#bringing back things from the 2010s and another platform

[televinita]

let’s play a game:

List the last 3-5 books you purchased, checked out of the library or otherwise acquired. What made you pick each of them up?

[londonfoginacup]

A New Larrie’s Guide to Tumblr

A probably incomprehensible, certainly incomplete list of what you need to know; whether you’re coming from a different platform or discovering Larry for the first time. 

My credentials

Hello! I’m Emmu. I’ve had tumblr since… 2008? Maybe 2009. I moved over from deviantArt and used Tumblr as a personal art blog for many years. I joined the One Direction fandom in 2014, so my 1D blog has 8+ years at this point. That being said, I will get on my soapbox a bit during this. Please excuse me, I’m quite passionate about cultivating a happy and healthy fandom.

What makes Tumblr different

The biggest thing that makes Tumblr, as a site, different from Twitter or Instagram is the rejection of algorithms. The “following” tab on your dashboard is in chronological order (and if it isn’t, you can – and should – change that), and the “for you” tab is both a recent feature and rarely used. Tumblr has very little algorithm, and the algorithm they have isn’t very good. It means that you’ll get the most god awful ads you’ve ever seen on this site, because they don’t utilize your data well. And that’s to your advantage.

Tumblr is a great place because you can curate what you see more than other social media. The people that you choose to follow are the only people that you see on your dash (unless you choose to follow tags, which I guess is an option? @lululawrence says “it is and it used to not do anything unless you went to the search page and then it would like autofill your followed tags options, but NOW they take those followed tags and plop them on your dash... SOMETIMES. usually only on mobile. but if there's only one new post in the tag, it shows you that post OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER AGAIN. IT'S SUPER ANNOYING ACTUALLY. SO I STOPPED FOLLOWING TAGS. lol anyway”).

So, the site is in chronological order. This is its biggest selling point.

There is also the opportunity for long posts. Masterposts. Things that are searchable without having to read through pages of screenshots or condensed twitter threads. You can write a whole lot more without worrying about character limit. People publish whole fics on here (I suggest ao3 for that, but tumblr is technically an option!).

Another important thing to know about tumblr is that the archives on tumblr run deep. There are newer larries here, and a lot of them, but you can also find older larries. People whose 1D blogs go back to 2010 or 2011. You can dive into the archives and read firsthand accounts of what was happening with One Direction or larry at that very time. Doing a bit of research means you find cute fetus pictures of the boys, but also you’re able to figure out for yourself whether something actually happened. Rumors always seem to spread quite easily and fandom memory always seems impossibly short, but here on tumblr you’re able to find out for yourself. That means the next time you hear about how xyz thing happened a long time ago, check out some of those archives and see what you can find.

Also, my personal favorite part of tumblr is that old posts are just as valid as new posts. Find a masterpost about RBB and SBB from 2015? Go ahead and reblog that; bring it back to the circulating dash. People will love that. Find a fanartist that you really like? Search through their tags, reblog anything you want. It’s not considered stalking or weird in any way. We love bringing back old posts here. Tumblr is a website where you’re not meant to just talk about the present. 

The cultural difference between Tumblr and Twitter

Speaking of the ways that tumblr and twitter are different, let’s talk for a moment about the 1D fandom in particular.

I’ve held this theory for a while that the twitter (and instagram) algorithm is fracturing the fandom. Because twitter is so dependent on the algorithm, people are more likely to split apart and join smaller and smaller communities based on smaller, more specific opinions. Tumblr, being a place where you don’t just get a post on your dash because someone else liked it, doesn’t have those smaller cliques. There are larries, and there are antis.

(if you get really in the weeds, there are also larry shippers [who don’t believe they’re together but like to read it in fic], and houis [who think they were together but broke up], but I just don’t hear about them as much).

While I do occasionally hear about blouies on my dash, for the most part this is a culture that exists primarily on other sites. 

On another note, because tumblr doesn’t have that handy algorithm, we have to work to make it a more active space. Likes don’t do anything here for anyone other than you, and it doesn’t really change anything about what you’ll see on your dash. Think of them more like the bookmark setting on twitter or instagram. Reblogs are necessary to get anything spread. Anything that you enjoy, or that looks interesting for any reason? Reblog it! That’s the only way other people will see it! And leave a happy comment in the tags if you’ve got one (more on that later). 

And, while lurkers do exist in this fandom (and we love them), it’s important to get an icon and blog header that make you look like a real person. People on tumblr have long been in the habit of blocking shady blogs, mostly because of a bot problem, so if you want to lurk, you have to look like a lurker. Maybe reblog a post or two to establish yourself, and make sure you don’t accidentally look like an icon-less bot posing as a sugar daddy. 

How to set up your account

Okay, so you’ve got a tumblr. Let’s take a minute to fix up the settings so that you’re not getting, well, the worst version of the site. 

My advice is to start by going into your dashboard preferences and:

Turn off the best stuff first (it’ll just show you things you’ve already seen)

Turn off “include stuff in your orbit” (you’ll see terrible posts that are mostly NOT in your orbit)

Turn off “Included based on your likes” (again, you’ll see posts you hate)

Turn off “shorten long posts”. It’s a ridiculous setting that, like many things on tumblr, had potential but was rolled out in an incredibly unhelpful and user unfriendly way.

Once you’ve got that squared away, go into filtering and block any tags and content you don’t like, as that is always proper fandom etiquette. Not seeing things you don’t like is your responsibility, not the responsibility of the person posting them. I personally suggest adding the topics you don’t want to see to both the content list and the filtered tags list, as that gives a much better likelihood of posts that are particularly unsavory for you getting caught by the filters. Please also note this might need to be done on both desktop and the app separately as, depending on where tumblr is at the moment, these filters do not always carry over from one application to the other.

Now scroll down to tumblr labs. These are their experimental things. Some are good! Some are very bad. They do change, though, so this might get out of date pretty fast.

Personally, I enabled fast queue

And disabled everything else

ALSO, an important note, if you are using the apple app, you need to go in and turn off the adult content filter. No idea offhand where that is, but it means posts that include tags like “mine” and “girl” are blocked. It’s ridiculous. 

Who to follow and how to find them

So, you’ve got a new tumblr and need people to follow. This makes sense! To really fill up your dash, I’d suggest the following

Find one person you like. There’s a good chance you know at least someone from twitter who also has a tumblr, so you can start there. If you’re not from twitter, or are looking to start fresh, you can dive into the search function (I’ve never tried finding someone this way myself, but searching larry stylinson or something similar would probably get you started)

Find the people they reblog from and check out each of their blogs! Follow people that make you happy

Follow some update accounts! Thinking of some off the top of my head, there’s @HLUpdate, @Stylesnews, @dailytomlinson, @HLDailyUpdate, or @neilswaterbottles (there’s definitely more though). 

Follow some fanart or fic rec accounts! 

I’d always suggest @1d-fanart or @hlcreators for art. 

For fic, you could check out @hlficlibrary, @ficsyoumayhavemissed, or @thelarriefics. 

Or, recurring fic fests! @onedirectionbigbang or @wordplayfics, which happen every year.

And if you end up not enjoying someone you’ve followed? Unfollow them! It’ll make you happier.

How to interact with posts

Tumblr is all about tags. Do you have a comment or thought? Reblog a post and say your thought in the tags. That way anyone you follow will see it, and the person who made the post will see it. This way a post doesn’t end up with a lot of cluttery additions that don’t mean a lot to the average person reblogging it, but if you browse the tags of posts you’ll find lots of interesting things. Tags can be used to keep track of things, too, of course — some people tag all pictures with who’s in them, or tag art or fic with tags that mean they can find them again. Tags are versatile! But reblog, don’t just like, and tag! The more you interact, the happier content creators are!

What not to do

Don’t repost. If you see something you like on tumblr, reblog it. Even if it’s a really old piece of fanart (like circa 2011). Reblog that old post! Reposting means people don’t get credit, and it doesn’t link back to them. That’s not cool, and in the long term makes fandom less happy.

How to cultivate a happy and healthy fandom

Send happy anons! Ask how people are doing, do question memes, say how much you loved fic/art/edits, etc.

Reblog art. Reblog fic. Reblog what makes you laugh. The more you reblog, the more other people see, the more the fandom moves! Content creators just want their things seen; every time you reblog, their phone gets that little notification and you’ve given someone a bit of happiness.

Unfollow people who annoy you. Follow people who make you happy!

If someone has a take about 1D that you don’t agree with, don’t tell them or send them argumentative anons. Find people who will agree with you, and complain to them privately. Or make your own post, not shading anyone, just presenting your own opinion and theories!

Remember that everyone is a real person. Cut them some slack when you find them being annoying. But also, unfollow. Curate your dash.

[natlacentral]

Kiawentiio grew up loving ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ and now she’s bringing the cartoon to life: ‘I did my best’

Kiawentiio is starring in a Netflix show. It's a sentence she's still processing.

"Growing up as a little native girl on my reservation, I never thought that this was something I’d even be able to do," she tells TODAY.com. "It was completely out of reach in my mind. So when I got the role, when we were filming and even now, it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that it’s all real."

Kiawentiio, a 17-year-old actor and singer from the Mohawk people, plays Katara, a beloved character from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” in Netflix's live-action remake. The show hit the streaming platform Feb. 22 and quickly soared to No. 1 on Netflix's list of top TV shows in the U.S.

Before this, Kiawentiio appeared in "Beans" and guest-starred in Season Three of "Anne with an E." Now, she's adapting a cult classic cartoon and faces a fandom that's hesitant to trust a remake, still sensitive about the previous attempt, a film released in 2010.

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon, from 2005 to 2008. The show achieved worldwide success and a cult following that only grew once the show was added to Netflix in May 2020. Like the live-action show, it became the most popular show in the U.S. on the streaming platform within days.

In a world full of "benders," people who can manipulate one of four elements — water, earth, fire and air — a group of friends embark on an adventure to save the world from impending war and destruction.

The story begins as Katara and her brother Sokka (played in the new live action by Ian Ousley) find a boy named Aang (Gordon Cormier) frozen in an iceberg. Aang turns out to be the long-hidden "Avatar," a bender with power over all four elements who's been promised to bring stability to the world.

Kiawentiio is a longtime fan of the original series and never thought she'd get to play one of the characters she grew up watching.

"The fact that I do get to play her, I cherish these moments, even the rough ones," she says. "When we were filming, there was a lot that I was trying to deal with at the same time. But even in all those moments, I do my best to stay grateful because of how lucky and blessed I actually am to to be in this situation."

Friendship is a core component to the series, and Kiawentiio says the focus on community in the show translated to set. She says she first met the rest of the cast at a boot camp, and was initially intimidated by some of the others — including Dallas Liu, who plays one of the main antagonists, Zuko. But the cast quickly found a close bond that she says will last long after production wrapped.

"With playing Katara, meeting the other cast members and becoming family with them, that is something that we are locked in for life," she says. "We’ve talked about this before, we’re gonna be at each other’s weddings type thing. I’m so grateful to have that, a second family formed for ever."

The whole cast had the difficult task of portraying existing, beloved characters, in addition to trying to translate a two-dimensional character to the screen.

“To have other people who are going through the exact same thing that you’re going through, it really strengthens our bond as a crew." she says.

There will always be differences watching something live action compared to a cartoon, Kiawentiio notes — but they can actually be for the better.

“So much more emotion comes, I mean, just seeing an actual face compared to a drawing of a face is so different on its own. So I’d like to think that the emotion of Katara and her backstory is more amplified or zoomed in on,” she says.

Another difference stemmed from turning a cartoon world into a physical set — which as a fan of the original show, Kiawentiio calls surreal.

In the original cartoon, the core trio travel across terrains, cities and oceans on the back of Aang’s flying pet bison, Appa. 

“All these new things that kept coming up, it was just crazy to see it unfold in front of me,” she says. “And for that to be my job, that’s just incredible. Especially as a fan of the show, I was really almost in tears once a week, or more than once a week if we’re being honest.”

Critics of live-action remakes often point to both the lack of new aspects to the story they bring, as well as some seemingly unnecessary differences from the original story. 

The series is the second attempt at a live-action remake of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." The first was M. Night Shyamalan's 2010 movie, "The Last Airbender," that released to overwhelmingly negative reviews. The film has a 5% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert, who gave the film a half star out of four, wrote that the film "is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented."

