#wes anderson power plant

[wesandersonpowerplants]

"We prepare everything fresh from local ingredients," Abdu said, walking us around the Plant cafeteria. "We have grocers who bring us in-harvest vegetables and organic meats. The menu will change every week. So far, we've only used this cafeteria once. But, it is ready for when we open."

"I'm Tena Ezera Joas," the head chef said as she posed for her photograph. "I owned a high-class restaurant in Abebe Etefu. Abdu was actually a frequent patron."

We asked her how she felt about cooking for a larger population, and she laughed confidently. "The recipes are the same," she said, "It is just the quantities of ingredients that are different."

We toured the Plant locker rooms, including the wash stalls and wall-mounted showers. Everything was gleaming, fresh, and new.

Abdu led us down another hallway. "Now, a little more serious. I am taking you to see the decontamination area and the decontamination pods. These areas of the Plant were designed with the newest technologies in radiation suppression. Just do not turn on any of the nozzles."

We entered a long room that contained individual doors. "We decided not to do an open decontamination format. There is one pod for every staff member. So, you can imagine that there are a lot of pods. That is why we are glad that Wedefīti is a mile per side!"

"I am not supposed to do this," he continued, "but we still have time to re-sanitize the room before we open." He pressed a button outside one of the pods, and the lock hissed. Then, he opened the door so we could walk inside.

"The front area is for full-suit decontamination. The back is for skin decontamination. Technicians will leave their suits in the pod when they exit; the suits are cleaned as the pod undergoes its own sanitation. In the meantime, we will provide a new suit in the technician's locker."

We left the room, and the door hissed shut. "Come," he said, "I will take you to see the lab."

"Every Plant must have a good chemistry lab. The lab technicians have already been working for the last month. If you look to the right, you can see that they started by collecting samples of local flora. This is so we can start measuring the effects of Wedefīti on the local environment and make necessary changes."

The chemists introduced themselves but were wary of our notebooks and watched carefully when we wrote things down. Pictured clockwise: Esyete Rada Befikadu, Helen Melku Gedarm, and Eyoab Goytom Atikem. Pictured below: Shashu Neguse Giday. None of the scientists would tell us the specifics of what they were doing, so we assumed they were working on the project Abdu had mentioned: radiation and local ecology.

Wes Anderson Power Plants is a work of fiction. All images are generated by AI.

[transmutationisms]

the idea that 'science' is an unmitigated and inherent social good---a politically neutral and universally beneficial process of accumulating knowledge---is wildly ahistorical and dangerously, wilfully ignorant of the role that science and its purveyors / practitioners have played in imperial and colonial expansion. warwick anderson went so far as to say that colonial medicine was better understood as a discourse of settlement than one of health promotion, & we can see this quite easily in, for example, french doctors' use of the nostalgia diagnosis to guide colonial policy in algeria in the 1830s, attempting to securely settle a french population there; or in the development of a science of 'water cures', spa treatments considered to mitigate the insalubrious effects of foreign (particularly tropical) environments, for which the french army by the 1890s granted routine medical leave because the 'health' of its soldiers was not a matter of individual interest but a state resource.

but medicine is in many ways an easy case when it comes to the relationship between science and the state; all too often we still seem reluctant to acknowledge, for example, the pursuit of economic botany and animal / plant breeding in the early modern period as contributors to discourses of acclimatisation and proto-eugenics, sciences that were given state financial support on these utilitarian grounds & not for any high-minded general pursuit of 'knowledge'; or the development of navigational instruments and knowledge from the 14th century or so onward as a project explicitly funded and intended to permit faster, cheaper, more reliable colonial exploration and travel; or the sheer amount of research in physics and chemistry that has been and is devoted to weapons development or natural resource extraction; or the promise of space travel as a further possibility for obtaining raw materials as well as for settlement---often marketed in terms and visual rhetoric explicitly comparing the 'space colony' to its terrestrial precursor: 'the final frontier', depicted as both lush tropical paradise & as rugged american west, waiting to be conquered & brought to heel.

i am of course not hostile to 'science' in any totalising way; this would be as indefensible a position as the automatic 'defence' of all such practices; they're not monolithic or intrinsically doomed to serve state interests. but it is simply irresponsible to pretend that the scientific inquiry into something---describing it, measuring it, taxonomising it---is inherently a social good, or that the pursuit of 'knowledge' is ever an apolitical endeavour. knowing, seeing, & measuring the world grant immense power; states and empires know this. scientific inquiry is not tangentially related to imperial and colonial expansion; often it is a critical piece of the machinery by which these processes occur. wilful ignorance of this fact in favour of an optimistic conception of science as a universal social good is not just inaccurate but propagandistic & an advancement of state & imperial interests.

