#dollar store Doomsday

[itsnothingofinterest]

Hey hope you're doing ok with the recent bnha discourse?

Still holding out hope for shigaraki/tenko and good writing 👍👍

Can I ask you, if you ever find it kind of off-putting (like I do) when some bnha fans commit to the idea that Deku and the other younger heroes will be the ones to change their society for the better, after the villains are killed?

As if purely heroic methods were really capable of changing hero society, when the very best that the innocent people in bnha have done from their constant protectors, the heroes, is toss the hero kids a shirt and some dollar store med. Items??

(To say nothing of the government corruption that came to be under All-might's nose, that Deku and the other heroes haven't thought about once.)

And they honestly believe that's the best outcome...

It feels either very optimistic or unknowing at best, and completely ignorant at worst.

Do you think so or differently?

Oh yeah, no I totally get what you mean; it kinda looks like we’re on course for a lot to get worse actually. And it all comes back to how poorly they handled the villains; both their talking points, and their failure to save them.

We just have not been given any indication that the next gen are going to do anything better than their predecessors; they're ending their arcs side by side with them as equals and partners after all.

Rather than improving things, they're basically a carbon copy of the last generation; which I feel is exemplified in how the final battle of this war ending in a retread of Kamino. Except like I said, in some areas it feels like it'll just get worse. This retread of Kamino ending not in an arrest, but in a murder; something I find very worrying given Deku's status as the next symbol (which, despite all criticism of All Might in the same roll, Deku has become anyway) because of the impact that'd have on treatment of villains by the heroes Deku inspires. Add in their treatment of Machia & their support of Hawks' handling of Twice and it just doesn't look good. Oh and if that same crowd gets wind of his status as 'The Greatest Hero Who Saves By Putting You Out Of Your Misery' that'll be even more catastrophic. (Especially once the Singularity doomsday starts up for real.)

Meanwhile, what little progress has been made on a societal level is either purely for the heroes benefits, like the civilians acting more grateful to the heroes (and as you say, the results of that are pretty middling, amounting to first aid & a shirt); or else maybe baby steps in the right direction like Shoji's answer to the heteromorph plot. Baby steps they do not have time for, mind you. And even then, that's still a 'maybe' because Shoji's not actually planning anything different from normal hero activity: just be inspiring and hope people follow your example. Meanwhile everything else societal that brought us here, corruption in the system, poor treatment or handing of quirks, general prejudice; it's all just gone unaddressed.

Probably because the points with which they used to be addressed, the League, instead got their plot points changed to revolve around motives more personal, less serious, less justifiable, and more easily addressable by the kids. Y'know; Toga's plot used to be about society's treatment of the other but then was about her wanting love, Dabi's was about people in power abusing their power but then was about him wanting attention, and Shigaraki's was about the lie of hero society and the complacency of the people it inspired, but Deku couldn't do anything about that so instead it because about Tenko's hatred towards his house. But then Deku still couldn't do anything about that so instead it became about Tenko's self-hated. And then Deku still couldn't address that either all too well, really, so we instead got 'It was AFO All Along'; and that Deku could handle with trivial ease. What self-respecting All Might clone couldn't punch AFO?

To use a metaphor I think Tomura would appreciate; it's like they all turned on easy mode, and Deku especially turned on baby mode, and it feels like we're all going to get the bad ending as a result of them skipping so many side-quests, dialogue trees, or special objectives. Personally speaking, any hope I had in things turning around was based in how the villains would be handled, both a) because I expected how they were handled would reflect how their societal motives would be handled(i.e. how Deku saved Tenko would inform us of how he'd save other Tenkos), and b) because I expected they'd need the help and perspective.

Needless to say, I've not been left with much hope that things will turn around.

So yeah, right there with you hoping Tomura could somehow come back, partially because that's the only part of this ending that feels salvageable even by his long-shot odds. But boy is the rest a mess of unfortunate implications beneath the veneer of how "The Day is Saved"...Man, Deku really is an All Might clone.

[addgg-taylor]

MTG: The Unstable Ground We Stand On

The year was 2013. Gatecrash had just come out to mixed reception, but I didn't even know what Magic was. I was in high school, and my best friend (at the time) was on a vacation to Disney World. So, I went to sit with my second best friend, but couldn't find them. That's when I found an old friend of mine playing a card game with them, and that game was Magic. I learned about it, looked into it, played Duels of the Planeswalkers (remember when that was a thing?), and decided it was for me! Now, I could have gotten a starter deck, but I was laser focused on one thing: A box that said Core Set. This was the M14 Deckbuilder's Toolkit, and I got it because that's what all my friends started Magic with. Granted, that probably wasn't the smartest idea, but I'm the type to jump off the deep end; if I'm getting into a hobby, I may as well make sure I'm prepared for the long haul. The Deckbuilder's Toolkit had everything I needed, the start of a collection, and most importantly? Lands. It had lands. You didn't need to buy them from a game store for up to (or even exceeding) a dollar a pop. You didn't have to rely on people liquidating their collection to stock up. You could just buy a box and have land cards to build decks with, and I remember buying toolkits just for lands and boosters. Now, you can't do that. If you're just getting started, you either have to borrow them, switch them between decks, open them in packs, or buy them on the secondary market. (That last one is pretty ironic, because Wizards of the Coast has a rule against acknowledging the secondary market.) And, yet there's no reasonable, mainstream way to get land cards. Some game stores will let you keep them after an event, but I've only been to one store that did that. (Read: did. They don't anymore because people weren't saving enough for others.)

Back on topic though, long time players probably made note of the time I started Magic; I started with Magic 14, which came between the Return to Ravnica block... and the Theros block, widely regarded as one of the most heavily unbalanced and mechanically awkward blocks of its time. So, after that, people reasonably wanted a palette cleanser, and they had it. The Tarkir block was amazing despite being chronologically confusing, but in the storm of chaos, there was warmth. The Core Sets would always be there to serve as the foundational building blocks, and get this; they gave players a moment to see where the main characters were on their journeys. These weren't just foundational gameplay wise, but story wise, and gave WotC a moment to show everyone what's going on in the background. They also ensured that, between the sets with heavy mechanical ties or complexity, there was always solid ground to stand on. New players could seek out these Core Sets as a good starting ground, and experienced players found themselves in familiar territory with highly desired reprints. However, despite no reasonable player protesting against Core Sets, the vocalization of players wanting more of their favorite planes was taken in a way that was bad for everyone (in my opinion).

After Magic Origins, the game switched to a two set block system, and suddenly lost the Core Set. From a game design standpoint, this is doomsday. This is how TCGs die if they don't have a dedicated, permanent selection of cards, and yet Magic somehow survived to realize their mistake. In the background, however, they were still making a more gross mistake, trying to capitalize on Elder Dragon Highlander. Around the time I got into Magic, they'd begun making Commander decks, and at first these weren't too problematic. They were once a year drops that let players get into this entirely different casual format. While Standard was limited on card selection, and Modern and Legacy a coin flip simulator, Commander allowed players to throw their collection into the ring without regard for the hottest cards. The general consensus was that you could play what you wanted, whether you had a few Standard sets worth of cards or flocked to Modern, Legacy, and Vintage.

Fast forward to War of the Spark. Now, the two block system was dying. The war on blocks had begun, with Mark Rosewater practically blowing off anyone that critiqued the change with the same "this is what you wanted, right?" Players really wanted to see previous planes, but instead of Wizards trying to revisit them in earnest, they shifted into rapid fire mode. With only one set per plane now, they began spitting out half-baked revisits that barely touched upon older planes, and tore through new planes and major events without putting much thought into them. Stories would begin to go undercooked, and with every "you wouldn't want to be stuck on a plane you don't like" from MaRo, an interesting plane or event is left unexplored past the surface level. Additionally, to add more ammo to this machine gun of mistakes, they threw the Core Set in the trash. They tried to kill it off once and realized their mistake, but after Adventures in the Forgotten Realms it was dead for good. Looking at things now, this has all caused Magic to fall apart.

Magic is the worst it's ever been for any player that isn't wholly invested in and unwaveringly loyal to the game. The beginner has the worst footing in many years, with the Local Game Store forced to leverage all the responsibility for getting new players into the game. Players who want to learn can do so for free, but the first step into the door beyond learning is a brick wall. Starter Kits have finally made a resurgence, which is a step in the right direction. However, you likely wouldn't know they existed if you didn't look online, which is antithetical to the fact that you'll usually have to go to a game store in order to play in events anyway. Additionally, with MSRPs being stripped off many products, it's the most expensive (even relatively speaking) it's ever been to start playing. As for experienced players? The story is the hardest it's ever been to keep up with, thanks especially to the fact that an entire plane's story has to start and end in one set. Players should be able to get the gist simply by looking at the set, but instead, hastily written stories with declining storytelling aspects do most of the talking (and it's assumed you've read them). This problem is becoming painfully obvious now; basically everyone that's died recently has been brought back to some extent, making it apparent that the folks in charge of story direction are leaning on old planeswalkers instead of innovating with new ones. Mu Yangling and Jiang Yanggu, Basri Ket, Niko Aris, Calix, Kasmina, Davriel, Dack Fayden, and Wrenn have either been ignored or cut from the story. Meanwhile, every member of the original five planeswalkers has completed their story arc and suffered some major fate that should have ended their tale, and yet they've all come back; Ajani and Jace were compleated, Garruk was corrupted by the Chain Veil, Liliana was hunted down, and Chandra was forced to face her corrupted fling Nissa. All of them are now totally fine, with Jace set to appear in Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

That's just scratching the surface of problems plaguing veterans. From a gameplay perspective, Standard is the most complex it's ever been, thanks to a three-year cycle being introduced and a constant torrent of increasingly complex mechanics. From a financial perspective, products aren't just the most expensive they've ever been, but there's basically a new product every single month now. Unless you stick to a single format (which can still be wallet-busting in its own right), you're bombarded with new content. Experimentation is great, but with the constant output, Wizards is forced to compete with itself; this has led to the worst level of power creep in many years. (You could probably reprint the Mirrodin block into Standard at this rate and only have to ban Skullclamp.) Every format has been turned on its back by the creep, from evoke elementals plaguing every deck in Modern to companions haunting Legacy and Vintage; worst of all, however, has been the fact that Standard is incredibly difficult to innovate in because of just how many blatantly busted cards are being printed. Oko was the thunder in the distance, and a storm has been pelting the format at increasing intensity since. We've reached a point where many blatantly powerful cards are considered fine in the format, because Wizards would rather keep bombs like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse legal than go on a banning spree for every seriously problematic card.