The live-action precedent set up Netflix's new series in a unique spot, where returning fans are simultaneously hoping for a more accurate remake while tentatively extending their trust.

Kiawentiio says balancing the appeal to both old and new fans was a through line during production.

“That was in all of our minds — how to appeal to existing fans from the original show and also bring in new fans that have never seen the show before,” she says. 

It's a weighty task for a young actor.

“For me, in the back of my mind was always ‘I’m just doing my best.’ As a person, you can do only as much as you can," she shares. "But I am open to opinions, and I know there’s going to be a whole variety of different opinions. And I did my best that I could at the time.”

Buzz around the eight-episode first season of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" continues to grow. Kiawentiio is looking to relish in any quiet she can find.

"As of right now, I’m trying to enjoy whatever quiet that I can," she says. "It’s hard for me to plan stuff because I don’t know where I’m going to be then. But I’m just trying to soak up the nice quiet, and I’ll be there when I’ll be there.”

[nebris]

The Personal Brand Is Dead

Gen Z would rather be anonymous online.

When I was 21, the cool thing to be was famous on Instagram. Now the cooler thing to be is a mystery. Anonymity is in.

The youngest adult generation and the most online generation is frustrated with being surveilled and embarrassed by attention-seeking behaviors. This has instigated a retreat into smaller internet spaces and secret-sharing apps, as well as a mini-renaissance for Tumblr, where users rarely use their full names. (The majority of new users are Gen Z, according to Chenda Ngak, a spokesperson for Tumblr’s parent company.) The voice- and text-chat app Discord, known for a culture of anonymous and pseudonymous discussion, now has 150 million users; anonymously run hyper-niche meme accounts are suddenly the coolest, most exciting follows on Instagram. The group-therapy app Chill Pill offers a “world of future friends and better days” but does not permit the sharing of any personally identifying information. (I downloaded the app but can’t make a real account—I’m over the age limit, which is 24.)

Something has shifted online: We’ve arrived at a new era of anonymity, in which it feels natural to be inscrutable and confusing—forget the burden of crafting a coherent, persistent personal brand. There just isn’t any good reason to use your real name anymore. “In the mid 2010s, ambiguity died online—not of natural causes, it was hunted and killed,” the writer and podcast host Biz Sherbert observed recently. Now young people are trying to bring it back. I find this sort of exciting, but also unnerving. What are they going to do with their newfound freedom?

In part, the trend is a response to security concerns. During the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, young people downloaded the encrypted messaging app Signal by the millions to avoid the surveillance they considered possible or probable on other platforms. The anonymous hacker group Anonymous made a buzzy return and was embraced by K-pop fans, many of them anonymous, while engaging in pranks that doubled as acts of civil disobedience. Other activists disseminated tools for blurring protesters’ faces in Instagram Stories, and tried to steer one another off mainstream apps and onto smaller, decentralized ones where users have more control of the data they create and share.

Anonymity can also be ideological. Crypto culture, now known as Web3 culture, was founded on the idea that transactions can be made online without the exchange of personally identifying information. It also has a newer norm of replacing one’s human face with a cartoon. In crypto circles, mentioning a very rich and successful person’s real name can amount to “doxxing,” and even those who aren’t well known are cautious about sharing the barest personal details. At a recent party sponsored by a new Web3 platform, a guest with about 5,000 Twitter followers explained to me that people online do know what he looks like—he “shows face,” as he put it—but that he has never shared a single photo of his girlfriend. Too dangerous.

But in the end, a return to anonymity is just a return to form. Hiding your identity has always been important for getting through the horror of being a person under the age of 24 on the internet. The gradual reveal of personal information, even building up to a “face reveal,” was once a give-and-take among people who shared the same online space for a long time, fostering trust. When Instagram and TikTok arrived and made it possible to make a lot of money from your face, personality, thoughts, beliefs, and personal trauma, young people forgot how good it felt to be no one in particular, or to try on various identities. In the past few years, they have been coming back around.

“It seems like Gen Z is getting really tired of presentation culture, as you might call it,” Zeke, a 21-year-old biologist and frequent Discord chatter, told me. “The idea that everything you do has to be a representation of your personal identity.” Obviously, he did not want me to publish his full name—he’s applying to lab-tech jobs right now, he said, and though nothing he was going to say to me would be scandalous or might put off a potential employer, he did not want to “risk it.”

Zeke does not have any active social-media accounts with his full name attached to them, but he is in many Discord servers pertaining to his interests, including art, writing, and science. He spends a lot of time there sharing interesting or funny photos of animals, and he met his longtime boyfriend while Discord-chatting under a pseudonym that is a play on Kermit the Frog. The site is “chill,” he told me. The servers that he likes best have 100 to 200 users, so the conversation is always lively, but it doesn’t get out of control or competitive. Sometimes people anonymously say disgusting things—the worst things he has ever read! (That well-established tendency has contributed to the collapse of anonymous social platforms in the past.) But mostly they just drop cool pictures and funny memes, and discuss or riff on them. “There’s an understanding that, like, you’re not going to kick each other, you’re not going to judge each other,” he said. “You’re not here to represent your identity; you’re just here to chill.”

The surprising recent popularity of Discord suggests a nostalgia among members of Gen Z for IRC and forum cultures that existed mostly before they were born. The return to Tumblr reflects a longing for the more recent past—just before the age of the influencer. “I’ve been on Tumblr for about 11 years because I was 11 when I got it,” Maya, an aspiring artist and photographer, told me. She asked to go by her first name only, as she does on Instagram. On Tumblr, where she feels most comfortable, she goes by the username coldstonedreamery—a reference to an episode of This American Life that she heard long ago in her mom’s car. She remains anonymous partly for artistic reasons: Being an enigma is good for world building and creating a mystique around her work, she said. She wants to be known for her point of view, not for her face or even her personality. “I mean, there are embarrassing YouTube videos of me playing guitar when I was 12 under my real name,” she added.

Being an enigma can produce strange results: Teenage girls on Instagram sometimes borrow selfies of Maya that don’t have her face in them and present them as their own. Most of the time, though, Maya sees her anonymity as being cozy. “I probably get 20 anonymous messages and questions a day, and I feel fine answering them and exposing all these intimate details of my life,” she said. “The people asking the questions probably don’t know what I look like, probably don’t know where I am or how old I am. I feel safer. There’s like a cloak over me.”

Even on Instagram, classic influencer culture is falling out of style. Among the well-known, generally beautiful faces who go by their real names, there are now thousands of niche meme accounts run by anonymous proprietors. Members of this latter group sometimes reveal their true identities when it becomes financially appealing to do so—if they’re offered a book deal, for example, they have to reveal themselves to someone. If they land a profile in The New York Times’ Style section, then everyone is in on the secret. But many more of them just post away from behind a curtain. (The more niche the content gets, the less likely it is that financial incentives will be in play, and the more likely the anonymity will last.)

The 24-year-old meme-maker behind an Instagram account called @neoliberalheaven makes pop-culture-inflected collages overlaid with parodies of online political discourse. (His profile picture is of the meme-literate musician Phoebe Bridgers.) He asked to remain anonymous for this story because he doesn’t want to limit future job opportunities and because being anonymous is part of his whole deal. The people who come across his feed can appreciate his work for its own sake, he told me, and they don’t care who he is. He also observed that anonymous accounts, by foreclosing on the possibility of becoming a personal brand, come off to some viewers as more “authentic,” or as “a new source of genuineness” online because they aren’t selling anything or trying to become stars. The internet’s prizing of authenticity has gone through the looking glass.

As a person who loves the internet, this all makes sense to me. Why should everyone have to live and write and think publicly at all times? Why should they be limited in that way? As a journalist who reports about the internet, I’ve found it frustrating too. In the past few years, more and more sources have been asking for anonymity on principle—not because they are afraid of specific or likely consequences, but because being named just doesn’t seem worth it. I can’t help but see this as unwillingness to say something and really mean it—and the portent of a sort of sad, slightly paranoid near future, in which everyone is cool, very cool, and impossible to pin down.

Kaitlyn Tiffany s a staff writer at The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/06/gen-z-internet-anonymity-instagram-tumblr/661316/

[ravensworldkreations]

The start to my journey pt.1

It was in 2010 that I met the monster of a lifetime or so I thought. Later on in life I would meet another. In 2010 I met a man who shall remain nameless. We met in Tuscaloosa and at first everything was good. We had talked before online. Yes I did that and now that I think about it, I would say that was not one of my greater choices in life. That night after hanging out with friends he had got me alone and assaulted me. I was choked until I was unconcious and well after that I do not know exact detail but when I came to I knew I had been done in a way that was not my choosing. That was the beginning of the nightmare to come. I tried to stop talking to him and ended up getting threatening messages against me and my family. So what else do I do? I already had found out he was no good due to what happened to me and learning his violent background from everything you could imagine to assault. I tried to remain as close to my family as I could and knew how to at the time hoping he would just go away. I even started talking and hanging out with my ex. This plan didn't work. So because he would not leave me alone and I had my kids, I moved into my friends house and made the hardest but probably the most important decision of my life with my mother's help. I gave temporary custody to my mother and son's father until I could get away from this guy. He moved me all over Alabama and Florida to keep me away from everyone. He even monitored my calls, texts, and emails. At the time Myspace was still a big social media platform so I was allowed to post things on there but he had to be included. I used this to my advantage as much as possible to let my friends and family know I was alive. During this time he was letting me talk to two of my family members ( again very closely monitored). They would talk to me and keep me updated on everything plus relay any messages I had. Keep in mind this is my first time ever having to deal with anything like this so I am just in survival mode trying to figure things out as I go. Toward the end of 2010 my father had a battle with pancreatitis. My aunt and mother called to have him atleast bring me to see my dad becuase he was in ICU. The beatings had already started but compared to what was to come they were minimal and most of the time I was able to talk him down after a few hits. All I could think with that call was ok now I can finally just hide behind my family. Boy was I wrong. Even with me going to my aunts and going between her house and my mom's to get a peak at my boys he came and snatched me back up. I was beaten all the way from where they live to Panama City which was around 6 hours of on and off again beatings. Keep in mind this is basically the short story to this hell event. During the time we were traveling all around and I mean everywhere in the south just about I was in and out of hospitals for concussions and kidney issues. I was living out of a car and homeless. There were a few times we had longer places to stay but that never lasted long due to his temper and the problems that came with it. All that time I was being made to panhandle money and pretty much used as a pitty party because of the bruising on my face. I would just hope and pray that someone would know that I was not just fighting for money or beat up by strangers which are the stories he would tell people. Nobody ever did not even the police. In 2011 on Valentine's day I decided I was going to try and just dart! We were living in Panama City and I had made friends with the neighbors. I was hoping if I could make it outside after being locked in and being watched like I was in high max prison that they would see him do something finally and I could go home! I was going to just leave my car and not chance finding the keys. I did not even make it past the kitchen to get out the door. I was grabbed by him beaten and tied up with a box fan cord so tight that my hands started turning colors due to lack of blood flow. He then did the r word and beat me and my dog who had tried to bite him for hitting me.

[maguro13-2]

Shattered Hero ~ Origins of the Ink Demon : Episode Maka Finale (5/11)

[Tails Doll Realm]

Seto : Ugh! Where am I? Am I in some kind of Saya no Uta sh*t? I better stay away from reading that disgusting Eldritch visual novel, cause eldritches are seriously gross and disturbing.

[Powerful Man From the Darkness - Kenji Yamamoto]

Seto : What the hell is place? Guess I'm not in some of kind of Saya no Uta sh*t, but what the hell did he take me too? Okay, this may have been a disturbing world, but I gotta find that doll first! (To me) And while you're at it, could you please change the music? That song sounded like it's from X-Men!

Me : (Sighs) Fine! (changes music)

[The Pandemonium - Tatsuyuki Maeda]

Seto : Alright, then here I go! Alright you stupid doll! Where can you be somewhere in this realm you dragged me? Just what the hell is this hellscape looking alike this? Is this Eldritch horror or am I seeing things that is totally disturbing and gross! Is this the path that leads me out of here? Not sure who's smart idea was it to make it Eldritch horror.

