#march of the machine speculation

[littjara-mirrorlake]

Principles of Asexual Heredity in the Phyrexian Organism

We know these things for sure about Phyrexian reproductive biology:

Phyrexians reproduce asexually; it is well known that one drop of oil, from one individual, is enough to birth a population of offspring (such as all of New Phyrexia) or convert a non-Phyrexian organism.

Phyrexians natively born of the oil ("core-born") inherit mnemonic and phenotypic (appearance) information from the oil that created them. For example, core-born Phyrexians of the Orthodoxy naturally develop porcelain metal; it is an inherited, lineage-specific trait. The oil also carries ancestral knowledge such as the Phyrexian language and echoes of history.

The five suns of Mirrodin somehow caused the originally mono-black lineage of Phyrexian oil to splinter into five colored lineages. They may have all arisen from one drop of oil, but they are phenotypically diverse.

(Little canon data is given about the genealogies of core-born newts, but it would most logically follow that Phyrexians descend from single-parent lines, a family tree with continually forking branches and no unions of mating as with sexually reproducing organisms.)

The mechanism I propose for the diversification of Phyrexians on Mirrodin is mana-induced mutagenesis. As a deeply magical material, it follows that Phyrexian oil is prone to being influenced by concentrated sources of mana, such as the suns of Mirrodin (which were trapped in the core, in close proximity to the progenitor oil, during the birth of New Phyrexia). Exposure to mana can thus cause de novo mutation in glistening oil that manifests as novel phenotypic traits in resulting Phyrexians. These mutations are not random, guiding phenotypes to align with the color causing the mutation.

Then there is the issue of inheritance via phyresis, or compleating another organism which was not originally Phyrexian by introducing Phyrexian genetic material into its body. To keep it simple I will begin with mono-color infections: an organism is infected with oil from a Phyrexian whose lineage traits (i.e. white-aligned Orthodoxy lineage, porcelain) may not match their own color identity.

Hypothesis: Phenotype (what color/type of Phyrexian an infected individual becomes) is determined solely by the color of infection, not the subject's own colors. Crucially this isn't the same as color identity; i.e. one can be a porcelain Phyrexian and still have a Boros identity by gaining red-aligned values or retaining them from a pre-compleation life, even though their phenotype is white only. (Much like how elves are associated with green mana, but Simic-identity elves exist.) This phenotype color, in turn, is also what would be passed down to any newts the turned individual creates, or subjects they themselves infect.

MOM corroborates this hypothesis. A mono-black-aligned human, upon exposure to Progress Engine oil, becomes a Phyrexian with a pure blue-aligned phenotype. The changes to their color identity are additive--they retain black alignment--but their phenotype is blue only. All the transforming creatures of MOM follow this pattern.

However, Planeswalkers in ONE did not. For example, Jace was infected by Vraska, who had both black color identity and a black/Thanes-aligned phenotype, but spontaneously developed eyestalks and other traits characteristic of blue Phyrexians from the Progress Engine.

New hypothesis: Individuals with a strong enough internal concentration of mana, i.e. Planeswalkers, cause oil to mutate in vivo to align with their own color, much like how the suns mutated oil in Mirrodin's core. This further shows that mana-induced mutagenesis is color-specific. This should however create a new blue lineage, independent of the Progress Engine, also spawned of blue mana but not necessarily identical. I do not have an explanation for Jace's resemblance to the Progress Engine besides convergent "evolution."

Proposed further study (not ethics-approved): Infect a colorless Planeswalker, i.e. Ugin, with colored oil to test whether a null color identity still has mutagenic effects.

To complicate this, though, we also have examples of Phyrexians who are chimeras of multiple colors, combining traits of different lineages. Vishgraz was assembled with material (genetic and otherwise) from a white, a green, and a black Phyrexian. It makes sense that Phyrexians put together in this patchwork way could have a combination phenotype. Atraxa was not assembled from scratch, but infected with four separate colors at once. Maybe there are just four types of oil circulating in her body?

I am, of course, interested in inheritance. If these Phyrexians show combined phenotypes, what colored trait(s) do they actually pass down? Do they have individual "cells" that are still only white, only green, only black, etc., or did the colors somehow combine on the most basic hereditary unit level? Thankfully, we actually do have an example of a "chimera" Phyrexian asexually producing core-born offspring: Ixhel.

Ixhel shares multiple colors with Atraxa, not only in her color identity but also apparent phenotype (she has both Orthodoxy porcelain and Swarm copper). Two possibilities here: 1) She truly inherited both genetically; Atraxa passes down multiple colors when she reproduces. 2) Her "core" physiology is still rooted in one color, i.e. white porcelain, and the green parts were added after the fact. I don't have an answer for this, but it's intriguing to consider.

Proposed further study: Attempt to isolate the smallest "unit" of Phyrexian heredity (one single nanobot of the oil) and test if it can only store information about one color, or multiple. See if a germ is formed from only one of these units, as with eukaryotic zygotes, or from multiple.

My theories of Phyrexian reproductive biology remain highly speculative, but every new piece of data adds fuel to this fire, and I have plenty to elaborate on in later posts. If only the interplanar ethics committee would stop delaying my research.

[mrmousetolliver]

Alan Mathison Turing

Alan Turing was  was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist and is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. He led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bomba method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. Turing played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic. in 1952 when Turing was 39, he began a relationship with Arnold Murray, a 19 year old unemployed man. In January of 1952, Turings house was burgled, and Murray told Turing that he and the burglar were acquainted, and Turing called the police to report the crime. During the investigation, he acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray and both men were charged with "gross indecency" under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. On the advice of his family and lawyer he pled guilty. In March of 1952 he was convicted and given a choice between imprisonment or probation with the condition that he undergo a hormonal treatment to reduce libido, aka as "chemical castration". Turing opted for probation and began the chemical treatments. Over the course of the following year he was injected with estrogen, causing impotence and for breast tissue to form. In a letter, Turing wrote that "no doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out".

On 8 June 1954, at his house at 43 Adlington Road, Wilmslow, Turing's housekeeper found him dead. A post mortem was held that evening which determined that he had died the previous day at the age of 41 with cyanide poisoning cited as the cause of death. When his body was discovered, an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it was speculated that this was the means by which Turing had consumed a fatal dose. Many question whether his death was suicide or accidental but it is officially listed as suicide. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II signed a pardon for Turings conviction of "gross indencency", with immediate effect. The Queen officially pronounced Turing pardoned in August 2014. The Queen's action is only the fourth royal pardon granted since the conclusion of the Second World War. Pardons are normally granted only when the person is technically innocent, and a request has been made by the family or other interested party; neither condition was met in regard to Turing's conviction. In September 2016, the government announced its intention to expand this retroactive exoneration to other men convicted of similar historical indecency offences, in what was described as an "Alan Turing law". The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for the law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to retroactively pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. The law applies in England and Wales.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Getting muddier…

So in April 2024, Sentebale hosts a polo match in Miami that Harry plays in and Meghan attends. Sometime during the match, there’s a Sebetebale group photo where Meghan gets mad and pissy at Dr. Chandauka for daring to stand next to Harry in the center-ish of the photo and she moves her down the line

On March 26, 2025, Harry’s PR claps back at Dr. Chandauka’s statement alleging board misconduct and malfeasance by pinning the blame on Dr. Chandauka by upsetting a major Sentebale donor in 2024, which caused the annual Sentebale Polo Cup to be canceled and resulted in a loss of significant donations to the charity.

I speculated that perhaps this “major donor” was Harry himself.

Yesterday, March 28th, the Financial Times revealed that in April 2024, Harry asked Dr. Chandauka to issue a statement from Sentebale supporting Meghan in whatever media onslaught she was currently dealing with. Dr. Chandauka refused, saying Sentebale was not a Sussex PR machine:

The Financial Times also reveal that Sentebale was pretty much reliant on Harry for donations and that once his reputation nosedived from Megxit-Oprah-Philip-Queen-Netflix-Spare, that stream started to dry up and forced the charity to reconsider other avenues for donations, which led to the development of the US marketing and outreach strategy. The board, according to the Financial Times, accused Dr. Chandauka of failing to launch a US strategy.

