#wired magazine japan

[keicordelle]

For Better and For Worse

Momo

RE:VALE'S MOMO REVEALS SHOCKING SCAR?! A fashion mix-up during a live performance on Monday revealed a startling discovery about one of Japan's top idols: a 10cm long scar up his left ankle. Fans everywhere are wondering just what sort of injury might have left such a wound, and what it means for the future of Re:vale. Some wonder if the 25-year-old idol was hurt in the recent wire rigging incident reported on last month, while others speculate that this represents a far deeper and more grievous trauma. But one question looms large in everyone's mind: does this injury spell the end for Re:vale?

"'Fashion mix-up,'" Yuki scoffed, throwing the tabloid down in a fit of pique. "Your pant leg tugged up a few centimeters. That was hardly the scandalous striptease they're making it out to be. And that scar couldn't possibly have been from the wire incident; any monkey with half a brain could see that."

"They'll forget about it by next week. They always do," Momo said breezily. "Must've just been a slow week. We should've given them something to really talk about," he teased.

Yuki was still frowning at the magazine with its blurry photo of Momo's leg. "You've had that scar since well before you were an idol anyway."

"Honestly, I'm surprised no one's noticed until now! It's not like I really try to hide it. What's there to hide? Some really nice doctors fixed my leg and now I can walk again! I bet the fans would celebrate if they knew!"

Yuki chuckled at that, eyes finally lifting from that rude tabloid to land on Momo instead. "And it really doesn't hurt anymore?"

"Nuh-uh, I'm fit as a fiddle! I bet I could even do a back flip right now if I really wanted. Or the cancan! I could do the cancan!"

Momo's chatter was reassuring, and Yuki dragged his thoughts away from silvered scalpel marks dug into his flesh and shiny welts stretched over titanium-reinforced bone. Yuki knew all too well what scars could mean for an idol's future. But so long as Momo was determined to stay by his side, maybe their Re:vale's story would have a different ending.

[Ao3] | [Masterlist]

[13a07s]

Actions Are Indefinite

(Tetsuro Kuroo)

[Artwork is not mine! Credit to Pixiv Id]

Requested by: No One

Word Count: 3,825

Warnings and/or Pre-Notes:

Toxic Relationship (Not sure how but it is)

Alcohol

Sexual Tension; "Good Girl"

Boss/Employee Relationship

———————————————————————

Vibrations fight with the weight of the liquor in my system to etch their way into the skin of my hand. My phone wins, momentarily pulling my attention away from the man speaking gibberish to Morisuke and me. Well, to Morisuke, I just happen to be present.

My brother is back in the country on a short trip, no surprise there. He's usually only home for holidays or something to do with volleyball. I don't mind though, Morisuke has his ways of being present in my life without physically being present. Daily calls, weekly FaceTimes, gifts, random grocery deliveries, wiring money, and a lengthy text lecture if my bank account gets a penny below a thousand.

My brother has always been a bit of a... well, a helicopter parent. Micromanaging everything at all times if it has anything to do with my life or the lives of our younger brothers. Lucky for Morisuke, the youngest of our siblings is in his last year of high school, studying abroad in Russia. Aka, always under the watchful eye of our oldest brother. My fellow middle child is also studying abroad, his first year of college in England. Aka, the least micromanaged of us because of his college choice.

     I'm stuck in a happy medium. Far enough not to have Morisuke breathing down my neck, but still in our home country. Aka, he can pop in whenever he feels like it and has enough connections to help me move forward or - his personal favorite - to track every aspect of my life. The top dog in that running being Tetsuro Kuroo.

Tetsuro, who I've been shadowing and interning for. Like the older man, I hope to have a career in sports media. Unlike him, I want to be a journalist, not a promoter. Tetsuro, who bent me over his desk, even though he's technically my boss and one of my brother's longest-lasting friends. Tetsuro, who had no shame using the fact he's 'watching over me' to tattle to my brother that a big-time journalist was 'being a little handsy' at our lunch meeting about my next internship and the possibility of it being with his magazine.

Tetsuro, who's calling me for the tenth time tonight. Tetsuro, who I've been ignoring for the past two days. Tetsuro, who dug his heels when I requested time off until my brother informed him why I was requesting time off; to prepare and come to this dumb party to celebrate Russia's and Japan's official match. Tetsuro, who declared our moment - more like an hour - in his office, on his desk was a mistake, a lapse in judgment. Tetsuro, who said it meant nothing and wouldn't be happening again. Ever.

     I smash the big red decline button, sending his call to my overflowing inbox. Each message is laced with his voice. Some disguised as work calls, some simply telling me to call him back, and others telling me I'm acting like a spoiled brat.

I am a spoiled brat, Morisuke made sure of that. He's spent my whole life, even up to this very moment, making sure he - not our father - was the foundation of what I searched for in a man. Before I even utter a want or need, my brother takes care of it. Whether it's something as small as a back rub or something as big as moving to Russia with him; a selfish want of his that he's been not so discreetly dropping hints about. My brother's selfish want that doesn't seem so bad at the moment.

"Morisu - "

Before his name is fully off my lips, his hand is waved at a waiter, beckoning them to fetch me another drink to add to the long line of glasses I've left in my wake tonight. My brother doesn't bat an eye or stumble over his words as he sends out the order. From an outsider, it would look like his full attention is on his teammate. It's not.

     The lengthy tab under his name and the lack of lectures about 'being presentable' and 'not getting sloppy drunk' tip me off that Morisuke knows something's wrong. The fake unawareness of my alcohol intake lets me know he hasn't a clue in the world what it is. Actions, his specificity, are indefinite, always telling the true meaning of someone's thoughts and feelings.

It's good he doesn't know what's going on, at least in my book. The last thing I need is his image getting tainted because he punched his friend's teeth out. However, I'd give just about anything to curl up in Morisuke's arms and cry over the heartache consuming my chest.

Just as the waiter is coming back with my sixth - or maybe it's my seventh - cranberry vodka, my phone vibrates again, forcefully shaking in my hand. I snatch the cup from the staff rougher than I should have but I don't care for long. The weight and chill of the glass on my lips paired with the burning and sour taste seeping down my throat eases my empathy as soon as it bubbles in my chest.

     "He's been calling you a lot tonight," Morisuke mutters, plucking the empty glass from my fingertips when I tip it away. "The only time he's called even Kenma more than twice is when he's overslept. He's called you eleve - " My phone starts vibrating again, cutting my brother off. "Twelve. He's called you twelve times tonight."

     My eyes skirt down to my phone, denying Tetsuro once again. "You know how Kuroo gets. He's a workaholic. He probably just misplaced a file and wants to know if I know where it is," I try to lie, forcing my words out slowly so I make sure they come out properly and not heavy like my tongue feels.

     After my voice stops, I hold my breath in hopes Morisuke will believe me. He stares at me, unblinking, for a few moments before snapping his mouth into motion. "Call him back so he'll leave you be. Stop at the bar on your way back too. Your words are coming out tanged."

On the one hand, I'm glad he believed me. On the other hand, I don't want to call Tetsuro back, but my brother is as right as always, even if he didn't fully say it. I won't stop receiving calls until I answer or call back.

Like clockwork, as soon as I step out of my brother's bubble, my phone shakes and lights up with the picture of him and his high school friend again. It's an outdated picture, one of the millions taken at their graduation, but it's the last photo I have of the two.

Reluctantly, I press the green button instead of the red one. "Mr. Kuroo," I grumble into the phone, the tips of my ear feeling hot against the chilly glass. My eyes snag on the bar, my brother's voice ordering me to stop at it ringing in my mind. Technically, he just said to stop at the bar, he didn't say what to order even if it was insinuated he wanted me to get a glass of water.

     "The fuck did you just call me?" He asks, voice even, steady, and deadpanned. Tetsuro might not ever raise his voice loud enough to yell at me, but he has other ways to get his point across if his cursing wasn't enough. "In the ten years I've known you, Buttercup, you've never once referred to me as Mr Kuroo. Kuroo-San, ya, but not Mr Kuroo."

     "In the almost ten years I've known you, Mr Kurro, you've never once thought about fucking me on your desk and yet here we are," I respond, echoing his phrasing to mock him. The liquor on my tongue helps smooth the words out easier. It helps me slide into the barstool at the counter easier too. Vodka, two. Me, also two. Tetsuro, zero.

     One of his chuckles rings across the line. Not his light airy business laugh or his crackle used around his friends. No, this one is dark and almost warning, a noise that reminds me of smooth whiskey. "Buttercup, since the first day of my second year, since your first day of high school. Since I walked into class and you were perched on Yaku's desk in that short little skirt that showed off how your thighs spread like butter on the laminate. All I could think about is fisting your hair and sinking my dick into you bent over that goddamn desk."

