#tb 01

[jtl-fics]

How will Neil terrorize Britain this week?

10/30/24 WIP Wednesday (CLOSED) | Foxhole Bake AU

“Now that we’ve had our morning signature bake it is time to move onto the Technical challenge for the bakers this week.” Noel’s voice comes over the image of the bakers all at their stations with a pile of covered ingredients in front of them.

“With the Signature Bake the bakers were able to practice their bakes beforehand to make sure that they could get it right.” The camera lingered on Neil Josten, “With this however the bakers are going in blind with no idea what they will be baking or how to make it.”

The camera finally settled on Prue and Paul. “Bakers, for this week’s technical challenge we are asking that you make your own marshmallows and then make a puffed rice treat.” Paul’s eyes landed on Neil, “I’d say that one of you already knows the latter but I think you are all going in equally blind.” he says with a bit of a chuckle.

“I’ll find a new way to mess it up, don’t worry.” Neil reassures Paul.

[stromuprisahat]

Cesare's face, when Juan suggests to outrun French cannons...

[aewmoves]

[neptuniadoesstuff]

My 2 Little Gae Goobers

This is Day 01 of my weird Pride Month Event where I basically draw both Harper & Jeremiah as a couple for a whole month bcs I LITERALLY SHIP THESE 2 & YOU CAN'T STOP ME!

Characters: Harper Turner (Blue boi) & Jeremiah Greenbel (Minty Boi) (Both of them belong to Rayark & Archpray)

Art: Mine.

Program: Screb.

Bubs' TOS: Plz don't repost/steal, trace, or recolor my art WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! If you do, I'll take yur femur and pelvis.. SO, DON'T THINK ABOUT IT! (The PNS on my blog's pinned post clearly means "Please No Steal" plz follow that rule.) If you do post my art on anything like yur blog or somewhere else (With my permission) PLEASE CREDIT ME!

[chiyokoemilia]

chapters of us (a bookstore romance)

ᰔ series. chapters of us (a bookstore romance)

ᰔ pairing. - architect/carpenter gojo satoru x bookstore owner reader

ᰔ summary. your love life is as quiet as the shelves of your bookstore. seeking a change, you sign up for a dating app and become captivated by a picture-less/nameless profile—belonging to none other than gojo satoru, a charming architect with a complicated past. your online connection sparks with undeniable chemistry, but you remain unaware that the man you’re drawn to is also your neighbor next door. when he unexpectedly walks into your cozy bookstore, your world shifts. as you navigate feelings for both the mystery man online and the neighbor who feels like a heartbeat away, hidden truths loom over you. can love blossom amid secrets, or will the shadows of your pasts eclipse your stories before it even begins?

ᰔ word count. tbs

ᰔ fic warnings. contains explicit sexual content, guy-next-door, romantic tension, rough sex, age difference (gojo is 32, reader 23), themes of self-doubt, angst, insecurities, heartbreak, and emotional trauma. explicit smut, self-destructive behavior, violence, he falls first and is down bad, illnesses, divorce, complicated relationship/pining, alcohol use. happy ending. ᰔ genre/tags. age difference (9 years), neighbors to lovers, slow burn, romantic tension, emotional depth, self-discovery, secrets, heartbreak, healing. 18+ ᰔ status: in progress ᰔ ao3 + wattpad

ᰔ navigation: chapter list: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | epilogue

ᰔ story details: c.o.u q&a, gallery: gojo’s aesthetic, readers aesthetic, bookstore, workshop, gojo headcannons, ᰔ taglist: — (open! comment if you'd like to be tagged for future chapters)

© chiyokoemilia. please do not copy, repost, translate, or modify my works.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Uncle Sam paid to develop a cancer drug and now one guy will get to charge whatever he wants for it

Today (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Tomorrow (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

The argument for pharma patents: making new medicines is expensive, and medicines are how we save ourselves from cancer and other diseases. Therefore, we will award government-backed monopolies – patents – to pharma companies so they will have an incentive to invest their shareholders' capital in research.