[yandereunsolved]

One false promise leads to another

Pairing: yandere Kai Anderson x fem aligned reader/gender neutral pronouns Summary: A Goddess becomes conflicted at the slander of a mortal claiming their spirituality. Inspired by @doll3tt33 's spiritual counselor!Kai bot! Go follow her. Her bots are spectacular. trigger warning(s): religious themes/cult, sexism, dubcon kissing, talks of forced impregnation word count: 1.07k Authors note: I have mixed feelings. I kind of hate this one and like it, but I wanted to share it with you all anyway.

Your sacred temples ransacked, the offerings of your devoted followers gone dry. The beginning of time was sparked by your power. The galaxies were created by your nimble hands. The stars are your testimony to all the lives you created. The humans are your scared flock. 

Over the centuries, you have guided humanity with a dutiful hand, fighting back against the forces of darkness. For when you sprung the world into creation, creation itself came along with destruction, and that destruction threatens to swallow you whole.

For even with your holy beings at your side, false phropets still arise. Those who wish to make your influence non-existent. Those who preach your falsehood. Those who twist the minds of your beloved creations into mush. Those very few are smited by your very hand. The essence of their beginning was wiped from the face of reality. For a real God doesn't need a false prophet.

Once again, like clockwork, a power-hungry mortal vying for an ounce of your ability claws their way into your sacred residence. Your greatest temple was torn down centuries ago by colonizers. Your chosen few were slaughtered. The God of destruction was sweeping across your lands, and you were unable to fight back. So now, after all this time, the land called Michigan belongs to destruction and not creation. The house of a cult that guides lost lambs towards damnation is in the same place where your temple used to sit proudly. 

Destruction mocks you. Your transparent hand dipping into the formation of another galaxy as you create it like revered art. Crystalline tears slip down your angelic features as a storm brews over mortal land. Your heart once filled with the adoration of mortals now filled with their sorrow and woes. Your mind unable to make a decision on the conflict that lies before you now. Do you get revenge on destruction by destroying his creation of a false prophet against you? That would go against everything you believe in. To kill a mortal— the greatest sin you could ever commit.

Before you are able to escape the insecurities planted by the offspring of destruction, you are off. Your mortal form so foreign to you that you cannot help but admire it. You truly are the being of life and of creation. The being that must choose the fate of such a pitiful creature.

In the next seven months, you visit this place of idol worship. You learn about the leader Kai Anderson, his followers, his tactics, and his deepest desires and fantasies. You hear his teachings, and your human stomach lurches— what an odd sensation.

"My lost lambs, your salvation is the destruction of this fallen world. If the goddess of life truly cared for us, then wouldn't they save us? I am afraid we have been misled. Fate has given me this position. The position is to lead you all to spiritual peace."

"Death to the goddess!"  

Each word that falls from his honeyed lips is poisoned by the silver tongue destruction gave him.

The sensation of destruction overstimulates your eleven senses. You only wanted to learn about him and contemplate his destiny.

You never expected to end up here with him in the hour when the moon is at its highest. He decided to lead you through the woods near his house. Each step of his cruching leaves that you have made. Each breath he takes is that of air you breathed yourself. Even his body was made by your hands. The dye for his hair was a gift to the mortals to allow them more self-expression.

He abruptly stops, and his piercing honey brown gaze turns towards your features. Your mortal body fills with all of these emotions you have never felt—a flush of anger like always, a sense of dread and pity, and that prickling in your stomach and heart. That uncomfortable sensation that you are unable to wave away. The one you first felt when learning of him.

"Destruction led you to me. It was the God of all that has been that gifted you to me." He speaks in a passive yet passionate manner. His real emotions simmering beneath the surface. The facade of an accepting and noble leader never slipping from his features. Not even for a moment. "You are mine to use as I please."

An unsettling grin appears on his pale features, his dimples showing. "And use you I will, little lamb." He whispers with such whimsy and venom.

One of his broad hands clasps on your shoulder like a lock. You feel powerless against his presence. Your breath stuck in the back of your throat. Your righteous anger rises in the pit of your stomach. "You will have my messiah baby. You will do as your told. After all, people like you are below me. You should always listen to your master. Don't listen, get another man, I'll kill them. I'll kill all of them. I'll kill you if I have to." He plants a forceful kiss on your lips. The rough texture of them making your body shudder. Like that the flame is extinguished. Another light is lit much lower in your body. The intensity greater than any other feeling you have had towards him.

"That's the only thing you women are good for. Making babies and sandwiches." He mutters in such a sweet manner that you were almost fooled into believing his words true. "You'll make my pretty little messiah baby. Your belly will swell and you will officially be mine. Mine all mine."

His lips refuse to disconnect from yours. You don't stop it but you don't comply either. In the first time in all of eternity you want nothing more than to listen to him. Give into his words. If only he truly knew. His most devoted follower is the one he despises the most.

"You will have my messiah baby." His teeth pull at your bottom lip defiantly. His temper has grown short with your lack of words. Normally he would enjoy the fact his most quiet and doting follower is listening to him— but not tonight. He needs your confirmation. He needs to know you are the one. You will have his baby one way or another, but it'd be easier if you just complied. "Come on, doll. Use those pretty little words for me and tell me 'yes'. Say yes for your leader."