     My heart flutters at the confusion, and not the heart pounding in my chest. I must not be drunk enough if the stupid bed-head can still get a rise out of me. "Forgive me for talking out of line, Sir, but you're full of shit right now, Mr. Kuroo," my hand flies up as I degrade my boss, waving at the waiter that brought me the last drink I had.

     "Actually," I start up again once the waiter nods, turning to start working on my next drink. "Don't forgive me, seeing how you're interrupting my personal time and according to my year contract as your intern, before the hour of seven in the morning or after the hour of five in the evening I'm not to be contacted for any of your needs. Mr Kuroo."

     I know it's petty of me to call him that again and that it'll crawl under his skin, but that's the point. Tetsuro wants to keep a professional relationship? Fine, I'll remain professional.

     When the waiter walks over with a chilled glass and my steady drink of the night, the relief of being tipsier almost erases the man on the other end of the phone. Almost. "If even a drop of that alcohol touches your lips I'll make sure that flirty little waiter doesn't work another promotion event of any kind," Tetsuro's icy voice echoes through my phone, the coldness of it not taking away the evenness.

     My hand snaps away from the glass, my eyes darting around the event room in search of the ex-winged spiker. "He's not being flirty and I'm old enough to decide if I want alcohol or not," I whisper, as if that'll make searching for him any easier.

     Tetsuro is full of shit right now. I bet he's not even here. I bet he took an educated guess on what I'm doing or has Kenma or one of the players feeding him updates on what I'm doing. The thoughts help me relax, my body turning back toward the bar as my free hand wraps around the glass again.

     "It's not common to freeze a glass for a cranberry vodka, Buttercup. If Yaku tabbed out his bill right now, how many of your drinks do you think Mr Wandering-Eyes 'forgot' to ring in?" Okay, maybe he's not full of shit. Maybe he is here somewhere.

     "If I told my brother you fucked me in your office like a pornographic secretary, how many of your teeth do you think he'd knock out?" I counter, raising the glass off the bar and slowly trailing it toward my lips. I might not be able to see him, but he sure can see me. Fine Mr Kuroo, do you want to test each other? Let's test each other. Words might sound pretty, but actions are indefinite.

     A hand slips over the opening of the glass, the knuckles of it pressed against my lips because of the short opening between the rim of the cup and my mouth. "Every last one of them, Buttercup, and I'd spend the whole time thinking about the way you begged me to choke you harder with your lanyard." Tetsuro's whisper cracks over the call at the same time it's whispered in my unoccupied ear, shooting chills up my spine.

     Actions are indefinite, words are not, and Tetsuro is whispering in my ear, the back of his fingers pressed against my lips to keep the alcohol I ordered parted from my tastebuds.

     He slowly pushes the cup down until it ticks against the counter again, his fingers sliding down the side to rest on top of mine. The dinging of the call ending rings in my ear for a moment or two before his voice is paired with it. "You've had enough to drink tonight, so, you have two options. You can float back over to your brother and ignore those soaked panties of yours - "

     "I'm not wet." Lie. Big, fat, fucking lie. My thighs are drenched, the material of my underwear clinging to my pussy because of my arousal. I've been dripping since he asked what I called him.

     Tetsuro's hand not wrapped around the glass snakes over my back, fingertips looping against the material of my dress before sliding down my rib cage. "You have two options," he repeats, his hand settling on my thigh, clawing at the skirt of my dress to hike it up my legs. "You can go back over and let Yaku take care of you, ignoring the sweetness you're wasting on this barstool."

     His fingertips brush against bare skin before rolling down, fingers prancing over me before settling on my mess. "Or you can let me take care of you," he mutters my second option, a single finger slowly ghosting up and down my clothed cunt, making me squirm on the stool secured under me. "Are you going to come with me to finish my important conversations like a good intern or are you going to continue sulking next to your brother as you try to drink away the feeling of my hands on your skin?"

     My tongue feels heavy again, weighed down with pounds made of vodka and lust. "I suppose starting to network will help me later on." My voice is so low I'm convinced he doesn't hear me, at least until his soft, normal laugh caresses my ear.

     "If you do tag along, it means no more drinking for the night, Buttercup, and some water to help sober you up." I grumble but don't put up a fight as he flags someone over.

Tetsuro's aura darkens as the same guy returns, the waiter's eyes jumping between the two do us. "Ms Yaku, how can I help you?" The man asks, his attention settling on me.

"She'd like a water," Tetsuro answers for me, his hand falling from the air to rest around my throat, his fingertips slightly digging into my flesh. Actions are indefinite, and at this moment his actions seem to counter his words from the other day. It wasn't a lapse of judgment, it was a lapse of self-control. The same gap is happening now.

"Isn't that right, Sweetheart?" He asks, words cool but tone laced with venom as he glares at the waiter. Tetsuro's head tips down, lips brushing behind my ear before his teeth snag on my earlobe, gently tugging on it before he pulls back again.

"Ya," I exhale, eyes locked on the waiter to help keep myself grounded. The worker has a mix of a pissy attitude and annoyance on his face before he turns away, grumbling to himself about 'high-class women'.

As soon as the waiter walks away, Tetsuro takes a step away from me, his hand and lips equally pulled from me. "It's repulsive a man like that thinks he stood a chance."

"You don't have to be so mean," I snap at him, turning my head to glare at the lengthy man. "Don't forget not that long ago we both attended one of the poorest schools in our district. What's gotten into you? Acting all prissy and like you're this big flirty guy. I've seen you stumble over your words ordering a coffee from a cute cashier."

A spark of the usual happy-go-lucky Tetsuro flickers through his eyes before getting snuffed out. "His bank account isn't why he doesn't stand a chance. He won't show you even an inkling of the respect your brother does. As for the other half of your complaining, I've embarrassed myself enough times in front of you that I can't do much worse. Besides," his voice drops to a hush and his head tilts down, his lips next to my ear again. "I already know what you think of me, Buttercup. That's a luxury I don't have with most people."

     Once again, Tetsuro pulls away from me, just in time for the waiter to set my glass of water down a little more aggressively than needed. I let the moment roll off my back as the water rolls down my throat, banished to mix with the too much vodka and too little food in my stomach.

     "Good girl," he whispers when I set the glass back on the counter. His hand cups my chin as his thumb rubs at the corner of my mouth, cleaning up a drop trying to escape.

     Tetsuro's fingers move slowly, tracing the lining of my jawbone, feathering over the skin of my neck, and caressing my shoulder before falling down my arm. Goose bumps are left in his wake, decorating my skin in tiny hills and my nerves with a soft chill. "Let's go finish up my business," he orders again, his hand cupping mine to help me off the barstool.

As soon as my heels click against the floor, his hand tugs mine upward, resting it on his bicep to sandwich my fingers between his arm and his side. If I didn't know any better, I'd think Tetsuro was using me as eye candy.

My stomach swishes as I'm led away from the bar, efficiently starting the war between the water and liquor in my system. My attention is focused on not getting sick on the shiny floor or the dress so expensive Morisuke refuses to tell me how much he paid for it.

At least, my attention is on my stomach until my name is called. "Ms Yaku," an older man in a suit similar to Tetsuro's calls; a huge grin on his face as he looks down his nose at me. His face seems familiar but I can't quite put my finger on it. "I assumed you'd be wrapped up with Russia's libero instead of our promoter." Ah, he must be one of the endless businessmen playing a hand with the Japanese official team; one of the men constantly filtering in and out of the office.

"I'm sure my brother has carved out time for me after his match," I respond, putting extra weight on the word 'brother'. Somehow, our parents mastered having four children that look nothing alike. Pair that with my last name and people lacking the understanding of Morisuke's behavior being rooted in trauma and not romance, and it leaves me in a sticky situation with my brother, on multiple occasions.

Confusion, disgust, and then understanding flicker across the man's face. "I was starting to wonder what the deal with the flowers was. Forgive me but the name 'Morisuke' didn't ring any bells."

That's another one of my brother's habits; sending a bouquet every Wednesday to the office, usually paired with a passive-aggressive note. Most of the time it's about not letting his friend overwork me or to drink water. This week's note was actually pleasant, Morisuke gushing about seeing me again after three months apart.

     The man's attention dies away from me, amping up as he talks to Tetsuro about Hinata's and Kenma's recent video together. I don't mind though, it gives me the time to focus on keeping the contents of my stomach in my stomach.

