78) and can be purchased through kiosks or smartphone applications. By comparison, Sadaqa found that nearly half of working women who take non-BRT public transportation spend 1 to 2 dinars getting to work, while the other half spend more than 2 dinars. With its low prices and improved overall service, the BRT is expected to help increase the percentage of overall commuters who use public transportation in Amman from 14 percent to 40 percent by 2025.

The BRT is operated by Amman Vision Investment & Development, a company owned by the Greater Amman Municipality. Before he began working on the BRT, Malek Bani Hamdan, Amman Vision’s health and safety officer, worked for more than a decade in Amman’s traffic police department, often responding to problems related to privately operated buses’ lack of fixed schedules, security cameras, passenger capacity limits, and well-marked stops. The latter two issues in particular led women to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable when in transit.

“The most common problem that my office delt with was gender harassment—like someone staring at a woman or saying something to make her uncomfortable on the private buses,” Bani Hamdan told Foreign Policy at the Amman Vision office.

Sadaqa’s research has found that more than 60 percent of women reported gender harassment while using public transportation. The most common type of harassment that women reported was inappropriate staring, followed by verbal abuse.

Bani Hamdan’s team aims to prevent these issues from happening on the BRT. Staff members monitor BRT bus interiors via CCTV cameras and operate a call center where riders can report complaints. In the future, BRT buses will be equipped to monitor their exteriors as well. In addition to the CCTV surveillance, Bani Hamdan says digital bus tracking and station lights have helped women feel safer, particularly when traveling in the evenings.

The BRT’s public financing model has also improved conditions for women. Private buses without fixed schedules often fail to enforce safety limits on the number of passengers who can board, meaning that women can find themselves in cramped vehicles without personal space.

“This structure is in large part why the service is unreliable. If everyone gets off the bus, they might not even finish the route,” said Hazem Zureiqat, who worked as a transport planner in the Greater Amman Municipality during the beginning of the BRT project. “The service is not attractive because it’s not reliable. A woman may have to wait at the bus stop at a place that’s isolated and unsafe, all while not knowing how long she’s going to wait.”

By contrast, BRT operators are paid based on kilometers driven, incentivizing them to stick with their routes and enforce limits on the number of passengers allowed on each bus. Amman Vision leaders hope that these changes will ultimately benefit the city’s most vulnerable citizens.

For now, however, the BRT has limited geographic reach. Only two routes are currently in operation, serving major transit hubs in the north and center of the city. “To get to BRT routes, you need to take other transportation, and the current transportation is ineffective, unreliable, and unsafe,” said Randa Naffa, a co-founder and manager of Sadaqa. “BRT as a service alone is better than the rest of the system. However, BRT will not solve the problem alone.”

Amman Vision and the Greater Amman Municipality plan to add more lines in the coming years. They also intend to expand beyond the city. The next phase of the BRT project includes a line from Amman to Zarqa, a city to the northeast of the capital. About 100,000 passengers will be able to shuttle between the two cities every day by the end of this year, according to Jordan’s Ministry of Transport. The municipality has also made transfers between some bus lines and the BRT free of charge, creating a larger network of transportation options for Amman’s residents.

The BRT project was launched in 2006 by former Amman Mayor Omar Maani. His team began by studying the distribution of residents and businesses in Amman with grants and loans from the World Bank and the French Development Agency. They weighed the option of buses against other forms of public transportation, including aboveground trams and underground subways.

“The BRT is simpler to implement than underground subways and aboveground systems. And the [BRT] buses themselves are safer and more comfortable,” said Husseini, the Fulbright fellow.

Despite their need for better public transportation, the Jordanian public has largely viewed government infrastructure projects like the BRT with cynicism. The BRT has taken more than a decade to complete and cost millions of dollars. After its launch, the BRT project came to a halt in 2011 amid accusations of corruption. An investigation eventually cleared Maani and the municipality’s team of wrongdoing, allowing the project to resume in 2015, but the allegations contributed to widespread public mistrust of the BRT and government projects more generally.

“We need to aggressively move forward with more improvements to the BRT service,” said Zureiqat, who now works at Engicon, an engineering consulting firm in Amman. “The main benefit is … the symbolism in showing people what it means to have proper public transportation.”

Since its rollout, the BRT’s ridership has been rapidly increasing. Today, the system carries about 700,000 riders per month. The high demand has resulted in longer wait times during peak hours. Despite their previous cynicism toward the BRT, Amman residents are now urging their city leaders to expand the system’s capacity to reduce wait times, add umbrellas along station platforms, and include night service.

Politicians are taking note. Late last year, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh announced the government’s plan to establish new BRT routes connecting different governorates in Jordan. And within Amman, Riyad al-Kharabsheh, the director of public transport and infrastructure projects in the Greater Amman Municipality, has made it the BRT’s goal to cover the entire Jordanian capital.

“I don’t want just to stay home. I’ve always wanted to work outside the house,” said Nodznaya, reflecting on the impact that better transportation could have on her life. “On the BRT, I’m more comfortable, and it’s easy to use. Now we need more lines and more buses.”