(monsters laughing sinisterly)

Seto : These must be the minions of that doll! Get out of my way!

Tails Doll Minion : Then find another way!

Seto : I don't know if I can get pass these guys!

Tails Doll Minion : Ha! You think that you can get to that ship to stop Demon Vibe's dream of galactic conquest, eh? I knew a Deathless girl would be the result of death's children that acclaims to be another of Shinigami's goons. What a little pussy!

Seto : Hmph! *DBZ SFX : SLASHING*

Tails Doll Minions : (deathly grunt)

Seto : You think that I'm Shinigami's or just Shinra's puppet. That Shinigami poser was that Dokeshi named Shotaro and you don't know what Shinra is! But I guaranteed to you all that I am Shinigami, a title that is worth mine and not that Kusakabe wannabe that brings the influence to that heroic crap of his! This is the reason that I dislike the Ohkuboverse and it's influence to thyself! (continues running while fighting off the enemies) This place is full of these stupid f**ks and there will be no sunshine for them! Brutal and grotesque, I am one vicious reaper that lurks into the day and night, and I got a clear sight!

(scene later cuts to Seto jumping on the floating platforms)

Seto : I can jump higher to get a cross on these floating things called "Platforms", but my life as a a deathless girl that will make me a girl to do some action over here! So much for being a dream girl! But got to find that doll first!

"later..."

Seto : Well, I made it all the way here, but this is the way leading to that doll! Here goes! (attempts to destroy the gate, but deflects) What!? It's only another...*QUACK!* Eldritch horror thing! Well, damn it! I'm supposed to know that my powers won't unlock it.

Saya : Looks like you're having problems with Eldritch horror stuff. Maybe that I, a girl from Eldritch horror, can give you an assistance!

Seto : Huh? Who the heck are you?

"MEET SAYA THE ELDRITCH"

"THE ELDRITCH GIRL THAT LOVES MEAT AND FUNIMORI! "

"A HEROINE FROM NITROPLUS'S SMASH HIT HORROR!"

"Warning : Saya is the humanoid form Eldritch Horror. Do not rape or f**k with an actual Eldritch horror that are truly happened in real life. You will die from Eldrtich horror."

Saya : Ever since I was born from the world of Eldritch Horror, I became so popular that humans would make the girl of Eldritch horror from all the way to Providence Rhode Island is where I got my story's inspiration from Lovercraft horror. I was the only girl that makes a human fall in love and gave birth to my only love child. But don't expect any mercy from the writer who made Fate and that Magical Girl show in the 2010s, or I'm giving humans the taste of their medicine. Now stand back and let me open this door with the powers of...[with Barnacle Boy's voice] "ELDRITCH POWER"!

(BOOM!)

Seto : Wow! That's some Cthulhu power! You sure you didn't get that from Cthulhu?

Saya : Well, it maybe intriguing that I'm the strongest Eldritch from Japan there is.

Seto : Now then, I wonder where he is...?

"later..."

[Can You Feel the Sunshine? - TJ Davis, Richard Jacques]

Seto : Oh great! This is weird. Where on earth would you be in a place that doesn't know where did he took place in? (realizing) We went back into 1997! This is Sonic R, a footing race setup by Dr. Robotnik who plotted the entire tournament that happened to this day.

Saya : So there are five racers in total, but there's only three robots, that makes it eight racers right?

Seto : Actually. There's only like ten of them. But not just three robots, four of them. There's Metal Sonic, a Eggrobo, a Metal Knuckles...Wait, when did this mad scientist build Metal Knuckles? And last but not least. The Tails Doll himself, a doll with a diamond attatch to his head and he bears a resemblance to Tails. It's a robot made by Dr. Ivo Robotnik that was tasked to the only mission that ever gets, racing. Tails Doll was the first robot doppelganger made by Dr. Robotnik himself that wanted to be a a mean looking robot to defeat it's original, Miles Tails Prower. One day after the end of the race, Tails Doll failed miserably and Robotnik called him a useless robot that was only tasked with one mission and immediately abandons him into the scrap. But in order to get his revenge, he set up a game of tag and chosen one of his victims, the victims that he chosen were his robot buddies, this is all where it all began on Resort Island.

Saya : Resort Island?

Seto : Indeed.

Tails Doll : This time! I get to be the first one to play tag and it's the four of you guys that I chosen!

Eggrobo : Oh, umm, you sure that you wanted to play tag with us? This is some kind of set up of for the three of us. Playing tag with us robots isn't exactly a good idea. Who's the last one that gets to be tag?

Tails Doll : It's easy for you to ask, the first one gets to be tag and the last standing shall be the victorious winner of tag!

Metal Sonic : You literally have no idea who's going tag the fifth one?

Tails Doll : Only to find out shortly.

Seto : Fifth one? Who is talking...(realizing) Oh no...(sees Sonic in his super state) The fifth one is Sonic in his super state!

Saya : His super state? What are we going to do?

Seto : Don't worry, We'll have to wait for the target and then I'll easily defeat him.

Saya : Gotcha.

[Start Fanfare - Richard Jacques]

Announcer : Ready...Set...GO!

[Can You Feel the Sunshine - Richard Jacques, TJ Davis]

Seto : Shoot! The tag race has just begun!

Eggrobo : (chuckles) This should be a piece of cake! I'm gonna be the first one to tag along with my gun and the no will--

Tails Doll : Tag! You're it!

Eggrobo : No fair! That wasn't supposed to happened! (gets pulled) WOAAAAAHHH!!! *SPLASH!*

Seto : Hey, that wasn't part of the flashback!

Metal Knuckles : Eggrobo! What happened to you? Eggy?

Tails Doll : Tag!

Metal Knuckles : Hey, isn't playing tag is a kids game and we were supposed to...Huh? (pulls out something that is a note saying "You're It!") Hahahaha! Very funny! *robotic beeping* OH SON OF A--! *KABOOOM!*

Metal Sonic : Hahahaha! I am the last one standing now! Oh great! I'm being tagged aren't I? (slaps himself, causing his eyes to spin) Oh well, time for me to go out of game!

Seto : [To Saya] Look! he's tagging his best buddies to bring up the curse and now he's going for the last, which the curse will officially happened!

Saya : What's gonna happen to the last one?

Super Sonic : Heh! Guess I'm the only one that is the last person there is to ever find! But what on earth would I ever get all that in action, you'll never catch me, I'm the fastest thing alive! In super speed!

Tails Doll : Bingo!

[Can You Feel the Sunshine (Acid Mix) - Richard Jacques]

Tails Doll : Finally! You are now...ALL MINE!!!

Super Sonic : What!? Hey! What's going on! This wasn't part of the deal!

Tails Doll : (laughs) With all four of them being chosen as the first of my victims, I can finally unleashed my revenge!

Saya : If he gets to the last one, we're done for! Time for us to get into action and give a good counterstrike! I was planning on doing that to be so cool!

Seto : Alright...(the two quickly runs out of the bush) Now's our chance to stop that doll!

Saya : Right!

Tails Doll : And now the curse shall be unleashed and you'll be dead as last!

Super Sonic : Oh man! I'm gonna be toast!

Saya : YAMEROOOOOOOO!!!

Tails Doll : What!?

Seto : Don't you even dare lay a finger on him!

Super Sonic : What's that? (in slo-motion) NOOOOOOOOO!!!

*DBZ SFX : Potara Fuse*

"So what's gonna happen if the doll has ever released the curse?"

"The whole world is gonna scare their socks off when the doll tagged more than four sacrifices and then the last one which will unleashed into the planet."

"Yeah, Feeling the sunshine hasn't been this much brighter than the darkest days that I ever faced with."

"Today's might be my luckiest day as Japan's Shinigami."

~ Act 30 : The Doll's Curse. ~

[pinemapstudio]

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

About the Game:

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is a role-playing video game co-developed by Level-5 and Square Enix for the Nintendo DS. Published by Square Enix in Japan in 2009, and by Nintendo overseas in 2010, it is the ninth mainline entry in the Dragon Quest series. The storyline follows the protagonist, a member of the angelic Celestrian race, after a disaster in their home scatters magical fruits across the mortal realm. While carrying over traditional gameplay from the rest of the series with turn-based battles, the game is the first Dragon Quest entry to feature a customizable player character, and the first to include a multiplayer mode, with the option of trading treasure maps and loaning player characters through Nintendo Wi-Fi. Online functions ended in 2014 when it ceased operations.

Why did I choose it?

I chose this game because is my favourite: I think it's fun, interesting, compelling (also I love turn-based battle games) and suitable for all ages, alone or with friends. The message that I think the game wants to give, outside the fantasy context, is that kindness can heal the world. I played it for the first time when I was young but I still enjoy the gaming experience every time I restart the game and honestly I was never able to finish ALL the side quests! If you want to accept my challenge you can always try but I'm not sure you will succeed 😂

My gaming experience and why I find it interesting:

I took a lot of notes while playing so I'll try to summarise them as best as I can. In my opinion the game is really enjoyable mainly because you have a lot of possibilities other than following the main story: you can decide to focus more on side quests on some days, other days you try to find treasures in secret spots with secret maps, other days you try to find recipes for completing the alchemy part of the game, basically you can't get bored with this game. Also the possibility of characterisation of the characters, not only for their aspects but for their skills and classes too (priest, thief, clown, ecc.), makes the player decide to keep playing to discover differences and unlocking new trophies. Finally even if the story is already written with no possibility to influence it, you still have the possibility to explore a gigantic map, well made for the landscape and with a great music choice. A plus is that if your best friend doesn't want to play with you, you can also create new characters to accompany you for all the game and you get to decide the class and even the name. Some other little things that make the gaming nice are, first, the game has a good balance of sense of humour based on some jokes or even on accents; two, when you come back on the game after time, you still can remember what happened thanks to a short story recap in the menu and finally finally the fact that the same object in the same places can always give you objects makes players take longer in the game experience making the exploration funnier.

What do you need to play?

To play you only need a Nintendo or an emulator.

How to bring it on another platform?

Square Enix and Nintendo tried some phone versions of it but they only found some ways to create a story with monsters, instead I think it could be interesting to create a full version for smartphones, the difference would be about using only one screen instead of two and trying to optimise controls to make the experience comfortable on that platform.

-Gaia

[mia-talks-toons]

(S1E5) Battle For Dream Island: The Power Of A Community

Today I'm doing something a little different, and delving into the world of indie cartoons! Instead of being aired on a big channel like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, or even a streaming platform, Battle For Dream Island is a YouTube webseries! I’ve always had an admiration for people who find ways to do big projects like this without the support of a whole company behind them. The show was released way back in 2010, created by twin brothers Cary and Michael Huang when they were just 12 years old. It follows a cast of anthropomorphic objects competing against each other to win the titular “Dream Island”. Since its initial release, the show continued on for another 4 seasons, two of which are still going on RIGHT NOW, and they currently have an entire crew and production team to help make episodes!

While it’s an incredible success story, the reason I’m talking about BFDI isn’t because of the show itself, but the community it created. The show raked in tons of fans even when it was a small no-budget project, and it only grew as the show got bigger. Heck, I was a fan way back when the second season was coming out, back in 2013! Soon, other people got inspired by the show, and by the fact that it was made independently by two preteens, and made their own “Object Shows”, as the genre is called. Nowadays there are dozens of different shows in the category, such as Inanimate Insanity (the second object show to be created), ONE (A genre deconstruction of object shows), and Open Source Objects (a show in which every scene is animated by a different person, in their own style).

Even those who didn't go through the effort of making an entire show still made things inspired by the show. There are a lot of people (including me) who make fan art, original characters, write fanfiction and more! An especially interesting phenomenon is object “camps”, where someone will host a competition online, and other people in the object show community will join with their original characters as contestants. The host will set up a challenge, and each contestant will write their character completing said challenge. In fact, this is actually how I met my boyfriend! 

