#mobile stage price

[newkiqx]

Installed a sensor on my girl so i know when

[mobilestagetrucktrailer]

Mobile stage manufacturer HUAYUAN hydraulic stage truck trailer for conc...

#mobilestage #stagetruck #stagetrailer # semitrailerStage #mobilestagetruck

Mobile Stage Truck trailer manufacturer HUAYUAN S455 Hydraulic Mobile Stage semi-trailer with LED screen light and sound system for concerts, church evangelism, Crusades, political elections, speeches and other outdoor activities.

Interested in friends quickly contact me! 

Phone/WhatsApp : 156 4980 9626 

Email : alice@hystagetruck.com 

Corporate Website :

https://www.hystagetruck.com/

Linkedin : 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/hystagetruck/?viewAsMember=true

Facebook : 

https://www.facebook.com/hystagetruck

Twitter : 

https://twitter.com/hystagetruck

youtube : 

https://www.youtube.com/@hystagetruck/featured

[nako-doodles]

I wanna buy the Jack in the box hobi but it’s $62 and I 🙃 watch me buy it next week 😂😂

its 63 bucks holy fuck what the FUCK?????????

[gmcdetailing]

Protect Your Car's Exterior With a Ceramic Coating

If you want to protect your car from the harsh elements, there are a number of options available in Sydney. Some companies will apply a high-quality ceramic sealant, and others offer complete detailing services. Protecting your car paint from the harsh summer sun will help prevent damage and keep it looking brand new. Here are some tips for protecting your car's paintwork. Read on to learn more about the advantages of exterior protection Sydney. You'll be glad you did!

Paint protection: Most car dealers offer organic paint treatments, which can weaken over time. An excellent solution is Brila Liquid Glass, which contains polysilazane, which doesn't crystallize or scratch. Moreover, it's easy to apply and maintain, thanks to its non-waxing characteristics. The result of this high-quality paint protection treatment is superior protection against chemical damage. Whether you're looking for a long-lasting sealant or a complete paint restoration, the experts at GMC Detailing have the experience to help you protect your car.

Ceramic coatings: There are a variety of ceramic paint protection Sydney specialists to help you protect your car. They offer packages and different types of ceramic paint protection. Because there are so many different types, choosing the best one for your car can be tricky. Ask your car repair Sydney specialist to help you choose the best ceramic paint protection for your car. Whether your car is new or used, ceramic paint protection Sydney can help you maintain the appearance of your car.

If you are looking to protect the exterior of your car from damage, you might want to think about ceramic paint protection. Ceramic paint protection Sydney companies offer a variety of different types of coatings for a variety of surfaces. They are a reputable company with products available worldwide. In fact, Ceramic Pro is one of the world's leading companies in this field, and their coatings are recognized by many car manufacturers. They also have over a decade of research behind them.

GMC Detailing in Sydney offers a wide range of paint protection and detailing services. Their professional team of ceramic coating specialists will apply a protective layer to your vehicle, preventing a host of common car problems from occurring. Moreover, you can rest assured that you won't be prone to costly repairs if you choose to have ceramic paint protection Sydney. This protection will help keep your car looking as new as the day you bought it, thanks to the tough exterior shell that they create.

While ceramic paint protection may not be necessary, it does help protect your car from damage from the sun. A high-quality ceramic sealant will protect your car from the harmful effects of the sun on your paintwork. These films are not expensive, and some Sydney-based companies even apply them for you. Moreover, a full detailing will keep your paint fresh. The paint protection services offered by companies in Sydney and other cities are beneficial for car owners because they will ensure your car remains gleaming.

[wauzmons]

We have been Betrayed, Backstabbed, Bamboozled: The Future of Elysian Eclipse

So, if you are active on our Discord, you know that EE is made in the Unity Engine and the CEO just decided to massively fuck over all the devs who are using it...

Callum Upton made a great video explaining the situation:

But it gets even worse!

Unity since defended themselves, saying that these fees are only affecting 10% of their customers, because of the $200k and $1m thresholds, so Indie devs don't have to worry about that.

…which isn't true:

Unity Plus

They aren't only introducing these fees but also changed the regular pricing plans! They just removed "Unity Plus" which is the lowest tier and costs about $50/month per dev with taxes. This is what most indies use. The next higher tier costs QUADROUPLE that amount and is also required to remove the universally loathed "made with Unity" splash screen. Oh! And if you have the personal tier, you won't be able to use Unity offline anymore! It now needs to do a license check every 3 days to function!

Unity's Ad Service

The fees will hit devs that do free-to-play mobile stuff especially hard, since they still have to pay the fees even when the players don't buy anything, meaning they could end up owing Unity more than they make in income. But what's this? If you use Unity's advertising service for your game, you will get a discount on the fees! The majority of mobile games run on Unity, meaning they are trying to monopolize the mobile ad market with this!

Publishers

Elysian Eclipse has caught the interest of a really big studio and publisher, who is considering to handle the marketing and publishing for the game. They are obviously planning to make the game come out big with sales, going beyond Unity's thresholds. But since the game is made in Unity, they probably now have to reconsider that carefully, since that would cause a massive amount of fees with Unity's new pricing model. So any game using Unity is now an instant turn-off for publishers, also massively hurting indie devs who don't reach that income threshold yet.

What will happen now?

So, Unity can't be trusted anymore and should be seen as a major threat to us and the gaming industry. Even if they walk back on some of these decisions, what has been said, has been said. They showed that they don't care about destroying thousands of games, as long as it nets them profit, so who knows what they are going to do next?

I will pause the development of Elysian Eclipse and release the Patreon demo, including all the prototypes like Aquatic Stage for free today. I canceled my subscription and it will run out next year, so Unity isn't getting a single cent from my games anymore.

Unreal Eclipse?