So now…apparently it is Dr. Chandauka’s fault that the trademark application Harry submitted to the US PTO was rejected for being “too vague” and apparently it is also Dr. Chandauka’s fault that US donations to Sentebale dropped by 50%…when no one has any idea who she is, what she does, and kept getting mistaken as “a royal fan.”

Let me tell you…there’s only one person to blame for declining donations from the US. It’s not the lady who no one even knows. It’s the ginger twat with global fame and household recognition.

[likeadevils]

Midnights Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on Midnights in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also included a few other songs she worked on while writing Midnights and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process.

If you don't want to read all that, check out this playlist of the album in order, or this playlist of her entire discography. WARNING: there is a very large chunk on the playlists that I have no information on (Maroon-Dear Reader).

I’ve also added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date: 

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but all available evidence points to that date

Speculation: This date is based off pure vibes and guesswork and is highly likely to change.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices

Renegade: March 7-15, 2021 (Confirmed)

Aaron: “I wrote the music [for Renegade] at some point after we finished [evermore], and sent it to her, because she was inspired by a llot of the Big Red Machine stuff we were working on. And she had already sung on Birch, a song that hasn't come out yet but is one of the major ones on the record. And I think she wanted to write a song for Big Red Machine. She very much feels like part of this community to me. So I wrote Renegade, the music, and sent it to her. And not unlike a lot of the things we've done together, one day I woke up to a voice memo from her and she had written this incredible song about how anxiety and fear get in the way of loving or being loved. And she was clearly thinking about Big Red Machine. And then we recorded her vocals and everything the week of the Grammys, when I was there in LA, and it was really nice to have something to think about that wasn't related to the Grammys - just to make music because you feel like making it." (transcript from jaimie)

High Infidelity and Would've Could've Should've: March 7-15, 2021 (Confirmed)

Aaron: [Would've Could've Should've], we wrote that song together, and recorded it while we were together in LA for the folklore Grammys. It goes back that far. And the same with High Infidelity. Those songs, we actually recorded in her house, the vocals, we recorded them then. And I just kept making music, and it was kind, after we had made folklore and evermore, I started to have ideas which I would share. And eventually, she obviously made most of Midnights with Jack, and it became something different. But High Infidelity, and Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, and The Great War, and we made Hits Different with Jack and Taylor and I also, and it was great to be part of that record in that way. (transcript from @cages-boxes-hunters-foxes)

The Great War and Hits Different: between April-October 2021 (Speculation)

In the above quote talking about his songs on Midnights, Aaron says "Eventually, she obviously made most of Midnights with Jack, and it became something different," implying his stuff was written before the bulk of midnights in fall. He also says High Infidelity and Would've Could've Should've "[go] back that far," which implies they were some of the earliest stuff on Midnights, so it's safe to assume TGW and Hits Different come sometime afterwards.

Summer 2021: Jack has a session with Sounwave, Sam Dew, and Zoe Kravitz, where the instrumentals for Lavender Haze and likely Glitch are written

Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: Before Antonoff began to work on Swift’s tenth album, he was cooking up tracks with Spears, Dew, and Zoë Kravitz [...] During a brainstorming session, the quartet put together a track that would eventually become “Lavender Haze.”

November 3 2021: It was announced that Joe has been cast in Stars at Noon, alongside Margaret Qualley, Jack Antonoff's then girlfriend now wife. Since Joe was parachuted into the film last minute, filming had already started, making it likely he left as soon as possible.

Taylor: We’d been toying with ideas and had written a few things we loved, but Midnights actually really coalesced and flowed out of us when our partners (both actors) did a film together in Panama. Jack and I found ourselves back in New York, alone, recording every night, staying up late and exploring old memories and midnights past.

November 8: Jack gets back from touring with Bleachers. Let the games begin.

Vigilante Shit: November 2021 (Speculation)

Vigilante Shit is the sole solo writing credit on the album, which implies it was written before her and Jack were holed up together 24/7. Also Scooter and his wife divorced in July. Beyond that there's no evidence this is early in the process, besides it making sense that Taylor wrote this alone, brought it to Jack, and then fell into a creative inferno.

Maroon, Anti-Hero, You're on Your Own Kid, Midnight Rain, Bejeweled, Labyrinth, Mastermind, Paris, and Dear Reader: November/December 2021 (Inferring)

I don't have enough info on the making of any of these songs to give them each their own little blurb, but if anything pops up I will update this post and reblog it letting y’all know.

Question..?: After November 21, 2021 (Inferring)

We know Rachel Antonoff, Dylan O'Brien, and Austin Swift were there the day they recorded it thanks to this behind the scenes footage of them recording the cheering vocals. Dylan was filming The Vanishings at Caddo Lake in Louisiana sometime between October 5 and November 20. I don't know exactly which dates he was filming-- he was in New York for All Too Well filming in late October and to attend the premiere on November 12, but since we know for sure he was in Louisiana on the 20th, I'm just gonna Occam's Razor it and say Question was written sometime after he got back from that.

You're Losing Me: December 5, 2021 (Confirmed)

December 17, 2021: Filming wraps on Stars at Noon, and with it the bulk of recording for Midnights.

Lavender Haze: Early 2022 (Speculation)

Lavender Haze, Snow on the Beach, and Karma are the only songs to have Henson Recording Studios credited (I can't find studio credits for the 3am tracks so there is possibly more on there). This could point to them all being recorded around the same time time, or it could be in reference to Jack and Sounwave's original recording sessions taking place at Hensen. I lean towards the former, since 1) it seems like the Winter 2021 sessions were mostly between Taylor and Jack, and the spring sessions have other collaborators, and 2) the tabloid rumors about Taylor and Joe getting engaged really started heating up in February 2022. On the other hand, Sounwave implies that there was a notable stretch of time between Lavender Haze and Karma, so I totally understand if you want to put it with the rest of the Winter 2021 sessions. Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: A few months [after Jack and Sounwave wrote the instrumentals], Antonoff reached out to Spears, Dew, and Kravitz to see if he could pitch [Lavender Haze] to Swift, who loved it immediately. She wrote lyrics inspired by a Mad Men scene, numerous tabloid rumors and online gossip about her relationship status, and “1950s expectations.” “When Jack brought us in the hear for the first time, all our mouths dropped. She took it to a whole new world and made it her own. She created different pockets we did not hear.”

Glitch: Early 2022 (Speculation)

Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: "Glitch,” one of the bonus songs on the Midnights (3am) edition, was born from the same studio session as “Lavender Haze.” I don't know if this means the instrumentals to Lavender Haze and Glitch were done in the same session, Taylor wrote the lyrics in the same session, or both. For the same reason as Lavender Haze, I lean towards this coming later in the process, as well as Glitch mentioning being together for six years, and in November 2021 Taylor and Joe had been together for a little over 5 years. That being said, Taylor could've assume the album was going to come out in 2022, and that she would stay with Joe until then, and bump up that date a bit. It's still very up in the air.

February 5, 2022: Taylor is photographed leaving Jack's house holding a keyboard.

Sweet Nothing: Spring 2022 (Inferring)

Joe is a co-write on this, meaning they likely wrote it after he got back from filming. It also mentions their trip to Ireland in 2021 and refers to it as "last July", implying it was written in 2022. While I was writing this timeline Taylor liked this post on twitter, implying that at least the second verse is in reference to Paul and Linda McCartney. The quote is from his poem Blessed, which you can read in this interview (TWs for death and cancer)

Bigger Than The Whole Sky: March 2022 (Inferring)

Claire Winter, a close friend of Taylor's, posts on Instagram that she miscarried. (I toyed with whether or not to add this, but seeing as Claire Winter made the information public herself, I decided to put it in. If she ever takes that Instagram post down, let me know and I'll delete this part.)