Which brings me to a personal point. The show and its community are important to me, personally. Like I said before, my boyfriend and I were both huge fans of BFDI, and we first interacted when he was hosting an object camp! He loved the way I wrote my character, and we bonded over the show. We became close friends, and a few years later, got even closer! On the non-romantic side of things, the object show community really inspired me to draw art consistently and create my own characters (even if they were just drawings of household objects with stick figure limbs), since I wanted to participate in all the fun I saw my community members having. I even tried to create my own object show (which I almost fully wrote out but never animated, but hey maybe I’ll revisit it someday)! Also, a group of my friends and I created our own little BFDI-inspired competition show multiverse called the Character Elimination Cinematic Universe. We all take characters from shows, movies, or games we enjoy and write them into our own big crossover stories, where they do fun challenges to win a prize! It’s a bit silly, but it’s a lot of fun too! Though I don’t watch Battle For Dream Island too much anymore, I cannot deny that it had a huge impact on me as a person, as it has for so many other people.

And that’s really all I have to say for this post! Honestly, I could ramble for way longer but I’m writing a blog post, not a 10-page essay! Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in my next post (also please give me cartoons to cover I’m running out of ideas lol)

[asktoobzee]

Is the HBO Max Name Change Good News? 6+ Things to Know

HBO’s path to deliver its online streaming service has been anything but straight. If you were to map it out, it would look more like San Francisco’s iconic Lombard Street than the Interstate. And the HBO Max name change brings another turn in the road, thanks to a recent merger between HBO’s parent company, WarnerMedia, and Discovery, Inc.

A brief history of HBO’s streaming services

The long road to Max

First, there was HBO on Demand. And it launched way back on July 1, 2001. That a full 6 years before Netflix took to the information highway! However, it’s not a streaming service per se, but a companion service available to subscribers of HBO’s linear service through cable or satellite providers.

Then came HBO on Broadband in 2008, which was almost immediately replaced by HBO Go, which officially launched in February 2010. This attempt at online content was an on-demand streaming service, but it also required an HBO subscription through a traditional television provider. The service was slowly put out to pasture starting in the summer of 2020 (and will continue its slow death until mid-2024.)

While HBO Go was just entering mid-life, the big wigs at WarnerMedia saw fit to launch HBO Now in April 2015. Unlike all of the previously launched HBO streaming platforms, HBO Now was a standalone service that did not require a traditional TV subscription. This was HBO’s answer to emergent TV entertainment powerhouses Netflix and Hulu.

Finally… well, not finally, obviously… HBO Max launched in May 2020. But if you think that it replaced HBO Now outright, you’d be mistaken. It was a brand-new service, distinct from HBO’s existing on-demand streaming service. The 2 services existed concurrently for a time while HBO Now subscribers were slowly migrated over to HBO Max.

The HBO Max name change

Getting back on track, in the balmy summer of 2022, WarnerMedia merged with Discovery, Inc., which naturally had its own streaming service, discovery+. (Yes, it was all lowercase.) Abandoning its initial plan to scuttle the somewhat-educational streaming service, the bigwigs decided to roll some of its content into HBO Max. But seeing as the HBO brand doesn’t really gel with Discovery, they decided to drop the “HBO” and go with just Max.

When does Max launch?

The new Max streaming service, which we agree is better than HBO Discovery Max+ (or something like that), launches May 23, 2023.

On May 23, HBO Max is becoming Max — The One To Watch for all of HBO, hit series, movies, reality, and more. #StreamOnMax pic.twitter.com/GYJ4yJtkhG — HBO Max (@hbomax) April 12, 2023

What shows will be on Max?

You’ll find all of the same HBO and HBO Max originals (like Euphoria, Succession, and The White Lotus) on the new service, as well as all those Warner Bros. films, the DC Universe, Sesame Street, and all the other things you’re used to. On top of all that, there’ll be a whole new slate of reality and lifestyle content, from brands like HGTV, Food Network, Discovery Channel, TLC, and more.

Will Max cost more than HBO Max?

The good news is that the prices will remain the same (for now). The With Ads plan will continue to cost $9.99/month or $99.99/year, and the Ad-Free plan will stay at $15.99/month or $149.99/year.

The bad news — of course, there’s going to be bad news — is that Warner Bros. Discovery is taking a page out of the Netflix playbook and locking 4K quality behind a premier tier. Unlike Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Hulu, who don’t charge extra for 4K Quality, Max will move its 4K content into a new third tier called Max Ultimate Ad Free. (I guess nobody told them that Max and Ultimate are basically synonymous.) It’ll set you back $19.99/month (the same as Netflix Premium) or $199.99/year.

However, given that we’ve never really been wowed by the so-called Ultra-High Definition 4K streaming that we’ve watched on HBO Max, so we don’t see any reason to upgrade.

Do existing HBO Max subscribers need to do anything?

Not really. Your subscription will stay the same, so unless you want to upgrade to get 4K, you don’t need to do anything about your subscription.

If you’ve got HBO Max installed on any of the following devices, your app will automatically update to Max: Amazon Fire devices, Roku, Vizio TV, Xfinity, and Cox.

If you’ve got HBO Max installed on these devices, you’ll be prompted to download the Max app when you log in after May 23: Android, Apple, DirecTV, LG TV, Samsung TV, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Can you keep your HBO Max profiles and settings?

Yep. Everything stays the same. Your profiles, account settings, even your viewing history.

Can you keep your HBO Max downloads?

Nope. This is one of the only things that changes. You’ll have to redownload any movies and TV shows with the new Max app.

Is discovery+ going away?

Verdict: Is the new “Just Max” a good thing?

Unless you need 4K streaming (which we’ve never really been impressed with), the revamped Max is a good thing. What you lose in a spotty and limited 4K library is more than made up for with a bunch of new content that make HBO’s offering a more well-rounded streaming service. It will definitely be more appealing to families moving forward.

[kusogamesss]

FJORDS

HELLO! THANK U FOR SUBSCRIBING TO SCIENCE MT. GUIDE TO LIFE AND SCIENCE!

SCIENCE GREETING ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻

THIS NEWSLETTER COMPRISES ESSENTIAL AND INTERESTING SCIENCE UPDATES FOR INSTRUCTION AND EDIFICATION OF ALL SCIENCE LIFE, EVERY BEING THUS DRAWN FORWARD IN SCIENCE AND UNITED IN THE HEAT OF COMMON SCIENCE, ACTIVATING SELF AND OTHERS IN THE CAREFUL JOB OF SCIENCE EYES, NOTICING ALL FORMS AND SOMETIMES INHABITING THEM. -- TRUE SCIENCE VISION

READ ON:::: FOR LATEST SCIENCE AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR OPERATION:

It's pretty easy to forget how much of a wild west the late 2000s and early 2010s were for indie games. The separation we have from this epoch has seen the chaff decomposed and rendered inert for the prosperity of a chosen few. What we are left with is arguably the best of the best, but only by the standards of the day and of the now.

In time, those works which dared to do the oblique and the unique resurface as internet weirdos, myself included, try to find and claim some dustcaked artefact as a harbinger of great things to come, of tremendous unseen influence. For me it's Geograph Seal, for others it might be Ultra Resort Keroncuel or Otocky, perhaps Ryan Trecartin's feature-length video I-Be Area or Ingrid de Kok's poems collected in Terrestrial Things. It might not even need to be something we think is intrinsically good. Our encomia need only point at these figureheads and say 'this did it first, this did it best, this did what we love but look how neglected it is and was and shall always be'. In reality this praise often amounts to little more than a celebration of a trivia nugget which will no doubt be unsheathed whenever it is most apt and most pedantic.

The reason I bring all this up is so I can now be that asshole and laud FJORDS for being so forward thinking in the miasma of Obama-era indie gaming.

IT IS OK!!! SCIENCE PRACTITIONER!!! ☻ IT IS OK ☻

The game-breakery of Baba Is You is clearly on display in FJORDS, although without the same player-authoritative wanton illogic seen in Arvi Teikari's work. This seemingly stiff platformer effectively pushes the player to a wall where they're forced to close out of the game or interact with its in-universe terminal. The commands available are sparse and obtuse. TRAVEL is a fast travel with two locations, the starting Pizza Place and right outside the Pizza Place. SET allows the player to toggle on and off certain aspects of the world with some options being inscrutable. SETting WATERFALLS to F is intuitive, but at no point has the player encountered a BOMB, or a GHOST, or MAGIC, or an ESCALATOR.

So maybe you change the settings of some of these just to see what will happen and proceed apace. ESCALATORs litter the landscape now. WATERFALLs have run dry. Grapple your way up and

W̶͍͊̄͋͘͝A̴̧͓̭̫͚̲̎̈̇̏̄̂R̸͚̹̦̠̻̗̋̎͛̉P̶͉̻̩̱̆̈͋ ̶̧̮̗̯̤͆̀̀͂̃̈͐ you are levitating in a miasma of desaturated blues and browns, deconstructed sprites surround your bubble, stay calm and find your place and

G̴̤̈́O̵͓͋ ̴̨̋Ā̷̻N̵̟̒Y̷̪͒W̷͖̓H̷͉̀E̶͙̓R̵̭̿E̵͈̿ ̷̥́Ẃ̷̨I̶͚͌T̴̨̑H̸̼̄ ̶͍͆S̷̥̈́C̵̺̈́I̴͕͆E̴̝͝N̶̥̈C̷͕͐E̵̛͕

What follows with this revelation is that the water hazards and ferries and blocks are mere suggestions of where the player can go. With DOORS, water is a non-truth. With MAGIC, ascension does not depend on a ceiling. With WARP, the world is ripe for exploitation and exploration.

U KNO WUT I LUV ☻

P I Z Z A ☻

And with enough faffing about you come across another pixel person and get teleported back to the start. And you do it some more. Maybe you fall into an endless hell abyss where you who are not you ceaselessly spews the letter K as a plea of self-destruction.

In time your exploration of the world suggests…

THE WORLD, BEING IN REALITY SEVERAL WORLDS, AND UNITED ONLY TENUOUSLY, THE PRACTITIONER OF SCIENCE INHABITS ALWAYS THE KNOWLEDGE OF SEVERAL, AND IS SEVERAL AND MANY.

The self has been lost in dead ends with no escape, logical ends for a journey in the quest to explore and deliver pizza. Or maybe it hasn't, maybe these aren't you, maybe they are just signifiers of progress.

U KNO WUT I LUV ☻

P I Z Z A A A A A A A A A A A ☻

This is only half the story, however, and if anything this self-made ruleset isn't even the most interesting aspect of FJORDS.

This is a SHARECART1000 game. A brief flicker of an idea with minimal documentation online, with no explicit creator, with a bizarre purpose. SHARECART titles all use the exact same savefile, meaning your progress in FJORDS affects your save for Michael Brough's POST-FUTURE VAGABOND, for Theta Games' A Colored Topology, Andy Sum's ap drive, Damian Sommer's YOUAREABOUNTYHUNTER. Your play order of these titles thus affords you a wholly different experience to everyone else. FJORDS is not limited to how it can be broken in-game, but across games. The SHARECART1000 idea is the hypothetical notion of blockchain gaming a decade before your mom asked you what a bitcoin was. It's a crossplay not for one game across platforms, but for one platform across games. And like those blockchain games from the beginning of the 2020s, a lot of those SHARECART1000 titles are effectively lost to time.

For as much as I love Michael Brough's work, I might never get to play POST-FUTURE VAGABOND. I can't even get some of the still-online titles to work with FJORDS. There is this incredible idea of an indie landscape that is non-accessible to me and will probably never be accessible again since it withered on the vine.

What else are we missing out on?

IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF TERMINAL WORLDS DISSOLUTION

IT IS THE EXPRESS RESPONSIBILITY OF ANY SCIENCE PRACTITIONER TO MAKE IMMEDIATE AND TIMELY REPAIR TO THE FOLLOWING VARIABLES

As a queer historian, my research has operated at the far periphery of a history that society sought to erase entirely. What is available is largely circumstantial, or self-referential, or operates on assumptions, or makes up a truth where one is absent. It is a pain in my heart. Of course information must inevitably be destroyed in an increasingly unstable world and universe. Nothing will survive the passage of time.

And yet, you and I and all of us should take the time to exhume those forgotten soldiers, to look at our past with reverie and curiosity.

Look for the weird, the esoteric, the obscure, the forgotten, the misconstrued, the auxiliary.

Dig deeper.

Write about it.

Share it.