[sugasiren]

☆ASTRO FACTS☆ ♈️

The Aries Woman & Her Real Power ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 Pt 1

**FYI - this blog contains mature content.

Time to clear up some misconceptions! And confirm some truths. So pull up your seat, grab a snack & prepare for TOTAL fucking honesty. 💯 While this post is primarily about Aries Suns, much of it can also be applied to other Aries placements in general. So take whatever resonates.

♈️ Aries Women are usually into more dominant, masculine types. They adore men who are stronger & smarter than them whom they can learn from. 👍While Aries Women are indeed fully capable of taking care of themselves, they love knowing that they can lean on and trust the man that they love if needed. They prefer reliable partners with backbone. They have NO respect for passive males, as they will DESTROY a weaker man's soul. 🔥 Eat him alive just like the large plant in the 'Little Shop of Horrors' movie. 🤣 It truly ain't pretty!

♈️ Contrary to popular LIES... many Aries Women are VERY feminine. They aren't doormats though! Nor the girl-next-door type. Ram Women typically embody the "Hot Girl" or the "Femme Fatale" brand of Femininity. ❤️‍🔥 She's often the Leader of the pack whom other women model themselves after & want to be like. Jayne Mansfield, Diana Ross & Mariah Carey - Aries Sun 🌞; Sade, Janet Jackson, Pam Anderson - Aries Moon 🌙; Marilyn Monroe & Liz Taylor - Aries Venus ⚘️. Are any of these women Tomboys?? FUCK NO! They are womanly, spicy & passionate beings. Learn the damn difference.

I sometimes find that Taurus, Cancer & Virgo Women can push the "masculine" stereotype onto Aries Women the most because they wish to be more like them in certain ways. 💯 For instance, most Aries Women aren't taking care of ANY man. But I've seen Taurus paying for men, Cancer mothering men & Virgo trying to train men into being obedient dogs! Add to that, Scorpio Women are often control freaks who insist on leading. Sag & Aquarius Women are rebels who often try to compete with & emasculate any man that they encounter. So who's actually lacking in Femininity here?? Not Aries, from what I see. 🤷🏾‍♀️ Lots of projection going on.

♈️ Aries Women are indeed outspoken. They are typically confident & in possession of strong boundaries. They are open & honest communicators who aren't afraid to ask for what they want. Most Men LOVE this about them and wish more women were like this! 🩷 Alternatively, deep inside of every Ram Woman is a sweet, adventurous little girl with a heart of GOLD who yearns to feel safe. ❤️‍🔥 A maiden wanting her protector! They're an astonishing blend of pure innocence like the Spring Goddess Persephone + the wit & warrior spirit of Goddess Athena. 🙌 There are sooo many interesting layers to the Aries Woman!! It's insanely fascinating. They are deeply selective with who they disclose all of this to, though. So they can be misunderstood at times.

♈️ Aries Women are Masters of keeping men ON THEIR TOES in a healthy way. They like men and men adore them. 👌 They highly value autonomy, so they extend that to their partners and give them breathing room. They inspire men to be better, more powerful versions of themselves. They do have tempers!! But they don't hold grudges and their sex more than makes up for the trouble. 😺 They are playful and NEVER boring! How TF do you think we keep attracting the best of the best?? Not by being a Basic Bitch, my friends. 🤣

♈️ According to Marriage Statistics: Aries Women have the longest-lasting marriages with Leo Men, Sagittarius Men, Aquarius Men & Aries Men. ⚘️⚘️ After that, we also have solid odds with Capricorn & Taurus Men. We most often divorce Virgo, Gemini & Libra Men which makes TOTAL sense to me. Not surprised! Aries Women do not enjoy flaky and/or nitpicky partners.

♈️ Aries Women are just as sensitive & intuitive as Cancers in certain ways - we just follow our GUT instincts more than the emotions of our heart. 🔥 We're rarely wrong about someone's character. We bully the bullies! And *if* we care about you, we have your back until the very end. But if you betray us?? You will go from feeling like the most special person in the world... to the most worthless piece of gum scraping off the bottom of our shoe as we walk away from you FOREVER. 🙌 Do not play with us!! Don't play yourself by losing the best prize you'll ever have.

That's all for now, darlings. Happy Aries Season!! ♈️ And thanks so very much for all of the new follows, shares & support!

[sassyfrassboss]

Leakings and the British Press

I tend to do some of my best thinking in the shower in the morning. Not sure if it has to do with my brain being fresh in the morning or if the water just pounds good ideas into my brain.

Anyways, after watched both the Anderson Cooper interview and the Michael Strahan interview, both twice, something Harry kept saying over and over again in both interviews stuck with me.

Harry was saying that the palaces, aka William, Charles, and the other royals, would continually brief against, mostly Meghan but Harry as well. Harry claimed that the palaces would collaborate with the British press and plant false stories about Meghan to take attention away from the other senior royals. He said they did this to distract from negative stories about the other senior royals. It was a cover up at Meghan’s expense.