In the meantime I'll focus on improving my C++ skills, so I can work more effectively in Unreal Engine 5. Unreal is the current industry leader, offering much better solutions for graphics and performance for 3D games. It is also partially open source and completely free until you reach $1 million in revenue.

It is unlikely that I will be able to just translate the game from C# to C++ and port it over, since it is using a lot of engine-specific features. This basically means, we will start from scratch... I can't tell yet how much work this will be or in what ways the game will change.

But one thing, you can always be certain of: I will NEVER BETRAY MY DREAM. I will finish this project, no matter who or what stands in my way. I hope you will continue to support me on this journey.

That being said,

FUCK JOHN RICCITIELLO!!

Fucking cunt.

[femoso-seben]

Cod Virus AU

The virus is manmade, but the public doesn’t know this— no one knows this but the US government. The Virus is attached to a person young the virus is colloquially called sludge virus. There are two types of viruses; Mobile and stationary.

Mobile:

1st Stage: a strong cough and rash at the bite point, acts like pneumonia.

2nd Stage: The flesh begins to be eaten up and sores open up starting from the bite zone. The flesh begins to melt and get saggy on the body, movement and motor skills deteriorate and speech also begins to slur.

3rd Stage: Infected fully lose control of their body, and have the urge to bite and infect others. Their body slowly turns back and slimy.

4th stage: black sludge on the ground that seeps Into the ground and sprouts the second type of virus

Stationary:

1st stage: black sludge

2nd stage: strange fern-like growth that gets up to 10ft tall

3rd stage: fully mature and sends out spores in the wind.

4th stage: humanoid statues frozen to the ground releasing spores.

Price:

Stress: high

strength: tired

Health: Excellent but tired

Mentality: Good but Weary

Goal: trying to find the progenitor of the virus knows it’s connected to a girl

Laswell:

Stress: High feels like the world is on her shoulder

Strength: average

Health: Excellent

Mentality: poor stress over

Goal: this is a former CIA experiment that’s gotten out of hand and she must catch the progenitor

Soap:

Stress: high

Strength: average

Health: poor

Mentality: bad

Infected: first stage, currently quarantined

Gaz:

Stress: above average

Strength: Tired

Health: Average

Mentality: upset that Soap is infected

Goal: to save Soap brought up the idea of amputation to save him

Ghost:

Stress: Average

Strength: a little tired

Health: excellent

Mentality: focus on the mission

Goal: finding and securing the target

???

Stress: High

Strength: Low

Health: poor

Mentality: bad

Goal: to survive

---------------

Love for someone to draw this.

[digimonirl]

It's a sad inevitability that all good things come to an end, including our time with our Digimon. But, every ending is just a chance for a new beginning and with Digimon that means the start of a new growth cycle! Today we're going to be touching on the Digimon life cycle, focusing on how to care for a digitama and what to do while you wait for your partner's new life to begin!

First off, for the newer Tamers in the audience, Digimon do not "die" at the end of a growth cycle. Think of it more like a transformation; the Digimon will shed excess data and surround their Digicore in a hard protective shell while reforming their remaining data into a Stage I form. A Digimon is strictly speaking alive for every step of the process and even if we humans find it useful to assign terms like "brith" and "death" to the process, it's important to keep in mind that Digimon cultures tend to think of it more as a period of rest and rejuvenation rather than a strict end or start to one's life.

Next up we have the tamas themselves! Digitamas, or Digieggs if you prefer, are the natal stage of all Digimon with no real exceptions. Despite looking like the kind of eggs you'd find here on Earth, tamas are actually incredibly durable and require no outside heat to incubate. Fragments of tamas donated for research have been shown to withstand puncture wounds and small caliber fire without so much as a scratch! Lastly, Digitama also display a wide variety of colors and patterns. Patterns seem to be unique to the individual as there is no correlation between the colors displayed on the egg and what species it will hatch into. This is consistent between naturally occurring Digitama and ones that were created via a data composition machine, leading researchers to believe that the color of one's tama is analogous to finger prints in us humans!

"But Lady", I hear you asking, "That's all well and good but how do I care for a Digiegg if they just seem to hatch on their own?". Don't worry friend, there's actually a lot you can do for your partner to help them along in the hatching process! To keep things convenient for mobile readers, I'll be formatting this section into bullet points.

1. Prepare a nest or incubator for the tama: It is true that tamas don't need outside heat to incubate, but a safe environment for both the tama and the resulting newborn is always going to be ideal. Incubators are the high end solution to this, most models being the Digimon equivalent of those backpacks you can buy to carry your pets around in. They're temperature controlled and very easily portable, most actually do have straps to make them into backpacks, so it's hard to argue against getting one. That being said, if you can't afford the steep price tag, a nest will do just fine friend. Bunch up some old blankets and pile them onto a sturdy pillow and your new friend will hatch just as well as one kept in a fancy incubator.

2. Wait: The time it takes for tamas to hatch varies between individuals, and can even vary between an individual Digimon's growth cycles. Some artificial Digitama have been observed hatching in as little as ten minutes, while the longest recorded hatch time for a naturally occurring Digitama was a little under a month! Generally speaking though, most tamas take about three to five days to hatch regardless of their point of origin. Don't be stressed if your friend takes a little longer than usual, you can't rush growth.

3. Be prepared for change: While it is true that most Digimon's Stage I and II forms remain fairly consistent, it is still ultimately as random as digivolution. I've already done a resource post on what to do immediately after a tama hatches so I won't go too in depth here, but it is worth repeating that you should be ready to accept change as it comes and be prepared to help your partner with basic tasks for the few days to weeks it'll take them to reach Stage III again.

4. Last but not least, care for yourself: Even if we know our partners aren't gone forever, waiting for them to hatch can take its toll on us Tamers. It's important to keep yourself busy during this time and to use it to enrich your life away from your partner. I always take time between growth cycles to tidy up around the house and give myself a spa day. I think that having a clean home and a refreshed attitude helps both you and your partner come into this new experience with a better foot forward but you can do whatever will make you happiest! There's no right or wrong way to care for yourself, as long as you put in the effort it'll pay off.