U KNO WUT I LUV ☻

P I Z Z A

U KNO WUT I LUV ☻

U R P A S S I O N ☻

[kilopassociation]

Blacksmith3d review

#Blacksmith3d review for free#

#Blacksmith3d review movie#

#Blacksmith3d review software#

#Blacksmith3d review mac#

#Blacksmith3d review software#

The B2M as it is alternatively referred to as, can resize images when exporting bitmaps, this depends on the software used. The application can be launched as a stand-alone bitmap2material app.Īlso, the bitmap2material is a substance application, and it can be launched within any compatible substance app. This texturing software is a tool that allows you to create PBR materials from single diffuse images. After that, you must pay to use the application.

#Blacksmith3d review for free#

The software is available for free during a trial period. The software works on multiple platforms which include Windows, Linux, and macOS. With less stress, you can tune into your creative mind easily rather than stressing with the interface of the software. Modo has a toolset that makes the whole procedure easier. You can create high-quality forms with in-depth detail.Ĭonsidering the fact the 3D modeling and texturing are tedious tasks. The software is so powerful that it even packs 3D painting, animation and rendering among its features.

#Blacksmith3d review mac#

The Photoshop application is available in Windows and Mac operating systems. Photoshop can do a lot of manipulative graphic work. But let’s give the software a round of applause and give it the prestige it deserves. It’s so common that the mention of it makes it seem worthless. The software is also available on Windows and macOS. The software can do 3D painting, and it is capable of UV mapping. You will get decent, high-quality textures. The application can do all the necessary things required by 3D modeling and texturing software. However, You will make the final decision because the software is a complete one. Sincerely, BodyPaint 3D is not in the good book of many graphic artists and 3D designers. Allegorithmic made Substance Painter, but Adobe has now acquired the software making its tools available on the Creative Cloud. The software works on multiple platforms Windows, Mac and Linux. The texturing is so realistic that you can apply wear, tear and scratches on your 3D works. In their website, for example, the developers endear you not to be scared to experiment because you effortlessly get back to previous stages. Substance Painter prides in the flexibility of its app. The texturing and painting are mind-blowing. Substance Painter is relatively new when compared to other software on this list. Another downside to the software is that it is hardly compatible with other applications. The application is more inclined towards sculpting than texturing, which makes it lack some advanced tool that pure texturing software have. You can use the application for modeling, texturing, and 3D painting. Users need not worry about complex usage hence, the software allows them to focus on the creative aspect of the 3D work. The software it´s been used on commercial projects, this shows how good the software is despite its free subscription status. Sculptris is a free 3D painting software. It is available on the macOS, Linux and Windows. It has been able to handle up to 32k textures since 2010.įoundry develops the software. Then, Mari expires, leaving you with no other choice but to pay for subsequent use. The good thing is you can run the 3D texturingsoftware for some time.

#Blacksmith3d review movie#

According to an article on, Mari is the 3D painting tool used in the Avatar Movie that was realized in 2009. The realism that Mari brings to 3D painting is mind-blowing. If you’re just doing 3D stuff for fun, this isn’t likely to be your go-to software. You can link your works in Amor paint to an existing 3D software like the Unreal engine. There is new development available for testing - Livelink. However, it goes up to 16K if you’re using a high-end graphics card. You get a 4K 3D painting and texturing experience. The 3D texturing on Amor paint is Node-based. While you work in Amory paint, you get instant feedback on the process of your work via the viewport. You would have to import your 3D models to the texture on the software. Īmor paint is a stand-alone visual software. The software used ranges from Substance Painter, and Armor Paint to Zbrush, and many more. Also, If you’re reading this article, then you already know what 3d texturing software are and how they work.ģD artists use varieties of 3d texturing software to bring their models to life. If you’ve ever seen a media - image or video that is very detailed so that it looks real, then, it must have been textured. Now computers are creating images close to reality with the help of 3d texturing software. They could barely make complex calculations during their earliest existence. Computers have become powerful in the last decade.

[hardisonbeier31]

Bottega Veneta Baggage Women's

With chunky crossover straps and a signature intrecciato wedge platform, Bottega Veneta's dark-brown leather sandals are a stylish summer time selection. The model launched a fashion jewellery line in 2002, adopted by a fine jewelry line in 2006. From 2001 to 2010, Bottega Veneta's sales grew 15-fold. Bottega Veneta introduced its first women ready-to-wear runway present in February 2005 and its first males runway present in June 2006. I do see padded cassettes sell on The RealReal for round $2500, due to this fact they don’t maintain their value in addition to another manufacturers, however folks can purchase what they like. Bottega Veneta redefines the classic tote and makes it feel model new with its large-scale woven design. Thanks to its extensive inside and traditional silhouette, it’s a bag for the ages. Bottega Veneta's most identifiable signature is its use of woven leather, a method referred to as Intrecciato. The design home has toyed with scale on its traditional type of small strips of over-laid leather-based to create iconic luggage like the Casette, and bent the textile into new shapes as with its Double Knot and Jodie bags. Crafted from Bottega Veneta's signature Intrecciato weave method, it features a chic sl... The Bottega Veneta slides have been made in Italy, they're designed with a textured footbed and embossed upper that's stamped to appear to be the home's intrecciato weave. phoenet.tw bottega veneta replica The colors, print design and materials of this Bottega Veneta shoulder bag bring to mind nothing so much because the textures, sinuosity, luminescence and velvety surface of exotic butt... Monthly fashion exhibits were replaced by private staged trunk exhibits referred to as Salons. The trend house reinvented its shows with industrial setups and hip-hop visitor stars. In February 2001, the previous Gucci Group acquired Bottega Veneta for $156 million. Whether you need an understated black hue or a standout metallic gold end, there’s one thing for everybody with the Pouch. Step back in time to the signature Bottega Veneta fashion with the ‘Jodie’ bag. It incorporates the ‘Intrecciato’ sample of weaving, recreating the fashion that is synonymous with the brand. In reality, the last brand known for this that comes to thoughts is Balenciaga. And whereas the model, of course, provides impartial tones and more understated hues, the extensive range of colors within the Bottega lineup knows no bounds. Not solely are there a plethora of choices, however the leathers decide up the colour so extremely nicely. At the moment, few other manufacturers are pioneering color tendencies like Bottega Veneta. This complete article is just saying what I’ve been saying on the forum for the past three years… Also, very predictable with Claire’s report that came out recently. Anyone who says new Bottega bags are simply fashionable is probably 50 and over and has zero taste and appreciation for cool/unique improvements. I get your perspective as a true purse lover…you know the origins of Bottega. Bottega Veneta's hottest items are the Cabat, the Knotand the Pouch baggage. The Cabat's complex weaving craftsmanship requires 2 artisans for two full days of labor. Bottega Veneta is known for combining traditional Italian workmanship with revolutionary methods to create fabulous new designs that really stand out in a crowd. The shoulder strap is casually knotted at one finish, and zip closure securely fastens the primary compartment. It comes in a wide range of colorways, as properly as maxi, original and mini size options. All merchandise featured on Vogue are independently chosen by our editors. However, whenever you buy something via our retail links, we may earn an affiliate fee. It revisits the synonymous, modest cinched construction that comes both smoothed over or weaved, but in addition features a structural triangular deal with that mirrors minimalist and sophisticated geometry. It's no shock that it is already discovered its way into the palms of profile persona and Bottega Veneta fanatic Hailey Bieber, who wore her black "Point" bag with two sporty yet very streetwear-esque seems. The new Classic bag in Blaster blue, created from woven nappa leather-based utilizing a technique often identified as torchon, a method partly inspired by intrecciato. However, one thing that Bottega Veneta nonetheless has the facility to do is fly underneath the radar. While most luxurious lovers know the model, it isn’t essentially a brand that everyone would instantly acknowledge. Devoid of garish logos, BV still has the ability to stay an “if you know, you know” bag model. Daniel Lee’s eye for element paired together with his capacity to play with proportions has worked season after season. While he focuses on avant-garde shapes and the exploration of new silhouettes, he’s also refined the classics. There is the right formed or sized bag for everyone. wikipedia handbags Bottega Veneta produces an nearly unparalleled range of colours. During the company's 50th anniversary show at the Accademia di Brera, the Bottega Veneta clutch bag carried by Lauren Hutton in the 1980 film American Gigolo was revived . In October 2016, Claus-Dietrich Lahrs was appointed CEO of Bottega Veneta. In 2018, Bottega Veneta opened a 6-floor flagship store in Ginza, Tokyo, in a constructing designed as a tribute to the capital's architectural modernism. In January 2018, Bottega Veneta opened a 15,000-square-foot retailer - its third flagship retailer - on the corner of Madison and sixty fourth Street in New York City. In June 2018, Tomas Maier stepped down as creative director of Bottega Veneta. The brand’s shoulder luggage are made in Italy, which is rightly famed for its skilled craftsmanship in relation to manufacturing clothing, footwear and baggage.

[theramseyloft]

i read your long pigeon poop post, and after some poking around online i saw that a loft in melbourne australia failed. do you have any idea why that is?

Oh... my fucking God. I am so furious.

Look at this thing!

$70,000 went into this monstrosity?

It looks like they converted a fucking water tower by punching holes in it and welding on entryways shaped like the stereotypical toddler’s first house drawing!

Who fucking researched this?!

Was it designed by a committee purely by aesthetic?!

Here is an article I found on it’s decomission and removal.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-city-councils-70000-pigeon-loft-turned-into-scrap-metal-20160724-gqcmsc.html

According to the pigeon expert quoted in this article: 

“Frank Hayes is the president of the Australian National Pigeon Association. While his group is mostly interested in show pigeons, a different breed to the city pests, he says it was fairly predictable the coop idea was never going to work.”

“ "The nature of the pigeon is that they find a home and they stick with it. So finding them somewhere else to go is a bit of a dream," said Mr Hayes.”

“ "Trying to shift them is one big headache. It's a worldwide problem and no one has ever figured out how to deal with it." ” 

LOOK at this structure!!!

It’s made of fucking METAL!!!

In AUSTRAILIA!!!

In the fucking OPEN!!!!

From this charming article:

 http://melbournedailyphotodaily.blogspot.com/2011/03/pigeon-loft-batman-park.html

“The loft is painted with light coloured corrosion resistant to reflect the heat and minimise internal over-heating. It houses two hundred nesting boxes for pigeon breeding. Eggs laid will be replaced with artificial eggs intended as a humane way to control and reduce pigeon numbers.”

That is a metal structure in the Melbourne sun...

No amount of Paint is gonna make that less an oven.

And I can’t imagine you can add anything to paint to make it corrosion resistant that isn’t noxious in a small space when the metal under it heats up.

“Bird feeding around the loft base is permitted to attract birds out of the CBD to this area. Bird feeding is not permitted in any other area around the CBD.”

But the city council is not actually providing the birds with good quality fed...

“... and no one has ever figured out how to deal with it."

No one, you ignorant twit?

NO ONE?!?!

Here is the site of a successful branch of the German Stadttauben Projekt, translated:

https://stadttauben-stuttgart.de/

“The Stuttgart pigeon project

Dear prospective customers,

nice that you found our homepage. We would like to introduce our project to you on the following pages:

The Stuttgart City Pigeon Project is an animal welfare-friendly concept for regulating and reducing city pigeons for the benefit of people and animals. We operate several supervised pigeon shots in the Stuttgart city area, in which the pigeons are cared for and their eggs are exchanged for dummies so that no offspring hatch. By the end of 2019, there had been well over 45,000 eggs. By feeding grain mixtures in our shots, the animals are no longer forced to look for food on the streets and squares in the area. They spend 80% of the day and the entire night in the dovecote. Ergo - your droppings also stay there and no longer land on roofs or balconies.

We were awarded the Baden-Württemberg State Animal Protection Award 2015 for our commitment .

The city pigeon is one of the most successful residents of the urban living space and today populates all major cities worldwide. It is the free-living descendant of the wild rock pigeons from the coastal and mountain areas in Africa and Eurasia. Long ago, the rock pigeons were domesticated by humans primarily for the purpose of meat production and thus also carried to our latitudes and cities. In modern times, the stock of the archetypal rock pigeon increasingly mixed with breeding, racing and sports pigeons that either escaped, were abandoned or, exhausted by exhausting competitive flights, ran aground in the cities. Today's city pigeons are the overgrown children and children's children of these rock, breeding and sports pigeons.