The worst part about this is that we likely wouldn't have reached this point if we still had a Core Set every year. The intentionally dumbed-down power of Core Sets is part of what helped keep power creep in check, as they couldn't go too far if they wanted to make the cards relevant. The ability to reprint many cards back into Standard gave players a comfortable baseline, let new players enter the game more easily, and made it easier to acquire classic cards. The break in the story allowed us to get a better look at where planeswalkers were and what they were doing, or it let us step back to see their history. It let Wizards introduce new characters more freely, not having to worry about their immediate implications. And, most importantly. if it was still around, there'd be far less arguments for one set per plane.

[ladyyellow-thegremlin]

Hello, I’ve lurked here on whump tumblr for a while, but now I’ve finally worked myself up to post some of my whump writing, so here’s some of my poor whumpee dude trying to put his life back together and also helping a stray dog :)

Trigger warnings: implied past abuse of a minor, reference to scars, self dehumanization (character refers to himself as a mutt), implied past animal abuse. I think that’s about it? Never done this before so please forgive me if I did the trigger warnings wrong

The fridge was empty. He’d scraped out the last of the peanut butter three days ago. Even his stock of energy drinks was long gone. That was fine, he’d gone for longer without food. He knew it was pointless to put it off, he’d have to go out for groceries at some point, but he couldn’t bring himself to go out of the apartment. Out where people could see him, out where children would hide behind their parents at the sight of him. He hated summer. In winter at least he could cover up, nobody had to see his frankensteined body. He’d considered wearing winter clothes anyway, but even he wasn’t crazy enough to wear a turtleneck sweater in ninety degree heat. Starving was better than heatstroke. Who knows, maybe someone would drop by and help him out. He laughed bitterly, nobody would help him, not again. How many times had he done this? He never answered his phone, and every time somebody had dropped by, he’d just told them to get lost, he didn’t need help. He’d go out that night, yeah, that was a good plan. Same one as always. He’d put off getting stared at until he was in the store, at least. Damnit, that’s stupid. Why put it off, right? Might as well get it over with.

He considered putting on some pants instead of shorts, but decided against it. The marks around his neck were what he really cared about covering, if those were on display then who cared about the rest. He grabbed his wallet, keys and pocket knife before peeking out the door to make sure no neighbors were around. When he was sure no one was coming, he exhaled and stepped outside, walking as quickly as he could to his car without seeming suspicious.

The shopping trip went as usual, stocking up like a broke doomsday prepper, playing “grocery aisle Packman”, and receiving a few disdainful looks from a mother to end the game. ‘Cause of course, how dare he come out in public, make everybody else’s day uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry sir, but your card declined.”

“What? I-I—“ he looked to see if he had any cash in his wallet, two one dollar bills. Great. He was holding up the line, he could feel people looking at him, shit, shit. He had to get out of here. “Never mind, it’s fine, I-I’ll just put these—put these back,” he grabbed the items and hastily put them back in the cart, dropping more than a few. “I’m sorry,” he laughed awkwardly.

After some Grocery Aisle Packman 2: where the hell did I get these things from boogaloo; he hightailed it back to his car and took his phone off of ‘do not disturb’ for the first time in a few weeks. He didn’t know many people, so there weren’t that many texts. Mainly just his sister and therapist. Heh. His mom had texted him too.

Are you okay? Your therapist just called and said you haven’t been coming to your appointments again.

I know you’re there. Please answer.

I’m cutting you off until you start going to your appointments again, please call me.

Damnit. He called her.

“Hey Mom.”

“Conner, I was worried sick! What have you been doing?”

“I’m sorry, I forgot to check my phone.”

“For two weeks? Please don’t do that to me, I was just about to drive down and check on you. Seriously, how much effort does it take to check your phone? It’s the least you could do.”

“Sorry.”

“Why haven’t you been going to your appointments again? And don’t say you were sick, you used that excuse twice already. Even if you were sick, you could at least text him and let him know that you can’t make it.”

“Alright, fine. You wanna know why? I can’t take it! I can’t take going outside and having everyone…everyone…stare at me, okay? That’s why; you happy?”

“No, I’m not happy. Frankly, get a grip. You can’t live your life like this. Suck it up and go outside, people don’t notice you as much as you think.”

“Why’d you have to cut me off? I can’t get to the appointment if I don’t have money for gas.”

“Because that was the only way to get your attention, and don’t change the subject.”

“Fine. I’ll go. I’ll go, alright? Can I have some money for food?”

“You let your fridge go empty again?” She sighed. “How many days?”

“…three.”

“Damnit Conner! I’m sick and tired of taking care of you, you’ve got to pull it together. What do you think starving yourself’s going to do? You’re always complaining about looking like a freak, you know half your problem would be solved if you’d just put on some weight.”

“I know, I know.”

“I’m going to give you some money for food and gas, but until I see you taking some responsibility and making an effort to get your life together, you’re on your own.”

“Mo—“

“Don’t give me that, this is as hard for me as it is for you, but it’s for your own good.” She hung up. He checked his account, a hundred dollars. He didn’t want to go back into the store, he’d just go drive through someplace.

He hadn’t been outside in two weeks, so he figured he’d take his mom’s advice and get out for a bit, but he still went to a cemetery instead of a real park. Well, it was a step in the right direction. He sat down on a bench. Just as he opened his food, he heard a rustling. His hand darted to his pocket knife, but he relaxed when a stray dog emerged from the bushes. It was skin and bones, and he could see it had a knot of bone where it’s leg had been broken. His heart broke when he saw the strip of fabric binding its mouth shut. He took out his burger and tore it in half, holding it out to coax the dog over. He’d gotten two burgers, cause he’d figured he might as well get one to save for later. Giving up half of one wasn’t a big deal.

“That’s it, that’s good, right over here.” When the dog was close enough, he slowly reached out to untie it. It shied away. “It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you, you’re safe.”

It retreated; he stayed still, moving with the slow deliberation he had learned so well, so many years ago.

Eventually he managed to get close enough to begin gingerly removing the fabric. “You didn’t do anything to deserve this, did you? Who would do this to a poor little thing like you?” The dog spooked a few more times, but he was patient. He knew what it was like, seeing everything through a lens of pain and terror.

The last knot was too tight to untie, he’d have to use his pocket knife. The dog retreated again at the sight of it, it took at least fifteen minutes to calm her down enough to cut the fabric. “Shit, it’s okay. Good girl, you’re a girl, right? Yeah, it’s over, good job.” He gave her the half of his burger. That wasn’t much, she’d probably die out here soon, with the broken leg and all. Something in him couldn’t bear that thought. Maybe it was just because she reminded him of himself when he was a kid. In that case he was probably just a narcissistic bastard, but he still wanted to help her. There he went again, not giving a damn about the people who loved him and then dropping everything to help a mutt. “Well, us mutts have to look out for each other, huh?” His therapist would be mad at him for calling himself a mutt again, but honestly at this point he’d rather be one than whatever he was right now. She hesitantly eased down beside him. He smiled and reached out as if asking her if it was okay to pet her. She didn’t move away. “Aw, thanks for sticking around. You’re not scared of me, are you?”

That’s why he loved animals so much, they treated him like a normal human being. Not a victim, not a freak, not a pathetic man child, just another friend. He jolted when he heard someone yelling.

“Where the hell is that damn dog!”

He panicked, he couldn’t leave her here, not with Sh—whoever that was. He took the other half and used it to lead her into his car. “What the hell are you doing with my dog?” She started growling, he shut the door before she could jump out.

“Your dog? I don’t—I don’t see a collar.” Come on, don’t stutter now, get a grip. “I’m taking her to a shelter.”

“I paid good money for that thing!”

“Well then you should have had enough money to feed her.”

“She’s a beast, keeps trying to bite me, she’ll attack you too.”

“She seemed perfectly sweet until you showed up,” he glared, “I used to live with a man like you, believe me, I know a violent son of a bitch when I see one.”

“You little—I could break you like a toothpick, you damn twink.”

“And I—“ He pulled out his pocket knife. “—could stab you.”

“Fine, take the mutt. Don’t come crying to me when she tears a chunk of whatever flesh you’ve got off,” the man turned and walked away.

Conner got in the car and locked the doors. He rested his head against the steering wheel. His knuckles were white gripping it, he was shaking. Come on, breathe, in and out; calm down. That’s not Shane, he’s not going to hurt you. After a few minutes he’d finally calmed down enough to drive.

“That was scary, huh? Yeah, it’s okay now though, you’re safe,” he reached back behind his seat to pet her, then turned the ignition and drove away.

…

He pulled into the parking lot at his apartment complex and checked to see that the coast was clear before hurriedly leading the dog into his apartment with half of his second burger. He technically wasn’t supposed to bring animals inside, and talking to people wasn’t a fun time even when he wasn’t breaking any rules.

“I’m an idiot for doing this, you know that right?” He shut the door and fed her the half, then took out his half and slumped into the solitary beanbag chair that was the only furniture in his living room besides a tv and some boxes. “Welp, welcome to the hobbit hole. It’s not much but it works well enough I guess, not that you care, cause you’re a dog…yeah.” She sniffed at the last bite in his hand. “Hey now, leave me some okay? I gave you three quarters, let me have this,” he laughed.

He spent the rest of the evening without incident. Video games, a bit of mindless cleaning, checking the fridge even though he knew nothing was in there. He knew he had to take her outside, but he didn’t have any more food to coax her with. He reluctantly grabbed the bit of rope he kept in a little box in his closet and went to tie it around her neck.

“Hey…I’m sorry about this, I just need to take you outside, okay? I wish I didn’t have to…” he felt sick as he tied it, he did it as loose as possible. “There we go, it won’t be long, ‘kay? I’ll—I’ll do it to myself after, to make it up.”

He led her outside, silently praying she didn’t hate him for this, going slowly to make sure he didn’t tug on her. It was well after midnight at this point, so there wasn’t that much risk in being seen. It was a beautiful night, a cool breeze cut through the oppressive summer heat. The nighttime was the loveliest time to him; cooler, quiet, no one to bother him. It didn’t feel as lonely, cause being alone was natural at night. Even so, tonight wasn’t lonely at all, tonight he had a friend.