That's all we have for now friends! As always, make sure to send us any questions y'all have on today's post and we'll try to answer them as they come. Good luck, and we hope that y'all's partners hatch soon!

[gatheringbones]

[“Trailer park residents rarely raised a fuss about a neighbor’s eviction, whether that person was a known drug addict or not. Evictions were deserved, understood to be the outcome of individual failure. They “helped get rid of the riffraff,” some said. No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.

In years past, renters opposed landlords and saw themselves as a “class” with shared interests and a unified purpose. During the early twentieth century, tenants organized against evictions and unsanitary conditions. When landlords raised rents too often or too steeply, tenants went so far as to stage rent strikes. Strikers joined together to withhold rent and form picket lines, risking eviction, arrest, and beatings by hired thugs. They were not an especially radical bunch, these strikers. Most were ordinary mothers and fathers who believed landlords were entitled to modest rent increases and fair profits, but not “price gouging.” In New York City, the great rent wars of the Roaring Twenties forced a state legislature to impose rent controls that remain the country’s strongest to this day.

Petitions, picket lines, civil disobedience—this kind of political mobilization required a certain shift in vision. “For a protest movement to arise out of [the] traumas of daily life,” the sociologists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have observed, “the social arrangements that are ordinarily perceived as just and immutable must come to seem both unjust and mutable.” This usually happened during extraordinary times, when large-scale social transformations or economic disturbances—the postwar housing shortage, say—profoundly upset the status quo. But it was not enough simply to perceive injustice. Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them—which was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do.

During rent strikes, tenants believed they had a moral obligation to one another. If tenants resisted excessive rent hikes or unwarranted evictions, it was because they invested in their homes and neighborhoods. They felt they belonged there. In the trailer park, that sentiment was almost dead. For most residents, Scott among them, the goal was to leave, not to plant roots and change things. Some residents described themselves as “just passing through,” even if they had been passing through nearly all their life. One, an out-of-work father of three who powered his trailer with stolen electricity, said, “We don’t let family come here. It’s not us. It’s lower-class living, and I didn’t come from this.” Lenny’s ex-wife, who being Lenny’s ex-wife was virtually married to the trailer park at one time, liked to tell people, “You forget that I’m the one that used to go to the opera.”]

matthew desmond, from evicted: poverty and profit in the american city, 2016

[centrally-unplanned]

Its fucking 2 AM lets keep ranting about this! Genshin isn’t popular the way people think its popular. It is currently one of the most financially successful games ever:

But it doesn’t make 20 quadspillion dollars by being the game with the highest player count - and certainly not by being the game with the highest player count in Japan. It has a ton of players, don’t get me wrong - looking like 60 million monthly users.

That isn’t that much though! 

All the big games clean its clock - and it looks even less pretty in Japan itself:

Mobile games ranked by installs. Do you even know what that second game is, by the way? 

Uma Musume Pretty Derby: Horse Girl Racing & Breeding game, absolutely more popular than Genshin in Japan on mobile (which most people estimate is how Genshin is played in Japan & China, vs PC in the US). Which I am singling out specifically, because beyond just ‘numbers’ you have metrics like intensity of the fanbase, how much do the devotees talk about the game and such. That sets trends more than numbers do, right? And hey look Comiket in Japan just happened, what do you got for me - lets rank number of doujins sold at comiket in the gatcha-style games category:

Type-Moon: 848 

Uma Musume: 728

Hololive: 620 (Vtuber)

Kancolle: 654

Touhou: 596

iDOLM@STER Starlight Stage: 474

Blue Archive: 446

iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors: 232

Genshin Impact: 230

Nijisanji: 194 (Vtuber)

Touken Ranbu: 192

Project Sekai: 172 (Includes Vocaloid)

Arknights: 123

Azurlane: 120

Girls und Panzer: 118

Fuck yeah Girls und Panzer. But anyway 9th place? Pretty good! Very respectable...and fucking wrecked by the HORSE GIRL BREEDING MOBILE GAME Uma Musume

How about some streaming data! Japan only ofc:

So now here its pretty low, but I will grant that its the best ranking anime-style game. Genshin is popular, for sure. But all this taken in, Genshin just aint that big - its a very popular game, probably the most popular “fantasy fluffy anime game”, but its not like, insanely popular, running the show.

The reason you think its popular is two-fold; one is that its a gatcha game, so it is monitizing its player base way above other large games. Not crazily so btw, the average Genshin player has probably spent $70 dollars on the game, the normal price of a game - but still its competing with other “free” games which always have much bigger player bases, its hitting hard in relation. It is, absolutely, one of the most financially successful games ever. And the second reason is its cross-country popularity - its really rare for a game to be huge in China AND Japan AND America. The fact that its a top game in all three countries is a big feat, and it makes you hear about it, it gives it a playerbase scale from the sheer market size.

But if you are Japanese company Nintendo, making a game that is *not* a gatcha game, for a company that is famously pretty parochial about branding their games for the Japanese market uber alles, that is making a *console* game on a console that famously did not sell well in China...why would Genshin stand out to you? Its just one of the games, competing with a totally different model, on a totally different device, and in totally different markets. It is a trend, but it is not driving trends, it is not the trendsetter - certainly not for a Switch game. Engage would have no reason to try to copy it over other game styles.

TL:DR Fire Emblem Engage is taking inspiration from the horse fucker game and if you can’t prove that wrong I don’t want to hear it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy

Amazon is a perfect parable of enshittification, the process by which platforms first offer subsidies to end users until they’re locked in, then make life good for business customers at users’ expense, until they’re locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.

