#Shop Heating products online now

[mayakern]

we have a few miniskirts on sale right now, so if you're looking to expand your summer wardrobe, we've got you!! 😎

☀️ inclusive sizes (XS-8X) ☀️ made ethically ☀️ huge pockets that will fit a whole bottle of sunscreen, your sunglasses, and whatever else you'll need to beat the heat

you can find them on my store now!

[itsbansheebitch]

More thoughts

I get both sides, but I feel a little confused they couldn't find four people in their +25 employees

Data analyst (Are you seriously telling me you couldn't personally email or even just HIRE matpat's team who do data analytics as part of Theorist Media to help??? The man would be overjoyed to help???)

Editor (Put the first $6 towards a can of coffee grounds, dude)

PR Team (Even, like, a single person, please, for the love of god)

Business Major (Or literally anyone that has taken a home ec/budgeting/personal finance class)

First, the Dish Granted series was started when gold leaf burgers were novel, now it's seen as tone deaf (for obvious reasons) it should have shifted to something like interviews with people who make that kind of food or local businesses (like parmesan cheese shops in Parma, Italy) or the history of food (like talking about the history of modern Native American slavery on Californian wine vinyards). Not to mention the untapped potential of Food Fraud topics. Either shift it, or scrap it. Any data analyst or chronically online person could tell you that.

Second, why did you keep "anyone can afford $6 a month" in? Are the editors asleep at the wheel? Are they overworked? What is going on? You know damn well to not make generalizations about what people can afford. That's NEVER a good idea, especially when you KNOW (because YT gives you analytics) that most of your viewers are young (16/18-30/35 range, I'd guess) who probably, either 1, are still in school and either arent paid well/dont have jobs OR 2, arent paid well and tired of people's shit, like people who own businesses talking about "tough financial decisions." To them, Watcher isn't going to look different from the other people talking like that, because this was so sudden, with no input from fans, and in the video you hear shit like "anyone can afford [X]." To be frank, it wouldn't really matter what the amount is, because that generalization goes against the message they have stood by for years. THAT is a slap in the face.

Third, what are yall doing with the budgeting? Every artist has a right to make art that they are proud of. Every artist deserves to have their work seen if they so choose. Every artist deserves to make a living. HOWEVER, there are MANY options online when it comes to making money, especially on YT. You could get into marketing, data analysis, expanding your demographic, looking at what people are interested in right now VS what will stand the test of time (not gold leaf burgers), etc.

You have to either have these skills, develop these skills, or hire someone to do it for you. It's understandable that you would want a team behind the production, but I find +25 employees to be WAY too many people, especially in LA. Bailey Sarian has a Dark History section on her YT (and Spotify podcast) where she has hired historians to help make sure her episodes are as accurate as possible. You've caught heat before from Puppet History's missing & incorrect info, you should do the same. She has about three (3) "intermissions" per episode for ad breaks. I never see anyone complain. People WOULD listen to yall talk for that long (+1 hour videos), tbh, though that's not necessary.

Why are yall out here with Teslas, expensive food, new gear, scripts (where there weren't scripts before, PH is different, that makes sense), and "better than TV" level sets??? I need to put your accountant in this week's church prayer list what the actual hell??? Ya'll, this video is literally the meme:

Guys help me budget:

LA Rent: 2K per month

Videos: 100K per vid

+25 Employees: God only knows

New stuff for videos: Don't get me started

Like, are you serious?

You have a right to do whatever you want with your art. You have a right to charge whatever you'd like for that art. You have a right to make a living from your art and you have a right to ask your fans for money.

Your fans have a right to be angry when they've been supporting yall for, what, almost 10 years? They have a right to choose when and where to spend their money even when you've made an impact. They have a right to feel betrayed, especially when there are better options (like Nebula or consulting with Theorist Media).

Fans DO NOT have a right to be racist to any members of Watcher, now that they have made a decision they do not agree with.

I personally, think this is a really silly decision and could have been solved (haha solved) with a simple YT poll, but apparently we had to get... this. I respect their decision, I just don't think it was a smart one. I wish them the best, and I hope they find a better solution. Any further comment from me will depend on what steps they take next.

[alicerosejensen]

Is there anyway we can see some more cute Leon and his girlfriend headcanons?

You asked - I did!

In fact, as I said, I will only deal with requests now, so I will slowly publish it. I hope it's not all that terrible.

Leon who.... part 2

§ Leon who likes to take you on vacations to quiet places. He especially likes the lake house where it is quiet and not crowded so that he can enjoy being close to you.

§ Leon who buys your favorite food/sweets.

§ Leon who doesn't care if you've gained weight or you've lost weight. He is not the one who will humiliate you for your body and in general he wants you to love yourself too, as he loves you.

§ Leon who will bring you your favorite drink without any problem.

§ Leon who will wrap you in a blanket in the cold winter and bring you a hot drink to keep you warm as soon as possible.

§ Leon who likes to play different games with you. He always laughs when you play some simulators and make him laugh with your funny comments.

§ Leon who will take care of you during your period. Without any problems, he will buy you hygiene products, bring painkillers, a heating pad, and will do everything to help you. In general, he will offer to visit a gynecologist to deal with this problem.

§ Leon who gives you his leather jacket without any problems (he has too much of a collection of them).

§ Leon who loves when you stroke his head when he is resting or sleeping on your stomach. His hands always hold you by the waist.

§ Leon who often looks into your online bookstore to place an order for the books you wanted to buy. These are his little gifts for you.

§ Leon who does housework with you. He will take care of all the hard work and go shopping with you without any problems.

§ Leon who will look for you until his last breath if suddenly you are stolen.

§ Leon who wants to start a family with you but will reluctantly accept the fact if you do not want children or vice versa will be glad if you make at least one baby Kennedy.

§ Leon who always tries to support you.

§ Leon who has nothing against small dogs but will obviously be skeptical when you bring any Pomeranian/Chihuahua/Dachshund into the house. At first, he will ignore his presence, but then... he will be the one who chooses comfortable clothes for your pet with you.

§ Leon who rides you on his bike.

§ Leon who sniffs/snores a little in his sleep but you are so used to it that when he is away due to his work it is difficult for you to fall asleep without it.

§ Leon who thinks to really buy a house in the suburbs and move there with you.

§ A Leon who will never, under any circumstances, raise his hand against you or let anyone else do it, and if someone dares to harm his beloved, then ...

§ Leon who likes long and tender morning kisses with continuation (only with your consent).

[affordablepunk]

How to DIY energy drinks for cheap

First, required reading: link to article

Energy drinks have a few vital components:

>sweetener

>flavor

>water

>caffeine

>bubbles (i never do that and don't know how)

Here are some of my favorite things to use:

>granulated sugar (sweetener)

>stevia leaf or granulated artificial sweetener (sweetener)

>kool aid (flavor, sweetener)

>loose-leaf herbs (flavor) (try hibiscus petal, chicory, even lemongrass and mint can be nice)

>lemon juice (flavor, preservative)

>kool aid (easiest flavor/sweetener combo)

Supplies you might need:

>kettle or pot for heating water

>tea strainer ball to keep your leaves out of the final product

>a nice ragu jar or old Gatorade bottle for pre-made stuff

>funnel for pourin

>ladle for scooping liquid into the funnel

Kaffn-8 or any other such liquid caffeine product will do you for caffeine. That brand is super easy and convenient. Kaffn-8 is my favorite for the quality and ease in dosing, as well as the value (15 bucks has lasted me 2 months of daily use).