Now I have spent the past few hours racking my brain trying to think about these “negative” stories about the other royals.

As we know, Catherine rarely has anything negative written about her. The top stories that come to mind are “Three Kitchens Kate” her being “work shy” and of course her “fight” with Rose Hanbury.

Charles, well I don’t think anything bad about him came out until after Harry left which was the donations for favors scandal.

William, yeah other than him being work shy or having a temper, and his kids going to a posh expensive school that he pays for out of his own pocket, but that is about all I can think about.

Camilla, well she tends to keep her nose clean as well.

The British press have all expressed their confusion as well over these claims. They keep saying “what negative articles about the other royals!?”

However, all the articles that made Meghan look bad were all of her own doing.

She is the one who demanded a big tiara. She is the one who yelled at The Queen’s chef about the taste of eggs. She is the one who made Catherine and Charlotte cry. She is the one who cried about no one asking if she was okay in a poverty stricken country where girls are raped and murdered daily. She is the one who had a $300k baby shower and her security for it was paid for by the UK taxpayers. She is the one who broke royal protocol over and over again by walking in front of Harry in the processional line and to greet a King. She is the one who planned surprised engagements on days other senior royals have very important speeches or engagements or tours. She is the one who cleared out an entire section at Wimbledon because she was too important to sit with the peasants. She is the one who lied to the palaces about work she knew she was not allowed to do and did it anyways. She is the one who lied on court documents. She is the one who has changed the story more than once and when her inconsistencies are pointed out it isn’t her being a liar but the press being racist.

So how exactly by reporting on the truth were the other palaces leaking or throwing her under the bus? Sure a couple of the instances happened behind closed doors so obviously those were leaked but, from memory, this was around the time that Meghan had started her own PR against the BRF and how they were threatened by her and her star power. She was saying her and Harry left KP because William was a bully. So we got the leaks of the tiara, the egg issue, and Catherine & Charlotte crying.  However, all the other ones, and many more, were there for us to witness with our own eyes and put two and two together. We didn’t need the British press to point out that when another senior royal, especially Catherine or Camilla had something important scheduled, Meghan would show up somewhere as a surprise!

KP even issued denials about stories that WERE true. The stories that Catherine and Meghan were fighting was true and KP issued a statement saying it was a lie. I think the only stories that were false were the copper bath tub and yoga floor, which many people believed Meghan and Harry planted themselves.

So I guess I am just super confused over the "fake" stories about Meghan? I can't recall a single fake article other than the bathtub.

I love how Harry has this attitude that the world cannot form opinions on their own and that us peons believe everything that we read.

This is the dude that fell for a fake phone call and believed in an island doesn’t exist. No questions asked. But yeah…we are the chumps.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Five

Week 29:

Film(s): Five (Dir. Arch Oboler, 1951, USA)

Viewing Format: Streaming Video (Amazon)

Date Watched: 2022-02-11

Rationale for Inclusion:

Late in the runtime of last week's film, The Thing From Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA), as part of a monologue trying to convince his fellow occupants of the Arctic base not to destroy the carnivorous plant alien that has already drained the blood of multiple scientists and sled dogs, Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) concludes his plea for the importance of the pursuit of knowledge at all costs with, "We split the atom." At which point, one of the airmen, Lt. Eddie Dykes (James Young), cuts in with, "Yes, and that sure made the world happy, didn't it?" The sardonic quip stops Carrington cold.

In 1951, only six years had passed since the United States had deployed atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August of 1945. Whilst news of the destruction and atrocities were initially slow to spread, by the time the film takes place the scientists and airmen in The Thing no doubt knew the horrors inflicted upon Japan. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1949, and the Cold War was very much underway.

With this cultural context in place, it follows that the post-apocalyptic film would make a comeback in the 1950s. Rocketship X-M (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950, USA) featured a post nuclear disaster society on Mars, but this survey has not featured a film where the central narrative is built around people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world since natural disaster film Deluge (Dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, USA). So when I encountered Five (Dir. Arch Oboler, 1951, USA) described as the "first to depict the aftermath of an Earthly atomic bomb catastrophe" whilst perusing Wikipedia's science fiction cinema list, I knew it was an essential film to view.

Five was an independent film written, directed and produced by Arch Oboler, a successful radio dramatist who followed in Orson Welles' footsteps in transitioning to filmmaking. Oboler had directed three films prior to Five, and to keep costs down on the production the cast featured relatively unknown working actors, the crew was recruited from recent University of Southern California graduates, and the primary filming location was a Frank Lloyd Wright designed guest house on Oboler's Malibu ranch.

Reactions:

With its limited cast and locations, Five is dominantly the kind of no frills character study that would become more commonplace during the 1960s. It is simply and competently made with aesthetics that may remind modern day audiences of episodes of anthology television series, like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.