Snow on the Beach: April 1, 2022 (Inferring)

On April 1, Lana Del Rey posts a video on Instagram of Jack in the studio with an unidentified female voice in the background. Two days later she posts this photo, which Taylor and Jack both include in posts about Midnights/Snow on the Beach. Lana: Well, first of all, I had no idea I was the only feature [on that song]. Had I known, I would have sung the entire second verse like she wanted. My job as a feature on a big artist’s album is to make sure I help add to the production of the song, so I was more focused on the production. She was very adamant that she wanted me to be on the album, and I really liked that song. I thought it was nice to be able to bridge that world, since Jack [Antonoff] and I work together and so do Jack and Taylor. Taylor: And with Snow On The Beach, which features the genius Lana Del Rey, very lucky to have collaborated with her on that. And Dylan [O’Brien] was actually in the studio with me and Jack, because a lot of the time we record at his place, and Dylan was just hanging out, drinking wine with us, and listening to stuff, and he was just trying out the drum kit there. He wasn't serious. But we were drinking wine, and we were sort of like, 'We haven't recorded the drums for this one yet! See if you want to...' and he played the drums on the song. Sometimes it just happens like that. (transcript once again from jaimie)

Karma: Spring 2022 (Speculation)

Rolling Stone interview with Sounwave: The bubbly “Karma” came later [than Lavender Haze and Glitch], when Antonoff reached out to Spears for any other ideas he may have to contribute to the album and its synth-pop vision. “‘Karma’ was just a last-minute Hail Mary,” Spears says. “I remembered I was working with my guy Keanu [Beats] and had something that was too perfect not to send to her. As soon as I sent it, Jack was instantly like ‘This is the one. Playing it for Taylor now. We’re going in on it.’ The next day, I heard the final product with her vocals on it.”

April 19, 2022: Elle's interview with the Conversations with Friends cast is released, and when Joe is "asked if he hopes to continue writing songs, Alwyn simply says, “It’s not a plan of mine, no.”" It's possible this means Sweet Nothing was yet to be written, but I think it's more likely Joe was just denying in order to not create hype around a song that wasn't officially announced yet.

May 2022: Taylor teases Labyrinth lyrics in her NYU Commencement Speech and says m i d n i g h t very prominently on this instagram post, meaning by early summer she was likely confident in the album's name and which songs would make the tracklist.

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

[ross-hollander]

Cryptid 'mechs.

Not necessarily "legendary", but never glimpsed more than on a few infamous occasions.

The Long Jump. Evidence: four photos and a ten-second video, tagged by data-miners as originating from a Confederation-FedSuns border march world. The 'mech appeared to be a stock Longbow save for the entire KF Drive that was bolted onto it. (Or, really, that it was bolted onto, given the relative sizes.) Never seen again, and never surfaced in any official discussions. Nonetheless, "hit by the Long Jump" has entered a narrow slice of MechWarrior slang as meaning an unexpected missile strike.

The Matriarch. Evidence: salvaged wreckage and entry on a cargo manifest. After a catastrophic explosion at a spaceport, this modified BattleMaster was found mangled under the scorched hulk of its DropShip. Modifications appeared absurd until somebody suggested, clicking everything into place, that this 'mech was adjusted to accommodate a pregnant pilot. Just who or why remains unknown.

The Super Atlas. Evidence: six photos and one potential footprint. Posted on a military enthusiasts' board, originating from the Lyran Commonwealth. Photos appeared to show something approximately Atlas-shaped but at the very least- based on assumptions of the background scale -twice as tall, with several unknown components visible. Potentially a hoax.

The War Machine. Evidence: four mentions in a declassified brief produced by FedCom military intelligence, first released a decade after the Civil War. The closest to hard facts about it are that it is definitely an Assault or Superheavy 'mech with more than two legs. Some people speculate it was going to be a hexapod. The wildest guesses suggest a continental-grade mobile fort, like a garrison turned into a 'mech.

The Thrall. Evidence: study released from Nagelring containing highly detailed blueprints- accused by some of being a total fabrication, but they are a bit too elaborate for a hoax. Appears to suggest a Light or 'demi-Light' 'mech, approaching battle armor size, designed to be stationed on and launched from another, larger 'mech like a missile. Never seen in combat, some suspect it's still being developed by the Commonwealth.

[seoul-bros]

Jikook Week 72 Complete (22/04-29/04/2025)

Jikook have finalized their 72nd week in the military and it's time to look back at this week in 2023. This was a big week for Suga. D-Day was released on 21/04 and the promo machine was in full swing. This included Haegeum Dance Challenges with J-Hope and Jimin.

Yoongi, J-Hope and Jimin were all busy during March and April 2023, hanging out and supporting each other. There was a lot of Tom and Jerry action including this cute Suga promo.

JK and Taehyung attended the Dream film premiere together on the 24/04. Their stage personas were in hiding that night but there was cute shyness in abundance......

...and Jungkook's flowing locks were the cause of heated debate leading to a complete internet meltdown that night.

In the early morning of 25/04, JK came live from his apartment looking a little sad. He had "I really want to stay at your house" playing on repeat and told us it is all he is listening to these days, "because I miss you all the time"

He explained that he had sought out the fans to help him calm down his feelings because he was feeling a bit unstable.

He avoided responding to comments (I can imagine the hotpotch of horrifying questions and suggestions he receives including this time someone telling him to cut his hair - aggggghhhhhhh!). Instead he told us about the film Dream and the new music he was recording.

He than fell on a topic close to his heart - cooking and managed to make himself hungry at 5 am in the morning (Is anyone really surprised he ended up working in the military kitchen given his 2023 weverse lives and posts and everything we saw on AYS? He really loves this sh*t.) . He was suddenly motivated to cook himself a meal and manages to animate and cheer himself up. He posted the same dish (with some additional minced garlic) on Weverse the next day.

Later on the 25/04, Jimin headed off to New York all dressed in a Calvin Klein Willy Chavarria shirt and Tiffany&Co jewellery. My brain was active with all sorts of speculations and predictions some of which came true and some of which were way off.

On 27/04, Jimin had them waiting round the block for his appearance at the Tiffany & Co opening and wow he looked amazing. He was the epitome of simple elegance that night.

He also popped up at Suga's D-Day concert in Newark on 29/04 and received a thunderous reception from the crowd.

They appeared on Weverse together after the concert and Yoongi continued wooing Jimin for a joint performance of Tony Montana.

That persistence paid off in Seoul four months later.

Jimin didn't actually get back to South Korea until the 6th May and many of us were wondering what he was up to in New York that week. Now with the release of Muse, everything has become clear. He was in the studio with Jon Bellion and crew writing and recording Who.

The recording of Jimin's Chapter 2 solo work was coming to an end while Jungkook's Chapter 2 was just heating up.

These were busy times with extended periods apart. No wonder JK was so pleased when they finally began filming AYS later that year.

cr. to OPs

Post Date: 29/04/2025

[lets-talk-gundam]

The MSM-09 Zogojuaju

While planning the invasion of Earth, strategists in the Principality of Zeon knew that gaining control of the planet's vast oceans would be key to a successful occupation. To this end, Zimmad, Zeonic, and MIP were tasked with with the development of mobile suits for use in aquatic environments.

While Zimmad and MIP are generally credited with the most successful designs, Zeonic also played a part in the development of such machines.

With all three companies contributing to the design, and with Hoshioka serving as its manufacturing center, the result would come to be a symbol of unity and collaboration for Zeon's people, as well as the ultimate aquatic machine.

Taking cues from Zeonic's Zaku Marine, MIP's Z'Gok, and Zimmad's Gogg, the MSM-09 Zogojuaju is remarkable machine, capable of unparalleled maneuverability thanks to its sleek aquadynamic design, the machine was favored by pilots whose styles incorporated speed and unpredictability.

The machine was armed with seven torpedo tubes, hidden by a stylized "mouth", as well as four additional tubes in each leg. For close range fighting, the machine featured six extendable "heat tentacles" each equipped with a deployable beam spraygun.

The machine was brutally effective during Zeon's campaigns in the Atlantic ocean and Gulf of Mexico, with Zeon ace Mauve Palomo making excellent use of the machine before his defeat at the hands of the Federation's Carrier Group 7. It's widely speculated that his defeat resulted solely from his decision to sortie in the inferior MSM-010 Zock.

The machine developed such a reputation that even the legendary Char Aznable elected to sortie in one over a fully-customized cutting-edge MS-14 Gelgoog.