He headed back inside when a car with blaring music pulled into the parking lot and a couple of drunk kids his age piled out. He slipped back into his apartment just as they reached the stairs, shutting the door just a bit too hard. The dog jumped. “Sorry,” he winced. He took the rope off of the dog’s neck and tied it around his own. “There, we’re even.”

He watched some tv for a bit, wadded a pair of his socks into a ball and threw it for her for a while. He wondered what he’d do about all this tomorrow, probably tell his mom about her. He wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Finally, he climbed in bed. She jumped up on the foot of it. He crawled down to sleep at the foot of the bed with her; sleeping with her at his feet felt too weird.

[coreyww]

The Owl House Except Everyone Plays Magic the Gathering AU

[Part One: More to come but this post was getting long with just what I have SO FAR]

Luz early-Season One:

Playstyle: “Five Color Good Stuff” / Lots of Janky Bullshit

Takes lands out of her deck to make room for better cards which she cannot play because her mana base ends up being just two tap lands and a Snow Mountain.

“Okay so how does the Stack work again? Okay got it” Doesn’t get it at all.

Says “HAHAHA you’ve activated my Trap Card” whenever she plays anything 100% of the time.

Eda

Playstyle: Spellslinger / Storm / "Chaos, if you're feeling nasty"

Runs the game shop

Unclear if she actually owns the building or has just squatted there for God Knows How Long 

Tries to pretend she doesn’t know or care much about playing MtG, is actually a gigantic nerd about it

“Still can’t believe they banned ante just because that’s technically and factually illegal. Pffft. Cowards”

Keeps trying to teach the actual children how to cheat at actual gambling but she’s mostly kidding (…probably)

“Awww it does my heart good to see you kids have a good time hehe…now buy a collectors booster or get out, I’ve got bills to pay, kid”

Willow

Playstyle: Tap Forest Followed by Curbstomp

Every deck has Green in it. All of them. If she ever had to play a deck with a land base of only Wastes, she’d somehow find a way to make it generate Green mana.

Her spirit animals are Rampant Growth, Giant Growth, and Llanowar Elves.

Doesn’t look like much at first until does some infinite mana bullshit, does a ridiculous amount of damage, and obliterates an opponent and all the hopes and dreams they ever had without mercy.

“It just makes sproutling tokens, what are you even worried about?” is the sound you hear before you die

Make a shitty comment about her friends during her game and she’ll Trample and Double Strike you in Real Life

Amity early-Season One

Playstyle: Blue Mana / Artifact Shenanigans / All Manner of Control Fuckery

A total Spike

Is rich and thus plays Modern

Good at the game but in an assholy kinda way.

Decks are loaded with $50+ cards.

Memorizes every spoiler card before Prerelease. Not an exaggeration, literally takes the time to actually memorize them.

“Wow, that’s a good spell ... how sad for you” (Casts Counterspell)

Gets cocky and toys with Luz during their first game until Luz gets the win and Amity has a mental breakdown in a very noticeable embarrassing way in the middle of the game store.

Gus

Playstyle: Flicker, Bounce, and Enter the Battlefield Triggers for Days

Doesn’t always win, but he has fun just watching something cool go off

Doesn’t have a lot of self confidence so their turns often take like over five minutes

Very excited about showing you the new sleeves and deck box he bought

“LUZ! YOU DID GREAT! I went 0-3 myself but who cares about that, look! I got a deckbox with Yargle on it! I don’t have a frog deck to put in it now, but when I do, watch out” (finger guns)

Belos

Playstyle: Thousand Dollar Decks Loaded with Nothing But Bullshit

(Posting on Reddit) “And that’s why proxies and casual play are ruining Magic the Gathering and new product shouldn’t be sent to stores that allow either. Furthermore, women—“

Motherfucker has the Power Nine in a Legacy deck and uses that shit against CHILDREN

He’ll use Mass Land Destruction, he don’t give a fuck

ALL the free Sac outlets, can’t get enough of that shit

“Surely you’re not afraid of a friendly casual game?” (Turn One: Black Lotus into Doomsday)

Seriously, fuck this guy

[thenefilim]

Review - Doomsday Meteor (2023)

25 years after the original, The Asylum gives us a dollar store version of Armageddon.

https://www.voicesfromthebalcony.com/2024/01/27/doomsday-meteor-2023-review/

[earningselite]

Don't Say We Didn't Warn You - More Downside Ahead In Store For This Sector

Waiting for the upcoming recession to head back into the stock market? You may be waiting a while... #sp500 #spy #bullmarket #bearmarket #newsletter #trading #earnings $spy $ndx $qqq $xlp $rsps #consumerstaples

AS MEDIA OUTLETS CONTINUE TO PRINT DOOMSDAY DATA ABOUT AN UPCOMING RECESSION, BIG WALL STREET FIRMS ARE VOTING WITH THEIR DOLLARS THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE On August 15th, an Earnings Elite article was published about a big player in the Consumer Staples space entering a bear market. Well, if a rising tide raises all ships, a falling tide seems to sink them all as well. The chart included here is a…

[themikithornburg]

ELMER MCCURDY

In honor of September, or of outlawry, perhaps... or maybe just of nostalgia, I’m getting this online, where I hear that it, like everything else, will stay ineradicably until doomsday or until the Yellowstone volcano goes off, whichever comes first.

This poem was written in 1977 by my late husband, Thomas R. Thornburg. It’s included in his Collected Poems, available on Amazon. It presents the history of the 20th century in a nutshell – a largish nutshell but a nice, knobbly, crunchy one.

Elmer McCurdy (1869-1911)  (1911-

     1976)

(HISTORICAL NOTE:  At the bicentennial celebrating the birth of these United States, a curious discovery was made. The mummified remains of Elmer McCurdy, who was known in his first life as The Oklahoma Badman, were discovered hanging in a Los Angeles carnival called “Laugh in the Dark Funhouse.”  Elmer, who was discovered by a crewman for the Six Million Dollar Man television show, had in his first life been a train robber operating out of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. In 1911 he was slain in a desperate gun battle, thus ending his first life. The sheriff who killed Elmer sold him to a carnival sideshow. So began Elmer’s second life, a life in which he was mistaken for a wax dummy and exhibited all over the United States. In 1940, Elmer was stored in a warehouse with a collection of wax dummies [real dummies, if we assume that Elmer was never a dummy] and in 1968 Elmer was sold again, then again, then again, and he hung around until the TV crewman, fiddling with him, caused his arm to fall off and reported that one of the figures was no dummy. After he was formally identified, Elmer McCurdy was trundled back to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and buried under a large granite boulder. Thus his career, begun in 1869, ended in 1976.)

In Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where the rolling purple plains

Have turned to dust beneath the wheel of Time,

At the turn of this last century, having come around to crime,

Elmer McCurdy turned to robbing trains.

There the ghost of John Brown’s body walks the bloody Kansas flat,

And the shades of Frank and Jesse James ride by in mask and hat;

What the freezing winds of winter or the deadly summer suns

Will not tender, men may render with a gun.

O, there’s just as many live outside as live inside the law

And old Elmer was as far-out then as any ever saw;

When he strapped a reputation on and rode to Dead Man’s Pass,

He said the world could kiss his outlaw ass.

He was so mad, so truly bad, so dangerous to know,

He was Manfred in a cowboy suit; he was Grendel on the go;

He’d a six-gun for his Cicero and dynamite for brains,

And he hated anything as straight as trains.

            Hurdy-gurdy

            Down and dirty

            Elmer McCurdy

            Whoopee ti

Now when Elmer commenced blowing up the bends of all the track,

Stationmasters of disaster started crying for some slack,

And bankers started bitching as they sang the business blues

And they asked their sassy sheriff what to do,

            What to do?

            What to do, do, do?

            O, they asked their sassy sheriff what to do?

Now, this sheriff was as bad an inlaw as you ever saw;

He was Donder on a drunk man, he was Blitzen on the draw;

He was Una in a union suit, a buckskin Charlemagne,

And he hated folks for robbing, hopping, or for pulling train.

So he printed up a circular and sent it all around,

And it said that they intended to put Elmer in the ground,

And it said if anybody else would like to join the fun,

There was money for a posse to keep Elmer on the run.

It was nineteen and eleven in the merry month of May

When Elmer saddled up and rode to rob one sunny day,

And he rode from dawn to daylight and he yodeled as he rode

For the silver in the saddlebags of swag that he bestrode;

And he whistled quite merrily as he rode out of the draw

But dumb behind him rode the dogging Law.

Elmer went about his work through June and through July,

And he robbed quite conscientiously as summer cantered by;

Through the grim dog days of August and in warm September rains

Old Elmer never missed a day of work at robbing trains.

In the dappled chase of Autumn when the wild October wind

Raced the chuffing locomotive down the chute to Dead Man’s Bend,

Elmer rode like sixty-seven, like the Devil on the loose

Going crazy in the saddle when the iron from his cayuse

Was arcing fire from rail to rail coming up on that caboose;

He’d a hotbox on his starboard hip and a cog caught in his brain,

While underneath his Stetson ran a single-track refrain,

And he would have died unsatisfied if he could not rob trains.

All the passengers was puzzled until Elmer made it clear

To stick ‘em up as he threw down against the engineer;

And when he ran things down for them the crew began to shake,

But the whistle blew, and the brakeman knew, and he threw down the brake.

Then the people started grinning when he reined up on the track

And he nabbed a couple railroad cops and robbed ‘em back to back;

He was laughing like a goblin as the people passed the word

That it was hurdy-gurdy

            Down and dirty

            Elmer McCurdy

            Whoopee ti

But it was his final caper there that Elmer ever turned

For he had infuriated far too many he had burned;

You may read it in the papers there, the Oklahoma press

Says he tried to draw against John Law and came out second best.

O, the Pawhuskans applauded when they brought old Elmer in

And their preachers copped an opportunity to steal on sin;

And the teachers taught the sons and daughters truths about the gun,

But the truth of truths

                        they could not use      

                                    and still abuse

                                                            is                                                         

Elmer did it all for fun.

            Hurdy-gurdy

            Down and dirty

            Elmer McCurdy

            Whoopee ti

It’s down in books in libraries if any think I lie:

How they claimed they could cool Elmer’s act and hang him high and dry;

But Elmer fooled the hangman and the folks when he went West

With a 32:20 dum-dum slug behind his Sunday vest.

Well, the undertaker undertook to empty Elmer out

And had boxed him up quite proper when the folks began to shout

(Underneath the rouge and lipstick you could see old Elmer grin)

That there was no ground for miles around that he could put him in.