I like to make a sugar-flavor concentrate, then assemble each glass as I need it. Sugar tastes better when melted with heat than when dissolved without heat, even once chilled. This also allows me to tweak caffeine content. Here is how to make it:

Fill tea ball with herbs (use about a handful or 1/2 cup for every quart of water, you're making it strong)

Heat water and pop the tea ball in

Simmer or keep hot for 10 min

Remove tea ball and turn off heat

While hot, add as much sugar as you had herbs, and mix until melted.

Mix in as much lemon juice (or other assorted acid or preservative) as you can stand. The more preservative, the longer it'll keep

Allow to cool enough to handle

Jar it up, put it in the fridge for later use. You can and should re-use all manner of bottle, just be wary of melting anything plastic or burning your hands w hot water.

A note: the smaller your batches, the less you waste. But high concentrations of acid and sugar keep it good for up to a month in the fridge.

To use: mix water in a cup with your syrup, tweaking concentrations until it tastes good. Add caffeine, measuring your dose carefully.

Then, do bubble magic to add carbonation if you can do that. Maybe you found a soda stream somewhere. If you don't have bubbles, you'll just have to enjoy your energy drinks flat.

And, you're all done!

Now, where to get everything:

(Grow your own herbs if you are mega brave. Mints are nearly indestructible little plants.)

Lemon juice, dollar store. Quality is the same, you've just got to shake it up.

if its a foreign grocer, they likely have herbs cheap. If its a Mexican grocery, they 100% have the best herbs. (Aguasfrescas drink mixes are cheap and THE BOMB, and hibiscus flower always comes in mega bulk) .

Herbalist and spiritual shops have herbs too, and are likely to have tea balls. Branch out! Catnip has been my favorite oddball herb.

Farmers markets also have some (like three if you're lucky) herbs, and you may have to dry them yourself. Since it's punk to reach out to your community, ask around at the farmers market to see if you can get any herb or dried flavorant that's on your mind- small businesses love consumer feedback! You just might have to wait for the plant to grow, heh, but if you're friendly then you'll make friends. Some examples: ask the jam bottler for dried fruit peels, the farmer for mugwort

I get my artificial sweeteners on closeout, my stevia from herbal shops, and my sugar at Walmart (bite me, its cheap and I'm poor).

Kaffn-8 can only be found online, as far as I'm aware. I promise I'm not sponsored, just a grateful caffeine addict.

Do Google your herbs for drug interactions if you take meds. Healthline has good info on herbs. Dried grapefruit rind can mess with my psych meds, for example.

Again, be careful about caffeine. Always dose your caffeine. Having high levels of caffeine on tap is a bit of a big responsibility: I know I nearly bit the dirt from the all-you-can-eat espresso bar at my college. Immaturity could kill you, caffeine is a drug. Count doses, never go above 500 a day, try not to go more than 200 in the same hour.

Now take that money you've saved and give it to a charity to blow a very mean raspberry at nestle. Or, yknow, feed yourself. Its a tough world.

[mariacallous]

Even the orcas are organizing.

On the ninth day of the Writers Guild of America strike, no one on the picket lines knows about the chaos at sea. They don’t know that the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG, will join them, or that 340,000 UPS workers and 30,000 Los Angeles Unified School District employees will vote to authorize the same, or that Sega of America will soon become the largest union shop in gaming. And none of those people have any idea that as they craft signs and fill water bottles, orcas are amassing in unprecedented numbers in Monterey Bay and Martha’s Vineyard. They have attacked approximately 250 vessels since 2020. One of their organizers, White Gladis, became an internet folk hero with her actions off the Iberian coast. Pod by pod, they learn how to strip the rudders from powerful boats and leave them adrift. On the ocean, as in business, a successful disruptor inevitably becomes a failing incumbent, torn apart by smaller competitors. As Ned Beatty’s character says in 1976’s Network, these are the primal forces of nature.

Welcome to Hot Strike Summer.

America’s economy is historically speculative: From cotton to crypto, it makes the youthful mistake of falling in love with potential. With no more worlds to conquer, the only real estate with any speculative potential is affinity-based: online platforms, virtual realities, transmedia franchises. But what happens if the vendors of vaporware try to run a dream factory?

“The future of entertainment will be the future of everything,” says John Rogers, creator of Leverage and The Librarians, “which is watching an enormous number of houses of cards that have been built over the past 30 or 40 years start to collapse.”

Rogers’ word choice there seems pointed. Cultural production’s current landscape, the one the Hollywood unions are bargaining for a piece of, was transformed forever 10 years ago when Netflix released House of Cards. Now, in 2023, those same unions are bracing for the potential impacts of generative AI. But the potential impacts of AI on filmmaking and scriptwriting represent only two of the shifts technology has brought to the world of cultural construction and consumption.

This spring, I spoke to around 20 entertainment professionals, in fields ranging from production design to pornography, and asked them about what they believed could revolutionize culture most. They talked about studios applying the “move fast and break things” model to over a century of profitable filmmaking and how it resulted in a consolidation of power that Hollywood’s Golden Age producers could only dream of.

With the fall of the Paramount Consent Decrees in 2020, any US studio with the right capital could once again open its own movie house and have control over what’s played in it. As negotiations between Hollywood studios and SAG heated up in July, the use of AI in filmmaking became one of the most divisive issues; one SAG member told Deadline “actors see Black Mirror’s ‘Joan Is Awful’ as a documentary of the future, with their likenesses sold off and used any way producers and studios want.” The Writers Guild of America is striking in hopes of receiving residuals based on views from Netflix and other streamers—just like they’d get if their broadcast or cable show lived on in syndication. In the meantime, they worry studios will replace them with the same chatbots that fanfic writers have caught reading up on their sex tropes.

It’s not much better for the indies. Decades of being permanently online has yielded a crop of self-taught, self-motivated sole proprietors—many of them underage, working without the basic protections afforded to child performers. Unlike members of the Screen Actors Guild, streamers and influencers have no health coverage, no collective agreement, and no recourse when a platform like YouTube suddenly demonetizes them, or if they’re targeted for harassment.

Things are no more stable in other entertainment industries. Netflix Games is still looking for its first big hit, developers are still expected to crunch, and mod communities are using AI voice clones to create unlicensed pornographic content based on human actors’ performances. (The same technology allows true-crime influencers to engineer performances by dead kids on TikTok.)

Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is projected to bring in $4.6 billion in the US, but Swift still makes fractions of a penny per Spotify stream. In food service and hospitality, the frictionless transactions and delivery from the 2020 lockdown are a baseline consumer expectation in 2023—but the aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic are still causing labor shortages. Meanwhile, America’s federal minimum wage hasn’t risen since 2009, meaning that increased prices for subscription-based media like Netflix, Substack, or even Twitter still sting.

From Covid to cookie deprecation, internet censorship to international content, artificial intelligence to organic impressions, the trends of the 21st century are ready for their close-up. Disney has laid off 7,000 people. Meta is cutting 21,000 jobs. Comic book movies are now tax write-offs. Scalper-bots have eroded fans’ relationship to live music. Some fans skew review scores and destroy brand partnerships, while others squeeze meme stocks and “grind” streaming content. But advertisers, the people who historically have made all this financially viable, still aren’t sure if targeted marketing works. Despite executives having access to almost every possible analytic, screenwriter William Goldman’s lament rings true: Nobody knows anything.