The next hour stays about the same. Tetsuro whisking me away after his conversation just to run into another suit-tailored man or floor-length dressed woman itching to talk about the players or promotion plans or the upcoming game. The whole time I focus on not getting sick and try to ignore the heat beckoning my skin to coat itself in a dewy sweat.

"Well I appreciate the offer, I think my date needs some air," Tetsuro's words rise above my inner voice trying to will my body heat to drop even a degree.

Date? Who's Tetsuro's date? My eyes scan the room, especially the space near the two of us. He didn't have a woman when he found me, though I don't know where he popped out of so maybe he did. Where's my brother? I should find him and ask him to drive me home.

The water quickly lost its battle with the liquor, no matter how much or how often Tetsuro was pouring it down my throat. My body is starting to feel that loss, most notably, my body heat is feeling it.

"Come along, Buttercup," he whispers in my ear, checking my grip on his arm before I'm pulled away from the small group of people he was speaking with. "We need to cool you down before you overheat."

"What about your date?" I ask, my words sounding slushy even to myself.

His usual chuckle fills the air, softer than the one he uses with his friends but deeper than the laughter he's been using all night. "My date's brother wasn't on the ball as much as usual. He let her drink more than I thought. Maybe we should have her throw up instead of just using water."

"Me?" I murmur, keeping my tone low as I fight off another wave of nausea. I shouldn't have had so many drinks, it's unprofessional for one, and for two, it doesn't feel too nice anymore.

"Yes, you, Buttercup," Tetsuro coos, holding the bathroom door open as he ushers me in. I slide past him, the chilliness of the room instantly coating my sticky skin. He follows after me, taking a second to lock the door before his hand is present on my stomach.

His head tips for the millionth time tonight, lips pressed against my ear as he paints out the agenda for the rest of the night. "After we let you get sick and get you cleaned up, we're going to go outside. I'm going to watch you bounce on my dick in the back of my car like you're craving so bad, of course, not without punishing you for ignoring me the past few days. Then, I'll return you to Yaku and we can finish off tomorrow when you come into work."

My stomach churns, but this time it's not caused by my overuse of vodka. I've been so focused on not getting sick on myself or any of Tetsuro's business partners that I've almost forgotten my uncared-for needs at the bar top.

Almost. Every flex of his bicep or long glance my way overrode my sickness for arousal, the same way it's doing now. "Is that what you want, Buttercup?" He whispers in my ear, pairing it with a dragged kiss behind my ear.

     "Yes."

[bleachbleachbleach]

More Bleach Library headcanons: their damaged item budget is through the roof. Somebody has to go around and quietly beg the captains and nobility for donations every time someone gets too out of control and yet another building collapses; I can't imagine a budget increase is feasible. There are blacklists and flags on so many shinigami accounts for causing damage. (For example, the 12th is the highest user of document delivery, because books came back in an utterly unusable and frankly distressing state, and it got to the point that it was just better Not To Send Items Over. Also they kepy having to buy new dropbox wagons due to contamination. Those things are like a thousand dollars if you get the good ones...Yachiru was banned for a decade because of how much damage her unauthorized pool caused the Kuchiki Archives, and while the Kuchiki Archives poaches talent, there is still a sense of solidarity...I have more but I am talking too much.)

No one dreads Pledge Drive season like the Seireitei, because both the SC and The Library go to town with it. There are plenty of things nobles are happily willing to patronize, but the military magazine and the military library are not two of those things. As for shinigami in the Gotei, it just seems… weird to be giving your paycheck to fund things that are run by the same thing that pays… you?

Due to the Horrors you mentioned happening to the previous dropboxes, the current Gotei dropboxes look like this:

(That is an actual picture of a book drop at my workplace. I get that it’s a sturdy weatherproof container! But LOL SIR THAT IS A TRASH CAN. Very trusting to assume people can read, and won't try to use it as one...)

Though, I was thinking about building collapses. Say a prayer for whatever circulating collections the Gotei might maintain, and this doesn’t necessarily spare them when people start bankai-ing it up, but I feel like the records library is underground specifically to avoid damage from surface shenanigans. The ground could still get cratered and it could probably still burn to the ground, but the likelihood is less and you know what, the Gotei archivists will take what they can get.

We’ve seen Ukitake in the underground records library, but it made me think about what other preservative measures might be in place, which made me think about Strataca in Kansas, USA, which is a museum/former salt mine/archives preservation vault. The vault serves as secure, high protected storage for a lot of different irreplaceable items, whether original film negatives or medical records, oil and gas charts, etc. In addition to being underground, away from sunlight, the preservative qualities of the salt keeps documents from moisture and oxidation. I think it’s super cool! (Cool enough to drive to Hutchinson, Kansas to see, even. It was on the way to the Barbed Wire Museum!)

Japan doesn’t have any land-based salt deposits, but this doesn’t mean Soul Society can’t. Even without the additional cool factor of the salt, though, who wouldn't store their important records in a cool underground vault. It could be like this random vault by Mt. Fuji, which is apparently for Sanyo? Lol? There’s also the Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters, which was built specifically to move important arms of government around during WWII, were the Allied Forces to invade (some wild stories in that Wiki article). Nothing makes your documents seem more important than putting them in an underground vault!

[brazenautomaton]

here is the segment for which I needed a period-accurate article to pattern off of

I mostly eyeballed it

is it a good balance of setting information and then character information? is it delivered well? does it get across what it's trying to get across?

VCASTERS: NEW WAVE OF ANIMATED PERFORMERS BECOME INTERNET’S NEXT BIG THING

WIRED Magazine Staff - Business & Tech - Oct 07, 2010

Justin Kan never intended to be a political figure.

“We’d just sold off our calendar app for a quarter million dollars,” Kan said in an interview with WIRED. “And Y Combinator was like ‘okay, show us what else you got.’ And I had the idea kicking around in my head of live-casting my life for years -- a way for people to feel like they were just hanging out with someone. They thought it sounded like it had potential. So they said, ‘go ahead,’ and they gave us the capital to get started. The hardest problem was the technology. We didn’t have cameras or Internet connections that could handle it. We spent most of 2006 creating what turned out to be a backpack-sized computer I’d wear that converted the analog camera feed into a digital stream.”

He laughed and ran his hands through his hair. “We were so focused on the project we kind of ignored everything else happening in the world.” 

What was happening in the world, of course, was the Kira killings. By December 5, 2006, master detective L had confirmed that criminals all over the world had been dying by unknown means, all of whom had their faces and names publicly released. Whoever was doing it lived in the Kanto region of Japan, and was dubbed ‘Kira,’ the English word ‘Killer’ with a Japanese accent. Suddenly, the issue of public visibility was politically fraught, a battleground between pro- and anti-Kira activists.

Kan’s project, Justin.TV, was scheduled to launch in the middle of March, 2007.

“At first I was amazed. I had over a hundred and fifty thousand concurrent views just to see me live my normal life.” He laughed once more. “Then I had two different SWAT teams called on me at the Smoothie King.”

Viewers couldn’t determine if Kan’s activity was a statement of support for Kira, declaring he was unafraid to let his face be known because he wasn’t a criminal -- or if it was a statement in defiance of Kira, that he refused to let fear of Kira prevent him from appearing in public. “I wasn’t making a big statement,” he said, “I just wanted people to feel like they were hanging out with me. So now I’d just spent all my venture capital and a year and a half of my life developing the technology for someone to stream their real life to the world, and the world decided that wasn’t gonna fly. So I thought, ‘Well, I’m doomed.’”

But salvation came from an unlikely place: animation.

“I still had people interested in justin.tv, like ‘Could I do something like this?’ A lot of people who were just like me, who didn’t care about the Kira politics, who just wanted to be able to feel like they were hanging out with someone. So we were looking into software that could recognize faces and blur them out of the feed, so nobody’s get hurt. But that’s impossible to do in real time without already marking the facial features. And I hear from some friends that they’re trying to do performance capture tech for the movie studios that need to quickly be able to convert a live-action performance into animation. And it hits me -- lifecasting, without the life. Real-time streaming, animated face.” 

Thus, the virtual lifecaster, or “Vcaster,” was born. By applying facial makeup to help the computer identify and track their facial features, Vcasters can assume the identity of 2D animated avatars that look around, blink, breathe, and talk in sync with their real movements. Justin.tv is now the home of over 50 Vcasters with their own dedicated followings. The first few were normal people who held what’s known as “just chatting” streams, where they attempt to hold a conversation with another Vcaster or with the channel’s live chat. Quickly, the Vcasters realized what the audience was interested in: larger than life characters with fantastical anime premises, playing video games.