In a new report for SOMO, Margarida Silva describes how the end-stage enshittification of Amazon is playing out in the EU, with Amazon repeating its US playbook of gouging the small businesses who have no choice but to use the platform in order to reach its locked-in customers, making European customers and European sellers poorer:

https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/

The mechanism for this isn’t a mystery. Amazon boasts about it! They call it their flywheel: first, customers are lured into the platform with low prices, especially through Prime, which requires pre-payment for a year’s shipping, which virtually guarantees that customers will start their shopping on Amazon. Because customers now start their buying on Amazon, sellers have to be there. The increased range of goods for sale on Amazon lures in more buyers, who lure in more sellers, with both sides holding each other hostage:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can’t get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon. The less choice customers and sellers have about where they shop, the more Amazon can abuse both to pad its own bottom line.

There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale. Amazon uses both tacit and explicit “Most Favored Nation” deals to hide these price-hikes. Under an MFN deal, sellers must not allow their goods to be sold at a lower price than Amazon’s — so when they raise prices to cover Amazon’s increasing fees, they raise them everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/

It’s not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly. Like Ozymandias, they have run out of worlds to conquer, and so their growth has to come from squeezing suppliers and/or raising prices, not from bringing in new customers. This is likewise true of mobile companies like Apple and Google, who have run out of people who are so excited about incremental mobile hardware gains that they’ll buy a new phone every year, which means that growth has to come from squeezing app vendors:

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7

This is likewise true of the streaming companies, which is why Netflix is cracking down on “password sharing”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

It’s true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we’ll still pay to see because there won’t be anything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

It’s certainly true of Uber, which is why they’ve double the cost of a taxi ride and halved the wages they pay drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Monopolies “grow” by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it’s obvious that you’re using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators. That’s because the only part of antitrust law that the neoliberal project left intact is “consumer welfare” — the idea that monopolies should only face enforcement when they raise prices and/or lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya

This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze suppliers and workers, because a monopolist — from Walmart to Amazon — can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare. The less you pay to produce a product, the cheaper you can price it.

When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called “Monopsony” so most people haven’t heard of the concept. But monopsony is every bit as dangerous as monopoly, and monopsonists find it far easier to acquire market power than monopolists. Few suppliers can afford to have even 10% of their sales disappear overnight, so a buyer who accounts for 10% of your sales can demand deep discounts and other favorable terms.

Amazon is a monopolist, but it’s also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist. For example, its audiobook division, Audible, has a 90+% market-share, and it used that market-power to steal at least $100m from audiobook creators, in a scandal dubbed Audiblegate:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

For Europe’s 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless. Take listing fees: Amazon’s “flywheel” pitch claims that as the company grows, it achieves “economies of scale” that can lower its cost basis. But Amazon’s listing fees haven’t changed, even as the company experienced explosive growth in the EU (remember, sellers whose Amazon fees exceed their margins have to pass those fees onto buyers, and also raise their prices everywhere else to satisfy the Most Favored Nation requirement).

Amazon books the revenues from these fees — and other junk-fees it extracts from sellers — in Luxembourg, an EU member nation that provides a tax haven to multinational businesses that want to maintain the fiction that they operate their businesses out of the tiny kingdom. There is sharp competition in the EU to offer the most servile, corrupt environment for multinationals, and Luxembourg is a leader, along with Cyprus, Malta and, of course, Ireland:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But at least listing fees haven’t gone up, unlike other fees, which have climbed sharply. Amazon falsely claimed that its additional revenues from fees were the result of growth by independent sellers, which Amazon pegged at 65%. Later, the company admitted that the true growth figure was 22%. Meanwhile, fees are up 85%.

The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its growth figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.

The SOMO report cites research by Juozas Kaziukėnas of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who finds that sellers are now giving 50% of their gross revenues to Amazon, an increase of 10% over the past five years across the whole EU. However, different EU (and ex-EU) countries have experienced much steeper increases in fees — in the UK, fees have nearly doubled (up 98%), and in France, fees more than doubled (up 115%).

Many of these increases come from the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) program, which is promoted as an optional service, but which is really obligatory — careful research shows that sellers who warehouse, pack and ship their own goods get banished to the depths of search results, even if they have ratings, costs and times that are competitive with FBA. This is especially true of the “buy box” that lands at the top of most searches. The company refuses to disclose how buy box positioning is determined, but 90% of products in the buy box pay for FBA.

Amazon has used excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.

Italy’s competition authority did yeoman service in uncovering the sleaze of FBA, publishing an investigation that showed that Prime and buy box made the notionally “optional” FBA into a must-have for merchants, meaning that Amazon could jack up FBA prices without losing business.

Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg’s flouting of EU tax law. Amazon passed these taxes straight through to its merchants, without seeing a comparable decrease in the number of sellers using its platforms — an unmistakable sign of market power. If you can raise prices without losing customers, then, by definition, your customers have nowhere else to go.

I’ve previously written about how Amazon’s $31b/year “advertising” market isn’t really advertising — rather, it’s a payola scheme that auctions off the top of a search-listing to the merchant with the most to spend:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is how you get a simple search like “cat beds” returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for dog products:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/

Auctioning off search results means that every time you search for something you want, you have to wade through screen after screen of listings for products whose vendors spent more on advertising, leaving less to spend on making quality goods.

This is as true in the EU as it is in the USA. The SOMO report shows that European merchants are required to spend ever-larger sums to show up in results for the exact products they sell, leaving them with a choice between making less money, raising prices, or skimping on quality.

But even the “winners” of Amazon’s gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose. Amazon uses an automated product removal process that can delete some or all of a merchant’s products, without warning or explanation, and no one at Amazon will explain what a merchant did wrong. That remains true even if a vendor pays for Amazon’s “marketplace consultant” service — ask these paid Virgils why you’ve been cast into Amazon’s pit, and they’ll shrug their shoulders (and bill you for it).