As implied by the title of the film, the small cast of characters includes five people: the pregnant Roseanne Rogers (Susan Douglas Rubeš), white everyman Michael Rogin (William Phipps), the aged bank clerk Oliver P. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), black everyman Charles (Charles Lampkin), and supposedly affluent adventurer Eric (James Anderson). Roseanne's sex and Charles' race become sources of drama, mostly because Eric exhibits a behavior described decades later by sociologists as "elite panic."

Lee Clarke and Caron Chess of Rutgers University coined the term in a 2008 journal article, in which based on available research and case studies of disasters from the 1950s through 2001 they determined that the source of panic in these scenarios was not the general public devolving into a mob, but by elites, fearing that their power and wealth would be violently stripped from them by a mob. Clarke and Chess specifically identify three relationships with panic that occur during disasters: elites fearing panic, elites causing panic, and elites panicking. My introduction to this concept came via an episode of the podcast Behind the Bastards recorded during November of 2020, when amid the COVID-19 pandemic and stress around the presidential election having a reminder that the majority of people are inherently giving, caring, communal creatures was a huge comfort.

In Five, after an initially violent encounter, Michael and Roseanne band together for survival, with Oliver and Charles later joining them. They compassionately deal with Roseanne's pregnancy and Oliver's mental dissociation and decline from radiation sickness amid their limited resources. Oliver's dying request to visit the nearby ocean results in the old man having as peaceful a death as available under the circumstances, and the discovery of a man washed ashore, Eric.

The injured Eric's explanation for how he survived the atomic bombing is bizarre compared to the banality of the others' explanations, who were shielded from the blast via being in an elevator, lead-lined hospital x-ray room, and bank vault, respectively. Instead Eric was actively climbing Mount Everest alone when a blizzard stranded him. When he made it back to basecamp he found other climbers dead. On foot and via abandoned conveyances Eric had made his way back to America, encountering no other survivors along the way, just dead bodies.

Eric's journey in its entirety sounds highly unlikely, but at first only one aspect utterly defied my credulity: who climbs Mount Everest alone? Mountaineering is not a pet topic of research for me, but I know enough to know that no serious climber attempts Everest without guides, frequently members of the local Sherpa community. "What happened to his sherpa?" I demanded aloud when we got to this point in the film. "Did he eat them?"

Given that Eric is gradually revealed to be a greedy opportunist, in retrospect his story may have been nothing but lies. It seems more likely he was in the United States the entire time and leapfrogged from one pocket of resources and survivors to another until he ended up washing up on the beach. Regardless of whether he actually was a billionaire or not--and the film does nothing to disprove his account--he nevertheless has an elite mentality: trying to hoard resources (including Roseanne) to himself. 

Eric is the sociopathic evolution of the wandering rapists from Deluge, and ultimately serves the narrative role of Michael's doppelganger. Michael may have initially tried to sexually assault Roseanne, but spends the rest of the film making up for that feral moment. Eric is predatory and ends up becoming a murderer in the course of the narrative; after being banished by the others, he goes back to steal supplies and kills Charles when he is caught. Michael is spared having to also become a murderer by the reveal near the end of the film that Eric has radiation poisoning and likely does not have much time left. The film makes it clear that Michael is a good man, and deserving of being the new Adam of the post-apocalyptic world.

Roseanne earns her new Eve status in part by being the token female, and in part because she is devoted to her missing husband until she finds definitive proof that he died in the bombing. Her dedication to her husband and baby are all that is needed to qualify her as a good woman. 

Unfortunately, her newborn dies for reasons of narrative convenience. Apparently it was too much to ask for Michael to be father to a baby he did not conceive. Instead it ends with Michael and Roseanne left alone. Despite the tragedies and threat of radiation sickness lingering, Five closes conservatively and reasonably optimistically: life will go on.

Before I wrap up, I would be remiss if I did not spend more time discussing Charles. His presence is itself a progressive act, given how the casts of most mainstream films surveyed thus far have been all or mostly white. However, he is introduced in a subservient role to an old white man, and spends the remainder of his time in the narrative as a litmus test to show who is the superior white man to repopulate the world: Michael or Eric. The notion that Charles might be a candidate for Roseanne's mate is never so much as suggested. For all the indignities Charles suffers throughout Five, he at least is spared the trope frequently placed on black men of being the first to die. Overall, Charles is a minor step forward for black representation in science fiction cinema.

Five, on the other hand, is a solid first representation of the post-nuclear apocalypse narrative. Later films built on the premise, like On the Beach (Dir. Stanley Kramer, 1959) and The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Dir. Ranald MacDougall, 1959), would result in better movies, but Five deserves greater attention within the sub-genre.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The White House is closely monitoring the upcoming labor talks in the US auto industry, negotiations that could put it at odds with the traditional support of a major union. [...]