In a phone interview, the actress behind popular Vcaster “Gushi Geisyuku,” explained. “I think even playing a single-player game is a group activity. You know, like when you’re a kid, and everyone crowds around the arcade cabinet to watch one guy play the game really well. It’s a communal experience. Everyone is sort of partway playing the game themselves, so, it at least adds up to like ten, fifteen games being played. I think.”

Her channel, Voice_ofthe_Vampiress, is one of the top 10 Vcaster channels on justin.tv. Within the fictional framing narrative she’s created, her character is the servant of a vampire, “Countess Rikimaru,” portrayed by another actress who often plays cooperative games with her.

We were going to have this gimmick where my partner was a vampiress and I was her thrall, and she’d order me to do things,” the actress behind Geisukyu said. The terms of service of justin.tv prohibit divulging real identities, though the ‘past lives’ of many Vcasters are an open secret. “Because you need a hook, right? And a lot of people, you know, they’d like to be bossed around by a sexy anime vampire lady. And if you don’t, then, you can idolize her spunky assistant who always does her best. So there’s a lot of crossover appeal. Blood on your face messes up the face capture software, but you can just add it to the character model, so it’s just as good. But anyway, we had this whole thing where she was the powerful Countess and I was her enthralled servant. But the first few streams we had -- unfortunately this was before we figured out how to save the archive videos so you can’t look them up now -- her audio was just broken. We tried fixing it in the settings, we tried three new microphones, nothing worked. So I played up this story about how I was the ‘Voice of the Vampiress’ and her proclamations were too powerful and pure for mortal ears to hear. You know, like the guy who follows the Emperor around and he like whispers something in the guy’s ear and the guy repeats it to everyone because nobody else is cool enough to be allowed to hear what the Emperor’s saying. By the time we figured out how to fix it, I’d spun so much improv about it it was a defining part of our gimmick. So we leaned into it. I do all the talking, and my partner just emotes with me. It works really well.”

Geisukyu’s actress is optimistic about the future of Vcasting. “It’s great. It’s like a bunch of people all in a room together, hanging out. But hanging out with someone who keeps them safe from any Kiras. People are more afraid to go out and hang out these days, and I can’t blame them, so I think it’s good we can deliver some of that feeling to people in their homes. And then me and my partner, when we’re just hanging out playing a game like we were going to anyway, now we’re letting people watch us and we’re doing something good and we’re performing for people, which is important. People should feel like they’re safe and with friends, and if we can’t provide the real thing, then I mean giving like 50, 75% of the experience is still pretty good. It’s like, you know, you should have a whole home cooked meal but sometimes you just wanna get fast food and it’s not all the way as good but MAN are you glad it’s an option. So that’s what we’re doing. I think we’re really doing something positive for people. Yeah, I bet Vcasters are going to get way bigger in the future, and I hope I get lots of fans!”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Massimo Calabresi at Time Magazine:

Joe Biden makes his way through the West Wing telling stories. In the Cabinet Room, with sun pouring through French doors from the Rose Garden outside, he remembers the first time he sat around the long mahogany table, its high-backed leather chairs ordered by seniority. It was more than 50 years ago, Biden says, and Richard Nixon told National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to brief the 30-year-old first-term Delaware Senator on the still secret timing of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Walking slowly through the halls, the President unspools anecdotes about heads of state: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron. In the Oval Office, he talks about his childhood home in Scranton, Pa., and the 2008 phone call from Barack Obama asking Biden to be his running mate. Biden recounts these memories over the course of more than 90 minutes on a warm spring day, speaking in a quiet, sometimes scattershot way. The impression he gives is one of advancing age and broad experience, of a man who has lived history. Biden leads the U.S. as the American century is fading into an uncertain future, a changing world of threats, opportunities, and power shifts. At 81, he holds fast to a vision that has reigned since World War II, in which a rich and powerful America leads an alliance of democracies to safeguard the globe from tyranny. [...]

Whether this view of America’s role in the world will outlast Biden’s presidency is an open question. Voters face a clear choice this November. Biden calls America’s democratic values the “grounding wire of our global power” and its alliances “our greatest asset.” His presumptive opponent, former President Donald Trump, called for withdrawing American forces in Europe and Asia and has promised, most recently in his April 12 interview with TIME, to cut loose even our closest allies if they don’t do as he tells them. By his own account, Trump sees all countries as unreliable, the relations between them transactional. That sentiment has spread throughout a Republican Party that once championed America’s values abroad. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Senator in contention to become Trump’s Vice President, tells TIME that the D-Day story has become a sepia-toned distraction. “The foreign policy establishment is obsessed with World War II historical analogies,” says Vance, “and everything is some fairy tale they tell themselves from the 1930s and 1940s.”

During his 40 months in office, events have tested Biden’s vision of American world leadership. Alliances haven’t been enough to win a new European war in Ukraine. U.S. power and leverage haven’t prevented a humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East, marked by alleged war crimes. Putin is trying to assemble an axis of autocrats from Tehran to Beijing. In China, the U.S. faces an adversary potentially its equal in economic and military power that is intent on tearing down the American global order. President Xi has told his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, U.S. officials say, raising the possibility of a dark analogue to Normandy in Asia. Biden doesn’t rule out sending troops to defend Taiwan if China attacked, saying, “It would depend on the circumstances.”

Biden’s record in facing these tests is more than just nostalgic talk. He has added two powerful European militaries to NATO, and will soon announce the doubling of the number of countries in the Atlantic alliance that are paying more than the target 2% of their GDP toward defense, the White House says. His Administration has worked to prevent the war in Gaza from igniting a broader regional conflict. He brokered the first trilateral summit with long-distrustful regional partners South Korea and Japan, and coaxed the Philippines to move away from Beijing’s orbit and provide the U.S. new access to four military bases. He has rallied European and Asian countries to curtail China’s economic sway. “We have put together the strongest alliance in the history of the world,” Biden says, so that “we are able to move in a way that recognizes how much the world has changed and still lead.”

But American Presidents must earn a mandate from their fellow citizens, and it’s far from clear that Biden can. In surveys, large majorities say that he is too old to lead. As he walked TIME through the West Wing and sat for a 35-minute interview on May 28, the President, with his stiff gait, muffled voice, and fitful syntax, cut a striking contrast with the intense, loquacious figure who served as Senator and Vice President. Biden bristles at the suggestion that he is aging out of his job. Asked whether he could handle its rigors though the end of a second term, when he will be 86, he shot back, “I can do it better than anybody you know.” Age aside, Biden’s handling of foreign affairs gets poor marks from voters, and not just for the bungled withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan or the ongoing war in Gaza. While 65% of Americans still believe that the U.S. should take a leading or major role in the world, that number is down 14 points from 2003 and is at its lowest level since Gallup began polling the issue two years earlier.

Biden, who is the most experienced foreign policy President in a generation, believes that role is in America’s interest. “When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they can reach our shores,” he said soon after taking office. To judge the merit of Biden’s plan to sustain American world leadership, voters can look to his record: what he has accomplished, where he has fallen short, and how he intends to build on his work in a second term. [...]

Others view all the investment in Ukraine as a distraction from the bigger challenge America faces in East Asia. “Who doesn’t think that $200 billion spent in Europe would’ve been incredibly useful in the Pacific?” says Elbridge Colby, a former Trump Administration Pentagon official and lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. “Great nations fail,” says Lieut. General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, when “you fix somebody else’s potholes instead of fixing your potholes.” 

Biden says he remains committed to Ukrainian victory. Asked about the war’s endgame, Biden says, “Peace looks like making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine.” But last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive was a failure. Russia recently has made its largest advances since the opening months of the invasion. Alliance building may have reached its limit, along with Americans’ appetite for funding a war of attrition. Biden’s allies in Kyiv complain he has been too cautious, giving Ukraine enough weapons to survive the war but not to win it. “It’s not a decisive stance,” says a senior official in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. “It’s not the way to victory.” On balance, however, even longtime critics are impressed with Biden’s efforts in Ukraine. Former Defense Secretary and CIA director Robert Gates wrote in 2014 that Biden had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national-security issue over the past four decades.” But on May 19, Gates said that Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion has gone a long way toward repairing the damage of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. “He gained a lot of credibility with the speed with which he assembled the coalition of partner countries, allies, and friends before, during, and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Gates told CBS’s Face the Nation. [...]