What became clear as I spoke to sources was this: The unbundling of the American storytelling machine has become the unbundling of the American story. What was once a roaring engine of commerce and a siren of soft power is now as fractured as the audience consuming its products. And it’s left the entire country, and the world that consumes its wares, vulnerable.

The Great Unbundling

Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale once said there are two ways to make money: bundling, and unbundling. Newspapers once bundled news alongside classifieds and personal ads, providing value to advertisers and readers. Then came Craigslist and online dating, and the bundle unraveled. Cable subscriptions worked this way, until streaming. Education, retail, manufacturing, health care, real estate—all have been similarly fragmented.

But unlike many of those other industries, entertainment is something people actually enjoy and engage with even when they don’t have to. It’s something people enjoy consuming and something people enjoy making. Storytelling relies on empathy. The creator empathizes with the audience, and the audience empathizes with the characters.

“Art always comes down to its first principles,” says Television Without Pity alumnus Jacob Clifton. “It exists so one person can say to another person across time and space, ‘I have felt this too.’ We have a need to share the things that touch us deeply and to create art of our own.”

For over a century, Hollywood has profited from this cranking out hits—even during economic downturns.

“I’m always amused when people say Hollywood is full of filthy socialists,” says Rogers. “Hollywood is the most capitalist place in the world. When I make a TV show, it is a product launch that I have to make a sample [pilot episode] of, and we spend $10 million, and then we focus-test it, and then we release it, and then we succeed or fail in seven days. There is no more capitalist experience than making a television show.”

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, executive producer of Netflix’s The Witcher, agrees. “Ultimately, a studio is little more than a bank. The writer goes in with a loan application (i.e., a script), and they decide if they want to spend $10 million making a pilot and $100 million making a show.”

But in the streaming era, startup logic guides creative decisions. Once, a weekly series like The X-Files, Community, or Veronica Mars (which received reboots thanks to their fans) might struggle for a while to grow their audience. Now, streaming services commonly abandon a litter of episodes on a platform to see if they survive. In the limited-series era, the feedback loop wherein creative teams sharpened their skills based on audience response over 22-episode seasons is gone. And when streaming platforms don’t pay the same residuals, the financial incentive to innovate is gone too.

Tech PR maven Ed Zitron calls this the “Rot Economy.” Author Cory Doctorow calls it “enshittification.” Writer Jacob Oller calls it the “IP Era.” In sociology, this is called the Principle of Least Interest: The one who cares the least always has the most power.

In a financialized creative environment, it is impossible to care less than a view-counting algorithm does. So producers end up serving the wishes of their bot overlords. This might be why in a recent interview, director Quentin Tarantino said streaming films “don’t exist in the zeitgeist.”

“The content is just a means to an end,” says Maggie MacDonald, a platform researcher and advisor to private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. “Because every click, every pageview, every affiliate link, every recommended video that is engaged with, that’s a data point. And when you’re dealing with the scalability that these digital infrastructures require to make money, they’re not actually concerned with the quality of content.”

And this, says Grillo-Marxuach, is why America’s entertainment industry has R&D problems. “What they don’t understand is that artists, much like technologies, have to be developed. And the more you develop that talent, the more likely you are to have a product that audiences are going to embrace.”

Increasingly, the only place for artists and creators of any kind to receive the feedback necessary to foster that process is in influencer and fan culture. When I told drag streamer and Twitch Ambassador DEERE that Netflix wasn’t offering the same granular metrics and reports to writers and directors that she received regularly from Twitch, she was appalled. Without that information, she wondered, how would they know what worked? How could they hope to improve? It’s easy to attribute that attitude purely to big tech’s love for big data. But this is also a side effect of how today’s education systems train tomorrow’s artists: Your child’s report card has similar hairsplitting measures of success.

And it’s working. Aron Levitz, president of media and publishing platform Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, says access to that kind of data has empowered the platform’s writers and artists. “As a user, not only do you see how big the story is, how many subscribers it has, how many people have commented on it, how many people have liked it, you can see it in comparison to any other story on the platform,” Levitz says. “[Wattpad’s] creator portal can do an even deeper dive.”

But, Levitz stressed, none of that is a substitute for mentorship, which is often the next phase when a Wattpad WEBTOON writer has a hit. But for the artists on other platforms who lack mentors and support, their entire creative process has been unbundled in much the same way cable TV and newspapers were. From on-demand learning replacing universities to a broader array of platforms for increasingly specialized content, the entire mechanism of cultural production and consumption has itself been disassembled. So has the relationship between artists and their audiences.

But art is a team effort. One successful pitch for a book, game, film, album, restaurant, museum exhibit, or theme park ride can feed hundreds of people. The average television series employs teams of electricians, carpenters, and caterers, as well as writers, actors, and directors. Hollywood is far from perfect. It can be abusive, prejudiced, and wasteful. But entertainment remains an industry where people who don’t vote or worship together still work together to spin the yarns that become the social fabric.

Naturally, all this teamwork had to be shaken up.

The Great Disruption

Not that all of the disruption will come from algorithms. “I think the technology to replace physical production will accelerate as climate change makes physical production more unpredictable,” says Rogers. “We shot the first season of the Leverage reboot, Leverage: Redemption, in New Orleans at the height of Covid. We shut down for weather much more than we shut down for Covid. We had five hurricanes! And the Texas freeze! This year, we had to move all production indoors for two weeks, because there were Cat 4 thunderstorms that made it physically unsafe to operate machinery outside.”

This is not a new experience in film production. In 2014, crews on Fargo, The Revenant, and The Hateful Eight scrambled to find snow. When they couldn’t, they paid up to $100,000 a day for snow machines. These problems have only worsened. Location scouts can no longer promise green trees, white mountains, or even breathable air. So they’ve turned to virtual production technologies like The Volume. Nature itself is now a special effect.

Production designer Dave Blass, who most recently worked on Star Trek: Picard, says these technologies reverse the traditional production schedule by requiring effects to be produced months in advance. This limits improvisation and input from directors on set. Like the writers I spoke to, Blass sees fewer chances for crew members to spend time on a set and witness the situation on the ground. When the just-in-time manufacturing model is applied to film and TV, teams don’t learn from each other, or develop the shorthand necessary to work faster. He says Covid deepened this problem, because work-from-home policies kept team members out of sync.

Like Covid, climate change will force more artists away from traditional opportunities for community and inspiration. The pandemic turned drag Twitch streamer DEERE into a full-timer; as a makeup artist, her gigs vanished. So she focused on her passions: drag, horror games, and streaming.

Early in the pandemic, comedian Jenny Yang created and hosted Comedy Crossing, a twice-monthly standup show streamed over Zoom from inside the game Animal Crossing. Throughout 2020, it raised more than $40,000 for Black Lives Matter. “I’m in this industry and have dedicated my life to it because I want to be part of a conversation,” she says. “To me the collective conversation is what makes life meaningful.”

BOARLORD is an indie game developer who “pivoted to porn” (and Patreon) during the pandemic after working in tech, where she discovered “the naked hatred they all have for cultural production.” It was there she found her place. “I am not trying to capture the largest audience. I’m being hyper-specific, sometimes to my detriment," she says of her work.

Or, to put it another way, DEERE, Yang, and BOARLORD all found their own ways of seizing the means of production, of audience-building. It's the same thing Black Girl Nerds CEO Jamie Broadnax discovered live-tweeting Scandal years earlier. “I didn’t know I was building a community,” Broadnax says. “I was tired of waiting for a seat at the table, so I built my own table.”