There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing:

https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf

And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "evergreening" – coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/

Evergreening got a lot of attention recently when John Green rained down righteous fire upon Johnson & Johnson for their sneaky tricks to prevent poor people from accessing affordable TB meds, prompting this excellent explainer from the Arm and A Leg Podcast:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

Another thing those monopoly profits are useful for: "pay for delay," where pharma companies bribe generic manufacturers not to make cheap versions of drugs whose patents have expired. Sure, it's illegal, but that doesn't stop 'em:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/competition-enforcement/pay-delay

But it's their money, right? If they want to spend it on bribes or evergreening or marketing, at least some of that money is going into drugs that'll keep you and the people you love from enduring unimaginable pain or dying slowly and hard. Surely that warrants a patent.

Let's say it does. But what about when a pharma company gets a patent on a life-saving drug that the public paid to develop, test and refine? Publicly funded work is presumptively in the public domain, from NASA R&D to the photos that park rangers shoot of our national parks. The public pays to produce this work, so it should belong to the public, right?

That was the deal – until Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Under Bayh-Dole, government-funded inventions are given away – to for-profit corporations, who get to charge us whatever they want to access the things we paid to make. The basis for this is a racist hoax called "The Tragedy Of the Commons," written by the eugenicist white supremacist Garrett Hardin and published by Science in 1968:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin invented an imaginary history in which "commons" – things owned and shared by a community – are inevitably overrun by selfish assholes, a fact that prompts nice people to also overrun these commons, so as to get some value out of them before they are gobbled up by people who read Garrett Hardin essays.

Hardin asserted this as a historical fact, but he cited no instances in which it happened. But when the Nobel-winning Elinor Ostrom actually went and looked at how commons are managed, she found that they are robust and stable over long time periods, and are a supremely efficient way of managing resources:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

The reason Hardin invented an imaginary history of tragic commons was to justify enclosure: moving things that the public owned and used freely into private ownership. Or, to put it more bluntly, Hardin invented a pseudoscientific justification for giving away parks, roads and schools to rich people and letting them charge us to use them.

To arrive at this fantasy, Hardin deployed one of the most important analytical tools of modern economics: introspection. As Ely Devons put it: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Hardin's hoax swept from the fringes to the center and became received wisdom – so much so that by 1980, Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole were able to pass a law that gave away publicly funded medicine to private firms, because otherwise these inventions would be "overgrazed" by greedy people, denying the public access to livesaving drugs.

On September 21, the NIH quietly published an announcement of one of these pharmaceutical transfers, buried in a list of 31 patent assignments in the Federal Register:

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-20487.pdf

The transfer in question is a patent for using T-cell receptors (TCRs) to treat solid tumors from HPV, one of the only patents for treating solid tumors with TCRs. The beneficiary of this transfer is Scarlet TCR, a Delaware company with no website or SEC filings and ownership shrouded in mystery:

https://www.bizapedia.com/de/scarlet-tcr-inc.html

One person who pays attention to this sort of thing is James Love, co-founder of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that has worked for decades for access to medicines. Love sleuthed out at least one person behind Scarlet TCR: Christian Hinrichs, a researcher at Rutgers who used to work at the NIH's National Cancer Institute:

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/lasker-clinical-research-scholars/tenured-former-scholars

Love presumes Hinrichs is the owner of Scarlet TCR, but neither the NIH nor Scarlet TCR nor Hinrichs will confirm it. Hinrichs was one of the publicly-funded researchers who worked on the new TCR therapy, for which he received a salary.

This new drug was paid for out of the public purse. The basic R&D – salaries for Hinrichs and his collaborators, as well as funding for their facilities – came out of NIH grants. So did the funding for the initial Phase I trial, and the ongoing large Phase II trial.

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, the proposed patent transfer will make Hinrichs a very wealthy man (Love calls it "generational wealth"):

https://prospect.org/health/2023-10-18-nih-how-to-become-billionaire-program/

This wealth will come by charging us – the public – to access a drug that we paid to produce. The public took all the risks to develop this drug, and Hinrichs stands to become a billionaire by reaping the rewards – rewards that will come by extracting fortunes from terrified people who don't want to die from tumors that are eating them alive.