Biden may be right that despite the partisanship, a consensus exists for a values-based, pragmatic role for America in the world. His challenge is to get Americans to focus on that rather than on other issues driven by foreign affairs, like inflation or immigration. Biden denies that his expansion of Trump’s trade war with China will increase prices, and says his only regret about lifting Trump’s anti-immigration measures is that he didn’t do it sooner. His goal in a second term, he says, is “to finish what he started.” At stake is the direction of the world for the coming century. At Normandy, Biden will make the case for what historian Hal Brands says is “the 80-year tradition of internationalism that has been quite good for America and the world.” The alternative, says Brands, would be a “more vicious and chaotic” world where Americans ultimately would be less safe, prosperous, and free, but only after everyone else suffered first. Wrapping up his conversation with TIME, Biden offers cookies from a tray in the outer Oval. “They’re homemade,” he says. Turning to leave, he offers a final salutation: “Keep the faith.” But then he pauses and turns back, as the phrase triggers one last story. It’s about a relative who had his own response to that admonition. And here Biden taps one of his visitors on the chest and says, “Spread the faith.”

President Biden was recently interviewed by Time Magazine on May 28th (2 days before the Trump felony verdict was handed down) and during that interview, Biden touched on his foreign policy views ranging from Ukraine to Israel to China.

Read the full story at Time.

See Also:

Time: Joe Biden's Time interview transcript

[blowflyfag]

ECW Magazine: February 2000

16 QUESTIONS WITH YOSHIHIRO TAJIRI

BY GABE SAPOLSKY ‘JAPANESE BUZZSAW’ KICKS HIS WAY THROUGH ECW ROSTER

Since joining Extreme Championship Wrestling in the beginning of 1999, Yoshihiro Tajiri has proven to be a perfect fit for the federation. From his bloody, barbed-wire beating at the hands of Taz at Heat Wave on July 18 to his victory over Little Guido and Super Crazy during a three-way dance at Anarchy Rulz on Sept. 19, Tajiri solidified the brutal reputation he built as a wrestler in Japan.

Tajiri is currently a soldier in Steve Corino’s war against hardcore wrestling. The following is an interview with the “Japanese Buzzsaw” conducted through an interpreter.

Q1. DO YOU LIKE WRESTLING IN THE UNITED STATES?

A. I like it except for the people. They are really ignorant and disrespectful. This has become a home to me, though. In Japan, I was also considered a rebel, I never really fit in. I am much more comfortable here. I get paid the most money here. I’d say that’s my favorite thing about the United States.

Q2. HAVE YOU PICKED UP A LOT OF ENGLISH?

A. I’m learning very quickly. I know a lot of phrases, for instance (now speaking in English): “ECW fans are white trash” (now back to Japanese through the interpreter). I’m very intelligent so my English improves every day. I learned Spanish while I was in Mexico. Soon I’ll be fluent in three languages. 

Q3. HOW DOES MEXICO COMPARE TO THE UNITED STATES?

A. Im supposed to answer that in one paragraph? They are very different. I can live in Mexico, Japan or the United States with equal ease. 

Q4. HOW DO THE DIFFERENT PROMOTIONS YOU’VE WORKED FOR COMPARE?

A. ECW has been my favorite promotion. I’m on national television every week here, I get the biggest checks of my career. I’m in a video game and everywhere I go I can find someone to kiss my ass because they know how good I am.

Q5. HAVE YOU HAD DIFFICULTY GETTING AROUND IN THE UNITED STATES?

A. Not really. A guy named Doug Gentry has actually helped me a lot. I call him and he drives me wherever I want. If I need something done around the apartment, he comes running. If I ask for a favor, he does it. He’s such a mark. It makes me laugh. It’s like I have my own butler. 

Q6. WHY DON’T YOU HAVE RESPECT FOR THE ECW FANS?

A. Like I said earlier, most of them are ignorant white trash. They chant items off a Chinese food Menu at me. They are just too stupid to even know that I am Japanese. Most of them couldn’t tell the difference between a Japanese, Chinese and Korean guy if they were all standing next to each other with their country’s flags hanging over their heads. That is pure ignorance. 

Q7. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN YOUR CHANGE IN APPEARANCE AND ATTITUDE SINCE YOU ENTERED ECW?

A. This is the real me. I acted polite and quiet when I first got here because I was trying to earn a job. Now that I have cemented my place in ECW as a star, I can do and act however I want. You can say I put on an act and that I worked the ECW fans. Their stupid minds stereotype me as a nice, little foreigner. Well, that’s not me. I’m the Japanese buzzsaw and I’m the most dangerous athlete in ECW. I’m after the big money and I’ll do anything to get it.

Q8. THAT INCLUDES ALIGNING WITH STEVE CORINO?

A. He pays me the best. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make as much money as I can. There were two things that attracted me to wrestling. I wanted to travel and I wanted to make money. So far in ECW I’ve been very successful at both. 

Q9. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR THE TARANTULA?

A. That has to be one of the stupidest questions I've ever been asked. I'm proficient in Japanese, American and Mexican wrestling styles and kick boxing. I know every pressure point and every way possible to twist and turn your body. I know more wrestling holds than most wrestlers, for instance Tommy Dreamer, will ever forget.  The Tarantula is just what happens when I apply my immense knowledge to the ring.

Q10. WHICH WRESTLING STYLE DO YOU PREFER

A. It really doesn’t matter to me. I’m a machine. I just win and make money.

Q11. WHO HAS INFLUENCED YOUR CAREER?

A. Of course Kendo Nagasaki who trained me. I’d say from Mexico it would be Negro Casas. I have learned many things from him that I do today in ECW. As far as non-wrestlers, Victor Quinones, who booked me in ECW, has been very influential to me in and out of the ring. Victor has played a huge role in my success

Here are the names of some people you have been involved with in ECW. What are your opinions of them?

Q12. STEVIE CORINO

A. He is one of the most intelligent people I have met. Did I mention he pays me really well?

Q13. Jack Victory

A. A true legend in the business. It is an honor to be associated with him.

Q14. TOMMY DREAMER

A. I have shown respect for everyone mentioned, but I cannot do that for Tommy Dreamer. I hate everything that Dreamer stands for. I really take pleasure in hurting him and anything that is dear to him. That is why i sprayed Francine in the face [on July 31 at ECW arena in Philadelphia]. I will make him suffer and I will break his back and put him out for good.

Q15. SUPER CRAZY

A. Crazy and I were once very good friends. The rivalry we had in ECW has destroyed that friendship. I think he’s just getting jealous because I’m winning more of the matches. He is definitely one of the best lucha libre wrestlers in the world and a great athlete, but I’m better.

Q16. JERRY LYNN

A. I’ve been in the ring with the best of Japan, like Jushin Liger, the top wrestlers of two Mexican promotions and many of the top stars in America. Jerry Lynn is one of the best technical wrestlers I have ever faced. He is flawless, except for one thing: He is weak. He is always injured and that always gives me a body part to kick the hell out of. If i know Lynn has injured ribs, you better believe I’m going to kick and chop those ribs until he cannot breathe. That is why he will never beat me.

[dorothydalmati1]

Obscure Animation Subject #55: Serial Experiments Lain

Originally posted on Twitter on April 15, 2023.

Created by Yasuyuki Ueda, written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura, this is a 13-episode miniseries produced by Triangle Staff, and aired on TV Tokyo from July 6 to September 28, 1998.

The series follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet. The show is an original idea to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda.

Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement made in an Animerica interview. He stated that Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after WWII". He later expanded this in numerous interviews.

He created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures.

When he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed. The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga), but due to its failure that was scrapped.

Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series.

However, the anime was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi ABe and released in an artbook An Omnipresence in Wired. Ueda and Konaka declared that the idea of a multimedia project wasn’t unusual in Japan, as opposed for Lain.

Despite the show’s confusion to the audience it wanted to appeal to, critics responded positively to the thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival for "its question the meaning of contemporary life".

According to Christian Nutt from Newtype USA, the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series.

He said that "Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime." Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5, and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on most criteria with some As for volume 3 and 4.

Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet". It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools.

It also notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo. Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s.

Susan J. Napier in her 2003 reading to The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation, compared the show to Ghost in the Shell and Spirited Away. According to her, the main characters of the two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain can’t.

Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'". Mike Toole named SEL as one of the most important anime of the 90s. Anime Academy gave the series a 75%, but criticized it due to the "lifeless" setting it had.

Michael Poirier of EX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes. Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered.

So all in all, this show is one of the weirdest shows out there, but despite being a miniseries, it still has significance thanks to the bizarre nature and sci-fi themes. Not in the levels of Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, but still really interesting to go through.