 Well, that puts the undertaker into something of a stew,

So he goes and asks the Sheriff what the hell he’s gonna do?

And the Sheriff said, “I delivered him dead; now you’ll have to decide.”

Well, the undertaker wrung his hands, and stomped his feet, and cried,

And I think he went and took a drink, and walked around outside

A little while (about a mile) and shook his head and sighed;

Then he went back home and got a comb and parted Elmer on the side,

And he put his robber outfit on him like he used to ride,

And then, dig:  he took his biggest rig and ran him up on formaldehyde,

And this coroner hung him up inside his corner closet where he dried,

And he said, “God!  He’s purty!”

            Hurdy-gurdy

            Down and dirty

            Elmer McCurdy

            Whoopee ti

So, though they could not make, they could not take, nor put him into jail,

They socked his hard-case carcass on the old South-Western Mail,

And if you laid a sawbuck down you drew nine dollars change

To see old train-robbing Elmer robbing people from the train.

And they hung a sign around his neck that said to come and see

The Oklahoma Bad-man (women and children admitted free).

So from Tulsa down to Ponca City Elmer made the scene,

From Shawnee down to Bartlesville and all spots in between,

From Wichita to Enid Elmer made a million miles

Exchanging trains through sun and rain, and all the changing styles.

The years ran by like rabbits; people did what people do;

The Yanks went over and came back, and twenty- three skidoo;

America went on the wagon, people stayed at home,

And Henry Sinclair pulled a caper called the Teapot Dome;

We kidnapped Tutankhamen and put him in the bank

And Richard Loeb and Leopold kidnapped Bobby Franks;

We dedicated Lincoln and earned the world’s applause

And then we put Marcus Garvey in the can for breaking nigger laws;

An Oklahoma Walton tried to stand up like a man

And in due process was impeached by the local Ku Klux Klan;

Half the nation spun around when the wild tornadoes blew

And the other half hummed right along to Rhapsody in Blue;

Folks pitched in to bathtub gin or radiator raw;

Jack Scopes got busted for trying to make a monkey out of the law;

The eight-hour workday was declared to be When Day Is Done,

And Our Lord Ford sent down the word to give everybody one;

Gene Tunney took a funny count that made the people swear

And Sacco and Vanzetti took a hot-squat in the chair;

Alphonse Capone took a fall one Philadelphia morn,

Steamboat Willie made the scene and Mickey Mouse was born;

And folks said, “Hi!” to passersby, or “How ya doin, fine?”

And Al Capone sent Bugs Moran a funny valentine;

Mrs. Harding showed the world the inconstancy of class,

And funny Albert theorized the inconstancy of mass;

The Scottsboro Boys got bum-rapped for that Alabama thing,

And Herbert Hoover signed into law a song no one can sing;

FDR cut his new deal to keep us free from fear

And when he asked us what we wanted, we said, “We Want Beer!”

One hundred thousand homeless kids roamed the Big Apple’s digs,

And Walter Disney pork-barreled an empire from Three Little Pigs;

The bottom broke out of the joke; the nation was a sink;

We prohibited Prohibition and everybody took a drink;

The Catholic League of Decency decided what was meet,

And Irish Catholic coppers killed strikers in the street;

John Dillinger took in a movie one Chicago day,

He took his ticket C.O.D. and came back D.O.A.

Joe Louis flattened Maxie Baer to let the whole world know,

And John L. flattened Bill Hutcheson and started the C.I.O.

Then Roosevelt ran past Alf Landon; Jesse Owens ran like scat,

And fourteen thousand Goodyear Rubber Workers sat down flat.

Three thousand Americans organized to fight the King of Spain

While General Motors tried to flush their families down the drain.

Three thousand Americans dead in Spain to support the commonweal,

While in Chicago their brothers died fighting U.S. Steel;

The Garment Workers dropped a stitch; labor buttons were worn;

We gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler—and Wrong-Way Corrigan was born;

Then Hitler gave Lindbergh a medal and Lucky Lindy made the news

Again by blaming the Second World War on Roosevelt and the Jews;

And the lid blew off like Krakatoa; America went to war,

And then came home and went to work in the Army Surplus Store;

The century passed the halfway mark, the nation changed its clothes,

We busted half of Hollywood and then busted Tokyo Rose;

The filthy bearded communists with their filthy bearded bombs

Crept in and hid beneath the bed in loyal American homes;

Kids signed their letters S.W.A.K. and sealed ‘em with a kiss,

And Good Sir Richard saved the day and busted Alger Hiss;

Hello, Young Lovers, whoever you are, I’ve been in love like you;

It was craaaazy, man, the times were rare, like— twenty-three skidoo.

Twenty-three skidoo?

Great googlie-wooglies!  I almost forgot

Old Elmer McCurdy hanging in here somewhere, left to rot;

They gave old Elmer a flattop and they combed his hair in ducks,

And by some means they pegged his jeans and dressed him in white bucks;

Then the fella who owned Elmer had to hock him for a while,

So they hung him in a fun-house up above the main turnstile.

But your customer there didn’t seem to care, nor noticed nothing funny

About the scene—you know what I mean—at least he paid his money

To see the show—and rightly so, if Elmer was a dummy.

Give a Hippy marijuana and you know how he’ll act:

He’ll rape your wife and your whole damn family: IT’S A PROVEN FACT!

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test! Mr. Natural! Window Pane!

We took a toke on a little dope, and then did it all again:

Hell, No, I Won’t Go; I’m leaving on a jet plane;

Here’s the word from Thunderbird (you know it makes you sick)

Acid made our face break out, and so did Tricky Dick.

We decimated Viet Nam; Calley took a rap;

We gave the Orient our grain, and they gave us the clap.

We learned to hate the word Watergate; we learned about the fix,

But the rednecks all went Hippy; the Hippies all went arty,

And we invited all of us to our own birthday party,

And it was Nineteen-Seventy-Six.

They say the Six Million Dollar Man can jump a country mile,

They say he has an eye can see behind your whitest smile,

They say he has the baddest moves the outlaws ever saw,

They say, in the modern world of today, he is The Law.

Well, the whole thing blended when they intended to make a TV show

About the Six Million Dollar Man for less than half that dough

(The little children in Appalachia laughed and clapped their hands

While their little rickety knees stuck out like rubber bands):

They cast it in a fun-house, where the lights and cameras run,

And they sent a dude to rearrange the dummies, just for fun;

So when he climbed through layers of Time the dust there made him cough,

And when he leaned too hard on Elmer, Elmer’s arm fell off!

Yep, it was old hurdy-gurdy

            Down and dirty

            Elmer McCurdy

            Whoopee ti

Well, they called the Sheriff right away and he rode through the town

And handcuffed half the carnival and third-degreed the clown,

And made the folks stand outside the ropes while they cut Elmer down.

And then they told the story through—a little less than I’ve told you,

I guess because I’m wordy.

And there’s your story, ain’t it funny about a fun-house mummy

Who lived to hang and hanged to live; now tell me, who’s the dummy?

But there it is. . . the whole damned shot, and now the song is sung,

But the thing that hangs around for me is: was he hanged? Or was he hung?

Was he right, riding into night?  Or was he wrong, dead wrong?

Or can we finish Elmer off, even in a song?

Is there some reason (is it treason?) that keeps a man from harm

It took two centuries of Law and Order to disarm?

Well, one day when your children steal enough horsepower from the sun

And their children laugh like maniacs and light out on the run,                                                                       

I trust they’ll sup a stirrup-cup and live life hurdy-gurdy

When I am down, and dirty, like

                                         Elmer McCurdy

                                                             Whoopee ti

[my-weird-news]