And even if you can navigate the junk fees, the Kafka-as-a-service removals, the war of all sellers against all sellers for search primacy…you still lose. Merchants told SOMO that a product that survives Amazon’s gauntlet is likely to be cloned by Amazon and sold as an Amazon Basic or other house-brand product. Amazon doesn’t charge itself 50% junk fees, so it can always underprice the vendors it knocks off, and give its own products permanent top-of-search placement.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once testified under oath before Congress that this doesn’t happen — and then refused to return to Congress when multiple vendors showed evidence that he’d lied:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/

He definitely lied:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/

Amazon has faced investigations and enforcement in the EU over this, and settled a claim with a promise to “not use non-public seller data to compete with sellers,” but given the company’s record of broken promises on this score and the difficulty of catching them cheating, it’s pretty naive to think they’ll stick to this.

The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over. Höppner says the problem is that the EU evaluates Amazon’s bad deeds on a “case-by-case” basis, missing the big picture: “By the time one identified problem was seemingly solved, Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within.”

But the EU’s enforcement approach is about to change significantly. The EU just passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes a bunch of obligations on Amazon:

allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),

not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),

limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)

preventing Amazon from giving top billing in search results to its own products or sellers that have acquired extra Amazon services (Article 6.5)

The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the “consumer welfare standard” that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.

They call for a probe into Amazon’s Most Favored Nation deals (“fair pricing policy”), the practice of sponsoring search results, and spiraling fees. They want the EU to adequately fund DMA enforcement, with “measures to prevent regulatory capture.” And they want Amazon to publish clear explanations for how search results, buy box placement, and other practices hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

Amazon will doubtless claim that disclosing how those systems work will make it easier for spammers and scammers to game their way to the top of search results. We should be skeptical of this claim — content moderation is the last domain where anyone takes the bankrupt idea of security through obscurity seriously:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Finally, the report calls for breaking up Amazon, forcing it to choose between being a platform seller or a platform user, calling this the only way to “prevent the conflicts of interest between its role as a platform intermediary, seller, and service provider.”

The technical term for this measure is “structural separation” — a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers. This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan AMERICA Act, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, Googbook represents both publishers and advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Structural separation hasn’t really been applied in the US for a generation, but it’s gained currency in recent years, for the obvious reason that the referee can’t also own one of the teams. I was in Germany last week speaking to regulators and politicians, and they espoused skepticism that the EU would embrace structural separation anytime soon.

But they were wrong! Today, the European Commission announced plans to force Google and Meta to sell off their conflict-of-interest ad-tech lines of business, mirroring the provisions of the US AMERICA Act:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Structural separation really is the policy we should be demanding. It’s amazing that lawyers who would never argue a case in front of a judge who was married to the plaintiff will turn around and defend the idea that Amazon can fairly operate a marketplace where they compete with other sellers.

With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon’s decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe’s economy. This is the “planned economy” that the EU claims it detests and seeks to prevent — but it’s an economy planned by distant autocrats in a Seattle boardroom, for the purpose of extracting the surpluses needed to launch an endless procession of penis-rockets.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this postto read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

[Image ID: A desert ruin. In the foreground is a huge Amazon box, with an EU flag in place of its shipping label. Atop the box are the feet and partial legs of an Oxymandias figure.]

Image: Rama (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gladiator_with_sword-Louis_Ernest_Meissonnier-MG_1216-IMG_1223-white.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/fr/deed.en

[mobilestagetrucktrailer]

QUILOMBERT MUSIC FESTIVAL

-HUAYUAN mobile stage to help your activity more wonderful

On June 10, 2017, the music team of Quilombel RV held the two-day "Guilin Quilombel RV Music Carnival" in the Lijiang River Carefree Lake Scenic spot in Guilin, Guangxi, which is known as "the best landscape in Guilin". With several groups of star singers, bands, dozens of luxury motor homes and the largest and only Transformers mobile stage truck in China provided by HUAYUAN, a mobile stage manufacturer, and brilliant lighting and sound, the "Blue Group" led by Xu Wei will appear in the final stage. On the stage truck in the scenic area of Xiaoyao Lake in Guilin, the fans were given a wonderful musical performance!

With much expectation, the famous rock singer Xu Wei and his top blue band arrived at the music carnival of the Colombert RV in Xiaoyao Lake, Guilin. Tens of thousands of fans came from all over the country to join in the crossover feast, which lasted until late at night. Xu Wei, who had planned to sing six songs, sang eight of them in one breath, making the music fans ecstasy. From Lao Wolf, Luo Qi, Black Panther Band, Shuimuaniao and Xu Wei, as more and more big stars join in the Quilombert RV music Carnival, the crossover integration lifestyle of RV travel + mobile stage music scene is getting more and more attention from people from all walks of life, and the recognition is also getting higher and higher. There are many famous brand sponsorship gifts sent non-stop. To the audience surprise again and again, linger.

Since the beginning of 2017, with the wonderful journey season after season, our mobile stage trucks and stage semitrailers have completed nearly 150,000 kilometers of China crossing with Quilombert. Quilombert is becoming a new cultural phenomenon, attracting fans, travelers and crossover people from all over the world. And in every MIDI music Festival, this new way of life is more and more popular. Celebrities in the culture and tourism industry, investment circles and Internet circles have been paying keen attention to the new crossover operation mode of Grenbel RV travel + mobile stage music scene. HUAYUAN mobile stage truck will fight alongside Grenbel in the future, making this new RV music travel lifestyle go to the whole country and lead the whole people to share it.

To learn more, please visit my website:

Youtube :

[tippenfunkaport]

Inspired by a recent poll, could you tell us a bit more about the software you use for writing and the advantages with it?

Thanks so much!

Can I keep this short is the question...

So, for anyone who didn’t see the post this is referring to, I mentioned on another post that the writing software I use is...