The three contracts between the UAW and General Motors, Ford (F) and Stellantis, which sells cars and trucks under the Dodge, Ram and Chrysler brands, are due to expire September 14. Traditionally the UAW will select one of the three companies to go first and have the other two put on hold while it concentrates on reaching deal that the union will then push for from the other two automakers as part of a “pattern.” The last round of negotiations in 2019 resulted in a strike at GM by nearly 50,000 union members that lasted about six weeks, costing the automaker nearly $3 billion. There was even greater cost to the overall economy in the Midwest due to the impact on GM suppliers and local businesses in the towns where GM plants are located. Beyond that, Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan think thank estimates that UAW members lost $835 million in wages during the strike and federal and state income and payroll tax collections were nearly $350 million.

All three automakers are investing billions of dollars as part of a transition from traditional gasoline powered vehicles to electric vehicles. Such a move would allow them not only to meet tough new emissions rules, but also to build cars with less need for labor because of fewer moving parts. Ford estimates the shift to EVs will reduce the hours of work needed to build a car by one third. So the shift to EVs, supported by the Biden administration, is a major concern of the UAW heading into these talks. Biden has already been endorsed for reelection by the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, with Liz Shuler, the group’s president, describing him as “the most pro-union president in our lifetimes.” But the UAW, which is part of the AFL-CIO, has held off on joining other unions in endorsing Biden so far.[...]

“We have been absolutely clear that the switch to electric engine jobs, battery production and other EV manufacturing cannot become a race to the bottom,” Fain said in a statement from the union. “Not only is the federal government not using its power to turn the tide – they’re actively funding the race to the bottom with billions in public money.” “These companies are extremely profitable and will continue to make money hand over fist whether they’re selling combustion engines or EVs,” Fain said. “Yet the workers get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. Why is Joe Biden’s administration facilitating this corporate greed with taxpayer money?”

5 Jul 23

[phantomoftheorpheum]

Just finished 1x07 of School Spirits, here are my (currently disorganized) thoughts-

*as usual, thoughts below a cut to avoid a massively long post.

Okay, well, first of all, glad that the Nicole stuff has come out now. It's pretty much exactly like I expected, though she has really muddled up the evidence (for the audience) by actively planting Maddie's bootprints. Is she behind any of the other "evidence?" I don't think so, but I'm going to have to consider that for a minute. I know that she and Simon were focused on the money, but it would have been nice if they'd talked at all about the fact that someone liked Nicole's social media post & since Nicole now also believes that Maddie is dead, they should be on the same page that it wasn't her.

It was immediately a red flag when Mr. Martin said his line about enjoying power & control. Obviously he's become actively more threatening throughout the episode. He's also in the fallout shelter when Dawn crosses over, so is he the one who died there? I have some somewhat vague theories about Mr. Martin, but I'll save those for the end.

Xavier called out that his own alibi relies on Mr. South, which does make him less suspicious to me again. Though I did think it was weird that he mentioned Mr. South whistling "the Titanic song" the whole time because he doesn't mention that he actually saw Mr. South the whole time. While Mr. South does feel like a red herring kind of character, I can't help but wonder if that will come back around in some way. Maybe it's something as simple as when we see what happened to Maddie, we hear him whistling that when she walks past the boy's bathroom, or something?

I know we needed to have various characters look suspicious and so Claire had a role to play throughout most of the season, but I really enjoyed her this ep & I wish we could have had more of this version of her throughout the season. I guess here's hoping for season 2!

I don't love that it seems like Claire & Mr. Anderson assumed the blackmail was coming from Maddie just because he hadn't given his number to any other students. It seems weird. Why would they even assume it's a student? What did Nicole say? But I think that's just the way it is, because I don't see how another twist fits in there well. It was a really bad and poorly supported assumption on Mr. Anderson & Claire's part, but okay.

Don't think I've forgotten that Mr. Anderson's alibi makes no sense, still. At least the alibi he told Claire. He said he spent the night with his father, Maddie was killed during the day & Xavier's alibi is for 8th period. Why would Mr. Anderson not be at school for 8th? That's never been mentioned/explained. The Sheriff claims he has a good alibi, but what is it?

Dawn mentions that people can be possessed by spirits. She is the perfect character to use to give the audience important information without them necessarily taking it too seriously. Plus, we later see that she's a lot "more" than anyone thought, and being taken seriously and appreciated seems to be what she needed to cross over. I think we need to take her concerns of possession pretty seriously.

Okay, I guess now is the time to talk about the fact that it seems like Janet didn't actually cross over & Mr. Martin clearly has something to do with that/is lying about it. I have about 12 different half-baked theories with this whole situation, so I don't even know which way to turn. Is Janet still around, or can he somehow absorb the energy of other ghosts and has basically killed her? Maybe through hypnosis? Perhaps hypnosis (or maybe any mentally altered state) on a living person leaves them vulnerable to possession, but on a ghost leaves them vulnerable to being absorbed or controlled? Does he have the ability to impact the real world? Is it possible that he can influence the actions of the living? Maybe not fully control them, but heighten emotion/anger etc.? Could he have had a hand in Maddie's death? Either by being powerful enough to hurt her, or by being powerful enough to influence someone else to hurt her? Maybe he can't make someone do something completely out of character, but he can push them past their normal limits? He was down in the fallout shelter and that may be his reset point, so it doesn't seem out of the question that he was nearby when Maddie died. Or maybe he didn't have anything to do with what happened to Maddie & he's just being set up as a season 2 antagonist. See what I mean about all the theories/thoughts?