Despite the machine's runaway success and reputation, it was unable to save Hoshioka from filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in February of 0080, where it was eventually acquired by Anaheim Electronics, where the machine would be fully discontinued by March. Despite their discontinuation, so tenacious was this machine that surviving units could be spotted in use during various conflicts following the end of the One Year War, including by;

Zeon remnants in The Delaz conflict, the First, Second, and Third Neo-Zeon wars from UC 0083-0096

The Anti-Earth Federation Organization Mafty circa. UC 105

Several factions during the Jupiter War from UC 133-136

The League Militaire during the Zanscare Invasion in UC 153

Metatron during its revolutionary movement against the Earth Federation in UC 203.

Various Settlement Nations in their campaign against the Illuminati in UC 223.

The Outer Space Alliance during their war with Earth in UC 1160.

The Zogojuaju was originally designed by Hideki Owada for the 2005 gag manga Mobile Suit Gundam-san. Have a wonderful April Fools`! And thanks for the suggestion. You know who you are.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Keith Edwards at No Lies Detected:

Last Monday morning, I endured the spectacle of MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski defending their post-election pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, marking their first meeting with Donald Trump in seven years. As they sat there reading from a prepared script, blissfully arrogant and hypocritical, a now-familiar nausea washed over me. It began in late October, when Jeff Bezos — with billions of dollars of business before the federal government — instructed the Washington Post’s publisher to break 36 years of precedent and make no endorsement in the most consequential election of our lives. I felt it again last week when CNN’s Dana Bash bizarrely both-sidesed the somehow unknowable politics of neo-Nazis on the march in Columbus. It was clear to me, as I’m sure it was to you, that Joe and Mika were afraid of what Trump 2.0 would do to them, which Brian Stelter’s CNN later confirmed. (See my YouTube video for my initial reaction).

[...]

Powerful media figures' craven capitulation to government power — before that power is even inaugurated — surely smacks of the preemptive compliance Snyder describes. Since we as Americans have no experience of authoritarian rule, speculating about what comes next is a challenge. To imagine what a returned Trump might do once in power, consider Russia’s experience during Vladimir Putin’s rise:  Four days after Putin’s inauguration as Russia’s president in May 2000, Russian federal tax agents raided the offices of NTV, one of the country’s few independent media outlets. NTV had pitilessly mocked the notoriously thin-skinned Putin; once he got to power, he wasted no time deploying the full force of the Russian federal government against it. Under the guise of financial crimes, NTV’s owner was swiftly arrested, imprisoned, and coerced into selling NTV to a pro-government conglomerate who would replace NTV’s journalists and make it a Kremlin mouthpiece. The following month, Putin summoned Russia’s most powerful business figures to the Kremlin where he made clear their new reality: Stay out of politics, and you all can keep your businesses, your wealth, and your freedom. In one fell swoop, the Russian state had cowed its media elites.

If you’re saying, “Well, that’s Russia and this is the United States,” compare the parallels between our country today and the Russia of 2000. Trump of course is pathetically sensitive to media criticism, and he has repeatedly made plain his intention to continue his weaponization of the federal government against his perceived enemies. Senate Republicans are eager to grant him his loyalist hacks as law enforcement officials (so long as they aren't generationally loathsome accused sexual predators!) who will unleash prosecutions against his enemies. As recently as today, Elon Musk — whose willingness to light money on fire extends from Twitter to Trump-Vance 2024  — has menaced MSNBC with a pro-Trump takeover. Meanwhile, social media and tech moguls fell over themselves to ingratiate themselves with Trump after his victory, having essentially shadowbanned political content prior to it. Trump moreover enters office with advantages Putin did not. He will be the first U.S. president with a media company of his own, which before Trump took a sledgehammer to our norms would have been unthinkable (though it worked out in Italy!). He enjoys the unlimited support of Elon Musk and his wholly owned and radicalized X, as well as of an emerging army of Gen Z podcast bros. Lastly, a rightwing legacy media propaganda machine consisting of Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN stands at the ready. A cinematic universe of Made-in-America state-run media served from your TV to your browser to your phone.

Dear Media: Do Nor Obey In Advance.

[kellanved-ammanas]

TF2 Drabbles: Engie/Soldier - Good Morning

Summary: I would also like to request some Helmet Party Hurt/Comfort! Soldier having a nightmare and Engie comforting him, mayhaps?

~

Soldier had two modes of sleeping; cuddly and quiet – rarely even so much as snoring – or stiff and straight as a board on his back as he muttered incomprehensibly. Tonight it was the latter. He was having a nightmare.

Carefully, Engie sat up and reached over to turn on the light atop the nightstand. His metal hand was in the drawer. He quickly pulled it out and attached it before reaching over with it to give Soldier’s shoulder a firm shake. With a gasp, Soldier shot up, grasping his wrist hard enough that it would’ve hurt if it had been his flesh hand. As was always the case, he realized what was going on fast enough to not do anything other than that.

His grip loosened as he panted for breath. “Good morning, Engie.”

“It’s two a.m.”

“That’s morning time and I’m wishing you good one.” Sometimes they left it at only mild chatter like this and would go back to sleep shortly but even if his grip on Engie’s wrist had loosened, he hadn’t let go. Meaning his nightmare had been particularly bad this time.

“Well, good morning to you to then, I suppose. You remember what your dream was about?”

Soldier took a few seconds to think about it. “No or well, sort of. I didn’t have my rocket launcher and I was in the middle of a battlefield, I think. People were dying around me and I couldn’t protect them. It was… people I knew, I think. I don’t remember their faces or if they even had faces.”

“It was just a bad dream. You’d never go anywhere without your rocket launcher.” Up to and including keeping it just under his side of the bed.

He nodded. “I would never. But why do our brains lie to us in our dreams sometimes?”

“I don’t know. Something to do with memory processing, I think.” Biology and mental stuff was one of the areas of science Engie had barely touched. Humans just weren’t his thing. Machines were much easier to understand both the inner and outer workings of.

“Medic would know.”

“He might.”

“Can we go ask him?”

“Right now?”

Soldier finally let go of Engie’s wrist so he could stand up. “Yes, right now.”

“Let’s ask him after sunrise instead, huh?” Engie slide out of bed too. “Which doesn’t mean we gotta go back to sleep if you don’t wanna. We can go hang out and drank some coffee or something instead for a bit.”

Soldier liked to be strict about the eight hours of sleep a night thing with precise times on the clock for going to bed and getting out of it in the morning. His nightmares were apparently bad enough at times for him to ‘forget’ that. Probably he didn’t forget though, right? He just ignored it because he’d rather break his sleep rules then risk going back to his nightmares. Not that he ever admitted to that, it was all speculation on Engie’s part because he certainly never asked. Maybe he should ask though? But how to do that without making it sound accusatory? Probably instead he should look into getting Soldier to go see a therapist. Which would have to wait until after the war was over. Except they’d already transitioned from the Gravel War immediately into a Robot War, who knows what might come next?

“Coffee sounds good,” Soldier said. “And then we can patrol the base to make sure there aren’t any robots trying to sneak up on us.” Decision made, he marched out of the room.

With a sigh, Engie followed. He wasn’t sure how best to help Soldier but just hanging out with him should help at least a little, right?

[tenaciouschronicler]

February 26 - March 1 2025 2010

A mother will do whatever is best for her children.

Now I dont like questioning the disembodied voices but...

The path through the mausoleum leads to a different part of the island where a dock can be found. Mom apparently rather than being forced away from Rose chose to leave of her own accord leaving only her martini glass behind.

WV is building a better Can Town, Exile Town, where '[a]ll expatriates are welcome, no matter what happened in the past, regardless of professional persuasion or metallurgical affiliation.' While this just at face value means the 'jobs' of each metal item, ie. can, mailbox, ammo, and type of metal, its really easy to think this is the future WV envisions for him and the others. Perhaps in this timeline, on this planet, he will do the same as Slick and make his own Town reality. AR is none too impressed, especially as this is WV's attempt at wooing PM, and yet, right outside of Exile Town hes got a militia started.

[A]ny town without a proper militia is as good as conquered.

As such he prepares one begrudgingly.