The transfer of this patent is indefensible. The government isn't even waiting until the Phase II trials are complete to hand over our commonly owned science.

But there's still time. The NIH is about to get a new director, Monica Bertagnolli – Hinrichs's former boss – who will need to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. Love is hoping that the confirmation hearing will present an opportunity to question Bertagnolli about the transfer – specifically, why the drug isn't being nonexclusively licensed to lots of drug companies who will have to compete to sell the cheapest possible version.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[faberkins]

when hes pathetic and sweaty

MIN @ TB 01/18/24

[conacoflakes]

Conan O’Brien media archive

As a rule of thumb I avoid any movie streaming services or other ways to download that aren't totally virus free, etc. so these links lead to Drive, archive.org, and YouTube or other trusted media sharing sites.

Shows + TV

Conan O'Brien Must Go (2024) | Drive

Conan visits his fans from around the globe and indulges in various countries cultures. His most recent show with only 4 episodes: Norway, Argentina, Thailand, and Ireland. All four episodes can be found at this drive link

Late Night With Conan O'Brien (1993 - 2009) | archive.org @ mountainmikeinoregon

Archived episodes of Late Night sorted by year. Not a complete collection, many episodes are missing (for example the 1993 collection jumps from episodes 1-4 to episode 35) but a great deal of them are here. Easy to access and watch.

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009-2010) | archive.org

The show he briefly inherited from Leno which would cause the infamous TV war between them. Conan would leave NBC for TBS after this. All 145 Conan episodes that aired are in here.

Conan Without Borders (2018) | dailymotion

A series of specials that aired on Conan where he travels various countries. The precursor to the 2024 show. Filmed during the height of the Trump administration which is reflected in a lot of the jokes, topics, and other parts of the show. Various clips are also avaliable on YouTube. QnA's are also avaliable on YouTube.

Episode List:

1. Conan in Cuba - 49:18 2. Conan in Armenia - 42:48 3. Qatar - Unable to find 4. Conan Does Korea - 36:23 5. Conan in Berlin - 42:58 6. Conan Without Borders: Made in Mexico- 42:20 7. Israel - Unable to find. Judging from the clips this episode paints Israel in an extremely sympathetic light. Know that I stand with Palestine and that Israel is an Apartheid state. Learn more at decolonizepalestine.org 8. Conan Without Borders: Haiti - 42:04 9. Conan in Italy - 50:13 10. Conan in Japan - 42:03 11. Conan Without Borders: Australia - 42:03 12. Conan Without Borders: Greenland - 42:01 13. Conan Without Borders: Ghana - 43:00

Film

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP (2011) - Part 1 / Part 2 | dailymotion

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP is a documentary about what Conan and his crew did on tour before TBS. After Jay Leno took back his show, Conan travels to 32 different cities to do improv while attempting to severe all ties with NBC. Fun film with more intimate and candid moments of him and his crew.

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP - Commentary by Conan, Andy Richter, Sona Movsesian & More (2011) | archive.org - YouTube

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP is a documentary about what Conan and his crew did on tour before TBS. This version of the film has his own commentary over it.

Podcasts & Radio

The Conan and Jordan Show (Podcast) | soundcloud.com | episode 1 | episode 2

Only two episodes have been uploaded. Apparently the site that it’s hosted on (SiriusXM) doesn’t even show all the episodes available.

To be updated as more links are found

[oventoleste]

Oi gente, voltei 🖤.

Fiquei um pouco sumida, mas agora estou de volta e bem.

Sobre as manchinhas que surgiram no meu corpo, não era a vesícula. A médica não fechou o diagnóstico, mas disse que provavelmente era herpes zoster. Pelo q eu entendi, as vezes o vírus da catapora se aloja no nosso nervo e uma imunidade baixa pode fazer ele despertar. Acho que aquele período de NF baixou minha imunidade e fez isso ocorrer.