So. Maddie's mom. I'm glad we're finally starting to address what she was doing at the school on the day of Maddie's death. I've said before in a post that if she killed Maddie, it would have been a crime of passion, imo (could she have been influenced by Mr. Martin? Is she more susceptible to ghosts because of being under the influence?) But I'm not sure she's capable of this level of coverup, and I'm immediately suspicious of any "revelations" that happen before the final episode, since mysteries like to leave an element of surprise for the finale. At this point, I think it's likely she and Maddie argued & that she has Maddie's necklace, but she didn't kill her. I think the necklace is likely what's in the envelope that she's keeping in Maddie's dresser. In Maddie's flashback with her mom she yells either "that belongs to me" or "that belonged to me" which I'm guessing is about the necklace.

Which brings me to- The Sheriff. He's a loose thread. He could have followed Nicole from Maddie's house and dug up the money. The last we saw, she was there with Maddie's mom and the police. We were reminded, yet again, about his re-election campaign and money. He would have the ability to plant evidence pretty easily (the backpack, the "murder weapon," etc.). And he can steer the investigation. Simon mentions that when he was shown Maddie's file it didn't have the ticket with the boot print. Why would that be left out, unless the cops know that was faked and that he might realize that? And how could anyone know it was faked unless they knew Maddie's shoes, or they killed her & know she couldn't have left the prints? Did someone maybe call the police when Maddie's mom showed up drunk at the school, giving the Sheriff reason to be there? Did he encounter Maddie after her argument with her mom? The question is, what exactly would be his motive to kill Maddie? He's an asshole, and they made sure to show us how much in the scene with Xavier, but why would he want Maddie dead? He does seem motivated by money/re-election, but Maddie didn't actually have any money & how would be know anything about that situation?

Could Mr. Anderson and the Sheriff have been working together to steal money from Claire's stepdad? I feel like I'm missing a piece here in this theory, because Claire's stepdad was donating to the Sheriff's campaign, so I don't know why he would need to steal money, but- is it possible the Sheriff was in on Mr. Anderson's plan, so he knew that Mr. Anderson thought Maddie was blackmailing him & had been given some of the money? The police told Simon there was no money in Mr. Anderson's wall when they searched, but maybe it was there & the Sheriff was trying to protect him/the stolen money. At that point, there was no proof. Once Simon produces the proof that Mr. Anderson stole the money, the Sheriff can no longer pretend & Ms. Fields tells Maddie's mom that Mr. Anderson turned the money over, but maybe the Sheriff already had it & was just now forced to acknowledge this. Mr. Anderson's supposed alibi doesn't line up with the timeline, but the Sheriff says he has a good one. Did Anderson kill Maddie (maybe he was told to get the money back by the Sheriff, but ended up killing Maddie when he became frustrated that she was denying having it) and the Sheriff is helping cover it up? So many options.

Is the hooded figure that we saw in the house the same person as the hooded figure we saw at the end of 1x07? Seems likely, but we have no proof, so we can't rule out anyone whose location we don't know during both of those two events (so, anyone, really).

Okay, those are my immediate thoughts. I'm in the process of constructing a timeline with some added conjecture/theories, but I'm going to post it separately, since this is already so long. Speaking of, do you think we'll get to go through events chronologically (like watch Maddie's last day play out) in the final episode. That could be interesting! Not as the entire episode, since obviously we want to see progress with the characters in the current timeline, but I'd like to see some of the events we've already seen put into the context of the new information.

[canyouhearthelight]

Leather Houses, Ch. 3

Chapter 3 of 4 for this one!

This chapter is significantly longer than the other two if my word count is correct. Which makes sense, because this is also the chapter that took the longest to write, despite @baelpenrose encouraging me every step of the way for several months. As before, a reminder that this is a horror story. This chapter in particular gets a bit squicky on the blood and medical stuff, so read at your own risk.

For those out there who don't vibe with this kind of fiction, never fear! One last chapter after this, and I have a short retelling of a fairy tale close at hand, and a cyberpunk story after that (hopefully).

So… My name is Joannette Perkins, I guess? Matt has called me Joanie since we were seven. That's one of the few things in this whole mess that hasn't changed.

I haven't heard from him in over a week. He went to this doctor we'd never heard of before, trying to get some answers about the latest change in our - my, I guess now? - reality. He was supposed to be back at my house by five-thirty at the latest. Six o'clock rolled by, then seven, with no Mike. I tried calling his phone, but it went to voicemail. When I called the doctor's office, they acted like they'd never heard of Mitch Anderson… despite the fact, earlier that same day, they had an entire file on him dating from his birth.  I hung up the phone before she finished his last name, jumped in my car, and hauled ass to his house.