[thatoneshortieho]

Hero name: Lassoine

Real name: Ryōri Shigesō [ 成颯  遼理 ]

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/Her

Height: 5’11”

Quirk: Hair Control

Quirk description: Ryōri has full control over her hair, allowing her to use it as a rope or “arm” to grab things. Her hair strands are incredibly strong, thin but with the durability of steel wire. She can even temporarily Grow her hair to double its current length if she needs to reach further. In a Docile state, her hair is about 2 meters long, which she usually has in a bun while off-duty. While doing Hero Work, she loops it around the ring on her waist like a lasso. 

Though her hair is strong as is, it can become weaker if her hair is in poor health. As such she showers about 4 times a day, some call it excessive, but Ryōri says that “Nothing is excessive if it’s for the good of others.”

Her natural hair grows about 5x as fast as the average person, unless it has reached its max Docile Length of 2 meters. If her hair is cut, the reach she has with it is cut as well, staying true to only being able to Grow it double its length. 

Background: Ryōri has claimed to have heritage in Italy, in France and in Spain on different occasions. No one is sure if she’s telling the truth or if it’s a partial truth, but her proficiency in those languages is nothing to doubt. She’s also shown to be fluent in German, English, Russian, Korean and Finnish, along with Japanese as her mother tongue.

Other: Ryōri does acting on the side of her Hero Work and is the main model and icon of Japan’s biggest hair-care magazine as well as CEO of the second best-selling hair-care product line, Ryōreal Hair. Her agency mostly consists of Heroes with Hair-based Quirks or other types of range. All sidekicks are given free top-quality Ryōreal Hair products every month.

[usafphantom2]

IMAGES: Falcons join the Eagles and Raptors in Japan

The United States sent its F-16 from Germany to Kadena, Japan

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 01/18/2013 - 13:00 in Military

0

Views

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

The F-16C/D Fighting Falcons of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) of the 52nd Fighter Wing operating at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, arrived at Kadena Air Base, Japan, where they will support the phased return of the F- 15C/D Eagles fleet to the United States.

The Fighting Falcons arrived in Japan on January 16 and will work there with the F-22A Raptors deployed from the 3rd Wing of the Elmendorf Richardson Joint Base in Alaska to ensure continuous steady-state hunting capabilities.

The two types of fighters are replacing the F-15C/D Eagle, which is being retired as part of the U.S. Air Force's modernization plan. The first Eagles said goodbye to Kadena on December 1, 2022.

While the 18th Wing continues the phased return of the Kadena Eagles fleet, the Pentagon plans to continue to maintain a stable presence of fighters in the region, temporarily deploying newer and more advanced aircraft to fill the F-15s as they retreat to the United States.

Since November 4, the deployed F-22 have employed their unique combination of stealth, supercruise, advanced avian and sensor fusion capabilities to bring the air domain to the Pacific theater, increasing the air-to-air capabilities of Kadena's F-15 fleet. As the F-16s begin operations, they will also integrate their unique forces to help Team Kadena stop and, if necessary, prevail over acts of aggression that threaten peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.

“We are excited to be here supporting our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Lieutenant Colonel Shaun Loomis, commander of the 480th Expeditionary Hunting Squadron. "We look forward to training and operating in this uniquely complex and strategically vital region. In addition, we are grateful for the opportunity to experience everyday life and local culture here in Okinawa."

Fighting Falcon is known for its fly-by-wire system and exceptionally flexible design, allowing it to stand out around the world on a variety of air-to-air and air-ground papers.

"These temporary deployments bring a diverse set of platforms to the region and offer the opportunity to integrate, train and operate with our joint forces and international allies and partners," said Colonel Henry Schantz, commander of the 18th Operations Group.

For decades, Kadena Air Base served as the cornerstone of the Pacific. The strategic position of the base makes it a vital preparation place for forces to detain regional opponents and project U.S. air power throughout the Indo-Pacific.

“It is exciting to train new crews to operate in and around the Indo-Pacific region,” Schantz said. "The units bring their own distinct sets of skills and experiences from around the world to strengthen our allies and partners as we work together to keep an Indo-Pacific free and open."

Tags: Military AviationF-16 Fighting FalconJapanUSAF - United States Air Force / US Air Force

Sharing

tweet

Pin

Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

Related news

INTERCEPTIONS

Aircraft loaded with drugs is intercepted by FAB Super Toucans in the interior of São Paulo

18/01/2023 - 18:29

A concept of the Russian aircraft carrier called Project 23000.

MILITARY

Russia is developing a new advanced aircraft carrier project

18/01/2023 - 14:00

Helicopter carrying senior officials from Ukraine and children crashed near Kiev on January 18, 2022. (Photo: EPA / SERGEY DOLZHENKO) Dostawca: PAP/EPA.

AERONAUTICAL ACCIDENTS

Helicopter crash in Ukraine kills Ukrainian interior minister and children

18/01/2023 - 10:30

Saab Gripen E. Hunt. (Photo: Jamie Hunter)

SAAB

Saab cancels agreement with Adani to build fighters in India

18/01/2023 - 09:00

An S-70 Black Hawk from the Australian Army.

HELICOPTERS

Australia buys 40 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters to replace its Taipans

18/01/2023 - 08:05

BRAZILIAN AIR FORCE

FAB KC-390 performs air resupply for Army troops in Roraima

17/01/2023 - 17:00

Cavok Twitter

[britishwheel]

Top 8 key lowrider moments in pop films and TV

According to the director of the Netflix documentary 'LA Originals,' Estevan Oriol, the '1964 Impala car has been taken for depicting the lowrider archetype. The same car can be seen on various pop culture events of a lowrider. Even outside this culture, the '1964 Impala' is one of the most widely familiar lowrider cars. Estevan Oriol has played a vital role in lowrider mainstreaming working from the back end. Let's now learn about the key lowrider moments in the below section. 

Top 8 key lowrider moments in pop films and TV

Here is the list of the Top 8 key lowrider moments in pop films and TV -

1.According to the source, 'Tubi, ' - Benjamin Bratt played a San Francisco lowrider that was quoted as Che Rivera in 'La Mission,' a 2009 film. 

2.As seen in the BET+, 'Set It Off,' a female heist classic of 1996 used a large number of Lowriders. Oriol responded that risking a car for bullet damage is the dumbest act when Cleo and Queen Latifah were inside the Impala & under the custody of police withdrawing guns during the shoot. 

3.Available only on DVDs, in the cult Chola coming-of-age drama 'My Vida Loca,' Echo Park, 1993 various dropped vehicles were featured with the presence of mini trucks. Oriol noted the mural piece during the beginning scene & the dropped green truck having hydraulics that soon turned out to be the plot device. 

4.According to Oriol, the 'Lowriders,' film of 2017 was a beautiful moment for a mass media subculture. The movie is directed by Ricardo de Montreuil with the main character played by Demián Bichir & Gabriel Chavarria. Oriol was the main executive producer as well as the consultant behind the execution of this film. He revealed that he successfully find various things that he desired to have from the cars, locations, etc. It is available on Amazon Prime as well as the YouTube. 

5.Cheech Marin's classic 'Up in Smoke,' was added to the 1975 hit 'Low Rider,' song by War, in 1978. The song acquired the number 1 position on the Billboard R&B charts. Oriol finds it hilarious to finalize the primer look & not wait for the final touch to it. It can be seen in the Amazon Prime series. 

6.Available in Amazon Prime, Oriol said that the classic barrio drama named 'the Boulevard Nights,' 1979 was majorly emphasized on the lowriders. In Eastern Los Angeles, 1970 it also portrays the cruising on Whittier Boulevard. 

7.As seen in Direct TV & Amazon Prime, Oriol noticed that in the 'Friday' film, 1995, Big Worm (Faizon Love) character drove the convertible Impala, 1961 of orange color. The original car is named Fresh Squeezed & he added that he shot in Japan as well as here. 

8.Available on the DVDs only, The 'Chico and the Man' TV series, 1974-1978 starring Freddie Prinze showcase the footage of a Gypsy Rose, a well-known world-famous low rider with the 1964 Impala. He said that the series had the best B-roll footage of the 70's L.A. & East L.A. lowriding. 

Lowrider cars are not only popular among car enthusiasts but have also been featured in various magazines, news platforms, pop films & tv. Such key lowrider moments have been very mesmerizing & worth watching. If you also wish to connect to a prominent company dealing with wire wheel tools, then look no other than a British wire wheel firm. British wheel is a trustworthy supplier of wire wheel accessories for lowrider hydraulics & car addicts. They provide spinner caps, wire wheel adapters, and wire wheel installation tools at affordable pricing. Reach out to them to purchase the quality-assured tool for cars! 