Sure~ Whatever you say AR. WV has his own moment of reflection admiring the sky 'oh my god a huge eggy looking thing just appeared in the sky.'

This is Daves fault. No really! we go back to Dave and Jade who have done most everything else to get the 'punch card eggy loking thign' which is immediately taken by the sprite crow to its 'nest made of shitty swords and soft puppet ass'. Obviously this makes Dave irate and he jokes about putting the egg in the microwave to hatch it which prompts Jade to dump his microwave off the skyscraper.

Not sure exploding the egg is what SBURB wants Dave.

We get to learn more about the differences in player entry and some new machines. Each time a player enters the amount of build grist is muliplied by 10. So John started with 20, Rose had 200 and Dave has 2,000. It seems like the later you enter the easier time you have building (and moving things, remember when 100 Grist was an insane amount to move the cruxtruder?). We can also see some new grist types have been unlocked from the get go though without enemies you cant really use them.

Then boy oh boy do I get to talk about computers again. Since Dave does not have any shale at his disposal hes kinda SOL on using the Punch Designix. This is terrible because we cant see what the JUMPER BLOCK EXTENSION and PUNCH CARD SHUNT actually do with the ALCHEMITER. However we can speculate.

So a Jumper is commonly used on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) to create connections that modify circuit connections either for fixing electric connections or adapting a PCB for specific requirements. A Jumper Block is used to configure connections for different PCB options consisting of mulitple pins or sockets bridged by shunts to establish those connections. Shunts are used when you want to selectively make or break these connections easily, manually or automatically. Its noted that a card must be punched to affect the flow of current when insterted to the PUNCH CARD SHUNT. Given all this, it seems like this is an upgrade to alchemizing that can affect the core of the system and perhaps more easily automate the creation of new objects.

This is all well and good but that doesnt change the fact Dave does not have a way to punch said cards. So, all that done, Dave goes to install the mystery disk, which in any other circumstance I wouldnt do so casually. While doing so we get to see Rose fighting white Imps with more feline features on LOLAR and that Dave has 3 hours and 41 minutes to destruction.

The disk turns out to be gristTorrent, which is a version of BitTorrent, to leech some of Johns shale and build grist. Now Ive never used BitTorrent myself, though I have heard of it. It uses peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol to distribute data and files over the internet. Its mostly used for very large files and is faster than standard file downloads in this case. The 'seed', in this case John, hosts and sends the initial file while 'peers', in this case Dave, connect and download the file in parts and then in turn can become seeds for others. Dave initially has a decent download rate of 4 g/s (grist per second) that dips once he starts also leeching Build grist. This is because he is the only connection, as one of the downsides is time it takes to reach full download speed without enough peer connections to offset internet bandwith cost.

This concludes Sam's TEDtalk.

In all honesty, Ive tried to make as much of this as consumable as possible and I hope it helps anyone who is lost on the tech side of things. (im gonna need a tag of this too huh)

[littjara-mirrorlake]

would people be interested if i made a post dissecting the phyrexian hereditary principles demonstrated in ONE and MOM because i'm a biologist and unhinged

[averageanonymous]

Summary: Crowley realizes that the only way to save Aziraphale might be to follow his lead.

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

Crowley sits at the edge of the sea. Chalk-white cliffs stretch to either side of him. Salt-heavy wind tugs at his hair, his clothes, and he closes his eyes and breathes it deep into his lungs.

You could come back. To heaven.

His eyes snap open, yellow irises blown wide, erasing the humanity from his gaze. He bares his teeth, jaw clenching so hard it aches as the memories assault him, the same conversation on endless repeat behind his eyes. He grabs the first thing his hand touches, a large black stone, and hurls it. He watches it soar out over the ocean before it falls with barely a splash in the crashing waves.

"Damn it," he hisses, dropping his head into his hands, gripping fistfuls of his auburn hair until his scalp begins to protest. Seven days since Aziraphale left. It might as well have been months, years, for how the time seems to have stretched before him, well and truly alone for the first time in six millennia. His entire being aches vaguely, as though the absence of the angel tore something from him, ripped a hole somewhere within. It's the kind of wound that he knows won't heal. Not with time, or distance. Not with any distraction or attempt to forget.

He finally drops his hands back into his lap and sighs, a bone-deep, weary sigh that feels like it's dragging his very soul to the surface. He counters it with another deep inhale of the ocean-soaked air. When his eyes open again, the serpent has receded. He lifts his gaze to the sky, a muted blue studded with gray clouds that threaten rain.

"What were you thinking, angel," Crowley asks the sky in a hoarse voice, gravelly with disuse. He thinks of Aziraphale, in heaven, surrounded by the same feathered dicks that would have seen him exterminated in Hellfire, working with the damn Metatron, and his heart threatens to eject itself straight from his chest. "What the hell were you thinking?"

His every single instinct screams to Save Him. March straight into Heaven's hallowed halls and find the angel, throw him over his shoulder and take the elevator directly back to Earth, SAYONARA SUCKERS.

But he can't. His angel doesn't want to be saved. Not this time.

If I'm in charge... I can make a difference.

"Do you really think so," Crowley speculates idly to no one, "You think one angel, even an Archangel, even The Supreme Archangel, can stand in the way of the machine? Derail The Great Plan?" He shakes his head. Aziraphale is many things, intelligent to a fault, determined to the end. And the truth of it is that he's actually not an idiot. But he can't possibly believe... not really...

But he does, doesn't he. Because Aziraphale also has faith. And hope. And he does believe, believes with his whole soul, that there is goodness at the heart of Heaven, if he can just chisel through the thousands of years of crystallized corruption to get to it. To make a better world. A world where Heaven isn't standing over it - over them - with a flaming sword, ready to end everything.

A world where, maybe, they could be together.

Together. That's what he had said.

We can be together.

I need you.

Crowley grasps those words in his mind, clings to them like a lifeline, and holds them tight. Those words feel pure. They feel like truth. Aziraphale had to have known he would never return to Heaven. But he asked anyway. And he left despite Crowley's refusal to join him. Why?

Because, Crowley reminds himself, Aziraphale is an angel of principle. An angel who fights for what he believes in. Aziraphale is up there, fighting, right now. Crowley's hands tighten into fists. He feels his body shaking with the effort of trying to remain calm. It's not working.

Aziraphale is fighting, even though that meant he had to leave everything behind... Even though it meant leaving Crowley behind... He did it because it was the right thing to do.

Crowley gets to his feet abruptly. Aziraphale is fighting, and what is he doing? Maybe he can't be an angel himself, and maybe he can't steal his angel back from Heaven. But he doesn't have to sit around and wait for The End Of The World to happen. There is something he can do. If Aziraphale is determined to try to take down Upstairs from the inside, why can't he do the same from Downstairs? After all, Hell is absent its Grand Duke, and he always knew he would look damn good in a crown.

Crowley lets the Serpent take hold of him once again, golden eyes glowing, teeth sharpening into venom-soaked fangs. Snake skin accents his arms, creeps up the back of his neck, and his fingers are tipped with black claws. Finally, he allows his ink-black wings to unfurl. If he's going to be a Demon Prince of Hell, he had better look the part.

The wind gusts around him, and suddenly there is no one on the cliff overlooking the sea, and no sign anyone ever was, save a circle of scorched earth to mark the descension of a demon to Hell.

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this foray into my imagination.

This started as "Crowley sits on a cliff" and this is where it went. Which was a totally different direction than I'd initially imagined. I guess what it comes down to is that, while I love some Angsty Crowley, I don't want him to mope forever. And I don't want him to be stuck thinking Aziraphale left because he didn't love him. He knows Az better than that! And, to be honest, I LOVE the idea of Crowley as Az's celestial opposite, Grand Duke of Hell, taking on the system from both sides. Dunno. Sounds fun to me.

[chosetherose]

*WSJ Link*

There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift.

By Allie Jones

April 18, 2024 at 8:00 am ET

Taylor Swift was celebrating the end of the Australian leg of her Eras Tour in late February when a bit of unpleasantness sailed out from Down Under and landed on the home page of TMZ. The New South Wales Police Force was investigating a 71-year-old man for allegedly assaulting a 51-year-old man at a wharf north of the city, according to their media unit. Per TMZ, the septuagenarian was Scott Swift, Taylor’s father and a key member of her management team, and the younger man was a photographer. 