In cooperation with the state capital of Stuttgart, the Tierschutzverein Stuttgart und Umgebung eV launched the pigeon project in 2008. The cooperation was formed with the aim of bringing about a permanent and humane solution to the city pigeon problem.

The concept of the Federal Working Group for City Pigeons or the so-called * Augsburg Model * was helpful. It is based on scientific publications, practical experience and has already been successfully recommended by several federal states such as Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg. Today it is implemented in more than 80 German cities and towns. For example, there are pigeon houses looked after in Aachen, Augsburg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken and Wuppertal.

We aim for a small, supervised and healthy pigeon population in Stuttgart. Then the image of the city pigeon may rise again. Because healthy animals, which have a permanent home and receive animal feed, do not bother anyone!”

https://stadttauben-stuttgart.de/?page=1,0,0,Chronik+%26+Fakten

“Care instead of fighting: our chronicle

2008:The first step was a dovecote at platform 1 in Stuttgart main station

2009:The second blow was made in the roof of the Leonhardskirche

2009:The third pigeon house was on the Mühlgrün parking garage in Bad-Cannstatt, which has since been demolished and replaced by the pigeon tower in the rope

2010:The fourth facility was the pigeon tower in the city garden on Max-Kade-Weg

2011:The fifth pigeon house stood on the roof of the town hall garage until February 2016. Reconstruction on the roof of the city comb in April 2016.

2011:The sixth dovecote was a second stroke on the roof of the Leonhardskirche (other roof side)

2013:The seventh dovecote was built in the roof of the Fairkauf building in Stuttgart-Feuerbach

2014:The eighth pigeon loft was built (as a replacement for the location at the main station) on a flat roof in the Kriegsbergstrasse

2016:Dovecote number 9 was inaugurated in July 2016 at the Marienplatz in Stuttgart in the roof structure of the imperial building

2017:

On Landhausstrasse in the east of Stuttgart, we were able to set up dovecote No. 10 in the attic of a residential building. It was opened in June 2017

2018:In summer, an indoor pigeon tower was opened at Seilerwasen in Bad Cannstatt as a replacement for the Mühlgrün pigeon house

2019In autumn a new pigeon facility was inaugurated at the station in Zuffenhausen and the first egg was laid in December.    

In addition, a dovecote (trailer) on the grounds of the shelter Stuttgart and Nistwand for about 30 pigeons on the will of the ASPCA Stuttgart  House  Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn in Stuttgart Zuffenhausen care.

... more dovecotes are to follow!

Health hazard facts

A health hazard due to pigeons flying around, running and sitting can be largely excluded. New scientific studies have shown (again) that pathogens that may be contained in the pigeon droppings are usually bird-specific and are therefore not transmitted to humans. This was confirmed in 1995 by the Federal Ministry of Health.

The general classification of the pigeon as a pest was withdrawn by the Federal Institute for Consumer Health Protection back in 1989 on the basis of research results at the time and the opinion from 2001.

Feed facts about pigeons

Feeding pigeons in Stuttgart is prohibited on public land. Well-meaning pigeon friends increase the population density of the city pigeons by regular feeding in the same place, without offering the additionally attracted animals sleeping and nesting places where they are tolerated or the clutch can be exchanged. This creates people who work there or often live more pigeon hate and more pigeon misery.

Above all, too many food scraps are thrown away on the streets and squares of the city! This waste is mostly not compatible with pigeons. They lead to illnesses, shortages and thus, among other things, to the unsightly liquid starvation. Nevertheless, due to the scarcity of bird-friendly feed in cities, these human foods are usually the main basis for the feeding of city pigeons, but their organism is designed for pure hard grain feed. So this means sick pigeon populations that nonetheless reproduce disproportionately due to their (pet) genes raised by humans.

If you would like to help sustainably, please contact us. Only other supervised dovecotes in the city area (including food and egg exchange) start at the root of the "problem". We welcome any support!”

From their gallery:

Here is a loft.

Small, wooden, well insulated from heat and cold.

Those openings are not the nests. They are just doorways with a landing ledge designed around the comfort of pigeons, which are social birds.

Here is the inside.

Lots of comfortable nest boxes, perches in the back, food, water, comfortable socialization space...

Here is an entry into another loft currently in use.

Here is the inside.

Water and feed are provided by the care takers. You can see feed and drinking stations all over the floor.

And this is the inside of a huge new loft in Frankfurt.

These German Taubbenhauses are designed around meeting the birds’ needs for food, comfort, safety from the elements, and socialization with their flock mates.

None of these birds had to be coerced or forcibly relocated.

Because their needs were better met, they came on their own.

Look at the $70,000 Melbourne monstronsity again!

More specifically, look at the bridge behind it.

And tell me where you would rather me.

Compact metal tower designed exclusively around convenient human access, metal nest boxes, 0 landing platforms, no socialization space, no protection from the elements, still no choice but to forage for what ever garbage people toss you...

or the comfortably Cool space under a concrete bridge with a convenient water source.

Three guesses what’s more comfortable for the pigeons.

Now, would you rather live under a bridge with constant noise from traffic, open to predators, 

or

A well insulated apartment building with comfortable suites, a spacious common area, and a nutritious free meal plan with clean water included by default.

"It's a worldwide problem and no one has ever figured out how to deal with it."

My ass, Mr. Hayes!

[letterboxd]

Siren Song.

Undine writer-director Christian Petzold talks to Reyzando Nawara about modern-day mermaids, Tinder culture and finding the magic in life.

“Love stories always change. A kiss in Berlin 1933, for example, is not gonna be the same kiss in Berlin today, right?” —Christian Petzold

“If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you.” Undine’s threat to her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Johannes, after he has told her that he has met someone else, seems at first like an over-the-top reaction to the breakup. But it is a curse that Undine must fulfill, for she will become human only when she falls in love with a man who is doomed to die if he is unfaithful to her.

From Splash to Ponyo to The Lure to Song of the Sea, mythical water spirits, usually female, sometimes horse, have powered many film plots. The sixteenth-century European myth of Undine, in particular, lies behind many screen adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, though the Danish writer was not the first to popularize the fairytale in his century. Decades earlier, around 1811, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué of Germany had produced his romantic novella, Undine.

And it is to Germany—specifically modern-day Berlin—that writer-director (and fellow German) Christian Petzold transports Undine in his contemporary magical-realist take on the myth. There, she does not take the form of a mermaid or siren, but a beautiful young woman (played by Paula Beer), who works as a historian at a museum, where she guides tours of Berlin’s architecture and its reconstruction. The breathtaking cinematography, by regular Petzold collaborator Hans Fromm, crystallizes both the romance and the beauty of Berlin, while Petzold’s leads root every scene in reality, even as aquariums explode and giant catfish drift past.

Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski fire up the streets of Berlin in ‘Undine’.

Water may be the dominant element in Undine, but Beer and her co-star Franz Rogowski bring fire to their scenes together. Where Beer brings charisma and intensity to the titular role, Rogowski, as Undine’s new love interest, an industrial diver named Christoph, offers charm and sweetness.

In the frenzy of Parasite’s world domination, it is easy to forget that Petzold’s previous feature, Transit, appeared in two of our 2019 Year in Review lists—the 50 highest-rated films and the highest-rated international films—and was one of the top romance films of the 2010s. His riveting Phoenix is still his highest-rated film on the platform—one of many to center a complex female character in search of love at a time of personal and/or political crisis. In Undine, Petzold does it again, a welcome departure from other adaptations, including the Colin Farrell-starring Irish romantic drama Ondine (2009), that have mostly told the myth from the perspective of its male characters. Petzold also revises the fairytale, by giving Undine a chance to try to emancipate herself from her curse.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Petzold about his fascination with water, the magic of Berlin history, modern dating and of course, his ongoing collaboration with Beer and Rogowski.

Spoiler warning: this conversation contains plot details regarding the ending of Petzold’s film ‘Transit’ (2018).

Your movie is inspired by the myth of Undine, but you reinvent it by giving it some modern twists. How did the main narrative for the film come about? Christian Petzold: I think the idea of the story first came to me around twenty years ago when I had a project in Germany. It was together with Claire Denis and also Kathryn Bigelow, and everybody had to make a ten-minute short film for a project based on the museum near the Rhine River. I had written a little dialogue—oh, by the way, Steve McQueen was also part of the project—and it was the scene that we can see in the movie in the first few minutes where Undine’s boyfriend, Johannes, said that he doesn’t love her anymore and that he wants to leave her and she said to him, “If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you.” Then she goes back to work, and later when she comes back to try to find him again, he isn’t there—so she knows that she has to kill him now.

Then when I made Transit with Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski, I told them after a very lucky and happy time of shooting, that I had written a short story and wanted to make a 90-minute feature movie out of it together with them. I wanted to keep working and making movies with them because we’ve had an amazing experience together in Transit. This was basically the start of how the movie and my collaboration with these two actors came about.

Paula and Franz are actors who didn’t come from the basic German acting school; their backgrounds are dance and theater. But they both have so much curiosity about cinema—when I met Paula for the first time, for example, she told me that she had bought 50 movies by Alfred Hitchcock and wanted to see all of them, and to me, this is the best kind of school to learn about cinema.

So to some extent, Undine is a spiritual sequel to Transit? Yes, you’re right. It has so many things to do with Transit. Marie, Paula’s character in Transit, finds her own death in the sea—she’s drowned. And Franz’s character, he’s waiting at the land, hoping that she may come back from the land of the dead. So I said to them, “Okay, the next movie is gonna be about a woman coming out of the sea and going to the land to search for love and also about this young man who is a diver, who is going underwater, to find love as well.” So to some degree, it’s a sequel, you’re right.

Beer and Ragowski in ‘Transit’ (2018).

You mentioned earlier that you had a great experience working with Paula and Franz in Transit. Can you tell us what it was about these two actors that you thought would capture the story you wanted to tell in Undine? Paula is a very young actor—she was 23 when we started Transit, and she was around 24 when we made Undine—but when you’re filming her, she has this ability to make her characters much more mature beyond her real age. In one second, she’s 45 years old, with a whole experience of someone who’s had a hard life and has gone through so many bad things, then one second later, she’s thirteen and innocent. And to have that kind of ability—to go from one point to another—is just really fascinating to me. I’ve never seen other actors do this before in my life.

Franz was a dancer, and if I remember correctly, I think he was also in a clown school for a circus, so he can do everything with his body. It’s unbelievable what he can do. He has this amazing physicality that I admire and haven’t seen before in other German actors. When they’re together sharing a scene, they dance with each other. And this is the thing that I like so much about them and the thing I need in Undine, because I need actors who can float from one scene to another as if they’re dancing underwater.

In literature and pop culture, the myth of Undine has been mostly told from the male perspective. You reframe the narrative, to give Undine the opportunity to maybe emancipate herself from both the male figure in her life and the curse. Tell me more about that choice. Two or three years ago, I had a retrospective in New York, and I had the chance to see some of my previous movies again—[laughing] I’ve actually never done it before, revisiting my own movies. And at that time, I realized that I’ve always tried to rewrite the stories centering on women, which were made by men in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, from another perspective: the perspective of the women.

When I was in Venice for the first time, Claude Chabrol [was] in the same hotel as me, and he had a Q&A. I wanted to say hi and tell him how great he was but I couldn’t do it because I was very young and too shy for those things. I heard what he said when asked why in his movies, the women are always the main characters. His answer was, “Men are living, women are surviving. And cinema is about surviving.” It was such a fantastic answer.

All the movies I [have] made, including Undine, are about surviving. Undine wanted to survive her curse—she tries to, every time, since centuries ago. In so many iterations of the myth, Undine always has to go back into the lake and to the life the curse has set for her. I really wanted to zoom in on that, to liberate the character of Undine from the myth and the curse.

In the movie, Undine works as an historian at a museum, and in her tours, she talks about Berlin’s architecture and its reconstruction throughout the years. How is this related to the romantic aspect of the movie? Everybody says you can take a love story and put it in the sixteenth century or the nineteenth century, and it’s always gonna be the same kind of love story. But I think that’s not entirely right. Love stories always change. A kiss in Berlin 1933, for example, is not gonna be the same kiss in Berlin today, right? Therefore I want to take the historical aspect of Berlin architecture and its reconstruction to tell the story of two young people in Berlin nowadays, to see the evolution of both this love story and the myth of Undine itself.