[sharingstories]

The Power of Sharing: Weaving Stories That Connect Us

We are social creatures, wired for connection. This fundamental need drives us to seek out others, build relationships, and share our experiences. But the act of sharing goes beyond mere social interaction; it holds immense power to inspire, comfort, and even guide us on our individual journeys.

In this ever-connected world, stories are currency. They bridge geographical distances, transcend cultural barriers, and create a tapestry of shared experiences. Through the lens of another's narrative, we discover new perspectives, gain empathy, and find solace in the realization that "we're not alone."

Unexpected Inspiration: From Fast Food to Fresh Flavors

Take the story of Jake Siler. A man accustomed to the quick convenience of McDonald's found his world turned upside down after a unique dining experience in Greece. A late-night adventure with friends at Alexi's in Lindos introduced him to a world of fresh, flavorful food, transforming his perception of dining and ultimately leading him to permanently ditch the fast-food chains. (Read the full story: A Trip to McDonald's

This seemingly ordinary anecdote highlights the potential of unexpected experiences to spark inspiration and growth. A chance encounter, a new environment, or simply stepping outside our comfort zone can lead to a complete shift in perspective and behavior.

From Childhood Dreams to Unexpected Journeys

Stories can also be about journeys, paths we never expected to take. Christabel Telewa's story exemplifies this beautifully. As a child with a passion for writing and storytelling, she couldn't have predicted her future as the Editor of Afroelle Magazine. Yet, a shared love for stories with her friend Patricia set them on a journey that led Christabel to become a champion for the voices of powerful African women. 

Read Christabel's story here: How I Became a Magazine Editor

This example reminds us that life rarely unfolds in a straight line. The seeds of our future might be sown in unexpected encounters and shared passions. Sharing these stories allows us to celebrate the often-unpredictable nature of life's journey.

Freedom on Two Wheels: Finding Autonomy in the Face of Challenges

Stories can also be about small victories, moments of personal liberation. Lois's tale of overcoming a language barrier to secure a motor scooter license in Japan speaks to our innate desire for independence and self-reliance. The freedom of cruising the city on her scooter wasn't just about convenience; it symbolized a sense of personal autonomy and empowerment. (Read Lois's story here: Story With A Photograph – 1965)

These small victories, captured in personal narratives, inspire us to embrace challenges and persevere in our pursuit of freedom and self-determination.

Share Your Story: Let's Connect Through the Tapestry of Narratives

The stories we share are like threads woven together to create a rich and vibrant tapestry of human experience. They offer a window into different realities, fostering empathy, understanding, and connection. Whether it's a tale of personal growth, an unexpected adventure, or a simple act of self-discovery, every story has the potential to inspire and resonate with others.

We invite you to share your story! What experience has shaped your outlook on life? How has an encounter with another person or culture changed your perspective? Let's keep the conversation flowing, weaving a web of narratives that connect us all.

Leave a comment below with your story or a link to your blog post. Let's celebrate the power of sharing and the beauty of human connection.

[alln64games]

Irritating Eclectic Stick

JP release: 19th December 1997

NA release: N/A

PAL release: N/A

Developer: Yuke’s

Publisher: Hudson

N64 Magazine Score: 65%

Original name: Ucchan Nanchan no Hono no Challenge: Denryu Ira Ira Bo

Do you know that kids toy where you move a stick around a metal wire and if you make contact with it it makes a buzzing sound? In Japan, they turned that into a game show, and that game show got multiple video games. Only one of them got a release outside of Japan, which is Irritating Stick on the PS1. The N64 game Ucchannanchan’s Flaming Challenger: Irritating Electric Stick (for the full translated name), however, remained in Japan.

The game is incredibly simple: move a stick through a maze. There are some tight corners and moving obstacles, and you view the stick from the side so it’s just a dot (you can turn on an option to display the full stick as you tilt, but it gets in the way). The only control is moving the analogue stick.

While it’s very simple, the game does what it sets out to do perfectly. The controls are 100% reliable, with the stick stopping the moment you let go of the stick, so there’s no delay or deceleration to worry about, it’s entirely down to your skill. So while the game is frustratingly difficult – the frustration is aimed at yourself, as it’s your skill causing you to fail.

And I lack the skill to complete the game. Even if you removed the time limit, my precision is not good enough for this game. That’s not a fault with the game, though, just with me.

Irritating Electric Stick doesn’t do much – and there’s only six courses (they will take a very long time to master, though) – but it does what it advertises so well that it’s a surprisingly decent game.

A ludicrous, insulting, expensive novelty, then, but one I like a lot.

- Jonathan Nash, N64 Magazine #12

Remake or Remaster?

A collection of Irritating Electric Stick on N64, Irritating Stick on PS1 and The Irritating Maze on Neo Geo, perhaps? They could even throw in some clips of the actual show.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Irritating Electric Stick

[bleachbleachbleach]

Okay, I feel the need to begin by assuring you that I am completely capable of reading things in their intended context, and enjoying their intended meanings. But consider also... setting that aside and enjoying in addition:

THE BLEACH CONTEXT.

Because what has bigger Gotei energy than "17 million precious military records went up in smoke"?????

Who's with me? (I bet @proustianrecall is with me. Library/archives lore!)

The Seireitei is constantly being burned to the ground due to Bount and Zanpakutou and Reigai and Thousand-Year Blood Wars, and that's not even including natural fires, which I'm sure they have plenty of. Fire is commonplace in any place's history, but even taking that into consideration I swear Japan has a higher incidence than normal of histories that basically go "this building burned to the ground THREE times! And we rebuilt it each time!"

The article screencapped above is a really good read, and does wonderful work weaving together biographies of people who remembered the fire; people now tasked with organizing or working with burnt records; people who can try to find other means of finding information that exists in the ether but may be doomed to stay there without the puzzle pieces from the blaze.

It also talks about the nature of the articles themselves, which in a Bleach context makes me think about all of the records that comprise net-zero missions for the Gotei, or the personnel files of nondscript Joe Shinigami--their complete unremarkability but also their mass importance in the aggregate. Their perhaps greater importance to the families of the "unremarkable."

I think it's easy to assume that surely, someone was keeping records, and surely, this information can be located--but even in our age of search navigation and digital databases, I think there's more AND less information than one might assume, and it is a lot harder to access and piece it together than it seems. To add a fire to the mix really puts that into perspective, as years roll by and a fire that took days to put out takes decades to sort through.

There's a moment in the article where the author describes the fact that often, for these records, the only way to even know what is missing is to have someone request it, and then to see what shakes out.

And this is concerning a fire in a building that *only held 20th century US military records.* The US has a lot of military records, granted, but it's a baby child of a country. As far as societies go, Soul Society/the Gotei is honestly pretty young, too, especially given the different timescale at which shinigami live. But it's way older than the United States! I M A G I N E.

Other moments of note, relative to Bleach:

investigators tried for a long time to pin the source of the blaze to arson meditated by students protesting the Vietnam War. Pinning a national calamity on kids who are opposed to your hawkish ways? That doesn't describe Soul Society at all!

the architecture of the building is also discussed in this article, and you know (or you SHOULD what kind of B3 dash blorbo are you) we love furniture and architecture here. They talk about its lack of firewalls, the perils of installing or not installing sprinkler systems in buildings meant to be preserving paper items... (gg Minoru Yamasaki).

It's all great, Bleach brain is great!

If you'd like to read Megan Greenwell's original article, I heartily recommend it. You can find it published June 2023 at Wired Magazine.

[paulisded]

The Ledge #603: UK 1979

1979 was an important year for rock and roll, but it was a bigger year for my musical journey. This was the year that the real obsession with buying records began. I had a job. I had a car. And I had put together a pretty awesome sound system in my bedroom.

This was the first year I was buying new music AS it was coming out. I was no longer saving up for a record I read about in Creem Magazine. I was at the record store each and every week. In fact, this was the year I first started working at a record store, and you know I spent more money on music than I actually made at the store.

So tonight's celebration of the UK sounds of that year is truly a trip back in time. With a handful of exceptions, this was indeed a good portion of my playlist back then. London Calling. A Different Kind of Tension. Setting Sons. Cool For Cats. Labour of Lust. The list goes on and on of music I forced friends to endure whether they liked them or not.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SHOW!