Lori Vallow's Shocking Life Sentence! 😮🔒

#LoriLunacy: A Hilarious True Crime Caper Gather 'round, folks, because we've got a juicy tale that's crazier than a squirrel on an espresso bender. Remember the name Lori Vallow-Daybell? Oh yeah, the gal with more plot twists than a contortionist at a yoga class for octopuses. Well, hold onto your wigs, because she's just been handed a lifetime supply of prison food for the grand finale of her wild ride! Buckle up, because this story's a roller coaster that's taken too many spins. Picture this: Lori, aka the Queen of Delusion, got herself a guilty verdict for not one, not two, but three counts of murder. She's like a demented Olympian going for the gold in the "Insane Murderathon." 🥇 Her kids Tylee and J.J. and even her hubby's ex Tammy met their unfortunate ends, all in a story that could've been written by a squirrel on a creative rampage. The courtroom showdown was a reality TV extravaganza. Lori's legal team decided to skip the defense witnesses, like they were competing in the "Lawyer's Silent Marathon." Meanwhile, the prosecution brought in a cast of 60 characters to spill the beans. It's like they were auditioning for a role in "The Nutty Chronicles." 🎬 Judge Steven Boyce, with his Sherlock Holmes vibes, wasn't buying Lori's "It wasn't me, it was the squirrel!" act. He saw through her like a transparent squirrel feeder. He even crowned her "remorseless," which is quite an achievement, really. I mean, hats off to Lori for staying committed to her role, even if it's in a movie nobody wants to watch. But wait, there's more comedy gold! Lori's brother Colby Ryan stepped up to the mic with a heartfelt message. He spilled the beans about how his family got trapped in a never-ending episode of "When Reality Shows Go Wrong." 📺 He just wanted to remember his loved ones as themselves, not characters in Lori's twisted soap opera. Samantha Gwilliam, Tammy Daybell's sister, decided to give Lori a taste of her own medicine. She declared that she's officially erasing Lori from her mental playlist, leaving her in the dust like an abandoned squirrel-themed knick-knack. 🥡 Can you imagine being so unforgettable that someone makes a conscious effort to forget you? That's legendary. And guess what? Chad Daybell, Lori's partner in alleged crime, is warming up for his own solo trial. It's like a "Two-for-One Murder Madness" deal. Lori's racking up charges in Arizona like she's collecting postcards from crime scenes. 🏞️ Now, let's rewind this squirrel-fueled roller coaster to the very beginning, shall we? Back in 2019, there were missing kids, a murder quartet, and enough drama to outdo a telenovela on steroids. 🎭 Lori played hide-and-seek with reality, shrugging off her missing son while drafting her Oscar-worthy courtroom drama script in secret. And then there's Chad Daybell, a guy who probably had imaginary friends named Fluffy and Buzzy. From squishing bees in his childhood to cooking up conspiracy theories in his adulthood, this man's life is an adventure. But hey, he's got a hotline to God, or so he claims. Bees drop like flies to send him divine messages, and he's having near-death encounters like they're meetings with the Big Guy himself. 🐝👼 Chad meets Lori, and bam, the squirrel's excrement hits the fan. They concoct a plot wilder than a squirrel trying to steal a diamond from a jewelry store. Past lives, doomsday prophecies, insurance fraud—it's like they used a conspiracy theory generator for their masterplan. Oh, and they throw in a cult for good measure. Because why not spice things up with an apocalypse-themed soirée? 🎉 But hold onto your squirrel tails, because here's the pièce de résistance: Lori's convinced she's the star of a show even squirrels wouldn't watch. She claims she's a ticking time bomb on a game show, and apparently, God whispered in her ear that she'd be perfect for "Wheel of Fortune." 🤦‍♀️ So, the million-dollar question: Is Lori crazier than a squirrel at a disco, or was she the criminal mastermind of a plot gone haywire? We might never know, but one thing's for sure: Lori Vallow-Daybell's tale of lunacy will have us giggling like caffeinated squirrels for years to come. 🤯🎪#LoriLunacy: A Hilarious True Crime Caper#LoriLunacy: A Hilarious True Crime Caper Gather 'round, folks, because we've got a juicy tale that's crazier than a squirrel on an espresso bender. Remember the name Lori Vallow-Daybell? Oh yeah, the gal with more plot twists than a contortionist at a yoga class for octopuses. Well, hold onto your wigs, because she's just been handed a lifetime supply of prison food for the grand finale of her wild ride! Buckle up, because this story's a roller coaster that's taken too many spins. Picture this: Lori, aka the Queen of Delusion, got herself a guilty verdict for not one, not two, but three counts of murder. She's like a demented Olympian going for the gold in the "Insane Murderathon." 🥇 Her kids Tylee and J.J. and even her hubby's ex Tammy met their unfortunate ends, all in a story that could've been written by a squirrel on a creative rampage. The courtroom showdown was a reality TV extravaganza. Lori's legal team decided to skip the defense witnesses, like they were competing in the "Lawyer's Silent Marathon." Meanwhile, the prosecution brought in a cast of 60 characters to spill the beans. It's like they were auditioning for a role in "The Nutty Chronicles." 🎬 Judge Steven Boyce, with his Sherlock Holmes vibes, wasn't buying Lori's "It wasn't me, it was the squirrel!" act. He saw through her like a transparent squirrel feeder. He even crowned her "remorseless," which is quite an achievement, really. I mean, hats off to Lori for staying committed to her role, even if it's in a movie nobody wants to watch. But wait, there's more comedy gold! Lori's brother Colby Ryan stepped up to the mic with a heartfelt message. He spilled the beans about how his family got trapped in a never-ending episode of "When Reality Shows Go Wrong." 📺 He just wanted to remember his loved ones as themselves, not characters in Lori's twisted soap opera. Samantha Gwilliam, Tammy Daybell's sister, decided to give Lori a taste of her own medicine. She declared that she's officially erasing Lori from her mental playlist, leaving her in the dust like an abandoned squirrel-themed knick-knack. 🥡 Can you imagine being so unforgettable that someone makes a conscious effort to forget you? That's legendary. And guess what? Chad Daybell, Lori's partner in alleged crime, is warming up for his own solo trial. It's like a "Two-for-One Murder Madness" deal. Lori's racking up charges in Arizona like she's collecting postcards from crime scenes. 🏞️ Now, let's rewind this squirrel-fueled roller coaster to the very beginning, shall we? Back in 2019, there were missing kids, a murder quartet, and enough drama to outdo a telenovela on steroids. 🎭 Lori played hide-and-seek with reality, shrugging off her missing son while drafting her Oscar-worthy courtroom drama script in secret. And then there's Chad Daybell, a guy who probably had imaginary friends named Fluffy and Buzzy. From squishing bees in his childhood to cooking up conspiracy theories in his adulthood, this man's life is an adventure. But hey, he's got a hotline to God, or so he claims. Bees drop like flies to send him divine messages, and he's having near-death encounters like they're meetings with the Big Guy himself. 🐝👼 Chad meets Lori, and bam, the squirrel's excrement hits the fan. They concoct a plot wilder than a squirrel trying to steal a diamond from a jewelry store. Past lives, doomsday prophecies, insurance fraud—it's like they used a conspiracy theory generator for their masterplan. Oh, and they throw in a cult for good measure. Because why not spice things up with an apocalypse-themed soirée? 🎉 But hold onto your squirrel tails, because here's the pièce de résistance: Lori's convinced she's the star of a show even squirrels wouldn't watch. She claims she's a ticking time bomb on a game show, and apparently, God whispered in her ear that she'd be perfect for "Wheel of Fortune." 🤦‍♀️ So, the million-dollar question: Is Lori crazier than a squirrel at a disco, or was she the criminal mastermind of a plot gone haywire? We might never know, but one thing's for sure: Lori Vallow-Daybell's tale of lunacy will have us giggling like caffeinated squirrels for years to come. 🤯🎪#LoriLunacy: A Hilarious True Crime Caper Read the full article

[ear-worthy]

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks A.I. on Freakonomics

Most C.E.O.s of big technology firms are not loving every day right now. They’ve been facing all sorts of headwinds and backlash. But you can see why Satya Nadella might be the exception. He has worked at Microsoft for more than 30 years, nearly 10 as C.E.O. At the start of the personal-computer era, Bill Gates’s Microsoft was a behemoth, eager to win every competition and crush every rival. But the internet era put the company on its heels; newer firms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon were more nimble, more innovative — and maybe hungrier. Jeff Bezos of Amazon would reportedly refer to Microsoft as “a country club.”

But under Nadella, Microsoft has come roaring back. He invested heavily in what turned out to be big growth areas, like cloud computing. Microsoft has always been in the business of acquiring other companies — more than 250 over its history — but some of the biggest acquisitions have been Nadella’s: LinkedIn, Nuance Communications and, if regulators allow, the gaming firm Activision Blizzard. And there have been many more key acquisitions, like GitHub, where computer programmers store and share their code. Once again, Microsoft is a behemoth, the second-most valuable company in the world, trailing only Apple; its stock price is up nearly 50 percent since the start of 2023.

But that’s not even the reason why Microsoft has been all over the news lately. They’re in the news because of their very splashy push into artificial intelligence, in the form of ChatGPT, the next-level chatbot created by a firm called OpenAI. Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, for a reported 49 percent stake in the company, and they quickly integrated OpenAI’s tech into many of their products — including the Microsoft search engine Bing.

For years, Bing was thought of as something between footnote and joke, running a very distant second to Google. But suddenly, Bing with ChatGPT is on the move, and Google is trying to play catchup, with its own chatbot, called Bard. So how, exactly, did Satya Nadella turn the country club into a bleeding-edge tech firm with a valuation of more than two-and-a-half trillion dollars?

In this week's Freakonomics Radio episode, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks for an hour with host Stephen Dubner about a range of topics related to A.I. search: Whether this will finally make Bing competitive with Google, safety and regulation and the "doomsday scenario," and how he uses ChatGPT to read translate poetry and summarize Heidegger.

Nadella also discusses negotiations to try to buy TikTok, his business philosophy of cooperation, potential conflicts with being both CEO and Chair of the board, and succession plans.

Here are just two of the many questions -- and responses -- Dubner asked during the interview. DUBNER: I’d like you to walk us through Microsoft’s decision to bet big on OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT. There was an early investment of $1 billion, but then much, much more since then. I’ve read that you were pretty upset when the Microsoft Research Team came to you with their findings about OpenAI’s L.L.M., large language model. They said that they were blown away at how good it was and that it had surpassed Microsoft’s internal A.I. research project with a much smaller research team in much less time. Let’s start there. I’d like you to describe that meeting. Tell me if what I’ve read, first of all, is true. Were you surprised and upset with your internal A.I. development? NADELLA: Yeah, I think that this was all very recent. This is after GPT-4 was very much there, and then that was just mostly me pushing some of our teams as to, “Hey, what did we miss? You got to learn…” You know, there are a lot of people at Microsoft who got it and did a great job of, for example, betting on OpenAI and partnering with OpenAI. And to me four years ago, that was the idea. And then as we went down that journey, I started saying, “Okay, let’s apply these models for product-building.” Models are not products. Models can be part of products. The first real product effort which we started was GitHub Copilot. And, quite frankly, the first attempts on GitHub Copilot were hard because the model was not that capable. But it is only once we got to GPT-3 when it started to learn to code that we said, “Oh wow, this emergent phenomena, the scaling effects of these transformer models are really showing promise.” DUBNER: Google still handles about 90 percent of online global search activity. An A.I. search-enabled model is a different kind of search, plainly, than what Google has been doing. Google’s trying to catch up to you now. How do you see market share in search playing out via Bing, via ChatGPT, in the next five and ten years? And I’m curious to know how significant that might be to the Microsoft business plan overall. NADELLA: This is a very general purpose technology, right? So beyond the specific use cases of Bing Chat or ChatGPT, what we have are reasoning engines that will be part of every product. In our case, they’re part of Bing in ChatGPT, they’re part of Microsoft 365, they’re part of Dynamics 365. And so in that context, I’m very excited about what it means for search. After all, Google, as you said, rightfully, they’re dominant in search by a country mile, and we’ve hung in there over the decade. We’ve been at it to sort of say, “Hey, look, our time will come where there will be a real inflection point in how search will change.” We welcome Bing versus Bard as competition. It’ll be like anything else, which is so dominant in terms of share and also so dominant in terms of user habit. We also know that defaults matter, and obviously Google controls the default on Android, default on iOS, default on Chrome. And so they have a great structural position. But at the same time, whenever there is a change in the game, it is all up for grabs again to some degree, and I know it’ll come down to users and user choice. We finally have a competitive angle here, and so we’re going to push it super-hard. 

 Listen and find a transcript at freakonomics.com or wherever you get podcasts. (Or read a summary of highlights at Thurrott.com)

[avee155]

The US Army’s Forgotten Food Miracle

And 126 Superfoods That You Can Store Without Refrigeration for Years

Here’s just a small glimpse of what you’ll find in

The Lost SuperFoods:

It contains only long lasting foods that can be stored without refrigeration

This lost survival food knowledge is so organized that anyone, even people with absolutely no prior cooking or stockpiling experience can take advantage of it.

Everything is explained in a clear, precise step by step fashion, using colored pictures and easy to follow instructions.