The story had all the makings of a public relations nightmare: (1) Celebrity family member allegedly behaves badly while (2) disembarking from a luxury yacht, resulting in (3) a police investigation. To make matters more complicated, Taylor was reportedly present for the alleged altercation—hiding under an umbrella, TMZ said. Though the man didn’t require medical treatment, the police said, there was video footage. Would this be the end of the pop star’s marathon run of fawning press? 

Not if Tree Paine could help it. 

Swift’s longtime publicist first released a statement that did not refute TMZ’s story, exactly, but offered some exculpatory evidence: “Two individuals were aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor, grabbing at her security personnel, and threatening to throw a female staff member into the water.” Subtext: Scott Swift was simply protecting his daughter and another defenseless woman from a couple of rogue aggressors. He was not charged. 

Around the same time, as if by magic, People found a video of Scott passing out sandwiches to young female fans at one of the Sydney shows and published it along with fan commentary. “Isn’t he the sweetest and cutest,” one cooed.

Online, Swifties clocked the People story as good old-fashioned damage control. As a chorus of fan posts put it: “The devil works hard, but Tree Paine works harder.” (In late March, the New South Wales Police Force media unit said that the North Shore Police Area Command finished its investigation and that it is taking no further action.)

The public often sees Paine expertly attending to Swift’s needs, from smoothing out Swift’s red carpet dresses to leading her past scrums of paparazzi.

The average celebrity publicist does not have fans. But Paine, the 52-year-old redhead seen trailing Swift at awards shows and rubbing shoulders with Gayle King in the Eras Tour VIP area, has become a Swiftverse cult figure in her own right. Fans post reverently about her PR machinations and share videos of her expertly attending to Swift’s needs: smoothing out Swift’s dress on the red carpet, leading Swift right past a scrum of reporters whose questions have not been approved, subtly offering Swift what appeared to be water at the Video Music Awards—a night when the star was filmed dancing in a manner that suggested inebriation.

Swift has trained her followers to look for meaning in her every gesture, outfit and Instagram caption. Paine’s own work—the stories she chooses to respond to, the narrative she puts forward in the media—has become part of that lore. 

And Swift and Paine are creating a lot of lore lately. Swift spent the fall cheering on her new boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as he sailed to Super Bowl victory, and dropped by the Grammys to pick up album of the year for Midnights and announce her new album in an acceptance speech for yet another award. The Tortured Poets Department, which fans speculate is at least partly inspired by her breakup with the British actor Joe Alwyn, drops this month, and Swift will promote it while balancing her public relationship, continuing her sold-out international Eras Tour amid growing criticism of her private jet usage and brushing off baseless conspiracy theories that she is secretly working as a Democratic operative to swing the 2024 election for President Joe Biden. 

In a long career of riding high, Swift has hit the stratosphere. It’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Back in 2014, Swift’s world domination was not yet assured. That March, trade publications reported that the pop star’s publicist of seven years, Paula Erickson, had submitted her resignation. Fairly or not, during Erickson’s tenure, Swift developed a reputation for being both boy-crazy and unwilling to joke about it. See: Swift’s string of high-profile relationships with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles; her alleged wedding-crashing with Conor Kennedy; her humorless response to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s joke at the 2013 Golden Globes about her dating life. (“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” she told Vanity Fair when asked about the incident.) Erickson declined to comment for this story.

Paine, who had been working as the senior vice president of publicity in the Christian and Country divisions of Warner Music Nashville, came on board and quickly flipped the script. She launched her own firm, Premium PR, and signed Swift as her first and only client. “There isn’t a publicist in NY, LA or Nashville that wouldn’t jump at an opportunity to work with someone as talented as Taylor Swift and her management team,” Paine told Page Six at the time. 

That year, Swift moved from Nashville to New York, went full pop with the release of 1989 and began flaunting her friendships with a gaggle of famous women, known colloquially as The Squad. The public started to forget about the time Swift, age 22, allegedly bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 

Now that Swift has hit the stratosphere, it’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Throughout this transformation, Paine refused to let rumors about her client fester. The very week her hiring was announced, she began issuing public rebuttals to the tabloids. “Never believe the National Enquirer,” she tweeted about an apparently false story that Swift declined to record a duet with Randy Travis. Ten years later, the gossip about Swift has changed, but Paine’s approach has not: She recently called out the anonymous gossip account Deuxmoi for causing “pain and trauma” by posting false rumors about Swift secretly marrying Alwyn before the two broke up. 

Paine became even more visible to fans in 2020, when she appeared in Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Wearing white shorts and blue nail polish, she clinked white-wine glasses with Swift as the singer-songwriter anxiously prepared to post her first political statement on Instagram. Swifties have since turned Paine into something of a meme: Online, they joke that Swift’s “Out of the Woods” lyric “the monsters turned out to be just trees” is a reference to the publicist and that a redheaded Eras Tour backup dancer is Tree-coded. They have decided that in the inevitable Paine biopic, the publicist will be played by Amy Adams, and that she will win her first Oscar for it. 

The fan obsession has been fueled, in part, by how little Paine has shared publicly about herself. Her Instagram is private. The last time she sat for an interview was 2012, when she was a VP at Warner and appeared in Nashville Lifestyles’ “Most Beautiful People” issue; she posed for a photo in front of a shiplap-covered wall wearing a peasant blouse and made the astonishing revelation that she was “trying to enjoy life.” I cannot report whether that is still true; Paine declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Born Trina Snyder, Paine grew up in Costa Mesa, California. She was still going by Trina when she was initiated into Pi Beta Phi at the University of Southern California in 1990, according to the women’s fraternity’s official publication, The Arrow. 

Like her client, Paine is a Nashville transplant. In her early career, she worked her way up at a variety of L.A. record labels—World Domination, Maverick and Interscope, whose roster included Snoop Dogg, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. She launched her own guerrilla-marketing company, worked for the Academy of Country Music and eventually joined Warner Music in Tennessee. 

In 1998, she married Lance Paine, a businessman and onetime president of the Nashville candy brand Goo Goo Cluster, in Las Vegas, according to public records. (Lance also served as president of the company owned by HGTV’s Property Brothers.) The Paines have one teenage daughter, and according to the society pages, they have spent some nights mixing with locals at Nashville charity galas. 

Paine has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift.

But mostly, Paine works. She has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift and sending emails to journalists with surprising velocity whenever she disagrees with a story. “Once I started working in media, I would always hear about people getting emails from Tree Paine, or maybe, people being afraid of getting emails from Tree Paine,” says Hunter Harris, a self-described “Painiac” and the writer of the entertainment newsletter Hung Up, which regularly chronicles Paine’s engagement with the press. (Harris has also contributed to WSJ. Magazine.)

In the past 10 years, Paine has guided Swift through some of the more tumultuous moments of her career: her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; her trial accusing a former DJ of sexual assault; her battle against her former label, Scooter Braun and private-equity giants for the control of her master recordings. At almost every turn, Paine presents Swift—arguably the most famous woman on the planet, a billionaire with a private jet—as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard. 

It has, for the most part, worked. In the process, Paine has become one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. 

Getting any kind of journalistic access to Swift has become a fool’s errand. The star sits for few magazine interviews, and in between, Paine does her best to ensure that no information about Swift that Swift has not expressly chosen to share with the public becomes available. One magazine writer recalls the slightly fraught process of interviewing another artist on one of Swift’s stadium tours a few years ago. As a condition of the interview, the writer had to agree that anything they witnessed or discovered about Swift while spending time with the other artist before a show would be off the record. Paine was clear: No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it. 

When writer Emily Kirkpatrick reached out last year to seek Swift’s comment for a profile of the actress and musician Suki Waterhouse for the fashion website Ssense, Paine surprisingly acquiesced, with the caveat that Swift’s quote be printed in full—no edits, no line breaks. (Kirkpatrick, annoyed, accepted the terms.)