1. The Undertones - Here Comes The Summer

2. The Clash - Spanish Bombs

3. The Clash - Death or Glory

4. The Buzzcocks - I Don't Know What To Do With My Life

5. The Buzzcocks - Harmony In My Head

6. Graham Parker - Discovering Japan

7. Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army

8. Nick Lowe - American Squirm

9. Dave Edmunds - Girls Talk

10. Squeeze - Slap & Tickle

11. Sex Pistols - Something Else

12. Public Image Ltd. - Poptones

13. The Monks - Johnny B.Rotten

14. The Damned - Smash It Up, parts 1 & 2

15. The Jam - The Eton Rifles

16. Joe Jackson - I'm the Man

17. The Inmates - Dirty Water

18. The Only Ones - Out There in the Night

19. The Soft Boys - Rock N Roll Toilet

20. The Raincoats - Fairytale in the Supermarket

21. The Slits - Typical Girls

22. The Cigarettes - They're Back Again, Here They Come

23. The Nips - All the Time in the World

24. Generation X - Valley of the Dolls

25. UK Subs - Strangehold

26. Strangeways - Wasting Time

27. Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device

28. Wire - Map Ref. 41 °N 93° W

29. The Fall - Rebellious Jukebox

30. Joy Division - Transmission

31. The Ruts - Babylon's Burning

[denisezd0]

Academic Blog #10

The Singularity is Near:When Humans Transcend Biology

Ray Kurzweil

In the this blog I would like to share a book that I've been interested in lately, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, by American author Ray Kurzweil, one of whose most famous personal achievements is called "Kurzweil's Law" (also known as the Law of Accelerated Cycling). The idea is that the power of technology is expanding outward at an exponential rate. In this book, he writes about artificial intelligence as the latest achievement of technological development in the 21st century and the enormous impact that technological development has brought to human society. He demonstrates the wide impact of the technological phenomenon represented by artificial intelligence as a "singularity" trend in the world.

I will analyse the impact of the book as a medium for the transmission of knowledge and culture. Whenever humans read, they perceive the text as a 'graphic' trace of a medium that is essentially an experiential-associative encounter modelled by Stewart's composite word (p. 11). (Cayley, J. (2023))

Ray Kurzweil divides this era into six eras, first, my mind forms six different images. Secondly, it is then filled in one by one with the author's opinions. When it comes to 5. the convergence of technology and human intelligence, we have now reached the fifth stage. The book mentions that the manifestation of these technological advances is centred on the development of three major technologies:

Gene technology: the convergence of information and biology

Nanotechnology: the intersection of the information and physical worlds

Machine Intelligence: Strong Artificial Intelligence

I have to say that all three of these have happened or are happening, having read about the Japanese science of printing 3D hearts to be transplanted into human bodies via nanotechnology and what Musk is doing now about human-machine interfaces. It makes me brave to believe and imagine the future. This is the integrated message that this book tells me through its narrative and then I combine it with some of my other sources to integrate it, I love the way books are narrated in such a way that whenever you read a fiction book it takes you to another world. Your imagination is at its best when you are trying to see things in your own mind in a new world.

I found an experimental paper on the interface between organs and specific tissues in 2021 that Prof. Warwick had his nervous system wired to a robotic hand allowing its remote control. (A) A 100-electrode array surgically implanted into the median nerve fibres of the left arm allowed the electrical reading of nerve signals. (B) The robotic hand was remotely controlled by signals from the researcher's nervous system. (Photos A and B were kindly provided by Prof. Kevin Warwick, University of Reading, UK published in reference48) with permission from Wiley. (C) Brain-machine interface demonstrating a Rat-robot hybrid that involves implanted neural electrodes using the rat's brain signals to control a motorized vehicle. (Photo was kindly provided by Prof. Kunihiko Mabuchi and Dr. Osamu Fukayama, The University of Tokyo, Japan. to reference48), adapted with permission from Wiley. (D) Synthetic telepathy, will the next step be wireless communication between human brains? Image adapted from the Smithsonian magazine website, published by Corinne Iozzio SMITHSONIANMAG.COM October 2, 2014. Image credit: PASIEKA/Science Photo Library/Corbis.（Prof. Lital Alfonta，2021）

This paper had pictures attached to illustrate its experimental method or process, allowing me to better understand or verify consistency with the picture I had formed in my mind. This saw graphics as an element of self-perception. Just like the cover of this book is also an addition to the imagination and content of the future. And these pictures are formed after my self-perception, so the book gives me the meaning to refine my self-perception.

Additionally through the Miller-Goldwater study of the impact of children's shared book reading on young children's science learning this study highlights the importance of the textual features of books and social interactions during shared book reading in facilitating early science learning.

Of course, many think that what the author says is exaggerated in the past, but The Singularity is Near gives us a glimpse of where the world is headed, and no matter how long the predictions in it are away from us, with technology changing so rapidly these days, let's wait and see!

References

Alfonta, L. (2021) ‘Bioelectrochemistry and the Singularity Point “I Robot”？’, Israel journal of chemistry, 61(1-2), pp. 60–67.

Krevel, M. (2014) ‘“BACK TO THE FUTURE”: TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY IN GIBSON”S SPRAWL TRILOGY’, British and American studies : B.A.S, 20(20), pp. 27–35.

Davies, P. (2006) ‘When computers take over’, Nature, 440(7083), pp. 421–422.

Miller-Goldwater, H.E., Cronin-Golomb, L.M., Hanft, M.H. and Bauer, P.J. (2023) ‘The Influence of Books” Textual Features and Caregivers” Extratextual Talk on Children”s Science Learning in the Context of Shared Book Reading’, Developmental psychology, 59(2), pp. 390–411.

Cayley, J. (2023) ‘Book, Text, Medium: Cross-Sectional Reading for a Digital Age’, Critical inquiry, 50(1), pp. 179–181.

[nickgerlich]

At The Movies

If you live long enough, you get to witness many tech revolutions. It’s also how your house becomes littered with obsolete junk. I guess that’s the price of Progress.

All of my students today have been witness to the arrival of streaming music and video. These advances are truly revolutionary, in that we no longer need tangible products to listen or watch, other than some kind of device to capture wifi. Ownership is out, rentership is in.

And we are now witnessing the slow, painful death of legacy media like CDs and DVDs. Who among us still has stacks of these laying around though? I bet you also have a CD and DVD player somewhere, although it may not be attached to speakers, amplifier, or a TV.

Best Buy is the latest to tap nails in the coffin of the DVD. They plan to phase out all discs by early 2024, but promise to continue stocking them through the holidays if you just have to have a few more.I remember when the DVD debuted in the US in March 1997. They were available in Japan in November 1996, and I had seen them in Taiwan at Christmas 1995. They were a revolution, and quickly replaced VHS, which had been the mainstay for roughly two decades.

The DVD was the logical extension of the CD, which arrived in 1982. While CDs quickly replaced vinyl records and cassette tapes, they are well on their way to an unceremonious death. To put things into perspective for both tangible music and video, only 33.4 million CDs were sold in 2022, while at the same time, 41 million vinyl records were sold. Score one point for nostalgia! CDs peaked in 2000, and sales have dropped 95% since then. DVDs are in a nosedive these days as well, peaking at 6.1 billion in 2011. Wired Magazine predicted sales of only 300 million units in 2022.

I confess to having stacks of both, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to a CD or watched a DVD movie. My legacy DVD player sits forlornly on the TV stand, in dire need of an HDMI cable. I don’t see myself connecting it any time soon.

Best Buy is wise to clear out remaining stock, because it will allow for better use of its selling space. In fact, one of the KPIs that retailers use is sales per square foot. If you’re using space to display products that are barely selling, you’re not doing your best. Sure, one might argue that someone needs to take care of the dwindling niche market that still wants DVD quality in their home theatre, but I suspect that business will be left to an online firm like Amazon who can service those customers from one central inventory.

And that’s for as long as it is viable for them to do so, depending on both customer demand as well as movie studios continuing to produce discs.

Revolutions like this take no prisoners; they take victims. Sometimes it takes a while for the revolution to take hold, but it does so eventually. Sure, there will always be a few who choose not to adopt the new way, but they do so at their own peril. Unless there is a revival—think vinyl records—the old way will be buried. How long it will be remembered is debatable.

Lastly, consider this. Inventory is a two-edged sword. You can’t make money without inventory, but too much of it can become the bane of your existence. And when you remember that the task of the retailer is to have the right stuff at the right price, in the right place and at the right time, you see what a balancing act inventory management is.

Kudos to Best Buy for a wise decision, even if it will pain some customers in the process. We barely had DVDs for a quarter century, and already they are on death’s door. That’s the nature of tech revolutions.I just have to wonder what will replace streaming, because right now, it seems unfathomable. I bet there are some futurists already scheming its replacement, though. And I hope I’m around long enough for one more revolution.

Dr “Keep The Wheels Turning” Gerlich

Audio Blog