[rushikesh-d]

Automotive Electronics Market To Witness the Highest Growth Globally in Coming Years

The report begins with an overview of the Automotive Electronics Market 2025 Size and presents throughout its development. It provides a comprehensive analysis of all regional and key player segments providing closer insights into current market conditions and future market opportunities, along with drivers, trend segments, consumer behavior, price factors, and market performance and estimates. Forecast market information, SWOT analysis, Automotive Electronics Market scenario, and feasibility study are the important aspects analyzed in this report.

The Automotive Electronics Market is experiencing robust growth driven by the expanding globally. The Automotive Electronics Market is poised for substantial growth as manufacturers across various industries embrace automation to enhance productivity, quality, and agility in their production processes. Automotive Electronics Market leverage robotics, machine vision, and advanced control technologies to streamline assembly tasks, reduce labor costs, and minimize errors. With increasing demand for customized products, shorter product lifecycles, and labor shortages, there is a growing need for flexible and scalable automation solutions. As technology advances and automation becomes more accessible, the adoption of automated assembly systems is expected to accelerate, driving market growth and innovation in manufacturing. The size of the global automotive electronics market was $91.06 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach $144.19 billion by 2026, with a CAGR of 6.1% over the forecast period.

Get Sample PDF Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/102840

Key Strategies

Key strategies in the Automotive Electronics Market revolve around optimizing production efficiency, quality, and flexibility. Integration of advanced robotics and machine vision technologies streamlines assembly processes, reducing cycle times and error rates. Customization options cater to diverse product requirements and manufacturing environments, ensuring solution scalability and adaptability. Collaboration with industry partners and automation experts fosters innovation and addresses evolving customer needs and market trends. Moreover, investment in employee training and skill development facilitates seamless integration and operation of Automotive Electronics Market. By prioritizing these strategies, manufacturers can enhance competitiveness, accelerate time-to-market, and drive sustainable growth in the Automotive Electronics Market.

Major Automotive Electronics Market Manufacturers covered in the market report include:

Continental AG

Robert Bosch GmbH

Sony Corporation

Aptiv

Hyundai Mobis

ZF Friedrichshafen AG

Autoliv Inc.

Magna International Inc.

Aisin Seiki Co. Ltd

Philips N.V.

Infineon Technologies AG

NVIDIA Corporation

Valeo SA

Globally, the increasing urbanization, improvement in the standard of living, and the rise in the disposable income of people is positively affecting the growth of the vehicles. The rising popularity of electric vehicles (EV) and automated vehicles (AV) is driving the market. With the growing population, issues such as traffic congestion and road accidents are subsequently increasing day by day thus giving rise to the safety security concerns among the customers as well as the manufacturers. Also, the rising trend towards comfort and luxury offered by high-performance vehicles is gaining traction among the consumers. The manufacturers are working on developing electric powertrains to boost the performance of the vehicles.

Trends Analysis

The Automotive Electronics Market is experiencing rapid expansion fueled by the manufacturing industry's pursuit of efficiency and productivity gains. Key trends include the adoption of collaborative robotics and advanced automation technologies to streamline assembly processes and reduce labor costs. With the rise of Industry 4.0 initiatives, manufacturers are investing in flexible and scalable Automotive Electronics Market capable of handling diverse product portfolios. Moreover, advancements in machine vision and AI-driven quality control are enhancing production throughput and ensuring product consistency. The emphasis on sustainability and lean manufacturing principles is driving innovation in energy-efficient and eco-friendly Automotive Electronics Market Solutions.

Regions Included in this Automotive Electronics Market Report are as follows:

North America [U.S., Canada, Mexico]

Europe [Germany, UK, France, Italy, Rest of Europe]

Asia-Pacific [China, India, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, Rest of Asia Pacific]

South America [Brazil, Argentina, Rest of Latin America]

Middle East & Africa [GCC, North Africa, South Africa, Rest of the Middle East and Africa]

Significant Features that are under offering and key highlights of the reports:

- Detailed overview of the Automotive Electronics Market.

- Changing the Automotive Electronics Market dynamics of the industry.

- In-depth market segmentation by Type, Application, etc.

- Historical, current, and projected Automotive Electronics Market size in terms of volume and value.

- Recent industry trends and developments.

- Competitive landscape of the Automotive Electronics Market.

- Strategies of key players and product offerings.

- Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growth.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

► What is the current market scenario?

► What was the historical demand scenario, and forecast outlook from 2025 to 2032?

► What are the key market dynamics influencing growth in the Global Automotive Electronics Market?

► Who are the prominent players in the Global Automotive Electronics Market?

► What is the consumer perspective in the Global Automotive Electronics Market?

► What are the key demand-side and supply-side trends in the Global Automotive Electronics Market?

► What are the largest and the fastest-growing geographies?

► Which segment dominated and which segment is expected to grow fastest?

► What was the COVID-19 impact on the Global Automotive Electronics Market?