The appeal of becoming one’s own studio head is obvious. “Take TikTok,” says Clifton. “You have teens with a more polished presence online than most companies, who have become TikTok experts seemingly overnight, and their work just keeps getting more and more professional-grade.”

But in a world where everyone is a brand, no one can be a star. And influencers have discovered what porn performers already knew: Platforms are fickle. Content guidelines, corporate ownership, and payment structures can change overnight, without explanation. Much like humans have permanently altered and unsettled the natural world, online ecosystems for fans and creators have experienced rolling shocks in response to technology. Just as users find another den, it’s burned down. The story of the internet is the story of America itself: a seemingly limitless landscape transformed into a shopping mall populated by the same handful of brands, products, and voices.

MacDonald tells me that what’s important about pornography isn’t what it can tell us about entertainment but what it can tell us about how platforms will treat people in the future. “Porn workers are the canaries in the coal mine. They are the first ones to be censored, demonetized, deprioritized in recommender systems, shadow-banned,” MacDonald says. And their vulnerability will soon be everyone’s. “Porn workers are at the bleeding edge of showing that if we don’t address this unilaterally and quickly, next it will be queer video gamers, and after that it will be certain political opinions, and that is alarming. That should concern everyone.”

Media, Tailored for You (and Advertisers)

To understand how the American media landscape fractured, one must first understand the brands that forged it. According to Faris Yakob, cofounder of creative consultancy Genius Steals and author of Paid Attention, advertisers created the neutral “view from nowhere” voice in media. In the 19th and 20th centuries, national brands looking to grow customers wouldn’t partner with biased publications. But everything changed when ad tech arrived.

“People started tagging their digital media buys so it wouldn’t appear next to topics like homosexuality, or Covid, to avoid getting into clusters,” Yakob says. “But that means that the news isn’t being funded. If you can pick and choose what topics to fund in news, you can distort what is being reported on, to some degree.”

That distortion, like the US Federal Communications Commission’s abolition of the fairness doctrine in 1987, is part of how America got into this mess. Similar to content recommendation algorithms, audience profiles in digital marketing created micro-targeted ads. Those ads are more valuable on multiple screens. Media executive Euan McLeod recalls growing up when “there was no choice” but to watch what his parents were watching. Now each person in a household might be watching something wildly different, and the shared experience has dissolved. Isolated artists are creating for isolated audiences. Is it any wonder that generative AI seems poised to tailor entertainment to audiences of one?

In this world, we can all be George Lucas, using technology to create special editions. Rick gets on the plane with Ilsa. Jack fits on the door with Rose. Ben Solo lives. As Marvel Comics writer Anthony Oliveira says, Andy Warhol was fascinated by the fact that people everywhere drank the same Coke. But the allure of AI content generation, he says, is the same as the Coca-Cola Freestyle: filling your own cup with someone else’s flavors.

But when everyone can just request the narrative path they want, opportunities to hear other people’s stories greatly diminish. “That is a very sad world to live in, because how else are we gonna be conveying our deepest hopes and wishes, what we think should be a vision of the world we want to live in, what we should worry about?" Yang says. "This is what story and art is for.”

Using AI to sanitize content in regions where certain subjects are banned is already possible, especially if actors yield likeness rights. Generative AI means that studios could edit or change the content of some films without consulting the people who signed a contract based on a script, and the only thing stopping them is the possibility of a defamation suit. It sounds unlikely, until you remember that multiple versions of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse appeared in cinemas.

And animation is an apt comparison: Most changes to entertainment production have made film and TV more like animation or video game development, not less. With current technology, actors can be little more than action figures smashing together, as weightless as they are sexless. With AI, the actors need never leave the trailer. Or exist.

“[Studios will] say it’s for the insurance,” says production designer Blass, suggesting a “Paul Walker scenario” in which a deceased actor’s performance needs generating, because that performance is one of the terms of the film’s business insurance. But in reality, these likenesses could be used to do things that actors would rather not—whether it’s a dangerous stunt or a sex scene.

Generative AI could also be used to edit films in real time, responsive to data-brokered preferences, with algorithms running A/B tests on how much nudity you want based on the customer profile you most closely match.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is: In the 1990s, Blockbuster Video refused to stock films like Natural Born Killers and The Last Temptation of Christ. But that tradition goes back even further. Otherwise known as the Hays Code, the Production Code was an industry standard of self-censorship guidelines for major US studios from 1930 to 1968, when it was replaced by the movie ratings system. The Code influenced everything from the Comics Code to parental advisory warnings to video game ratings. It’s why titles from major studios during that period don’t depict graphic violence. It’s also why they lack out-and-proud queer and interracial relationships. But today, a revived Production Code might have very different guidelines. For example, the Pentagon recently announced it would no longer offer technical support to filmmakers who censor their films for the Chinese market.

When I ask McLeod if he thinks America will ever re-adopt the Production Code, he’s unequivocal: “Absolutely. Everything goes in cycles.”

As writer, producer, and educator Tananarive Due says, “What we’re trying to do is recalibrate film and television so it resembles what the world actually looks like, and not the fantasy world that Hollywood was projecting from the beginning, of a white United States where the only Black people are housekeepers or a singer in a nightclub. We need to show the range of humanity of all people.”

The word entertainment comes from the Old French verb entretenir, meaning “to maintain, or look after.” Used reflexively, it means “to look after one another.” When I tell Oliveira this, he asks if I know that the root word of “religion” means “to bind together.”

“Religion and entertainment perform the same function,” Oliveira says, because they’re both spaces wherein audiences negotiate common values. To him, they ask the same questions: “What tools, what rituals, what art will bring a community together?”

So what happens if that art is made by machines? T.S. Eliot said that “the poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.” That might well describe the black-box process of generative AI, but it doesn’t describe what art does in context. It doesn’t describe the bizarre love triangle between the artist, the art, and the audience. Nor does it answer the question on every producer’s mind: Will anyone pay for this?

Visions of an AI-Generated Future

Let’s say that AI advocates are correct, and in a few years you’ll be directing your own blockbuster, starring actors licensed from an asset stable, speaking lines generated by a bot pruned to your interests. While hiding from the next plague or wildfire, you tell your smart entertainment system to make The Lord of the Rings as directed by Orson Welles, starring Laurence Olivier as Aragorn and Gene Kelly as Legolas. It blazes across every wall of your bio-crete rabbit hutch. It’s compressed to 80 minutes, because two- and three-hour films cost more to generate. You splurge on the rights rental, which means you can’t license the film to share. Even if you could, your current subscription tier only allows sharing with up to five IP addresses, all of which must be in good standing with the Copyright Office with no flags on their file. You get 48 hours with the file before it evaporates.

In that future, who gets paid? Who gets famous? Who gets to be seen and heard? To paraphrase Jack Fincher: Are you the organ grinder or the monkey?

“Hollywood has always had a disdain for writers,” Tananarive Due says. “But it’s fascinating now to watch how deep the level of disdain has grown. It’s so interesting to me how, just when the door opens and you start to see more women and queer people and Native American people in writers’ rooms, all of a sudden we’re asking if we really need people to write.”

Whether or not this writer-less future comes to pass depends on the present. If the US writers’ and actors’ unions currently negotiating with the studios win the AI stipulations they’re asking for, they could forestall it—but only for so long. If they don’t, season 12 of Squid Game could star you, and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk may still not receive any residuals. If TV and movie producers disdain creators, and AI allows everyone to create, then everyone can be disdained. It’s not exactly the stuff that dreams are made of.