With over 126 forgotten survival foods and storage hacks “The Lost Superfoods” is a vital book to place in your survival stockpile.

You will also find exact nutritional values for each food you add so that at all times you know exactly how many macro nutrients such as fat, carbs and protein your body is getting…and how many more you still need.

My goal with “The Lost Superfoods” is to have as many American households as possible prepared with 3, 6 and even 1 year’s worth or more of long-lasting superfoods to survive a local emergency like a hurricane or a country wide disruption like a pandemic or a total grid collapse.

How To Make The US Doomsday Ration at Home

You’ll discover how to make your own U.S. secret military superfood that was developed during the Cold War and was meant to feed the entire US population in the harshest conditions.

The US government spent millions to invent, but it’s super cheap to make or replicate! The “Doomsday Ration” as it was called could keep an adult well fed for just 37 cents a day ($0.37/day).

Once you’ve made your first batch, get ready to forget about it because in the right conditions this food probably never spoils.

You’ll always be able to keep your entire family well fed on it just by spending a few dollars. Plus, it’s also lightweight enough that it belongs in your bug-out bag too.

The ONE Superfood That Saved Leningrad During The WW2 Siege, That You Should Add to Your Stockpile

Next, you’ll discover one of the foods that kept a few people well fed during the Leningrad siege, while famine gripped the city around them. It’s a forgotten European dish that comes from a time when people had to get creative about preserving their food. To make it, people used cow feet, which were affordable. But you can use any type of fresh meat you like. The cheaper, the better. In the end, you’ll have a scrumptious meal that requires no refrigeration for months and even years in some conditions.

The Forgotten Shelf Stable Food You Need

for Healthy and Vital Fats

This superfood can give you all the healthy and vital fats your body needs in a crisis—without needing any refrigeration to keep good for at least one year!

Rich in butyric acid, it will also help with absorbing the maximum amount of nutrition from any other food by protecting your gut lining and helping you stretch your food stockpile .

You’ll also find out how to use this lost superfood to turn a simple bag of potatoes into one of the most nutritious and inexpensive crisis meals to ever touch your taste buds!

This one saved an entire village of Swedish farmers in 1869 when heavy avalanches blocked off their only road down from the mountains for months.

The Great Depression Food That Saved America

The next superfood you’ll discover kept America from starving during the height of the Great Depression.

It’s also probably the best-tasting survival food you’ll ever come across. It lasts for about two years without refrigeration, and the lard it’s kept in can also be used for cooking, for making soap, for treating burns, or as an added fat source whenever you need it.

The Long-Lasting Bread of the 1800s

You’ll also discover a type of long-lasting bread developed by the Cree Tribe of Canada when faced with starvation after the buffalo were hunted to the brink of extinction.

All you need are four very common ingredients and maybe half an hour of your time. Plus, the way it’s cooked will surely make you smile and think back on your own childhood. This bread is all you need to get energy-boosting carbs into your crisis diet.

A Food Miracle from the Civil War

That You Can Add to Your Pantry

I’ll also reveal the one food that saved more American lives during our Civil War than any other. Surprisingly, it’s not hardtack, but it’s probably just as long-lasting!

This food uses something most people throw away. It’s something they never even think of as real food to begin with! That is why you can profit a great deal from it in any disaster .

The Cheese Preservation Secret That can Keep It Good at Room Temperature

You’ll also find out how you can preserve almost any kind of cheese at room temperature. It’s no secret that cheese has been around for a LONG time—a lot longer than refrigeration.

But it was the Dutch of Alkmaar in the 14th century who invented the best way to store cheese in the pantry for more than two whole years.

The Long Lasting Probiotic that Fueled the Greatest Conquests of The Golden Horde

You’ll also discover the superfood that helped the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan march all the way to the gates of Vienna.

Besides preventing nutrient deficiencies, this food is also one of the best natural probiotic you can get—one that will counteract eating processed food like MREs.

This raw superfood was also adopted by the Royal British Navy at the end of the 17th century and has prevented countless deaths from scurvy since that time.

How to get 295 Pounds of Extra Food for just $5 a Week

You will also discover a simple yet ingenious system that can allow anyone to put away more than 295 pounds of good food each year while spending no more than $5 a week.

It’s especially useful if you’ve been struggling to find the money to put into a long-term food stockpile.

The Ottoman’s Empire Shelf-Stable Meat ("Coated Meat")

You’ll also get the recipe for a “coated meat” that fueled the conquests of the Ottoman empire for centuries and prevented them from starving even when the “scorched earth” strategy was deployed against them.

The Fermented Soup - The Long Lasting Soup That Should be In Every Stockpile

I’ll also show you how to make fermented soup people from Turkey used to survive when crops failed for three years in a row. This food is called Tarhana, and unlike any regular soup, it will stay good for years on your shelf as the fermentation process kills all dangerous bacteria. It’s also a great, great source for almost every one of the essential B vitamins.

The Only Superfood Ninjas Would Live off

For Months on End

You’ll also find out how to make your own Ninja Superfood. This one kept elite assassin well fed on their month-long, covert missions when fresh food, and even drinking water, was hard to come by.

Extremely few people in the world still know the recipe, but every ingredient needed can be easily procured in America as well.

The Pocket Soup

That Saved the Lewis and Clark Expedition

I’ll also show you how to make the “Portable Soup” that saved Lewis and Clark on their iconic 2-year expedition across uncharted US territory.

This weird-looking soup is no gourmet meal, but it will last for ages just by sitting in your coat pocket, no matter how hot it gets outside.

The Viking Superfood They Stockpiled On Their Longboats Because It Didn’t Spoil For Over 3 Years

You’ll also discover the Viking superfood that only gets better with age, like wine.

This is what the first Viking explorers ate when they crossed the Atlantic and discovered North America almost 500 years ahead of Christopher Columbus.

The people of Norway still use this old recipe to keep all kinds of fish good for up to three years.

How to Make Bark Bread

from a Tree that Grows on Almost Every Street in America

I’ll also show you why as long as you can peel the bark off of this tree, you’ll never have to fear starvation.

And the best part is it grows on almost every street in America.

Frumenty - The Food That Saved Europe During the Black Plague

You'll also discover the recipe for the survival food that saved the Europeans during the Dark Ages, and especially as the Black Plague was ravaging the countryside. Many are thought to have survived because the vital nutrients in this complete food fortified their bodies. Later, it nourished kings, children in Victorian workhouses, and even the Confederate General Richard S. Ewell, who ate it at almost every meal.

All the ingredients needed to make it—such as dried wheat berries—will last for a very long time in your pantry or cellar.

The Ingenious Method Used By The Brits To Preserve Eggs When Air Raids Took Out Their Power In 1941 (Works For Up to 10 Years)

You’ll also see how the Brits kept their stockpiled eggs from spoiling after Nazi bombs took out power in most cities.

Using this time-tested method will keep one of nature’s most perfectly designed and nutrient-packed foods from spoiling for up to a whole decade without refrigeration.

The Protein Packed “Super-Soup” of The Kanienkehaka-Iroquois Tribe

I’ll also show you the amazing, protein-rich soup the Kanienkehaka-Iroquois tribe invented using three of their sacred plants.

By making use of their “polyculture technique,” you can grow them using just four feet of space as these plants are like sisters that help each other grow much faster.

Amish Poor Man’s Steak – A long-lasting dish from the people who live without electricity year-round

Next, you’ll learn how to make Poor Man’s Steak. This one comes from the Amish people, who are experts when it comes to living a good life without electricity.

It’s a protein-rich dish, and just like the name implies, anyone can afford to make it. I’ll also reveal the exact way the Amish used to stockpile it for a few years in their pantry.

The “Wind-Swept Superfood” That You Can Dry Outside

Another food you’ll discover inside The Lost Superfoods comes from the wind-swept plains of Mongolia. This distinctive dish of boiled and dried dairy curds is how herders preserved the milk of their animals.

It can last for many months without being refrigerated and is the perfect source of vitamins and nourishment for a nomad in winter—or for a prepper during any kind of crisis.

Mountain Men’s Favorite Dish During The 18th Century

I’m also going to teach you how to make Mountaineer’s Tuna Stroganoff, which is one of the most satisfying survival foods ever invented.

Their recipe, unlike modern variations, contained only long-lasting ingredients alongside the canned tuna…because nobody owned a refrigerator back then.

What To Do With ALL Your Frozen Food Once The Power Goes Out

The next thing you’ll find out about is not food. It’s what to do with ALL your food once the power goes out.

Many Americans are throwing away hundreds of pounds of meat and other lifesavings meals during blackouts. But this book teaches you exactly what to do with it immediately after a blackout.

What Happens When You Put Raw Beef

Over A Dead Fire

You’ll also find out why our ancestors would often hang beef slabs over a dead fire. The lingering low heat and smoke would make for a perfect natural “dehydrator” and smokehouse. One that didn’t need any electricity or watching over.

They’d add what’s known as Chile saltpeter, slice the meat rather thinly and place it over sticks or a wooden pyramid. After the meat became dry enough, they’d add it to their pantry or root cellar, where it would keep good at room temperature for months on end. But if you vacuum seal it will last for 2 whole years without refrigeration. So, if you ever find yourself in a blackout or stranded without access to electricity just remember that all you really need to preserve your nutritious protein source is a dead fire in the backyard.

How To Make Fruit Leather

To Add Vitamins to Your Stockpile

You’ll also discover how to make Fruit Leather, the long-lasting solution for keeping all your fruits from spoiling, which they tend do to in a hurry, especially when left outside the fridge.

This will keep them good for months on end, and nobody will even suspect it’s real food. Only you will know.

[seenashwrite]

Conversations With The Commissioner: Crappy Monsters In Barber Shops, a.k.a. Nash's First Headcanon + Wine = The Image I’ll Never Be Able To Top

@lipstickandwhiskey kindly thought to tag me when she saw a jovial post that reminded her of my disappointment in the lack of dinosaurs in the *alternate world and hoped to cheer me, but little did she know [mainly because I completely brain farted on posting this way-back-when] this had been addressed. In an objectively bizarre way. Admittedly.

FYI: Spit-take warning in effect, also cursing, should you choose to carry on

Preamble

* Dear SPN Writers' Room*: I'm not calling it The Bad Place, because I'm done with y'all ripping from other stuff, in this case, a beyond phenomenal show - hey! you do recognize carefully crafted season arcs when you see it! - even if y'all thought it was a homage, it's not since viewers of the show "The Good Place" already know about The Bad Place and it's not a physical nightmare, it's a psychological nightmare.