4TheWords for drafting (brainstorming, first draft, etc)

Scrivener for all subsequent stages (editing, formatting, etc)

ProWritingAid for a final look before I submit / post

Longer version (and, like, I could talk about this all day so feel free to ask follow ups but I will try to contain myself)

4TheWords is a fantasy RPG-ish writing game where the words you write defeat monsters, earn loot, complete quests, etc. I have been playing it for five years ish and the game-ification just works really well for my brain. Earning silly little prizes and moving the game plot along keeps me motivated to keep writing when otherwise I would be a useless slug so I do most of my early stage writing on there like drafting, brainstorming, journaling, etc. It is silly but I love it and it basically saved my writing life when I was in a huge slump so they have my undying devotion. The company is also the kind you feel very good about supporting and they are HUGELY queer friendly with a big yearly Pride event with many of the main in-game characters being queer and/or trans. (The closest the game has to main characters are a lesbian couple that just got married as part of the Valentine's Day event last month!)

It costs money but a) there is a 30 day free trial of you want to check it out and b) there is a community pool if you cannot afford the fee as well as frequent sales/deals. (If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to use my referral code when you sign up because then you’ll get some extra crystals and I can send you a welcome present of some loot! If the image link above is annoying, dm me and I will give you it via text for copy and paste.)

Scrivener is very robust writing software that I use for fiction, non-fiction and scriptwriting. I only rarely use it for first drafts (bc I use 4TW for that) but I do almost all my editing / rewriting / formatting / publishing in it. I have been using it for probably about a decade and am still finding new tools and features I didn’t realize it had. I absolutely swear by it. The learning curve can be steep but luckily it’s one of the most popular writing programs in the world so there are a TON of great tutorials out there. (My advice? Just watch a video of something like the top 5-10 features and then play around and look up stuff as you have questions instead of trying to do the whole long tutorial it comes with.)

Disclaimer that I only own the desktop version. There are mobile versions that are a separate purchase from the desktop version but I don't use them.

Biggest selling points of Scrivener to me are:

while many writing services have a monthly fee, Scrivener is purchased exactly once and you can use it for life on your laptop and desktop AND you can get 50% off that one time price with a NaNoWriMo winner code (this alone is enough to buy my loyalty for life)

it’s incredibly versatile for both plotting and publishing and works really for my writing process (which is, admittedly, chaotic and weird) and has near infinite customization. It's esp great for making story bibles, organizing research, and plotting out larger works with lots of cross references and chapters you need to rearrange

as a script writer, Scrivener only cost me a one time fee of $35 and includes all updates and bug fixes until the next major version (which happens like once a decade). FinalDraft is $250 and that only includes the current version (which changes about once a year) to do the same thing. That’s a no brainer to me.

ProWritingAid is editing software. Like Grammarly but MUCH more robust with a lot more reports you can run. It’s not replacement for a human editor (AI editing can only do so much) but I like it as a second pair of eyes before I post or submit something because it does catch a lot of the basics and makes me feel a little better about sending something out. There is a limited free version and the full version can be pricey if you pay the monthly fee but I bided my time until the lifetime subscription went on sale for 50% off and paid once and now I have it to use for life.

There. That was almost short, right?

[antipolin]

Luke Thompson for The Guardian

The actor Luke Thompson, 35, was born in Southampton, grew up in France and trained at Rada. He was nominated for two awards for his first professional role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe. After 10 years in theatre, his screen breakthrough came playing Benedict Bridgerton in the Netflix hit Bridgerton, which will return soon for its third season. On stage, he recently played Willem in A Little Life, opposite James Norton, and is now making his RSC debut as Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

You recently won a WhatsOnStage award and were nominated for an Olivier for A Little Life. Was that gratifying?

It’s a lovely cherry on the cake of that experience. It’s easy to have an opinion on awards when you haven’t been nominated but actually they mean a lot. I’ve devoted a lot of time and thought to getting better at acting, so it’s incredibly meaningful to be recognised like that.

What was the audience reaction like? There were reports of fainting.

Oh god, yes, everything. There were weeks when it was mad. The craziest one was towards the end of the run. Someone was coughing very loudly during a quiet moment in the play and the show had to stop. It turned out they’d projectile vomited in the dress circle, over other people, who then started retching too, so it was like a chain reaction. I wonder sometimes how much of it is self-perpetuating. The more people come expecting graphic content, the stronger they might react. There’s definitely been an uptick in fainting incidents post-pandemic.

How was working with James Norton?

Fantastic. What I love about James is that he keeps it simple. I don’t know if it’s because of his screen experience but in theatre, the risk of repeating a show over and again is that you start to decorate it and it becomes unrecognisable. Whereas James always wanted to trim the fat and get back to the core of it.

We’re speaking during a break in rehearsals for Love’s Labour’s Lost. Is your RSC debut a big deal for you?

A really big deal. It’s a lovely time to do it as well, when there’s been a changeover of artistic directors. It feels like a fresh page. To be the first production in the big theatre is a real honour.

Director Emily Burns’s production is inspired by billionaire tech bros, right?

The play itself is very Elizabethan. We’ve tried to put it in a modern, more relatable context. It opens with a group of rich, powerful men who are very anxious about what to do with their time, what’s real, what’s honest, what’s fake. We all live in that online world now. It’s also about self-improvement and how to deal with these horrible things [points at his mobile phone].

The play includes Shakespeare’s longest speech. How do you go about learning that?

As always with Shakespeare, there are different versions swimming around but yes, it’s a mouthful. Lines in these great texts work like magic spells. You learn them, repeat them and it stirs things in you. So I mutter it to myself and see what happens. Somehow it’s easier when I’m on the move, but I have to be careful. I’ll be walking down the street and run into someone while reciting lines at full throttle. Then I’ll go quiet because it’s like being caught out.