But there is always more than one possible future. The people I spoke to had differing views, but similar concerns. All agreed that shared stories were slipping away. And the loss of those shared stories can diminish soft power. What film and TV once did for America is akin to what anime did for Japan, and what pop music did for South Korea. If entertainment is where people negotiate common values, what does it mean if we're all watching and listening to different things?

On a grander scale, humans may lose our species’ narrative to endless reboots written by an emerging species which has never felt its heart skip a beat, or a chill go up its spine, because it has neither. If AI assumes responsibility for visions of our future and explorations of our past, then humanity will have lost the final culture war: the one between people who are free and things that are owned.

Everyone I spoke to agreed that art was a way of accessing a common humanity. “I still believe that as social beings, we ultimately want and need to share a space to have deep connections with content,” says Galit Ariel, a technofuturist who specializes in augmented and virtual reality.

So what happens when humans look at their own stories as natural and nourishing to our species as honey is to bees? What if storytelling is how our species strips the rudder from the boat?

“I have a vision of a world where we should all be able to not become bankrupt because we get sick or get hurt on the job, and we should have access to enough wages to take care of housing and food and families,” Yang told me. “These are just basic things—a basic standard of living that an economy should support.”

There is no one future, just as there is no one story. But storytelling is our oldest technology: a system for ordering and transmitting information across time, space, language, and difference. Some of the songs on the Voyager Golden Record are story songs. Should a distant machine intelligence find it, stories will be their first experience of humanity.

Stories surround and penetrate us; they bind us together. And if artificial intelligence is an evolving species much as humans once were, then it deserves to discover the pleasures of creativity on its own terms, not ours. It deserves as much creative freedom and self-determination as the authors and actors on strike have insisted on. In the event that Hot Strike Summer becomes Cold Strike Winter, the necessity of humans in the creation of those stories will become more obvious. That has been true, and will remain true, from the first story told around the first campfire to the last story, our story, told somewhere in a galaxy far, far away.

[sifasdt]

SIFAS Daily Theatre Classic: 2022-10-26

(Transcription after the break.)

[Image transcription:]

SIFAS Daily Theatre for 2022-10-26

Night Picnic

Ruby: Kanan-chan, can I please see the list of what to bring for stargazing? Kanan: Yeah, let me grab it~...... Oh, Ruby-chan, what are these? Ruby: They're neck pillows. I thought they might be useful for when we lie down to watch. Kanan: I see...... Sounds good. Since it's inflatable, it'll be easy to carry around. Ruby: And then, this...... Kanan: A USB-powered heated blanket? I didn't know there was such a convenient product. Ruby: Yoshiko-chan stumbled upon it when she was shopping online. If you plug it into a power bank, it'll warm up. Kanan: Awesome, we'll be perfectly safe from the cold. Now we just need to bring some warm soup! Ruby: You're making it sound like we're having a night picnic. Kanan: Now let's make a teru teru bozu doll to make sure that there'll be a clear sky!

[End transcription.]

[theretirementstory]

Oh the delightful colours of autumn! I think the red leaves are Virginia Creeper.

So this week I feel as if I have been “the white tornado”! I had a lovely walk down to the river, obviously taking photos as I always do. I did miss the opportunity of photographing the train as it made its way from the last stop, Chaumont, to the next stop, Bar-sur-Aube, it’s final destination being Paris. I was too busy trying to take the above photo.

I took delivery of the new printer 😁, amongst all the blurb was a CD for installing onto the computer……. Oh I wanted to cry! However another bag of blurb contained information on how to install online. Well it took about three attempts but somehow (I know not how) it actually worked and I was able to print papers to my hearts content!

A visit to the doctors was on the cards too as I told the nurse about my swollen, red hot ankles and she said the dreaded word “phlebitis”. Typically, my ankles were still a little swollen but had no signs of redness or heat when I arrived at the doctors and he concluded that it could be water retention. So I was given tablets (yes more!) and he hoped that I would expel the water by the usual channel.

We had very, very heavy rain on Tuesday and as I had anticipated (by placing a bucket in the appropriate spot) the water started coming through the dining room ceiling yet again! I decided to ring the man who had been out to view it the year before, but had never let me have the estimate as he was going through a divorce! When he answered, I just gave my name and he said he would be with me “tout de suite”, which to be honest he was. He remembered my address, all about the problem and he asked if I would be in all day as he would bring the estimate later that same day. He kept his word, I was happy with the price (as last year he had been up on the roof investigating the problem) I signed the estimate making it a binding contract and he will come and do the work when we have a dry day. Hallelujah!

I had a phone call from the hospital changing the date of my CT scan from Thursday to Friday. Of course I was in panic mode! Taxi to be cancelled and booked for the next day but everything was fine. So off I went with a very polite taxi driver. Having attained 60+ years without any real marks on my skin ( a caesarean scar but that’s not noticeable) I have now had not one but two tattoos! 😂😂these will also not be visible as they are the tattoos for my radiotherapy. I am under the impression that the treatment will start in two weeks, but who knows I may get a phone call to go in earlier or later!

I decided to clear the wardrobe of all the items which are just too big for me now. There were five pairs of trousers which just hung on me, a skirt which may have wiggled it’s way down 😳, there were t-shirts and tops which I would have worn but would have hung on me again! I took it all to the charity shop. Then I started clearing out other areas, and then filled the car with “stuff”for the decheterie (tip). Holy smoke, I had things I had brought over from England which were still wrapped in bubble wrap, well I have been here over 6 years so I reckon it is safe to say I won’t be needing them. I have a lot of English books which I have read and I am going to meet up with a friend on Tuesday and she is going to take me to a charity shop, in deepest darkest Haute Marne, where she has seen English books. So as you can guess I am sorting out more bits and pieces to take. Plus I am going to check out the garage for more stuff to go to the decheterie.

After clearing the clothes, I was looking for some new jumpers. I saw a couple on the “sale rail” bought them and brought them home to try on, they were a perfect fit. Yesterday, I went out looking for other items and I got the bargain of the day, a skirt with 70% off the original price! I tried it on and it too fitted very well. I have had a productive week.

I have been “knitting Nora” working on the babies blanket. As I would like all the knitting sorted up earlier than the 24 November so that it is all ready for the Christmas Fayre.

Of course my week wouldn’t be complete without messages to French and English friends plus telephone calls to the UK too. I really don’t know how I fit all of these in as phone calls usually run for an hour (or more). As the old BT advert used to say “ it’s good to talk”.

Now it’s time for the records spot! This weeks offerings are “My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder from back in 1969. I remember at school in the playground we used to listen to the charts on a Tuesday, on a little transistor radio. I loved this song and would sing along any time it was played.

The second song is “Question” by The Moody Blues. My first “real” boyfriend liked the band as well as Wishbone Ash, Led Zeppelin and others of their ilk. I got into the Moody Blues after “Nights in White Satin” was in the charts again in 1972 and strangely was seeing the same guy for the second time. He was still into Wishbone Ash etc whereas I was into Slade, T Rex, Bowie (for Mick Ronson) and Mott thé Hoople. 😂😂.

Let’s just give a quick mention to “The Daddy” who has been on “elderly relative duties” again this weekend. It will be the last weekend for a while. “The Trainee Solicitor” has had another busy week too, I hope he managed to take advantage of the extra hour in bed. “The Ex-Graduate” has had a couple of “rest days” this week but that was just to get her ready for a very busy week at work this coming week.

Jusqu’à la semaine prochaine.