What’s the significance of all the buildings Undine mentions in the movie? The buildings serve a very important role in the movie because Berlin is between two rivers on an island, and the city is built on dried-out swamps, so the element that Undine is coming from, which is the water, is destroyed in Berlin. It doesn’t exist anymore. And therefore Undine doesn’t have any habitats, so she has no choice but to adapt and to live on the land.

In some way, I always think that the modernization in Berlin erases history, and when there’s no history, there’s no magic, which means magical creatures like Undine won’t exist. That was the main idea of the architectural elements in the movie.

Is that also the reason why there are two locations in the movie: Berlin, and the small town where Franz’s character, Christoph, works and lives, which is still full of swamps? To show that in this small town, magic still exists? That’s a good question. The romance and the myth of Undine is a part of German and European history. It’s a unique enchantment. But in Berlin, where modernization and civilization keep growing and changing, there’s no enchantment anymore. So I want to show how in this small town where everything is still kept as closely natural as possible, the enchantment and the charm of Germany are still there.

There’s a beautiful and romantic poem by Joseph Eichendorff that says, “You must find the right world, so everything can sync again.” To me, that line encourages us to find the magic of the world back. We live in this world surrounded by retro buildings and retro behavior and retro music, but it’s all actually just an illusion of magic. The real magic, that’s something that we have to find—either by movies or camera positions or poems or even by preserving the naturality of a city. And the Undine myth actually has a lot to do with this.

Another thing that fascinates me about the movie is how the dynamic between Undine and Johannes, in some way, reflects the state of modern dating. Is this something that you also wanted to capture when you wrote the script? [Laughing] Funny story, when Paula read the script for the first time, she told me that she liked it so much because the story reminded her of Tinder and modern dating. And on some level, it’s true; part of Undine is about modern dating. I always think that in the era of dating apps, everything gets much simpler—you meet someone, you have sex (or perhaps not), and if you feel like this someone is not handsome or beautiful enough for you, you can keep scrolling until you find someone new. So, dating right now is like going to the supermarket.

Johannes leaving Undine to be with another woman, who for him is better-looking than Undine, reflects the culture of Tinder. And the line I mentioned earlier, “If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you,” is the opposite of that kind of dating life. And Paula, who hates Tinder, loves that line a lot. Some of the actors are on Tinder, I’m sure, and that’s understandable. Actors are sometimes very lonely because for six to eight weeks, they are deep inside of a character, and when they’re on break, they’re in some sort of “black hole of loneliness”.

Writer-director Christian Petzold.

Undine being a water nymph, of course, makes the water element very important in this movie. But water has actually been heavily featured in some of your previous features as well, like in Yella, Barbara and Transit. Can you tell us why you find water fascinating? I’ve seen a documentary by Agnès Varda, and in [it] she said, “The place where one element is touching one another is the place where cinema builds its stories.” That’s why she loved the beach, because on the beach, there’s water and there’s the earth and there’s also wind, and they’re touching each other. So to her, the beach is the perfect place where you can tell a story.

For me, however, the reason I like featuring water or the other elements in most of my movies is because it has something to do with seeing my characters coming from one element then going to the other elements; to see them act and react in a new and sometimes uncomfortable place. Also, when you see pictures or paintings, so many of them are about people looking deep into the sea. I always feel like that kind of painting is actually about a desire. And most of my movies, at [their] core, are about desire. That’s why water is so important to me. Deep under the water, there’s the place of desire.

What’s the first movie that made you want to become a filmmaker? The first movie I loved very much as a kid was The Jungle Book, but the first movie that made me want to become a filmmaker was by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps. I was fourteen or fifteen years old when I saw the movie for the first time, and I loved it from the first moment. The movie is about a man and a woman who are bound by handcuffs, and they don’t like each other, but because they’re on the run, they have to communicate and come to an understanding. And the love story starts because of that communication, not because of looks, and I love the movie so much for that reason.

If you could program a double feature with Undine, what movie would you pick? Good question. I would say The Night of the Hunter. Also maybe Creature from the Black Lagoon or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or The Son’s Room by Nanni Moretti. These are the movies that I would recommend for a double feature with Undine.

Related content

More ‘Little Mermaid’ adaptations: a list by Katherine

Paula Beer strolling around towns cinematic universe

Diogo’s mega-list of Mermaids in Film

Horror’s History with Scary Mermaids: a Bloody Disgusting list

Follow Reyzando on Letterboxd

‘Undine’ is in theaters and available on VOD in the US now.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own

With the deplatforming of forums where trumpists and right-wing figures congregate, there's a lot of chatter about whether and when private entities have the right to remove speech, and what obligations come with scale.

The most important - and overlooked - area of this discourse is the role that monopoly plays, and the role that anti-monopoly enforcement could play.

In short, the fact that being removed from Twitter and the app stores and Facebook and Amazon is so devastating is best addressed by weakening those companies by spreading out our digital life onto lots of platforms.

Not by strengthening them by giving them formal duties to either carry or remove speech based on its content. These duties will justify all kinds of anticompetitive activity, because only a very profitable company can afford to fulfil them.

It also turns the same companies that failed horribly to craft and uphold moderation standards into private-sector arms of powerful state actors (like domestic surveillance agencies) who defend their right to monopolize the digital sphere as necessary for national security.

(recall that the Pentagon intervened in the DoJ's breakup of AT&T in the 1950s, successfully arguing for a stay of execution on the grounds that the Korean War could not be effectively persecuted without AT&T's help - the company stayed intact for 30 years after that)

Competition in the platforms is important, but it's not the whole story. The First Amendment was drafted for newspapers, and most contemporary communications law comes from broadcast and cable regulation. The internet is not a newspaper or a TV station, after all.

The discussion of the difference between the American revolutionary era (or the heyday of broadcast TV) and the present moment focuses on technology, but there's a much more important difference to take account of: the presence or absence of a public sphere.

The First Amendment contemplates both a diversity of speech forums (newspapers, cafes, halls) alongside of public spaces that are *truly* public, owned by the people through their governments and tightly bound by 1A as to when and whether rules about speech can be enforced.

So if the Masonic Lodge won't let you give a speech from its stage, and the cafe throws you out for arguing, and the newspaper won't let you publish an op-ed, you can stand outside of those establishments with a sign or a bullhorn, leafleting and speaking your piece.

The government can still restrict your speech on the public sidewalk or in a public park, but not according to its content - only according to "time and manner" (for example, enforcing a noise ordinance after 9PM or ticketing you for blocking traffic).

The biggest difference between a world where we are locked indoors and connect to one another via the internet and the world we left behind is that there are *no public spaces* on the internet.

If a cafe kicks you out for your speech, you can picket the public right of way out front. If Twitter kicks you out for your views, you have no constitutionally guaranteed right to stand at its digital threshold and tell everyone who enters or leaves that you got a raw deal.

Now, the state provision of digital services isn't an unmitigated good. US governments at all levels have proven themselves to be utterly surveillance-addled, in thrall to the fallacy that spying on everyone will make us all safer.

But surveillance fears aren't why we lack democratically controlled tech. For that, you can thank the same right wingers who are so exorcised about deplatforming today, who, for a decade, have been the useful idiots of telcoms monopolists in the fight over public broadband.

American cable and telco monopolists have divided up the country so that the best most of us can hope for is a duopoly, while many others are burdened with monopoly carriers, and millions live in broadband deserts with no high-speed internet at all.

The poorer you are, the more your broadband costs and the worse it is. The more rural you are, the worse your broadband is and the more it costs. Homeowners with good broadband see their assets appreciate. If your home is outside a monopolist's profit zone, its price drops.

The internet barons like it that way. When Frontier went bankrupt last year, we got to see its internal docs. Guess what? If you have no choice other than Frontier, it treats you as an "asset" because you will pay more for worse service.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

Frontier cares about its share price (its execs are mostly paid in stock, not cash), and share prices are rigged by influential analysts who downrank any company that makes a capitol expenditure that takes more than five years to pay off.

That's why Frontier decided to walk away from the $800,000,000 in profits it would realize on a ten-year investment in fiber for three million households who currently make do with Frontier's failing copper network, which often consists of wires draped over trees.

We've been here before. For decades, you had to live in an urban, affluent area to get electricity; your country cousins burned coal for dinner and used oil-lamps to read by. The New Deal electrified the nation, extending universal service regardless of the business-case.

Electricity became a human right, and the US government extended it across the nation (though structural racism meant that it arrived late for majority Black settlements).

Long before covid, underserved towns realized that their very existence depended on decent broadband.

The initial experiments with municipal fiber were incredible, jaw-dropping successes. Towns that invested in fiber saw a vast expansion of job opportunities, access to global information and services, and new blood from telecommuters who relocated from big cities.

The telcos fucking hated this. How can you sell flaky access to copper wires draped over shrubs for $80/month when the city is wiring people up to networks that are *1,000-100,000 times faster* at a lower price?

In a competitive market, companies would have improved service and lowered prices to compete. Luckily (for monopolists), there's a cheaper solution: buy off state legislatures so they pass laws banning municipal broadband.

These laws were promulgated to GOP-dominated statehouses across the country, passed by right wing lawmakers who told their constituents they were "keeping government out of the internet."

This is a line that their footsoldiers dutifully parroted during the Obama years, then signed up to Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's order that reversed a late-term-Obama FCC order banning state laws that interfered with municipal fiber project.

Unfortunately (for the right), reality has a well-known left-wing bias. 700+ US towns and cities have municipal fiber. They are the only Americans who consistently express satisfaction with their ISPs. Most of these towns vote Republican!

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Woe betide the rural "red" town that lacks municipal fiber. These have been mostly abandoned by cable companies, so their cable/DSL duopoly has become a DSL monopoly, with prices rising and quality of service falling.

https://ilsr.org/monopoly-networks/

Which brings me back to the First Amendment and public sidewalks. All those people who are trying to find a way to support the "free market*" and also justify demanding that dominant platforms be ordered to carry their speech are living in a hell of their own making.

* Adam Smith popularized the term "free markets" to describe markets free from "rentiers" who collect money without adding value...such as cable monopolists. He *definitely* didn't mean "markets free from government regulation."

Because here's the thing: your ISP - and Twitter, and Facebook, and Amazon - is a private company. It is not subject to the First Amendment. It can have any rules it wants about which lawful speech it will tolerate. It can sling your ass out the door on a whim.

You know who's bound by the First Amendment? You know who can't suppress your speech based on its content? You know who has to answer public records requests about why you got booted out of its service?

Your local government.

If you had a $70/month, 100GB fiber in your rural house, you could run a kickass P2P messaging server, and while you'd be right to worry about (covert, illegal) government surveillance (use encryption, kids) on that line, you would 100% have recourse if you got booted off.

It's not an automatic home run. The First Amendment has exceptions, even beyond "time and manner," and has been substantially eroded by GW Bush and his successors, in the name of fighting terror, animal rights activists and water defenders.

But a lawsuit against your town council for nuking your Turner Diaries fanfic server is a hell of a lot more likely to succeed than griping about Twitter mods failing to grasp the "irony" in your Auschwitz jokes.

The right's war on municipal broadband was its biggest self-own of the 2010s. And while it's not true that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged," it might be true that "a municipal broadband activist is a conservative who's been kicked off Twitter."

And this is one of those causes (like shutting down private prisons, or opposing foreign wars of aggression) where a substantial slice of the left and the right can come together (at the most local of levels!) to really Get Shit Done.

Because the other great victims of America's monopolized broadband are people of color, poor people and working class people (often the same people). They live with digital redlining, where they pay 2X for 1/100th the speeds of their affluent neighbors a block away.

They're the ones whose kids are doing homework in Taco Bell parking lots (and getting flunked on their tests because creepy remote proctoring services penalize them for taking their tests in a beat up hatchback and not a private room).

The ones who can't videoconference with dying relatives in ICUs or doctors for telemed consults. Who can't apply for work-at-home jobs, or just play games and watch movies and upload their fun Tiktoks and Youtube videos.