Bom, agr que eu tô melhor eu vou iniciar outro NF. Mas, uma coisa que eu vou fazer agr, e uma dica que eu dou pra vcs, tomem propolis td dia, pelo menos 15 gotinhas. Vai ajudar na imunidade.

É isso. Agora que minha saúde tá boa, vou tentar fazer +1 NF. O meu último foi de 7 dias, queria dobrar, mas não vou me forçar demais tb.

Enfim, vou relatando aqui direitinho até onde conseguir.

Início: 01/10 - 21:30

Fim: ???

[putschki1969]

LisAni! LIVE 2024

Yuki Kajiura, her regular FictionJunction members and LiSA all participated in the Saturday Stage of LisAni! LIVE 2024.

Title: リスアニ ！LIVE 2024 Date: January 27 (SATURDAY STAGE) Venue: Nippon Budokan Website: https://www.lisani.jp/live/ Appearing artists: illumination STARS & CoMETIK／ASCA／Yuma Uchida／JUNNA／ FictionJunction (Vocal: KAORI, KEIKO, YURIKO KAIDA, Joelle, LiSA)／Myuk UPCOMING ARTISTS：asmi / SennaRin / UniteUp!

🎤Setlist🎤 1.蒼穹のファンファーレ 2.stone cold 3.from the edge 4.Parade

Tweet by Keiko | Tweet by LiSA | Tweet 2 by LiSA | Tweet by ASCA | Tweet by Yuriko | Instagram post 1 & 2 by Keiko | Instagram post by LiSA

Kaji Fes. 2023 Day 1 Broadcast Promo Video

「30th Anniversary Yuki Kajiura LIVE vol.#19 - Kaji Fes. 2023-」 held at Nippon Budokan on December 8th and 9th, 2023 is set to be broadcast on CS TBS Channel 1. The other day, a short promo video was posted for the Day 1 broadcast.

📺DAY1：2024/02/24 21:00~(JST) 📺DAY2：2024/03/??

※The broadcast date and time of Day 2 will be announced on the TBS channel official website as soon as it is decided. ※You can watch it on your PC or smartphone via “SKY PerfecTV! Streaming”. You can also watch the archived video for one week after the broadcast. [Note: I don’t think this service is available overseas] ◇TBS channel official website

Yuki Kajiura LIVE vol.#17～PARADE～ TV Broadcast

In other news, it was announced that the final performance of YKL Vol#17 (2022/8/12) will be broadcast on CS TBS Channel 1 on February 24, before Kaji Fes. 2023 Day 1! 『Yuki Kajiura LIVE vol.#17～PARADE～』8/1 Tokyo Nakano Sunplaza Broadcast date/time：February 24 (18:30/21:00) TV Channel：CS TBS Channel 1 Website: https://www.tbs.co.jp/tbs-ch/item/o2837/ Yuki Kajiura（Piano/Chorus） Vocal：KAORI・KEIKO・YURIKO KAIDA・Joelle [Guest Vocal] Hanae Tomaru, rito, LINO LEIA [Surprise Guest] Hikaru

Previously, this live was broadcast on the streaming platform "Streaming+" (2022/11/01) so we are not getting any new footage unfortunately. Here are my posts about the broadcast => Live Report | Sprinter Performance

[jtl-fics]

Good Morning and Happy WIPW

The cupcakes were a hit but I was thinking how does Mr.Minyard do with savory baking?

Foxhole bake AU? Thank you 🙏🤍

WIP Wednesday - Open (9-13-23) | A Foxhole Bake

"What mystery challenge will await our bakers in this week's technical challenge?" Noel Fielding's voice questioned over the shots of the bakers all looking at the covered ingredients. "As per usual Paul and Prue have gone off to, I assume, stare passionately into one another's eyes talking about sausage rolls. The bakers technical knowledge of baking will be put to the test." Noel says.

"This week bakers," Noel looks at them all, "You will all be making a quickie!" he announces.