Table Of Contents:

1 Market Overview

1.1 Automotive Electronics Market Introduction

1.2 Market Analysis by Type

1.3 Market Analysis by Applications

1.4 Market Analysis by Regions

1.4.1 North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)

1.4.1.1 United States Market States and Outlook 

1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook 

1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook 

1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)

1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook

1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook 

1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook

1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook 

1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook 

1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)

1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook

1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook 

1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook 

1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook 

1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook 

1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa

1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook

1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook 

1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook 

1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook 

1.5 Market Dynamics

1.5.1 Market Opportunities

1.5.2 Market Risk

1.5.3 Market Driving Force

2 Manufacturers Profiles

Continued…

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[cafenostalgique]

My ultimate film watchlist (2010s)

1930s-1940s | 1950s | 1960s-1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s

Welcome to the final part of my ultimate film watchlist! If you haven't familiarized yourself with the intro of the first part, please see it under the 1930s-1940s link above. Otherwise, we'll jump into the next list, of which I've seen many movies, and intend to watch even more. Enjoy, and as always, let me know if anything should be added to this list.

watched | loved | wouldn’t watch again | holiday

2010

Alice in Wonderland

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Black Swan

Clash of the Titans

Date Nights

Dear John

Despicable Me

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Easy A

Eat Pray Love

Grown Ups

How to Train Your Dragon

Inception

Insidious

Little Fockers

Megamind

Salt

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Secretariat

Shrek Forever After

Shutter Island

Tangled

The Book of Eli

The Expendables

The Karate Kid

The Last Song

The Other Guys

The Runaways (I have a special love in my heart for Joan Jett)

The Social Network

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Toy Story 3

TRON: Legacy

True Grit

2011

A Dangerous Method

Bad Teacher

Bridesmaids

Cars 2

Contagion

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Footloose

Friends with Benefits

Hugo

In Time

Kill the Irishman

Kiss Me

Megan is Missing

Melancholia

Midnight in Paris

No Strings Attached

Paul

Rango

Scream 4

Shame

Sleeping Beauty

Soul Surfer

Source Code

Super 8

Take Shelter

The Adjustment Bureau

The Artist

The Cabin in the Woods

The Descendants

The Help

The Muppets

The Skin I Live In

The Thing

The Tree of Life

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

We Bought a Zoo

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Winnie the Pooh

2012

Chernobyl Diaries

Excision

Frankenweenie

Hotel Transylvania

Iron Sky

Lincoln

Magic Mike

ParaNorman

Pitch Perfect

Prometheus

Rock of Ages

Ruby Sparks

Sinister

Ted

The Campaign

The Looper

The Lorax

The Master

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Raven

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

The Woman in Black

Wreck-It Ralph

2013

12 Years a Slave

About Time

Carrie

Don Jon

Frozen

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Insidious: Chapter 2

Lovelace

Monsters University

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II

Parkland

Safe Haven

The Bling Ring

The Book Thief

The Conjuring

The Great Gatsby

The Invisible Woman

The Last Days on Mars

The Purge

The Railway Man

Warm Bodies

We're the Millers

What Maisie Knew

2014

A Brilliant Young Mind

American Sniper

Big Eyes

Big Hero 6

Boyhood

Gone Girl

Interstellar

I Origins

Labor Day

Maleficient

Oculus

Serena

The Captive

The Fault in Our Stars

The Giver

The Lego Movie

The Signal

The Theory of Everything

Unbroken

2015

50 Shades of Grey

Amateur Teens

Blush

Chappie

Green Room

Into the Forest

Kept Woman

Krampus

Maggie

Pitch Perfect 2

Poltergeist

Room

Spy

Summertime

Ted 2

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

The Lure

The Martian

2016

10 Cloverfield Lane

A Wish for Christmas

Before I Wake

Blair Witch

Brain on Fire

Devil's Bride

Finding Dory

Friend Request

Grease Live!

Hounds of Love

Loving

Moana

Ouija: Origin of Evil

Passengers

The Birth of a Nation

The Boy

The Conjuring 2

The Receptionist

Train to Busan

Zootopia

2017

1945

50 Shades Darker

A Quiet Passion

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Dolores

Get Out

Frantz

It

Kedi

Lady Bird

Lady Macbeth

Land of Mine

Lucky

Mudbound

Prevenge

Raw

Step

The Florida Project

Their Finest

Thelma

The Lost City of Z

The Shape of Water

2018

50 Shades Freed

Annihilation

A Quiet Place

A Star Is Born

Bohemian Rhapsody

Book Club

Crazy Rich Asians

Halloween

Hereditary

Insidious: the Last Key

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

The Grinch

The Kissing Booth

The Meg

The Nun

The Post

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

2019

Ad Astra

Amazing Grace

Apollo 11

Booksmart

Child's Play

Doctor Sleep

Hail Satan?

High Life

It Chapter Two

Judy

Little Women

Midsommar

Nightmare Cinema

Parasite

Ready or Not

Rocketman

The Highwaymen

The Sisters Brother

Toy Story 4

Us