The current system serves about 300 senior execs at telco monopolists, and a few thousand investors, and savagely fucks over everyone else. Even rich people in big cities usually can't buy fiber at any price.

It's time for our four decade Atlas Shrugged LARP to end. It's time for a bipartisan fiber consensus.

Image: Olaus Linn (modified) https://thenounproject.com/term/tin-can-phone/15140/

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

[causeiwanttoandican]

They are massive liars and have been planning this all along.

Meghan is definitely doing most of the planning.

Harry and Meghan were in talks with video platform a year before ‘Megxit’

The Telegraph has learned the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had discussions with the now defunct Quibi service from early 2019

By Camilla Tominey, Associate Editor2 April 2021 • 9:00pm

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were discussing projects with a billion-dollar backed US streaming service a year before they stepped down as senior members of the Royal family, it has emerged.

The Sussexes had a series of meetings with Quibi, a now-defunct rival to YouTube, from early 2019 until after they dropped their 'Megxit' bombshell in January last year.

The Duke returned from the so-called Sandringham Summit to meet executives from the short video platform in London as plans for him to provide content apparently reached advanced stages.

In their interview with Oprah Winfrey, the couple said that they “didn’t have a plan” upon leaving the Royal family, but The Telegraph has learnt that they had talks with executives of the £1.3 billion start-up before their son Archie was born in May 2019.

The discussions are understood to have led to tensions with Palace staff fearful they would be accused of “cashing in” on their status, and because the couple were predominantly consulting Meghan’s US-based team of advisers.

A source with knowledge of the situation said: “There were well-developed proposals in place with Quibi from early 2019.”

A royal source added: “A lot of it was orchestrated by Meghan’s people in America. It was a bit of a secret squirrel.”

Sources in the UK and US confirmed there were numerous conversations with Quibi, including its founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, described as “one of Hollywood’s premier political kingmakers”, and Meg Whitman, chief executive, a former president of eBay.

After Quibi drew up a proposal in early 2019, there were conference calls to discuss a plan for their own series of 10-minute videos. There was a meeting in London last January, which the Duke attended with James Holt, the new executive director of Archewell, the couple’s non-profit organisation.

Shortly afterwards, the couple relocated to Los Angeles, and the pandemic put all plans on hold.

Quibi did well on its launch last April, but by September, around the time the Sussexes said they had signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Netflix, it was on the verge of shutting down.

A spokesman for Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Unfolding events

They told Oprah Winfrey they “didn’t have a plan”. Revealing that they had been “cut off” by the Royal family, Harry, Duke of Sussex, insisted that he and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, only signed deals with Netflix and Spotify out of immediate financial necessity.

As the Duke told the US chat show host: “The Netflix and the Spotify, they’re all . . . that was never part of the plan.”

“Because you didn’t have a plan?” prompted Ms Winfrey. “We didn’t have a plan,” replied the Duchess, with the Duke adding: “We didn’t have a plan. That was suggested by somebody else by the point of where my family literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford . . . afford security for us.”

The Telegraph has now learned that the couple spent more than a year in the lead up to “Megxit” in talks with a now defunct US streaming platform which would have seen them make a series of 10-minute videos.

The story behind their conversations with Quibi, once hailed the next YouTube and backed by £1.3 billion of investment from the likes of Disney, NBC and Goldman Sachs, lays bare some of the apparent tensions between the Sussexes and their staff as they attempted to walk the tightrope between royal duty and potential commercial opportunity.

Throughout 2019, the couple held a series of discussions with senior executives from Quibi including its founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, described as "one of Hollywood's premier political kingmakers” and its CEO Meg Whitman, a former president of eBay and Hewlett Packard.

Worth an estimated £650 million, Mr Katzenberg, a former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, is one of the Democratic Party’s top national fundraisers in the US, having actively supported Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama.

Ms Whitman was a senior member of Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in both 2008 and 2012 and ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010, but supported Democrats Mrs Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

Both apparently viewed the Duke and Duchess as the key to getting their “mobile-based Netflix” off the ground, actively courting them in the run up to its eagerly-anticipated launch in April 2020.

The couple stated in their “Megxit” statement of January 2020 that they “intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen.”

Still working royals

They went on to sign lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify, thought to be worth millions of dollars.

But when they were still full-time working royals, palace aides are understood to have long harboured concerns that the couple would be accused of cashing in on their royal status because of their meetings with Quibi, or tarnished by association if it failed to take off.

As one source put it: “Chinese walls were put up and certain amounts of information weren’t shared which just made it difficult to protect the couple from accusations of attempting to monetise their role.

“It was hard for royal aides to be supportive of projects like Quibi because they knew how it might look but the couple kept dismissing these concerns. They didn’t seem to see the pitfalls of any potential conflict of interests.”

Amid much talk of conflict behind the gates of Kensington Palace, with a bullying complaint submitted against the couple in October 2018, it seems one bone of contention for royal aides was the couple's “secretive” conversations with the Duchess's trio of US advisers.

Asked whether she would be giving up her career in their November 2017 engagement interview, the Duchess replied: “I don’t see it as giving anything up. I just see it as a change.”

Sunshine Sachs and sussexroyal.com

Multiple sources in the UK and US have confirmed that the Duchess continued to consult her lawyer Rick Genow, her business manager Andrew Meyer and her talent agent Nick Collins, during her time in the Royal family – with regular conference calls even set up to link both sides of the Atlantic.

Another key figure who remained in her sphere of external advisers throughout was Keleigh Thomas Morgan of PR firm Sunshine Sachs, who helped to broker the Duchess’s first interview about dating the Duke with Vanity Fair in September 2017, before going on to mastermind the couple's first charitable foundation, Sussex Royal.

The quartet are understood to have helped with the registration and development of the couple’s new website, sussexroyal.com, in March 2019.

According to one insider: “Rick, Andrew and Nick came with the territory. So did Keleigh. They were constantly fielding proposals for Meghan and bringing stuff to her.

“But the team in America did pose problems for staff at KP. There was always quite a lot of secrecy surrounding the couple’s conversations with the US.

“Certain people would be in the know about what was going on with things like Quibi, while others wouldn’t have a clue. Discussions that had been quite public would then suddenly go underground, into the 'private' space. It was all quite difficult to manage at times.”

In September 2019, James Holt, now executive director of the couple’s Archewell non-profit organisation, confirmed that Sunshine Sachs had been “supporting us with outreach and coordination in the US.”

The firm helped with the launch of the Duke's sustainable travel initiative, Travlyst.

Mental health initiative

Around the time the Sussexes had received a proposal from Quibi in April 2019, they announced that the Duke would be teaming up with Ms Winfey to create a series of documentaries about mental health. The shows were to air on Apple TV+, Apple’s video streaming service expected to be released that autumn, after Ms Winfrey had signed a multi-year deal to create programmes for the streaming platform.

But the announcement on the Sussexes’ new Instagram page took Buckingham Palace by surprise, with the Queen’s private secretary Sir Edward Young and Prince Charles’s counterpart Clive Alderton both contacting Samantha Cohen, then the couple’s private secretary, requesting more details.

“The Apple TV series was a bit problematic because senior palace staff were given minimal information about it," added a royal source.

“Meghan had insisted it be announced on Instagram because they had just launched the Sussex Royal page and wanted to make all the big announcements on there. But no one had seen the fine print. There was uncertainty over the commercial terms of the deal.”

The palace briefed at the time that the collaboration to “accelerate change for a more compassionate, connected and positive society” was the result of “several months of discussions” with Ms Winfrey, who had attended the couple’s wedding in May 2018.

'Surviving' rather than 'thriving'

Confirming the Duke would be donating his fee to a mental health charity, a spokesman for Kensington Palace said the multi-part documentary series "will focus on both mental illness and mental wellness, inspiring viewers to have an honest conversation about the challenges each of us faces, and how to equip ourselves with the tools to thrive, rather than to simply survive".

The Duchess would later use the same terminology to describe how she was “surviving” rather than “thriving” in the Royal family during an October 2019 interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby.

During the Oprah interview, the Duchess suggested that she went into the Royal family “naively” and that they “only wanted to have the same type of role that exists”.

Citing royals who “earn a living, live on palace grounds, can support the Queen if and when called upon", she said: “We weren’t reinventing the wheel here.”

However, there was no precedent for full-time working royals to earn money outside the institution. Figures like the Earl and Countess of Wessex had to give up successful careers to devote their lives to public service.

While Prince Andrew’s daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, do earn their own living, they are not and never have been full-time working royals.

The royal source added: “There was a constant dialogue from the couple along the lines of: “Why can’t we do this? You can’t stop us from doing what we want to do".

Calling the shots

“They were calling the shots and would be the ones instructing the press office on what line to put out.”

The Duchess suggested in the Oprah interview that the institution did not do enough to defend her against negative press coverage. But insiders on both sides of the Atlantic revealed the Duchess did have a great deal of control over the couple’s PR, writing her own Instagram posts and even selecting the imagery to go with them.

“Meghan was the one controlling the timing of announcements, and doing a lot of the planning,” said one source. “She had a grid and was plotting the cadence and order in which all of their plans would come to fruition. There was a sense that Meghan thought she knew what was best for them.”

Another insider revealed how royal aides were left in a quandary after Meghan attended a baby shower in New York without taking any palace staff with her.

As guests including Serena Williams and Amal Clooney began to arrive at the exclusive Mark Hotel alongside trolleys-full of baby items, staff back in London wondered how they should register the freebies in accordance with the Royal family's strict rules on declaring gifts.

“That was a bit of a headache, not least because no one from the palace was there to oversee what was happening,” said the source. “The American lot were the ones dealing with the baby shower.”

Eyebrows were also raised four months later when the couple attended the Lion King premiere in London, when they met the singer Beyonce and her rapper husband Jay Z.

Voiceover work

Video footage later emerged of the Duke touting the Duchess's skills as a voice over artist to Disney CEO Bob Iger. “You know she does voiceovers, right?” he told the media mogul. “She’s really interested,” to which Mr Iger replied: “We’d love to try”.

In January 2020, it emerged that the Duchess had signed a deal with Disney to do a voiceover for a wildlife charity called Elephants Without Borders, having reportedly recorded it before the couple left for their six-week sabbatical in Canada in November 2019 to consider their future.

The couple said Disney had made a donation to their charity work on the environment and conservation.

Holed up in a multi-million pound mansion on Vancouver Island over Christmas 2019, the couple are understood to have masterminded their departure from the Royal family with the help of Mr Genow, Mr Meyer, Mr Collins and Ms Thomas Morgan.

Around the same time, the Duchess’s company, Frim Fram Inc, was moved out of California and incorporated in Delaware, which tax experts suggested could have been done to avoid being hit with tax liabilities in California.

Corporation filings seen by The Telegraph showed that the move was made on New Year's Eve, while the couple were still in Canada. Mr Meyer and Mr Genow are listed as CEO and secretary of Frim Fram Inc.

With its flexible business laws and low personal income tax rates, Delaware is known for being home to more corporations than people, with almost 65 per cent of Fortune 500 companies incorporated in the state.

A source said at the time that as the Duchess was no longer resident in California it was appropriate for the registration to be moved. It is understood that the company receives payments for work undertaken by the Duchess before she joined the Royal Family, such as residual payments from her acting work.

The company was described by the source as "largely inactive". On March 10 last year, the company’s status changed from “active” to “merged out”.

In January 2020, the Duke had his last meeting with Quibi at Soho Works, a workspace in London’s White City. Previous conversations had taken place while the Duke was at Kensington Palace and at Frogmore, the couple’s Windsor home.

The discussions with Quibi, understood to have been about a sustainable tourism project, never came to anything. Its app fell out of the list of the 50 most-downloaded free iPhone apps in the US a week after it was released in April 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic put the global economy on hold.

In late 2020, the streaming platform shut down after just over seven months of operation due to a lack of interest and profitability. Of the initial £1.3 billion raised, Quibi only returned £250 million.

On October 22, 2020, Mr Katzenberg reportedly told the employees to listen to the song "Get Back Up Again" from the Dreamworks movie Trolls as he announced that they would be fired.

By then, the Duke and Duchess had announced they had signed a multi-million dollar deal to make content for Netflix. Three months later, they announced they had also signed a similarly lucrative deal to make podcasts for Spotify.