"Love, I believe it is pronounced Quiche." Sandi says.

"No, I think I had it right." Noel shakes his head.

[stromuprisahat]

When you realize your brother

and son

fucked his little brother's future wife...

[aewmoves]

[heartmaddie]

yn + kiyoko's red velvet cookie recipe incl cream cheese frosting

ingredients !

cookies

110g softened unsalted butter* 1 tsp vanilla bean paste - use paste not extract! 220g caster sugar ; 200 if osamu is on cut (!) 2 large eggs* 2 tbsp cocoa powder 1/4 cup of plain full fat yoghurt 2 tbs red food colouring ; use gel NOT liquid 250g plain white flour ; cake flour is okay too (no self raising or bread flour) 1 tsp baking powder

*make sure to take eggs and butter out of the fridge at least two hours prior to baking - or heat butter up in 10 second increments on low heat in the microwave until soft to the touch ; not melted.

cream cheese frosting ; leave at least 5 unfrosted for keiji, 12 if osamu is on cut.

6 tbs softened unsalted butter : see previous note 150g cream cheese ; use the expensive brand , no name brand has an after taste 1 tsp vanilla bean paste ; extract is okay 220g powdered icing sugar ; add to taste (try not to exceed 260g)

method !

01 heat oven to 180C 02 use butter to stick parchment paper onto baking trays 03 cream butter , vanilla extract and sugar until light and fluffy (8 minutes on high speed) 04 add eggs, yogurt , cocoa powder and food colouring , mix slowly until combined. 05 add sifted flour and baking powder carefully , mix slowly until just combined ; don't overmix 06 drop heaped tablespoons onto the parchment paper, distance of about 1.5 cm from eachother. 07 bake for about 8-10 minutes until top springs back when touched 08 allow to cool for 5 minutes then transfer onto cooling rack 09 only garnish until cookies are fully cooled ; melts otherwise 10 beat all ingredients together with stand mixer for cream cheese frosting until light and fluffy, don't overmix

notes !

! kei doesn't like when the frosting is too sweet - adapt for that ! make sure to store in an air tight container in fridge ! finish in 4-5 days ! offer some to atsumu when he drops by, complains otherwise ! tobio doesn't like the frosting , only give him 2 regardless of bulk/cut.

[here-queer-and-really-werid]

Saturday, November 9th

9:01 PM

✨The results are in✨

From the finished Tea poll results this is what I will have to drink tomorrow morning, will update when made (i had to turn the percentages into measurements):

Tea: (1/3 cup, 5 tbs + 1 tsp)

Milk: (2 tbs + 1 tsp)

Sugar: (1.5 tbs)

Cream: (1 tbs)

Honey: (1/4 cup, 3 tbs + 1 tsp)

Vanilla Extract: (1/4 cup + 1 tsp)

Hot Water: (1/2 cup, 6 tbs + 1 tsp)

1/4 CUPS OF VANILLA EXTRACT

More vanilla extract than even water

I’m scared

——————

Sunday November 10th, 10:49 am

Edit: hate to be a flake but I don’t think I’d be able to do this because:

1. I only have a small bottle of vanilla extract and I don’t want to waste pretty much all of It on a possible disaster (and the vanilla extract isn’t cheap)

2. The thought of drinking something like 1/4 of a cup of VANNILA EXTRACT is puke worthy

If any brave or crazy soul out there wants to do this, let me know how it goes

[solarsonicsoda]

Rebbie's Wrestling Reviews - AEW Dynasty 2024

Kazuchika Okada (c) def. Pac by pinfall for the AEW Continental Championship in 21:55

This match was simply awesome. Two guys who have absolutely all the tools put them to good use in this opener. Pac sold everything amazingly, he is brilliant at what he does, and there were many great sequences between the two men. Some of the specifics of this one were absolutely unreal too. Avalanche brainbuster, that brutal barricade DDT Pac took, an awesome springboard moonsault, a standing Brutaliser, a Black Arrow into the knees: so much brilliant wrestling. Of course, there was also Okada’s rug pull of the Rainmaker taunt. He had us in the palm of his hand and everything about that moment was hilarious. Loved this one. 