This is an understandable sticking point for Paine. The Kardashian-West debacle revolved, in large part, around a truncated recording of Swift. Before the rapper released the single “Famous,” which contained lewd lyrics about Swift, they spoke by phone, where he asked her to promote the track on Twitter. For years, a snippet of the call released by Kardashian painted Swift as a liar who publicly rejected the lyrics but privately approved them. When someone released the full call online—a friendly heads-up but one in which West never shares the final lyric (“I made that bitch famous”)—Kardashian tried to save face. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…,’ ” she tweeted. But Paine never said that exactly. She tweeted a rejoinder: “I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing. P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”

The biggest year of Swift’s career has also been her most public yet. There’s the tour, the new album, the NFL boyfriend, the constant tabloid coverage of her relationship with the NFL boyfriend, the never-ending paparazzi strolls with her famous friends at sceney New York City restaurants. There have been stumbles: Swift forgot to thank Celine Dion, who presented the album of the year award, when accepting her Grammy. (A photo of the two singers hugging circulated online later.) She’s still taking heat for her private jet. She dated Matty Healy. 

But the sheer volume of information about Swift that pours, ceaselessly, out of every tabloid and news outlet from the Daily Mail to the New York Times typically washes away negative stories as soon as they are published. There are fans who speculate that Paine sent Swift to Kelce’s regular-season game against the New York Jets in October so that internet searches for “Taylor Swift jets” would return cheery images of Swift dancing in a VIP suite with Blake Lively instead of stats about CO2 emissions. 

Swift is at a point in her career, however, where she could completely disappear from view and still generate more headlines than just about any other person on earth. Scientists at Caltech and UCLA recently published research proving the existence of “Swift quakes” (seismic activity caused by fans dancing and jumping at concerts). Ancestry.com shared on social media that Swift is a sixth cousin, three times removed, of poet Emily Dickinson. The New York Post talked to experts to guesstimate how much Kelce has spent wooing Swift so far (more than $8 million, allegedly). 

If Swift released The Tortured Poets Department with zero fanfare, it would probably still hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But she chooses to feed the beast—with black-and-white Instagram posts, snippets of possible lyrics, a pop-up poetry library, so many vinyl editions—and, with Paine’s help, make her own news.

[sp1c3-r4ck-synd1c4t3]

Eldrazi will be the next major antagonist

This is just my own called shot. I will be looking back at this in ~a year and a half to see if I'm right, but I have evidence. I have. Some evidence.

Part 1: Data

I am going to use War of the Spark and March of the Machine as examples, and will assume their models are accurate to Ziplining, the climax event-set of the current arc.

Let's start with War of the Spark. This set had 31 months of "Foreshadow-time", which starts when the first Macguffin is loaded. Kaladesh set this in place with Tezzeret's presence, and the Planar Bridge he stole. I believe Tezzeret's presence was intentional, not just as "an" antagonist, but specifically Bolas' pawn. After that plot beat, it would take almost another year to see the true next step, in Bolas' army of Eternals. 31 months from first contact, 21 months from phase 2. Moving onto the Phyrexian arc, now that we know what we're looking for, we can find the first two teasers of Phyrexia's presence. The first is obvious, with Vorinclex on Kaldhiem, 27 months before MOM, similar to the number gained from the first examination. It would take a full year for this beat to be continued, with Jin-Gitaxis on Kamigawa, giving us 15 months pre-climax, which is definitely a much smaller time-frame, but hey, data is data.

With this information, we can make some reasonable estimations. Ziplining wants between 31-27 months of heads-up between its first foreshadow and its release. Its slotted to come out in Spring 2026, meaning that its first mention should have been during....... March of the Machine.

Hm. If we all rack our brains, maybe we can come up with something that happened in the Phyrexia arc that might've disturbed something that lives in the Blind Eternities...

Part 2: Story

This section starts my more outlandish speculations that will make me look truly foolish in 2 years time.

So, if we continue the pattern of first foreshadow->followup a year later, we would need something that tells the audience what's going on.

You remember Modern Horizons back in 2019? Well its funny, that set was built from the ground up! There was barely any thematic consistency between the cards except for draft archetypes. There were only a few premium Slivers, there just to spice up a limited deck. And the same holds true for Modern Horizons 2, there's even less consistency, each deck is going to feature cards with vastly different flavours!

And then came Modern Horizons 3, themed not around generically powerful cards, but around Eldrazi. Not new Eldrazi mind you, but

Time for crazy theory #1: What if the focus on Eldrazi in MH3 was in order to show the old kind of Eldrazi, so that we would be wowed by the new kind showing up 2 years later?

Now, this sets up some serious expectations! After the second story beat, every set had to do with Wank of the Spank or Mommy! Well that's what I'm predicting.

CRAZY THEORY #2 EVERY SET MENTIONED ALREADY RELATES TO THE ELDRAZI!!!

Part 3: Pepe Silvia

The Death Race set is... well I don't know what planes it takes place on yet, so I won't be making any specific claims. I like Corocojo's theory that it will be taking place on the wasteland plane of Gastal though, so... maybe it was razed by Eldrazi in the past? That one's weak but the next ones are a lot stronger.

Tarkir is pretty clear. Ugin spent a thousand years recovering on that plane, giving it... some connection to Colourless mana? Okay I'll be real this one also sucks

BUT THEN ITS SPACE OPERA TIME! People tend to view planes as one planet, with others just near enough to travel to, but with the deadly void of space/the Blind Eternities between them, and with horrible monsters potentially living Out There! Eldrazi have always been compared to aliens, so it'd make some sense to draw the distinction. Maybe in a plane all about outer space, we could learn more about the origin of Eldrazi. Maybe something that lives in the In-Betweens of reality started in the In-Betweens of planets!

Lorwyn is easily my weakest link. Nissa made contact with Emrakul on Zendikar, then planeswalked to Lorwyn? I'll be honest, not sure what I'm cooking with that one.

But then we get to the real reason I'm making this post. A return to Arcavios, the final plane before the climax. And let me ask you a question. Do we know of any colourless creatures that live on Arcavios?

That's right. Why else would they make the penultimate set a Strixhaven sequel? Because it's been the home of an entirely different kind of titan this whole time.

Part 4: A list of the many reasons I'm probably wrong

Here's a non-comprehensive list of the many reasons I'm probably wrong.

Loot is related to the Fomori, whom have nothing to do with Eldrazi

Kellan has nothing to do with Eldrazi

It probably has to do with dragons cause Tarkir and Arcavios both have extant Elder Dragons and Bolas' probably escaped his meditation realm in the Invasion

Jace already did the whole Eldrazi thing a decade prior why would he be showing up so much if they just want to make him Do It Again

Emrakul is still in the silver moon and its not very likely that she'll escape off-screen

MH3's Eldrazi could just be a way to appease fans who won't get another chance to see them in a long time

We JUST defeated Phyrexia forever, why on earth would the other big bad of the multiverse be next, instead of being saved for 2033 with a smaller big bad in-between

Tezerret has nothing to do with the Eldrazi

Why the fuck would the first "Macguffin foreshadow" be something that happened DURING the last climax

Why the fuck would the second story beat take place in a set WITHOUT A STORY

Mark Rosewater said about Ziplining "I can't even say who the antagonist is". If it was Eldrazi he might've said 'what the antagonist is'

You've never once made a correct magic theory

But hear me out on that last one. There's a first time for everything :)

[handeaux]

Cincinnati’s Gold Rush Coins, Steeped In Mystery, Are Worth A Fortune Today

Among the most sought after and valuable coins in the world are a handful struck for the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company during the California Gold Rush of 1849.

Despite the exorbitant value of these rare coins, we know next to nothing about the company that minted them or the men who organized the Cincinnati company. We don’t know where these coins were minted or why. Perhaps because of the mystery, the Cincinnati coins change hands for sums up to a million dollars – when they rarely emerge on the market.

According to coin dealer Joseph O’Connor, only a single Cincinnati five-dollar gold piece is known. It resides in the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution. There are only seven recorded gold Cincinnati ten-dollar pieces, two of which are held by the Smithsonian. A lone twenty-dollar coin from this company is known. It’s at the Philadelphia Mint, and it was struck from copper, not gold, deepening the mystery.