There’s an ongoing debate about West End ticket prices. Should theatre be more accessible?

Of course. It’s not just about accessibility, it’s about the role of theatre. I sometimes worry it’s for the 0.05% of the population who go all the time but I still believe theatre has a societal function. It’s a bit like politics – you need everyone involved, from as many different backgrounds as possible. Theatre should be the opposite of an echo chamber. It’s about coming together and sharing ideas. That’s increasingly rare nowadays. We’re all stuck behind our screens, slightly uncomfortable with the idea of proper debate and exchange.

Bridgerton series three is imminent. Where do we find your character Benedict?

Things come to a head in terms of trying to work out what he actually wants. When you’re “the spare”, there’s a lack of pressure. Benedict flits around having fun, free and easy, but he’s also paralysed by choice and searching for something more meaningful. He’s quite a modern character in that way: I know a lot of people trying to build meaning in their life.

Is this series as sexy as ever?

Of course. Julia Quinn’s books are romance novels, so it would be a betrayal not to explore that. It’s a genre with its own codes. That’s what’s so delicious about the show. Sometimes it’s dismissed as unserious, but there may be some misogyny in that. People love romance. There’s not enough of it around.

What’s it like seeing your bare backside on screen?

Quite strange. We don’t often get that view of ourselves. In a way, it’s good to keep track of these things.

A disabled character joins the cast this series. Are you proud of Bridgerton’s diversity?

Hugely proud. It’s great to see everybody represented on screen. Disabled people were around in those times. It also gives the lie to the authenticity police who govern how period dramas are done. Particularly in the UK – it happens with Shakespeare productions as well – there’s a whole army of people ready to insist that it’s supposed to be like a museum piece. It’s often governed by a nostalgia for something that never even existed. Bridgerton’s not a documentary, it’s a drama. In drama, you can do whatever the fuck you want, Shakespeare wrote history plays that are completely inaccurate historically and no one gives him any shit about that. I guess partly because he’s dead. But it’s a poetic reality and Bridgerton is no different.

What’s it like learning Regency dance styles for ballroom scenes?

Great fun. I have to be careful with spoilers or I’ll get arrested, but I get a nice dancing moment this season. It’s fascinating when you understand these dances as basically like a dating app. They get people to speak, touch, be close – then literally swipe to the next row.

Luke Newton plays Colin Bridgerton. Does it ever get confusing with two Lukes playing brothers?

It’s OK because I tend to be referred to as “Lukey T” and he’s “Newts”. There’s a whole flurry of acting Lukes suddenly. Later in the RSC season, Luke Thallon is playing Hamlet. I grew up thinking I was the only Luke in the village but it’s back in fashion. We’re all roughly the same age, so there must have been a Luke moment back in the late 80s/early 90s!

What do people tend to come up and say when they recognise you?

It’s always a lovely exchange. The breadth of people who are Bridgerton fans is heartwarming. Although once someone asked: “Are you from Bridgerton?” I evaded the question a little bit, then saw her Google “Bernard Bridgerton” on her phone, which made me laugh. Who’s Bernard? Another came up with a photo of Jonny Bailey [who plays Lord Anthony Bridgerton] and said: “This is you, isn’t it?” I was like: “Well, obviously not. We play brothers, sure, but we look quite different.” The funniest was on a plane to New York recently with some of the Bridgerton lot. The air steward came up to Claudia [Jessie, who plays Eloise Bridgerton] and said: “Oh my god, you look like Eloise from Bridgerton!” She pointed at me and said: “And doesn’t he look like the brother?” The air steward said: “Oh, I wish!” So apparently I look shit in real life.

Which fellow actors do you admire?

I just saw American Fiction and the whole cast were terrific but Sterling K Brown was particularly great as the brother. It was just simple, warm, easy acting. It was also lovely to see Jeffrey Wright front and centre for a change.

What theatre have you enjoyed recently?

I loved An Enemy of the People with Matt Smith and had the best time at Sunset Boulevard. It was so fun, sexy and exciting.

How do you relax when you’re not working?

I’m a pianist. I’ve played since I was a kid and did all the grades. Sometimes acting can feel like you’re always deferring to other people and don’t have much control but piano is something entirely yours. I can sit down, play classical stuff for two or three hours, and not notice the time pass. I’d be up for including it in an acting job someday.

Do you have a dream role? It’s a terrible cliche to say you want to play Hamlet, but most actors do. And I’d love to play Iago, mainly because a casting director once told me: “You can’t play Iago because you’re too nice.” That’s such a misunderstanding of how evil works. It’d be nice to explore something a little bit more unpleasant.

[usafphantom2]

Finland acquires JDAM and SDB I weapon systems for its F-35 fighters

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 03/01/2024 - 13:00 in Military

The Patria and the Finnish Defense Forces signed a service agreement to develop the capabilities of Finland's F-35 program, specifically purchases of JDAM and SDB I ammunition.

Major General Jari Mikkonen, Head of the Logistics Command of the Finnish Defense Forces (FDFLOGCOM) signed the contract for the acquisition of JDAM and SDB I ammunition for the F-35 multifunctional fighters on February 29, 2024. The Finnish Minister of Defense authorized the Logistics of the Defence Forces Command to conduct the acquisition.

The object of the acquisition is the JDAM and SDB I systems with related equipment and services in the years 2024–2030. The acquisition is referred to as the Total Package Approach (TPA), which means that, in addition to the JDAM and SDB I pumps, the acquisition includes transport sets of BRU-61 ammunition, training material, manuals, spare parts, accessories, transport services and manufacturer instructions, as well as training services and supplier support. Contains spare parts and support services for manufacturers and suppliers by 2030.

The acquisition contract is in dollars and its indexed maximum price is US$ 96.1 million. Purchase payments will take place during the years 2024-2030.