4.5 STARS OUT OF 5

House of Black (Malakai Black, Brody King, & Buddy Matthews) def. Adam Copeland, Eddie Kingston, & Mark Briscoe by pinfall in 17:46

Super fun! Loved the energy they brought to this one, and the pace was quick which is just what I want from a trios match like this. Briscoe had a pair of great spots on the apron here, first launching himself off a chair to attack Matthews, but then being launched off into a brutal Death Valley Driver by King into the barricade. I also really enjoyed the triple Spears later in the match. Generally just great fun here all executed well, and I enjoyed Black picking up the win after never truly meeting Copeland in the ring until that final moment. That’s fun and I look forward to Black challenging for the belt in the future. Potentially at Double or Nothing? I will say though, maybe Rick Knox could have picked a better position to count that pin, he was looking directly into the misted face of Copeland…

3.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Willow Nightingale def. Julia Hart (c) by pinfall for the AEW TBS Championship in 6:01

This is not the most revolutionary match on the card, but it was pretty satisfactory. It was pretty short, but I didn’t realise it was quite this short! It was worked sufficiently though and it gave us a big championship win for Nightingale! That’s going to be raising the rating! Mercedes Mone slightly cramps on what’s a lovely moment but I’m excited for their match at Double or Nothing! Feels big time! 

3 STARS OUT OF 5

Roderick Strong (c) def. Kyle O’Reilly by pinfall for the AEW International Championship in 17:18

Another brilliant match. Great sells, great strikes, great technical work: what not to love? Some of the transitions and reversal in this one were simply beautiful, there was an awesome ankle lock transition by O’Reilly, there was a tiger driver that became a guillotine hold, there were sweet counters of some of their common offence: I ask again, what’s not to love?! O’Reilly has great facials for a match like this and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing! I think the finish was a tad sudden, I’m not entirely sure why Wardlow showed up, but good for him. We also see that Adam Cole can walk post-match!

4.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Chris Jericho def. Hook (c) by pinfall for the FTW Championship in 16:34

Please say sike right now. I will say, I was actually enjoying this one for most of its run. Hook has some awesome suplexes, he wrestles with such a unique form and stuff, he’s just very engaging. Hook sends Jericho through a table off the apron with a T-bone suplex, he suplexes him in a bin, and he kicks out of two Judas Effects! That all went so hard! I don’t particularly remember what Jericho did but oh well. Now, why the hell did he win? Jericho got to dominate, and like he overpowered Hook, in a strike exchange, which should never be happening with Jericho who is not known for anything close. Then, after all their action, Jericho is walking whilst Hook is selling his ass off for Jericho post-Judas Effect, and then he hits him with his baseball bat and wins. WHY?! I do think this “Learning Tree” character can be fun, but it should be a character where he goes in there and loses a lot, and convincingly. No one wants to see Jericho have many long matches, nor do they want to see him win titles. How does this help Hook? He does not need to reclaim the title again from the likes of Jericho, it makes him look like a dork. This should have been a feud where Hook won every encounter. Really stupid finish on a flawed but fun schmozz.

2.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Toni Storm (c) (w/ Mariah May & Luther) def. Thunder Rosa by pinfall for the AEW Women’s World Championship in 15:08

First off, Team Timeless were absolutely slaying with the looks here. Yes, of course that includes you Luther. This was a pretty good match overall. Rosa hits a great Tornillo, Nigel McGuiness is a hoot on commentary as usual, and the Death Valley Driver on the apron was awesome. Some sweet sequences and combos in there too, like a cool tornado DDT into a Northern Lights suplex from Storm. I don’t particularly care for the Storm Zero kickout as it was done, I feel like it was a bit early for something like that for me. Rosa also had a real smooth transition into a backbreaker late on before Storm rightfully got the win. As I say, good match, just not the best. I feel I’ve never particularly gotten into Thunder Rosa’s work. Like, she’s a good wrestler, but I just don’t feel much about her in-ring skill, and I don’t like her promos. Regardless, they had a decent showing here.