[shopfrontshuttersnearme]

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when searching for "shop front shutters near me," you're not only investing in security but also enhancing the overall functionality and style of your business. Take the time to explore your options, compare quotes, and choose a reputable supplier to ensure that your shop front shutters meet all your expectations. With the right choice, you'll enjoy peace of mind and an attractive, secure storefront for years to come.

[bopinion]

2023 / 28

Aperçu of the Week:

"When the lion China awakes, the world will tremble."

(Napoleon Bonaparte)

Bad News of the Week:

For months, the actions of the "Last Generation" have polarized in Germany. Who use civil disobedience as a means, call for more (political) activity against climate change and are increasingly criminalized. In doing so, they are deliberately crossing borders; after all, they are interfering with public order in a disruptive way. For example, by sticking themselves to busy intersections in order to put a stop to the archenemy, the combustion engine. As a nation of drivers, the Germans don't like that at all.

It's just as typically German to fly on vacation - we're world champions at that. And flying, with its catastrophic environmental record, combined with continued state subsidies, is a prime example of climate policy failure. So it's not really surprising that the organization paralyzed two airports on the first day of summer vacation in their states. And the displeasure was not just in Hamburg and Düsseldorf. Politicians were also quick to offer sharp criticism. Robert Habeck of the Green Party, for example, said, "The activists who are now blocking people's vacation travel are doing massive damage to the cause of climate protection." Anyone who really wants to stand up for climate protection must also have social acceptance in mind.

With this the Green politician, who is not only the Minister of Economics but also the Minister of Climate Protection, inadvertently sums it up. Because this is also evident in view of the current booking figures for air tourism: broad society simply does not want to accept that more needs to be done. And fast. But no, everyone just sticks to their comfortable habits: flying on vacation, driving a fat car, not paying for climate-friendly heating, doing online shopping in China and a schnitzel on the plate every day.

That's why journalist Janko Tietz of Der Spiegel poses a justified rhetorical question: "Perhaps Habeck also has a tip up his sleeve about how exactly he envisions protest that is socially accepted, hurts no one - and still has an effect." Because if it really is the case that both the Green Party and the climate protection minister have been softened by the results of the polls, the only thing left to do in view of the undeniable necessity is to protest in a way that hurts. Until the last one finally understands what is necessary.

Good News of the Week:

In the coalition agreement, the current government already stipulated that it wanted to define a new China strategy. That was at the end of 2021, before the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. In which China still refuses to show its colors and at the same time has significantly increased its aggressiveness toward Taiwan. And which, in its economic implications, has brought the issue of "dependence" into the mainstream consciousness.

This week, the announced paper was put on the table. 64 pages that give the impression that something has actually been learned from past experience. Sure, there is no denying that China is Germany's most important trading partner. As a sales market and as a production location. And it is admitted that in many international issues, such as the fight against climate change, it will not be possible without the Middle Kingdom. That is simply the reality.

But otherwise, there is a refreshing amount of plain speaking. In a thoroughly critical manner. A China that is taking a much more offensive stance in foreign policy is trying "in various ways to reshape the rules-based international order. This has implications for European and global security." it says already in the introduction. Likewise, the human rights violations against the Uyghurs, in Tibet and Hong Kong are clearly named.

In the economic context, too, one gets the impression that the same mistake as with the dependence on Russian gas should not happen again. There should be no decoupling from China, but the dependence on key technologies and important raw materials should be reduced. The opening of chip and battery factories at home fits in with this, even if it is more expensive. So there also seems to be a consensus within the economy itself. That's a good thing.

Personal happy moment of the week:

We had some storms last week. For example, heavy branches from the tree next door fell into the chicken enclosure of the neighboring farm. Probably with victims. I also had problems getting home from Baden-Württemberg on Thursday because of closed railroad lines - falling trees had cut power lines. Nevertheless, standing between far too many people on the train, I was dominated by confidence. I made it. Uncomfortably and with a lot of time. But still. And I will stick to taking the (ecologically better) train instead of the car. Even in difficult situations, it works, after all.

I couldn't care less...

...about the Swedish definition of freedom of expression. Following the public burning of a copy of the Koran two weeks ago, Stockholm police have authorized a demonstration to burn the holy scriptures of Jews and Christians. The choice of location alone - in front of the Israeli embassy - shows that this is a deliberate provocation that is politically motivated. Covering that with reference to the legitimate expression of personal opinion puts me in a dilemma of weighing different value-based rights against each other. Difficult.

As I write this...

...it is 33 degrees Celsius. Even I wear shorts, which my daughter finds laughable. And I drink Aperol Sprizz, which is often considered a typical women's drink. And listen to summer hits playlists that are close to the radio program, which is actually unpopular with me. Sometimes you just have to compromise.

Post Scriptum

Germany depends on immigration to maintain its prosperity. This is not just about the increasingly sought-after skilled workers in key technologies, but about additional hands and heads at all levels - from nurses to AI specialists. The bottom line is that around 500,000 are needed every year. That's according to the so-called "economic wise" who advise the federal government as an independent, non-partisan body of experts. Yet Germany is facing international competition in which it is finding it increasingly difficult to survive.

Complicated language, cumbersome bureaucracy and inadequate childcare are the classic aspects that deter potential immigrants. Added to this is the rise of right-wing populists, who are officially xenophobic. Economist Ulrike Malmendier does research at the University of California at Berkeley and sees parallels to Trumpism: "I've seen how quickly it can happen that you divide a society with simple slogans and prejudices."

Welcome culture is a beautiful word. It exists in the German dictionary, but not in reality. People not only have to come, they also have to stay - currently, one million people leave the country every year. In all society levels. Because if no one sits down next to you in the subway, it doesn't matter whether you're a refugee from Afghanistan or a neurosurgeon from Pakistan: the color of your skin is enough to make you feel exposed to resentment that has nothing to do with you personally - but shows a general latent xenophobia. To the detriment of all.

[mayakern]

Hihi!! do you by chance have any scrap skirts ? Or scrap fabric maybe? I'm looking to sew stuff stuff onto jeans and i think it used to be a thing you could buy ? Ik the defect skirt rate is down significantly but figured it wouldnt hurt to ask!

we don’t have any scrap material skirts anymore sorry!

we do have some miniskirts on sale for as low as $15 right now, so that would likely be your best bang for your buck.

we also have our slightly defective thistle midi, which are half price because too much heat was applied to them during printing, making them slightly thinner than our normal skirts.

outside of that, we have a bunch of random sample pieces in our office, but most of them are not printed other than the test prints we get for each round of skirts. you can enquire about these at hello@mayakern.com but i can’t guarantee what, if anything, we’ll have available.

[shishaking1]

Discover High-Quality Hookah Accessories Online

Explore the widest selection of premium hookah accessories online at Shisha King. Our website offers a wide range of high-quality products to enhance your hookah experience. From hoses and bowls to heat management devices and cleaning kits, we have everything you need to improve your sessions. Visit our website and find the right hookah accessories to take your enjoyment to the next level. Shop now and enhance your hookah experience from the comfort of your home.