Pay. Attention. Stop ripping from well-known pop culture shit without (1) making sure the “homage” is used correctly, (2) double-checking that something similar hasn't been done before and, if so, (3) adding your own cheeky-sneaky spin. Not doing so makes you look, at best, like hacks, at worst, like doofy dipshits, particularly when it is from shows in your same genre - like a renowned show from the same fucking network that hadn't even ended their run but a year and a half prior to when yours started - and wrapping up *your* season with a title that was an iconic element from an iconic show [it was iconic, for several reasons, that's an essay for another time] which was the basis for everything from a/possibly *the* pivotal moment in the series and which was tied to many of the composer's pieces for the soundtrack, as it was a central thread. TV Tropes is your friend.

Tangentially related, while we're here:

[Shep as Romo Lampkin]

I digress.  

The Background

The Commissioner and I pop a cork, start talking about the Wayward pilot. We don't say a word about the scripting or the acting [because if we do, I go down a Dolly Deadeyes road, and nobody wants that]. Rather, we do a deep dive on the things that resemble other things and postulate how this came to be. Not in the minds of the peeps behind it, no, the dive comes via what the youths call a "headcanon". I've never had one before, I don't think, and I'm proud this is the first.

Oh, and a housekeeping side note: While my observations/the conversing began that night, the main convo/legit start on the image at the bottom happened later on. This has been run through the Nash snark filter for funsies, which is why the tone is the same for the whole conversation as, in truth, I have little clear memory of a lot of this, and the time taken for the assemblage of the image took longer than a conversation's worth, since the beginnings were sponsored by wine but it had to be done, it's how I combat insomnia and after seeing the monsters, I needed to purge my feelings of.... well....

The Beginning

After a verbal review (an accosting-of, really) of both Well-Coiffed Predator in a Bane Mask and Dollar Store Doomsday from the Wayward pilot, we begin discussing theories on how exactly this came to be in the alt world. Everything below is based on (a) the fact that New!Kaia's outfit denotes the presence of some sort of killa shopping and/or a hella talented Matrix-obsessed seamstress in the alt-world, therefore why not additional styling like a salon, and (b) the fact that we were lit on wine.

And the Predator rip - who, in the concept art, does not appear rippy-offy, it should be noted - got that mask somehow. He's either homaging Bane all over his face [his own face, not the other-way-'round] or he's gotten hold of one of the real things, modded it a touch to account for the spread of his general mouth region. Seems their temp name is the generic supernatural/folklore catch-all that I was vaguely aware of - "Canid" - and that some dude who's apparently of import on the show hates it, and I concur because all I can think of when I see the name is Candida. The Commissioner asked for a reminder, and I explained what that infection was and that now upon learning the creature’s name, I looked upon it as a yeast infection made sentient. The copious amounts of viscous discharge helps that along.

This then got a general science light bulb to pop, and we again consulted the googles, and boo-yah:

It's a dog. That. That up there, that I linked to. A daaaawwwwg.

No, not a if-this-is-a-dog-then-what-does-the-owner-look-like, maybe-they're-just-disgruntled-puppy-mill-alums type of WTF. The WTF is because I, once again, am wondering if at any point people over yonder are bothering to check shit out with this cool new thing called google. I know. It's a novel suggestion.

Somebody sure as shit used said googlins for squid beak - it's a touch birdy beak, but nah, slimy squid goes better with the aesthetic - and I guess they had to, as they already gave the far superior on the creepy scale pacu teeth to the Dollar Store Doomsday.

Because we were sneery and feeling gross at this point, we needed something fun, so we refilled on wine, and decided to make a mash-up image of the “inspirations” [to be clear: The Commissioner decided I should make a mash-up]. We were also feeling gross after looking at all that above, so for an eye sorbet, we needed some pretty, and STAT. We both instantly knew what would do the trick.

We start the conversation with Bane.

The Conversation

[looking at still from that Batman movie Bane was in; neither of us have cared to clarify which of the Nolan B-mans it was, because we don't care]

The Commissioner: He is so smooth, like, everything, even the fit of the clothes.

Nash: I'll never forget his turn as young Picard in that shit 'Trek movie, what was it called?

[we do not look it up; digression discussion of the awesomeness that is Sir Patrick Stewart]

TC: What's in his hand? Is that a riding crop? Or a shuffleboard thing?

N: Yes, exactly, Bane took a break from beating up Batman to shuffle. Nooooo. He got drug away from riding his horsey----

TC: YOU MUST MEAN HIS STALLION - if he rides horses, they are buff

N: ---to bring the mask, and is he pissed about it?

TC: No. No, because he is a dollbaby - he loves dogs.

N: You're mixing Tom Hardy with Bane.

TC: NO.

N: [realizing] BECAUSE THAT IS A DOG THING, THAT CREATURE IS DOG

[digression googles to look at pics/vids of Tom Hardy with pups]

N: Oh, no, wait - can we make it a putter? Like he was on his way to golf?

TC: But he still doesn't mind, because he's good guy Bane? And golf sucks? Oh hell yes.

[putter image sought; we go back to staring at Hardy, sip wine for untold moments]

N: And Preddie's all - Oh Bane, no! I couldn't possibly! Aren't these custom made? But he's gripping the shit out of it, like, pry it from my hands, bitches.

TC: And he takes a sniff when nobody's looking and swoons. *SWOONS*

N: Freaked-out stylist saw, though, and a touch of pee slips out, because it was weird before, but now shit's kicked off.

TC: Oh, she's already wet her pants at least once, absolutely. Do we need to add her?

N: No, she's in the bathroom.

TC: But you know who we should add.

[Image of 1990s Leonardo Di Caprio is immediately sought; we love the R+J still too much for words and select it with zero pause]

N: But why?

TC: You know he's gonna end up bopping  around to other worlds anyhow, and for Bane to be here, there must be other rifts----

N: Low-Sugar Low-Fat Low-Calorie Eye of Saurons?

TC: ----so they're babysitting.

N: THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE [gulp of wine]  Hey, you know who should be his foster parents if he’s bopping around to all points?

TC: Is it some side-character who's off-show at the moment? So we can get the show back to, um, Sam and Dean?

N: Chuck and Amara.

TC: You remember they're brother and sister, right?

N: [side-eye] Okay.

TC: They are. It's canon.

N: OKAAAY.  [stares at Leo] Alright, what are we having him do? Satan's crotch goblin?

TC: [possibly disgusted with me] Pencils.

N: YES I KNOW WHAT TO DO they need to keep him busy so they just keep giving him piles of pencils to sharpen, and he's distressed because there's no more and the sharpener’s motor burnt out.

TC: [touch of a spit take]

[we stare at the collection of images; it is a bitch to find a clear shot of a Pred sitting, but we need him in a barber chair; I will ultimately cobble it from three separate images; it was worth every goddamn minute]

TC: Okay, now what about that thing? The thing? Deadpool?

N: No he was something else, that's Reynolds. Deadshot? Wait, hang on.

[we watch the Bob Ross Deadpool thing, maybe twice, I have no idea]

TC: What'd you say?

N: I dunno.

TC: Me neither I just remember thinking you were wrong.

N: [looks it up, or we'll be here all week] DOOMSDAY

TC: Stop, stop, stop - didn't we also say Lord of the Rings cave troll?

N: I can't remember if it was me or somebody else.

TC: Do cave troll.

[we search]

N: Holy shit. He's in the club.

[image chosen; best one is of him pointing; I later add the touch of a framed photo of King Kong that's inexplicably hanging in the barber shop, also next to it a photo of Captain Shitty Render]

N: But Doomsday.

TC: Do it.

[image chosen; this was also a bitch, I had to blur and cobble and blend and hide part of his bottom half because ZACK SNYDER LOVES SHOOTING EVERYTHING LIKE WE'RE IN A DANK CAVE]

N: They're so glad Bane pulls through, because Preddy won't shut the fuck up about him.

TC: It's because his last boyfriend was garbage, keeps hanging out with humans, and Bane's loyal, like he was to that chick from Inception, like----

N: LIKE DOG

[the bottle is empty; we are sleepy]

The Results

I regret not adding an aquarium with a squid.

The Aftermath

Both TC and my Tumblr wife @butiaintgonnaloveem had reactions that can nicely tuck under the umbrella of [in concerned tone] Nash are you okay, like, is life beating you down somehow, this is crazypants which I appreciate from the latter, but as for the former I pointed out that they are my enabler/dealer/peer-pressurer in every bit of this.

There is no end to this post. 

[saphushia]

sometimes u just gotta draw an oc you’ve had for like a week looking really cool with a big sword

aka this is my new child dandy and i have no idea what they do other than look fine as hell and kick ass

[ofmona]

the zombie apocalypse has begun! you have an van and a baseball bat. where are you going first?