3.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Will Ospreay def. Bryan Danielson by pinfall in 32:40

I’m going to start by mentioning how brilliant the atmosphere was with this St. Louis crowd. They were awesome the whole night but here was their peak. Everyone was just having a blast it seemed. Now, there’s a lot of hubbub about this one, and I’ll start with this now: No, this isn’t the best match ever. What it is though is really quite great. So many unreal spots here and a solid bit of story throughout. There’s the likes of Danielson fully tying up Ospreay, the tiger suplex off the top rope, the series of counters from an Oscutter to a Lebell Lock, and the staredown with the elbow pad removal. I want to mention the dodging of a Hidden Blade to hit a running knee from Danielson, loved that. All of these moments were great. In my notes though, I did eventually end up writing three things down in all caps. First, “TRIANGLE HOLD STYLES CLASH”. Yeah, that’s awesome. There was also the finishing stretch with “HE JUST HIT A TIGER DRIVER 91 ON DANIELSON”. I think that speaks for itself as something wild. Thankfully he took it as safely as he could, that is to say “I bet his shoulder hurts like hell”. Then, the best of them all: “KNEE OSCUTTER REVERSAL”. This was simply perfect, what a reversal for the Oscutter, and what a running knee it was. Beautiful. Overall, it was a really nice match that pulled me round into loving it, even if Ospreay can be a bit much with some of his style for me. It works for a big match! I don’t love the finish really with the doctors, but it’s not super egregious. It was probably a Danielson idea, but I’d prefer a clean finish here. Maybe there’s a sequel on the horizon. Anyway, on a first watch, I’m concluding that “the greatest match in US history” is not quite that (some people just love a man’s particular style and that’s ok!), but is still pretty stellar.

4.5 STARS OUT OF 5

The Young Bucks (Nicholas Jackson & Matthew Jackson) def. FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) in a ladder match for the AEW Tag Team Championships in 21:34

Now, something completely different! There’s plenty of ladder-based fun here, like some fun dropkick spots and one of the Bucks heading up for the belts off of a rope run. A ladder bridge was a large part of this one, first with a moonsault by Wheeler and an EVP Trigger by the Bucks atop it. Wheeler had a great performance here, and he hit a tope onto Matthew that sent him through a table, which I loved. Shortly after, Harwood would take a hurricanrana through one too, which I did like but it was a tad awkward. I really loved the Power and Glory off the ladders, that was super awesome, and the Wheeler tope through a table at the end was wild! He went so fast! There was a scary moment, as Nicholas would 450 Wheeler through a table, but as Harwood tried to piledriver Matthew through the ladder bridge, it would give way. Fortunately, it seems everyone is ok. This was a pretty fun match all-in-all, and I really enjoyed the finish with big shit-eating grin Jack Perry helping the Young Bucks. 

3.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Swerve Strickland (w/ Prince Nana) def. Samoa Joe (c) by pinfall for the AEW World Championship in 17:59

This is the moment I was waiting for! This was a pretty good match, Joe looked like an absolute beast in this one and I loved him for it. Swerve did his part too, selling very well for the big man. I especially loved his sell off the leg sweep, that was great. I do think the kickout from the Muscle Buster came a bit early in this match, it felt a tad flat for me, but it was soon followed by the House Call whilst Joe was in the ropes and the 450 Splash to the back of the head. I absolutely loved that spot. Those final moments were also great though, with Swerve doing whatever he has to do and with a great leap over Joe. That Swerve Stomp had me on my feet! The right man won here and it was absolutely essential here. What a great run from Samoa Joe though. Unfortunately, it is, indeed, Swerve’s House.

3.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Overall, this was a pretty good show! Not quite as good or as consistent as Revolution 2024, but another great PPV! This one is getting 4 STARS OUT OF 5 from me!