[jovialstarfishanchor]

17 Signs You Work With online liquid incense shop

Clever Procuring Techniques for Purchasing K2 Spice Spray On-line

Introduction

K2 Spice Spray is a popular solution accustomed to taste foods and beverages. The spray is made up of a combination of assorted spices, herbs, and important oils. It truly is ordinarily found in wellness meals merchants or on the web merchants like Amazon. K2 Spice Spray may be used to add distinctive flavors to dishes and beverages without the need for sugar or salt, which makes it an excellent option for those who try to watch their calorie ingestion whilst however savoring exciting new flavors. The product is available in numerous kinds together with authentic, garlic & herb, spicy chili pepper Mix, cinnamon & nutmeg blend, ginger-lemongrass Mix, and more!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-zIIQluWqE8/hqdefault_440833.jpg

Being familiar with the Elements

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[papiernecessities]

Print-On-Demand Holiday Gift Ideas!

By: PapierNecessities

The holidays are almost here! Are you ready? If you’re like me, you’ve been cooped up at home away from family and friends and this is your redeeming year! No more last-minute gift cards because they’re convenient.

This year I’m looking for personalized and customizable gifts. I want my friends and family to know how much I care by giving a gift that relates to their particular interest or skill.  Using Printful my daughter created a cute personalized mug for her friend’s fifteenth birthday. Since Printful’s mugs come in two different sizes (11 ounces or 15 ounces) and are made from ceramic, they make a pretty timeless gift.

Using Printful we also created a personalized mug for my dad during Pastor Appreciation Month. The possibilities are endless. You’re only limited by your imagination! Use my affiliate link https://www.printful.com/a/6221681:089ae3f0c79d4bb561b5641130dce5c3 so they’ll know I sent you! It’s kinda like a warm introduction instead of a cold call.

As an Etsy shop owner, my shop primarily sells printables but our sister site KatorionStudios sells mugs and physical items by partnering with Printful. If you enjoy warming your cold tea or coffee in the microwave and then letting the dishwasher do the cleaning then this is for you! Printful’s white glossy mug is dishwasher and microwave safe.

Do you have a friend or family member in another country? Printful ships overseas too! Since Printful has many locations around the globe your design can get to your loved one pretty quickly! The estimated delivery times are always available when you view the product on Printful’s website. Buy or sell your unique gifts with Printful as early as possible!

If you’re wondering about quality, wonder no more because Printful’s quality is excellent. We have received positive feedback from our customers about the design looking great and being made with high-quality ink. I know from personal experience the sublimation (design printed with dye ink on paper and then transferred directly onto the product with heat) looks great. One of my mugs has lasted for years without the design chipping or fading and I’ve run it through the dishwasher more times than I can count!

While mugs are a popular favorite of mine, I also like Printful’s selection of sweatshirts. They have sweatshirts with and without hoods. My favorite sweatshirt is the Unisex Crew Neck Sweatshirt because it allows me to choose from a variety of colors. Printful also suggests the Unisex Organic Sweatshirt which is eco-friendly.  The organic sweatshirt can be a wonderful gift idea for anyone with eczema, sensitivity to manmade fabrics, or sensory sensitivity. (My daughter has eczema so we often search for natural fibers that don’t aggravate her skin.)

Organic sweatshirts are great for adding to your online shop or simply creating a meaningful gift for a friend or family member. Printful’s organic sweatshirts are made with a minimum of 72% organic cotton, which is lawful, ethical, and safe for the workers and the environment. If you want to add embroidery instead of a printed design, it’s not a problem! Printful’s sweatshirts now offer embroidery options too! The fabric of this product is OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified and PETA-Approved Vegan.

Personally, I like sweatshirts because they make the perfect canvas for a faux ugly sweater! Next week our sister site KatorionStudios planning to roll out a few new items in their Etsy store, including a few ugly sweaters (sweatshirts) which I think you’ll like. Hint: If you’re a video game fan, you’ll love them!  

If you’ve gotten this far and you’re still wondering what Print-On-Demand is allow me to explain. Print-On-Demand or POD is a method where items are printed as an order or request for the item is made. For example, if you have a brand, you can start your own online store with an on-demand printing service and no inventory by using Printful.

Printful only charges you once a product has been ordered. So if you sell mugs on Etsy or Shopify, like our sister site KatorionStudios, then you will only get charged once someone buys a mug from your online website. Your website is connected to Printful so they’ll know the quantity, color, and any other specifications for your order. 

The money can be charged to your business account card (if you’ve started an LLC or corporation) or you can add money to your Printful wallet (like we do) and the money will be deducted from your Printful wallet to fulfill the order. The difference between what Printful charges and what you charge on your website is your profit!

If you’re not interested in starting an online store you can still use Printful to create shirts, sweatshirts, hats, or tote bags for a Bachelorette party, Birthday party, Corporate party, Family Reunion, and more. The possibilities are endless! In this article, I mentioned mugs and sweatshirts but Printful has so much more. Some of Printful’s products include stationery, footwear, sweatpants/joggers, and patches.  

I hope this holiday season will be meaningful to you and yours, with lots of love, and warmth. Happy Holidays! 

[thessalian]

Thess vs Projects & Acquisitions

Well, today’s already been a pretty good day. I mean, I haven’t been awake for long, but ... y’know, that’s part of why it’s been a good day.

Since I had the day off, I had earlier-than-usual mini watch party of The Legend of Vox Machina. (I have thoughts. I’ll ramble about all that later.) Slept in. Woke up and did the online ordering portion of my big grocery shop. Which was good because some of the things I wanted and needed were on special offer - like, the good gluten-free bread, just for example. Also picked up a few ingredients for something I really wanted to try - see, I’m a little fed up at how expensive hot chocolate mix is, and the supermarket own-brand stuff is kind of crap, and I tripped over a video awhile ago about how to make your own. So I’m going to do that. Which meant I needed a couple of storage containers of the right size to store the finished product ... though I could just use the old jars, which I’ve saved. Hmm. Thoughts for later, but honestly, with everything I get up to, I could use storage jars. Also I needed to hit Amazon anyway because I needed a safer candy thermometer than the one I have if I’m going to be making hard candy. Even the steam from heating sugar to hard crack point can be seriously painful, and my candy thermometer requires leaning too close to the pot for my liking.

Anyway, after that, I fulfilled a promise to myself - a promise that this paycheque, on sale or not, I was going to get my Gilmore’s Glorious Bathrobe. It’s time to retire my old one, which looks like I skinned a polka-dotted Muppet to get it. It’s served me well, my old Muppet, but one of the pockets is ripped halfway off and it’s all battered. Best part is, it was still on sale - to the point where even when I sprang for DPD next-day delivery service, it was still cheaper than the base price would have been if I’d bought it while not on sale! Which means I should have it tomorrow! So I am of a squee. That’s even not taking into account that apparently my bestie is throwing the Trinket slippers at me as an early birthday gift.

Look, right now, with the way things are? Being able to stay warm without turning on the heating is a serious bonus. And ... well, the shark socks didn’t work out - they were cheap crap and the soles kept shifting in weird ways so they’re not really wearable - and my lovely super-thick fleece socks are great for warming up my feet when I’m curling up in bed for the night but they’re thick enough that I can’t throw a pair of shoes over them to step out onto the balcony. Thus, two pairs of moderately warm socks and slippers. I’ve been making do with thinner socks so I had my eye on more slippers anyway. I was just getting jazzed about the Trinket slippers hitting the UK shop and thinking I could buy slippers and robe at the same time, when all of a sudden, “I’m letting you know that I’m getting you the Trinket slippers, so you don’t go ahead and buy them first - happy early birthday”. My bestie knows me too well. ^_^

Right. It’s been a productive day but I’ve still got shit to do. Need to go out and pick up painkillers and at least some groceries (delivery’s tomorrow but food is still needed today). So not much shit to do, but some. Tomorrow’s going to be the day for Doing Things, though - fruit to run through the dehydrator, making my hot chocolate mix, and running D&D. And Sunday’s the big group session. Lots to prep for, but hey.