The acquisition will be carried out in accordance with the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) procedure between the authorities of the USA and Finland, in which the Defense Forces Logistics Command will conclude the acquisition contract with the United States administration.

The JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) is a modular guidance kit for 500, 1,000 or 2,000 pound bombs of the Mark 80 series. In addition to a guidance kit, a fuse or sensor is installed in the pump, depending on the intended use. A bomb equipped with JDAM can perform precision attacks on fixed or mobile targets at short range.

The SDB I (Small Diameter Bomb I) is a glider pump capable of accurately hitting medium-range targets. Thanks to the relatively small size of the pump, a fighter is able to carry a larger number of SDB I bombs at a time.

Guided bombs and glider bombs are part of the weapons acquisition package that allows the Finnish Air Force to have the ability to support other Forces in combat activities. The weapons of the F-35 fighters from Finland will be acquired in stages until the year 2035. The phased implementation of the acquisition of weapons will make it possible to optimize the composition of weapons as the Finnish F-35 program progresses.

"Some of the types of weapons to be purchased can also be used with our current fleet of F/A-18 Hornet. Therefore, when we make the transition to the F-35, we will be able to profit from the skills and experience in systems acquired so far," said the Director of the F-35 Program, Colonel (retired), Henrik Elo.

Tags: Military AviationF-35 Lightning IIIlmavoimat/Finnland Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

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

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O

[llwygarugysglyd]

Commissions are open!

I have a soft, cosy and warm artstyle, and as a FFXIV player I love to draw people's WOLs and wolships. I take payments through paypal.

If you're interested in a commission, here's an easy to fill out form!

Please reblog and help me find my clientele!

Full information below cut:

PRICES

Emojis: £15

SKETCH

Headshot: £10

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Full Body: £30

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Half Body: £45

Full Body: £60

FULL COLOUR:

Headshot: £60

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Full Body: £100

EXTRAS:

Extra character: +75% per character

Fancy border or detailed background: £30 each

Design charge for character with no ref: £20

Complicated outfit or prop*: +20% of initial price *I will never charge for mobility aids or bodytypes of any kind

I don't draw NSFW or kink art. I will let you know if I feel I am incapable of delivering the piece you are looking for. I will try my hand at anthro art and animals, but it isn't my speciality.

terms and conditions

By commissioning me you have agreed to the terms of service and have confirmed that you have read them in full and understood them.

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[dojae-huh]

I’ll be waiting for your commentaries on Doyoung youth documentary! I think you’re really gonna like a lot of the contents during this promotional era. Thankful that promotion nowadays are not just about going to variety shows. Thanks to social media, we got to see him appear to talk shows and see him talks more. We’re seeing more of Doyoung who is not part of NCT. His thought process, his interaction with people outside of his circle or out of his field. I can see he’s a lot more confident too. He really says ‘This is who I really am’ through this era (album-wise and personality-wise). Despite being ambitious he’s also aware that this album will not appeal to all due to people’s preference. But most important thing to him, he’s satisfied with it. I learnt a lot from him through this album. Once again, you’re really gonna enjoy it!!

*sobs* Yeah, only in June. I'm in a new country, and the prices for mobile internet are insane here. Plus there are complications with buying a package in the first place giving my location and lack of a credit card. I have to severely safe on data. Unlimited is not even an option.

I see that Doyoung goes on a lot of programmes where he can sing live. It's really great he has the opportunity to do now what he had been longing for for so long (remember how he complained about his parts in NCT songs? "I will do what I have to do"). All his patience and perseverance is paying off.

I think, it is extremely hard to wait for postponed gratification (when an idol starts to invest blood and tears since day one of a trainee life), to see other, younger people, making it or doing what you want to do (like freshly debuted groups achieving more awards than NCT), add to it the loom of enlistment over male idols. Fortunately, in comparison to poor Taeil, and even Taeyong to a degree, Doyoung lucked out with the debut time window. I'm really happy for him and for his fans.

I also suppose that he got a full album because he found those additional 3 songs himself (one he wrote, one from Lucy's guy, maybe Kenzie's or the one with Mark can be counted as the 3d). As it is less about money, and more about finding enough of good songs that can go together. The songs were collected over a long time as well (Tae had less than a year after Shalala).

I said before that I don't find idol Jaehyun interesting, he is bland to me. (His real self I'm sure I will like, what's with the love for arts, old things and jazz). Doyoung is a different case, but mostly because I invest in knowing him and see past his fake facade of a cute trembling bunny. The real Doyoung is tenfold more charming than his idol image that he developed over the years in apprehension of antis and not his NCT fans. After his shift in image (from savage) there always was a difference between what he allowed to show being in a group setting with other 127 members versus his communication with his own fans. With his fans he was more honest (Doyoung/Dongyoung divide, fake boyfriend pictures, etc). And as a soloist he is even more sincere. I'm looking forward to seeing him open up in those interviews (he will never be not self-censored, but still).

I thought yesterday about Doyoung's words about standing out. To me, he is a more unusual and rare individual than even Taeyong. I guess "tortured artist" is a well-explored personality, heh. There are many of them in the industry. Meanwhile a "tribal chief" could be more often found behind the scenes, not on the pop-stage. And if they exist, they are not "seen". The idol culture exposes artists, shows them from many sides, it is very different from how pop-scene is elsewhere.

Real Doyoung gives off a lot of energy. Active positive energy. Many idols are a subject of desire (sex appeal), adoration (cuteness) or empathy ("mistreatment"), not many are "class presidents" (Hanbin seems to be one, btw), those who push you.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but Do's chant guide cracked me up. It heavily reminded me how he persuaded his class to participate in a choir competetion and led them to win it.

Doyoung: "Repeat after me. You all emit light, you are all fireflies and stars, you are all kind and meant for great things. You are my support, I'm your support. If I can do it, you can do it. Do like me, do better than me. Sing with me."