The most complete history of the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company may be found in a 1913 book by Edgar H. Adams, “Private Gold Coinage of California 1849-55: Its History and Its Issues.” According to Adams, although the coins bear the legend “Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company,” the official name of the firm was “California Mining and Trading Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.”

The by-laws of the company were printed in Cincinnati in 1849 by the Model Western Printing House, a company that appears not to be found in any city directory or contemporary newspaper. That document is preserved in the library of Yale University.

Adams provides a full list of the fifty or so stockholders in the company, copied from the New York Tribune of 17 March 1849. According to that roster, the president was J.H. Leavering, vice-president W.B. Norman, treasurer David Kinsey, secretary Sam T. Jones, bookkeeper A.H. Colton, and a “board of finance” consisted of Joseph Talbert, G. W. Letter and L. M. Rogers. Scant clues from Cincinnati records suggest these officers were solidly middle-class: teachers, lawyers, wholesalers, grocers. Amos Gove was a bookkeeper in his uncle’s Cincinnati market.

Among the stockholders were a couple of Nixons, maybe brothers, who might have been connected with a Cincinnati paper manufactory. In his 1981 book, “Private Gold Coins and Patterns of the United States” (1981), Don Kagin hypothesizes that the dies used to strike the Cincinnati coins originated at the Nixon paper company:

“There can be some intelligent speculation as to who made the dies for the Cincinnati Company. Nixon and Co. were paper manufacturers in Cincinnati on Walnut Street below Pearl and employed engravers on steel to create the designs for wallpaper. H. Johnson and W. Johnson of Cincinnati later engraved dies for the token cents which widely circulated during the Civil War. Since A. B. Nixon, J. Johnson, and A. Johnson were members of the Cincinnati party going to California, it is probable that the Cincinnati Company coining dies were prepared by the Johnsons in Nixon’s paper mill.”

It remains a mystery where the coins were minted. Were they struck in Cincinnati as sample designs? Were they struck in California by the Cincinnati company after they arrived? Or did the Cincinnati company sell or give its dies to another company, who then struck the coins in California?

We know the Cincinnati company headed westward hauling a machine for striking coins because the diary of one of Doctor Alexander Butler Nixon is preserved at the California State Library in Sacramento. According to that diary, the Cincinnati company ironically realized, once they were on the dusty trail, that they were too well equipped. John Phillip Reid, in a 1976 article for the Hastings Law Journal, described the dilemma:

“Before reaching Fort Kearney in Nebraska the members of the Cincinnati company had discovered that their wealth was not a source of strength. It was instead a source of disharmony, dissension, and division.”

Nixon relates that, after much debate, the company compromised. They agreed not to haul the heavy coining machine in their own wagons but sent it ahead with another wagon train. Interestingly, Nixon – the company’s medical doctor – noted that other supplies were abandoned as well:

“Our Brandy was taken along for medicinal purposes, the company being organized under the titotal abstinence principle, but that Brandy was a very popular preventive and of course was all used medicinally.”

Despite the logistical hurdles, it appears that the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company did arrive some months later in California. Alexander Nixon and Amos Gove, at least, survived long enough to be designated as California Pioneers in the 1870s. The documentation required for this honor raises even more questions. Gove wrote a long letter to his Cincinnati family from a point halfway through Nebraska on May 17, 1849. His California Pioneer file indicates he arrived in California on July 6, 1849 – but claims he arrived by ship, which would have required many more months of travel.

What happened after the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company arrived in California also remains a mystery. The Alta California newspaper of 15 November 1851 records a “Cincinnati Company” operating a mine in Calaveras or Tuolumne County, but none of the names associated with this operation match any of the stockholders listed in 1849.

Edgar H. Adams devoted an entire book to the private mints that operated in California before the U.S. government got involved in producing coinage late in 1850. Until the feds muscled in, private specie was the basis for commerce in the gold field. Adams does not believe the Cincinnati coins ever made it into circulation:

“Almarin B. Paul, of San Francisco, who conducted an extensive business in Sacramento in 1849 and 1850, and through whose hands passed many of the private issues, states that neither he nor any of the pioneers with whom he had consulted, remember seeing this Company’s coins in circulation. It is very likely that those known were simply trial pieces, struck in gold, and that for some reason the Company which contemplated their issue abandoned the plan.”

Circulated or not, it has been suggested that so few coins exist because the company’s dies were faulty. Surviving coins show cracks on the reverse side, indicating that a few more strikes would have fractured the die.

At least the Cincinnati company was mostly honest. Coins struck by other private mints were criminally debased. Some private ten-dollar pieces contained less than $8.00 in gold. The Cincinnati coins, on the other hand, averaged about $9.70 in actual gold.

You may be inspired to take another look at those odd coins you shoved to the back of your sock drawer, but beware. Numismatic expert Mike Locke reports that a company called Martguild makes brass or gold-plated cast-zinc replicas of rare and expensive coins. These reproductions are extremely common and have very little value. Other large pioneer gold coins have been similarly reproduced, but the Cincinnati company’s coins seem to be one of the most common. The reproductions often misspell “trading” as “tracing” or have a “T” standing for “token” stamped on them.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Will Sommer at The Bulwark:

TOP TEXAS REPUBLICANS ARE falling over each other announcing investigations into a “Sharia city” set to be built outside of Dallas. But, at least publicly, there doesn’t seem to be anything illegal about the planned construction. Instead, figures like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton just seem really mad that a group of Muslims are trying to develop some land. Ground hasn’t even been broken on “EPIC City,” a 402-acre suburban development near Josephine, Texas. But it’s already attracted fury from both high-ranking government officials and grassroots activists.

The controversy, which has percolated up from TikTok and regional talk radio into Fox News segments in just a few weeks, recalls the “Ground Zero mosque” saga of 2010, when right-wing media personalities became convinced that a planned Islamic cultural center blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center was in truth a secret Muslim victory edifice celebrating 9/11. Similarly, it’s not clear what specifically about the EPIC City plans, put forward by a development group associated with the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) mosque, has inspired the outrage, aside from the group’s religion. The project is set to include a Muslim school and mosque, and the developers have said they’ll abide by fair-housing laws and not bar anyone because of their religion. That’s all enough to garner EPIC City a sort of El Chapo–level investigative response from the Texas government. On March 31, Abbott ordered the Texas Rangers to look into EPIC for “potential criminal activities.” In an X post, he claimed that “a dozen state agencies” are “investigating” the project. Abbott has repeatedly suggested EPIC City’s planners intend the community to be a “no-go zone” where law enforcement would be banned from enforcing American laws. EPIC City has also become grist in the budding Republican Senate primary between Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn. Paxton has perhaps outdone even Abbott in his zeal to stop Muslims from building a neighborhood, announcing the first investigation into the project in March. Not to be left out, Cornyn himself on Monday called for a Justice Department investigation.

Again, it’s not really clear what the case is here. A journalist for KERA, a North Texas media nonprofit, noticed the same thing, writing that for all the announced investigations, Abbott hasn’t explained “what laws may have been violated.”

[...] Since then, EPIC City has been picked up by various right-wing talkers, from Glenn Beck to Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau. A guest on Mark Levin’s show speculated that people affiliated with the mosque appeared to have built “an observation post and possibly a shooting platform” near a police station to take on the cops. YouTuber Dave Rubin said EPIC City was going to be “a giant Islamic mega-city.” This anger is being felt on the ground in Dallas, too. On March 31, a county commissioner’s hearing about EPIC stretched for more than four hours, as residents opposed to the project testified that the development would be a sharia-law compound filled with stonings and honor killings.

[...] Unlike the “Ground Zero mosque,” EPIC’s opponents have struggled to find a kind of geographic symbolism on the level of the World Trade Center. But one critic has come up with an interesting idea involving the television show Dallas. Far-right activist Amy Mek, who has almost half a million followers on X, tried to key in on this story’s emotional resonance for opponents of the development in a post on Tuesday. The EPIC mosque group, she claims, once hosted an event at the Texas ranch where Dallas was filmed, and which now hosts an event center.

The right-wing faux outrage machine is whipping up Islamophobia reminiscent to the Park51 debate in the early 2010s, this time with EPIC City in Texas.