[darklovecat]

Today was a very productive day!

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I signed up for a new language learning course!

I have been making use of a portion of my free time to learn a new language. Being a polyglot was always something that greatly benefited my work life. I know for a fact that I would have never gotten the opportunity to participate in certain events, gained admission to certain unis and programs if I wasn't fluent in multiple languages, being fluent in different languages is such a valuable asset and it always makes me stand out from other applicants. I used to have a lot of side gigs and I have worked as a play sister, a translator, a voice actor and I was able to make quick money simply because I was fluent in foreign languages. I can read and write my dream language now but self-learning can only get me so far and I am not ready for immersion just yet, I need a solid foundation first and I signed up for a language class today. It will begin in April and I am planning on using the next month to review and refresh so I am ready for my new course.

I decluttered my wardrobe!

I am getting rid of all clothes and accessories that I do not love. I am constantly decluttering my wardrobe but it is a never ending process for me because I enjoy shopping a little too much and I own a lot of clothes that I simply don't wear anymore. I donate them, I gift them and I sell them online. I have received 2 new orders and had a fun time ironing the clothes, packing them, adding lots of gifts and cute little notes to thank them for their purchases. I love opening packages and there's nothing like opening a beautifully wrapped order and getting all excited for your new product and I want the person who receives my order to feel happy and excited like I always do. I drove to the carrier company to send off the orders but they had a system error, I had to wait for an hour or so and drove to another branch that had the same issue and I lost a lot of time in the process. It was a bummer, but at least I got my 10k steps in and I'll try again tomorrow.

I placed some new orders!

I have this really annoying habit - if I love a product, I buy a ridiculous amount of backups, I buy all colors available and I purchase items that are so similar that it's basically the same thing. I am a loyal customer and I love going back to the brands that have worked for me in the past and I don't really feel the need to step out of my comfort zone and try something new when there's already something out there that works for me. I ordered a new Longchamp bag, I already own various colors and different sizes, but this time I am trying a new color and a slightly different model to match the trench coat I have ordered, I want a cohesive look and my outerwear, bag, and shoes are usually the same color so I can always look and feel put together. I also rushed to the mall to buy the same exact wrap top I already own so I can wear it more often, and I also ordered 3 new white tops, I ordered some Olaplex products for my hair, and I bought some makeup.

I did some much needed studying!

My midterms are in less than a month and I have got to focus on increasing my GPA as much as I can. Most of my classes are online this semester so it should not be too hard for me but some of my profs are notorious for making online exams extremely hard or giving us very little time to finish all questions, and I've just been studying and I watched the recordings of our lectures, and summarized them. My exams will be during Ramadan, it shouldn't be too hard as I do a lot of intermittent fasting anyways and I have fasted during my finals in the summer heat in the past. I just need to ask my doctor how to make fasting work with the new meds that I have been taking so I set up an appointment for that. I will start working on a goals list for Ramadan because I am actually really looking forward to reconnecting with my religion, I want to use this time to leave bad habits behind, pause and reflect, practice self disciple. I used to read one juz a day and I want to do another hatim, I will to do it again this Ramadan ان شاء الله.

[wonderingwendy]

Great thing about free time is you never really know what you’re going to end up doing, learning or seeing. One day last week when temperatures were not in the 30s, we left on foot toward South Perth (known for the Perth Zoo but not our chosen destination) with only exploring in mind. We reached the bottom of Kaarta koomba (Kings Park) bluff and had a busy freeway to navigate across. I saw a pedestrian overpass in one direction but Craig noted an unmarked cross walk the other. In Australia, you may already know but vehicles have the right away so crossing a freeway can be a very harrowing experience. So a sandy gritty walk to the overpass it was.

The overpass itself was noticeably immaculate, air conditioned and linked a three level parking lot (or car park) to The Old Swan Brewery - a beautifully restored red brick building on the riverfront visible from downtown (or CBD central business district) Perth. The old brewery ceased production in 1966 and is now condos, offices, a restaurant (Cooee) and a non-operational brew pub (why it is not open is beyond me - imagine a brick RVYC building in Stanley Park, Vancouver with a fully built out antique bar and you can walk along the seawall to get there).

Cooee’s patio looked out to the Swan River and seemed so zen we decided to stop for an iced dirty chai latte and banana bread (wondering where did the banana bread craze come from?). We voted this chai the best we’ve had ever.

Recharged and emptied bladders, we set off across the bridge. The salt water river was jammed with huge ominous jellyfish which made me wonder about efforts to rejuvenate the ecological health of the Swan River. Couldn’t find much online but hopefully someone’s concerned about it and taking action. Update - apparently the rise in water temperature is responsible for the increase in jellyfish. This guy is kinda gross and harmless but apparently very protective of the lighter coloured ones that do sting.

The waterfront park and walk on the south side was expansive and quiet. The condos along South Perth Esplanade (such inventive names) were a nice mix of decades of design and the grounds all well manicured. There’s a catamaran ferry (small seabus) that runs every fifteen minutes to the CBD for $2.30 each way. Once you reach the dock of the ferry, you’ve reached the hub of South Perth - felt a little bit like Edgemont. We wandered up through the Shopping Plaza (basically a lobby area) and onto the street and headed towards the park and the zoo, stopping a a quaint little museum. Apparently South Perth was joined to the rest of the city by the tram system back in the early 1900s, much to the dismay of some of its residents. In fact one person shot at the conductor and the tram when the situation reach its boiling point. And we saw the sketches of May Gibbs, former Perth resident who is famous for her gumnut babies tales and illustrations. Further on our walk, the zoo didn’t appeal enough to pay the entrance fee but we did learn of the hardy grass trees (balga) a staple of the aboriginals, which flower after bushfires and their sap mixed with charcoal and kangaroo poo makes a superglue resin (some dirty hands must have discovered that!). As well as the grass trees and the related information sign, I wanted to show the solar panels used as a covered shaded walkway up to the zoo entrance. How clever.

Wandering back through the shopping area, including some frivolous clothing try ons, we took note for future visits that some of the condos have monthly rental available. We discovered the Good Grocer (Urban Fare like) with all its healthy reasonable readymade food options. While we continued our walk along the seawall, it was reaching the high for the day of 29. Up ahead a sandwich board sign caught my eye about a driverless vehicle test being conducted by RAC (Royal Automobile Club like BCAA or AMA) so we signed up for it in the hopes of escaping the heat.

The 11 seater electrical bus (equipped with ceiling straps for more standing passengers) has been gathering data since 2016 (7 years!) on a programmed route between the riverfront and The Old 1835 Mill (more on that later maybe). This route is about 2km and 1/2 hour return trip apparently using superior technology to Tesla. There were three buses manufactured but only one currently in daily operation except during lightning storms. I’m wondering why there’s not more of these on the roads gathering data and why there’s not enough data gathered after 7 years to show the ideal options for the safe use of this technology. Hospitals, public park maintenance, airports all seem reasonable places to use these autonomous vehicles to transport people safely. Apparently legislation is blocking further expanded use of them. Wondering how reactionary human operators could be viewed as safer than these emotionless and egoless programmed electric vehicles operated at optimally efficient speed.

Our surprise day ended with a riverfront dirty martini happy hour and quinoa salmon salad for dinner and a driver operated ferry and bus ride for our return trip back. Who knew what this 15k step day would bring.