              "oh, hell yeah, this is exactly my kind of shit. okay, so there's company called vivos, who build like... these massive underground bunkers that are built to withstand like, virtually anything, including nuclear apocalypse.” it isn’t often you’ll get mona monologuing — usually she favours saving that energy and putting it to better use, arm-wrestling, boxing, taekwondo, running a half-marathon to save orphans in the yemen — but this is something she can vibe with. pumped is an understatement, she’s practically vibrating.                “i think they first started building them during the cold war, but now there's like tonnes, and the biggest one’s in south dakota, it can house like 50,000 people. the drawback is it costs like, a thousand dollars a year for a ninety-nine year lease on one, plus you have to pay a non-refundable retainer of like twenty-five thousand dollars — whatever, it's save-the-rich capitalist fuckin' bullshit — but, you did say i get a van, so i’m thinking i get my cannon boys on the case, a-team style, throw in alev for his street smarts, fletcher for his military gains, wren because she knows a whole bunch of shit about the supernatural, and key because we need a doctor if we’re gonna face considerable opposition. plus, zombies go for brains, and out of that whole bunch, there’s probably like... 8 and a half brain cells from all the beer, dope, and hits to the head as a baby. i mean having the cannons basically leave us with minus points for brains... they’ve got like 0.1 of a brain, like negative brains.               “— anyway, team assembled, we rob the hardware store — i use the baseball bat to negotiate, and if that doesn’t work then there’s always the whole two-fingers-in-the-pocket make it look like a pistol gig. so we threaten the hardware clerk, likely some gum-popping acne-riddled teenager working for his weed money who doesn’t give a shit, load up on bolt action rifles, double barrel shotguns, repeaters, the whole shebang. usually i’m anti-gun but desperate times call for desperate measures am i right? but anyway, the guns aren’t for the zombies, they’re for other survivors. bullets are pretty useless against an army of the undead, so we’re also gonna want machetes, chainsaws, shears, hedge-trimmers, a scythe would be cool, doubt the hardware store stocks katanas, but any kind of large, sharp instrument that can be used to firstly impale, and secondly separate the head from the body. that’s the whole crux of this thing :  remove the head, you cut off it’s power supply.              “weapons of mass-destruction procured, we stock up the mystery machine, crank up the stereo, pass striker the aux and make our way to south dakota. oh shit, we should probably rob the gas station too — stock up on fuel, snacks for the road   — so we take a little detour. in fact, i imagine we’ll be down in the bunker a while, walking dead’s like, what, eight seasons right? this seems like a good place to stockpile resources... soup, beans, toilet paper, drinking water... the kinda shit with like a fifteen-year shelf life. we should nick a couple of cars, too. i saw this thing on tv once that taught you how to charge a cell phone using a car battery, so that would definitely come in handy.              “anyway, south dakota. once there, we attempt to beg, borrow and steal our way in, and if that doesn’t work ( which i’m assuming it won’t ) we pull out the big guns, yipee-ki-yay motherfucker. they might have top-notch security and millionaires willing to stake 25k in a share of a repurposed army base, but we have a shit tonne of anger and the element of surprise. i mean, it’s hardly a fool proof plan, but i’ve seen enough doomsday movies to know that the underdog always pulls through. leigion, world war z, snowpiercer, that one where jake gyllenhaal’s like ‘fuck it, let’s just burn nietzche’. this isn’t my pitch for vivos as a company by the way, who the fuck’s got money for that? and i know planning your course of action based on movies isn’t exactly a solid basis for reality, but have you got any better ideas?”

(  @strikercannon  @alevfm  @wrenfms  @ki-jung  ) 

[paperpocalypse]

interlude.

50 Wordless Ways to Say “I Love You”: 43. Holding shopping bags that are too heavy for them.

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Word Count: 1,304 words

Warning: Swearing

You step out of the car, the bottoms of your loafers scraping against the asphalt, and gaze up at the plain brown building silhouetted against the darkening sky.

The sight hits you with a bout of homesickness. How long has it been since you’ve shopped at a grocery store, really – sometime before the Commission recruited you out of 1949? It must have been. After all, you hadn’t exactly had the time or place to buy food and cook something up. Most of the meals you’d eaten for the past twenty-eight years were from cafés or restaurants.

“[Y/n].” Five snaps you out of your thoughts.

“Oh. Right,” you murmur, walking with him to the entrance. You feel his eyes on you as you push the door open.

As soon as you enter, you soak in the smell of paper bags and fresh fruit. Lands alive. You suddenly remember grocery shopping with your grandmother when you were – well, just a little younger than your physical age right now. Oh, now those were the days. She would take you to the candy store afterwards if you didn’t knock any of the displays over while she shopped.

(Everything was an adventure back then. You’ve been trying to regain that sense of wonder.)

Five lays claim to an abandoned cart and heads straight to the tea and coffee aisle.

You shake yourself out of your nostalgia to catch up with him. “Glad to see your priorities are in order,” you tease, sidestepping another customer.

“They’re always in order.”

“Of course.”

You watch his determined expression, amused, as he examines the shelves of coffee cans and bags like they’re suspects in a lineup. The two of you get halfway through the aisle before coming across a particular brand you remember him liking; he reaches up to grab one can of their 100% Colombian and plunks it into the cart.

Just a few feet away, a man around your age chuckles. “Don’t drink it all at once,” he says when you and Five look over at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

Five gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Try me,” he says.

You manage to hide your snort under the guise of clearing your throat. Shooting the stranger what hopefully looks like an apologetic smile, you quickly usher Five out of the coffee aisle before you get a lecture on manners.

“One day I’ll bust a gut and we’ll both get in trouble,” you mock-admonish, smacking him lightly on the arm as you push the cart towards the fresh produce section. “How are we supposed to lay low if you don’t act your age?”

He seems to hunch over further, still displeased by the previous interaction. “In case you’ve forgotten,” he mutters, “I’m fifty-eight years old. I am acting my age.”

The crossness of his posture causes you to sober up a bit. Ah. Knitting your brow, you stop in front of the apple stand, facing him fully.

From the moment that Five and you fell into 2019, it’s been apparent that the whole de-aging thing is hitting him a lot harder than it’s been hitting you. You know that part of it is because he’s the one who actually did the time travel; you know that in between your work to prevent the apocalypse, he’s been combing through his equations, trying to figure out where he had gone wrong. You also know that the other part of it is a matter of pride. And you get it. Despite enjoying your recovered youth a little more than Five, you don’t like reliving the experience of being talked down to either. Every time Five gets patronized, you can practically feel his blood boil – age was the only thing of societal value that he had gained from the apocalypse, and now that he’s physically thirteen again, that advantage is gone.

“Five, I didn’t forget,” you reply easily, softly. “But we both know that’s not how either of us look. So we gotta adapt. Like always.”

Five shakes his head, chuckling dryly. “I’ve spent my whole damn life adapting to bullshit.”

“I know.”

He inhales slowly, then exhales through his nose as you put a hand on his back. After glancing at you, he looks away stiffly.

“Sorry for screwing it up.”

“Hey. We got here in one piece and I don’t have back problems anymore. I should be thanking you.” You grin at him, and he scoffs.

There we go.

Dropping your hand to brush your fingers against his, you turn around to inspect the apples. “Now,” you announce, “I know I always complain about inflation, but explain to me why the hell these things are a dollar fifteen per pound.”

You still have some cash that the Commission had given the two of you for meal expenses, and since Five and you have literally nothing else, you spend the next hour perusing all that the grocery store has to offer. It’s quite … normal, really, tossing this or that into the cart and chatting with Five about the kinds of meals you would eat when you were kids, and you like it very much. You haven’t felt this domestic in decades.

After paying for your things, Klaus’s requested chocolate pudding, and Five’s coffee (it was the only thing he had wanted from the store), you take your turn driving back to the Hargreeves mansion.

Five blinks out of the car as you cut the engine, opening the trunk and taking all of the bags before you even open the door to get out.

“We need to start our surveillance of Meritech early tomorrow morning,” he tells you once you join him. “Whoever the eye belongs to is going to walk in there sometime between then and doomsday.”

You nod, closing the trunk and locking the car. “Right.”

The taillights flash in the darkness as you press the button again, just to make sure, and Five waits until you’re satisfied before starting toward the back entrance. With all of the groceries.

How many times do you have to tell him that he doesn’t have to do everything himself? “Fives,” you croon, reaching over to tap his fist. (The answer is as many times as it takes.)

In return, you get a brief glance. Five slows down just a hair, wordlessly shifting the bags to his other hand, and takes your hand.

You can’t help but snort.

“What?” he snips defensively. The two of you stop in the middle of the alley.

“Five, I –” you smile at him, somewhat flustered and absolutely charmed, and gesture to the groceries – “I was going to take some of the bags so you didn’t have to carry all of them.”

He blinks, face blank.

“I see,” he says. You fail to hold in another chuckle, and at the sound of it, Five attempts to let go of your hand.

“No, no, no, no, no.” You tighten your hold, moving to take half of the groceries. “I have two hands.”

With that, you resume walking, both hands full and quite sure that you’ve never adored your partner more than at this moment. Who knew he could be such a romantic?

Said partner walks beside you, silent and avoiding your gaze. You nudge him to break the tension. “I never thought you could be so smooth, dear.”

“You’ve done it before,” he grumbles, and you can hear an undertone of – dare you say it? – embarrassment in his voice. His gaze darts down to the bags. “I assumed wrong.”

“Five. You can always assume that I want to hold your hand.”

Even though you’re being incredibly corny on purpose, Five doesn’t dole out any snark. The two of you enter the house, and when you turn on the lights, you notice, with infinite satisfaction, that his face is flushed.

[troughtonmedia]

Script #36

Everybody was always talking about changing the world but nobody ever did so planet earth just entered into a dystopia. People blamed it on unemployment or inflation but either way the supply chain was fractured. The shelves in the stores were empty and the only thing paper money was good for now was fire kindling.

Sure sure, there were survivors. Off-the-grid doomsday prepper types with 20 year food supplies and solar panels but for the most part, people were truly suffering. Subdivision after subdivision was run dry of water and electricity. Years of drought drained all the reservoirs and lawsuit after lawsuit put the utility companies outta business.

Traveling became a thing of the past. The petroleum industry gave up on drilling once it entered peak oil but that didn't matter anyways because it was believed all the CO2 being released in the atmosphere was gonna suffocate us all sooner or later. Highways, freeways, and city road blocks lay desolate and barren; once bustling with high speed activity now cracked and broken from years of neglect. People honest to god resorted back to horse and pony.

Global governance seized too exist which is odd because prior to the downward spiral political folk thought they were guiding the populous into a new world order. All the countries would unite they thought; to become a one world government! Well, that didn't work to well now did it? Survivors of this terrible plight did best working together in smaller, local communities where ordinary people accomplished extraordinary things like trying to rebuild the world that left them behind.

We had the world at our fingertips and we blew it. Politics and religion divided us like we had never seen before and we weren't willing to learn from our ancestors. First came famine, then came war, the animals in the jungle are laughing at us for throwing away such a good fine thing. We were disillusioned by dollar signs and cryptocurrency. We got hooked on fast food chemicals. Our goals in life were basically to get paid doing absolutely nothing. Well now the skyscrapers are crumbling to the ground. Outer space exploration isn't even a thought anymore either but at least we cured obesity. The end forever and ever!

[loudlittledemon]

This virus scare is ridiculous. I needed to buy water for tea, (dad doesn’t want me using tap) and water is sold out everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Bottles, gallons, even those lil tiny ones! I’m like, guys! Jesus, what are we doing going into bunkers? Stopping living our lives because there were 39 cases and one death in our county? Nah fam, we just keep living.

Not to mention all the hand sanitizer, toilet paper and canned food is gone. It’s like a fucking doomsday in stores.

Also there are scalpers outside re-selling water for fucking high prices. No, I’m not buying a bottle of water for 15 dollars ffs. We ended up getting a Brita, which might actually be better in the long run. But guys. Come on.