Whatever higher power exists in the universe must have heard my desperate prayers, because the sight that greeted me when I pulled in the driveway I knew as well as my own tasted like salvation.  No feeling of dread, no nausea, no pulsing veins. Just plain, white siding. Black shutters.  Concrete porch, brick lined foundation.

Mitch’s house was just a house. He wasn’t erased. He may still be alive.

But that meant that the so-called-doctor’s office was lying.

I bolted into his house, key already in hand instead of digging it out of the potted plant. Slamming the door, I looked around. Nothing seemed out of place.  After a mad dash to his bedroom, I snatched his planner off the dresser.  Matt was always so meticulous, and I had never been more grateful.  I flicked through the pages, not trusting anything in the past - just because… Mitch? Matt? Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck why couldn’t I remember my best friend’s name? - was supposedly immune to what was going on, I didn’t trust it to spread to his planner.

Finally, I reached today’s date. DCol 3.5.  Sure enough, I recognized that shorthand, and it matched what I remembered. He promised to be back at my house by 5:30PM at the latest.  Here it was, creeping up on eight o’clock, and he was nowhere to be found.  The house wasn’t transformed, but I was also battling to remember his name.

Swearing soundly, I glanced around the room. Mail.  He kept mail somewhere… his desk.  Where was his desk?  Storming through the house, I finally found a small sideboard in the living room, stuffed with neatly-filed mail.

Michael Andrews.  Every last thing in that drawer was addressed to the one name I couldn’t think of.  Logically, this had to be the right name - why keep me from even guessing such a normal name, if it wasn’t the name I was looking for? I mean… Mitch? Has anyone actually known a guy named fucking Mitch? Not even ‘Mitchell’. Just…. Mitch.

I scrambled to look at the messages in my phone.  To only mild chagrin, I saw they were nothing out of the ordinary.  Breakfast dates, good mornings and good nights, cutesy little nicknames and plans for weekend after weekend.   A romantic getaway coming up, to help ‘rekindle’ our relationship.

“Lazy fucks,” I muttered.  The only fight Mike and I ever had was over who was taking Amanda Bradford to prom.  I punched him because he took her, he hit me back because I hooked up with her in the limo.

We both dumped her, our black eyes and broken hearts a matched set. Mike and I were platonic soul mates, and how dare she do that to us?  We also both casually ignored the fact that our friendship was likely the reason we were both single. Codependency? Never met her. Anyway.  It was very clear that whoever was behind this didn’t do their homework.  Yet another piece of information we - I - could use against Them: They were fallible.  Anything that made mistakes could be beaten.

In the end, I tucked Mike’s planner under my arm and headed back to my house to plot my next move, along with anything I knew to be accurate that I thought may help me - plus his phonebook, which was currently so thin it did nothing to level his table anymore.  My biggest concern was the difficulty I had in remembering his name.  Every other detail was crisp and clear, but the name kept getting garbled.  Had they realized they couldn’t just erase people without either of us noticing?  Were they still able to mislead me, so I couldn’t ask around about him?

For the last seven days, I had done everything I could think of to find out where Mike vanished to.  He obviously didn’t disappear in the same way everyone else in town had, since his house was still just a house when I drove by twice a day to collect his mail. Calling the ‘doctor’ with the right name didn’t help, either, since it seemed he didn’t put me down as his emergency contact.  I called bullshit every time, since he had no living family and I would have been his emergency contact even if there wasn’t some fake hot-and-heavy relationship dangling in the new background.  I even drove past the address for ‘Doctor Collins’ several times, and the building looked… boring.  Like a normal medical practice.

Except that Sanderson had never had a doctor’s practice in town.  We had always driven over to Hendrix for that.

Today was the day I planned to walk into that clinic and find out exactly what happened to Mike.  A week was past, no word of him, plus more and more people were disappearing around town and leaving those horrid leather buildings. Yet his house still stood, as though he just stepped out for a minute. As reassuring as the sight was, it seemed an offense in the face of everything else going on - a sick taunt from an unknown player.  I vacillated between relief and revulsion every time I drove by, but didn’t dare park in his driveway.

Instead, I decided to lay low at my own house and get what little rest I could before what I had planned for tonight. As much as my conscience told me I should be seen around town and try to act normal, another part of me couldn’t stand to be reminded of the nightmarish ghost town I lived in now.

As hard as it was to believe, I managed to doze off into fitful sleep at some point. When I woke up, it was dark outside and the clock read nine at night. I shook the sleep out of my head and picked up the planner on my bedside table. 

DCol 3.5

Right. “Doctor” Collins’ clinic, looking for Mike.  I pulled my tennis shoes on and dug a permanent marker out of the kitchen junk drawer.  In the largest letters I could manage, I scrawled “Don’t Sleep” on the back of my forearm, and “Save Mike” on the inside.  The fog was already trying to descend and push him out, fighting back with every letter of his name that I managed to write. In the end, I was breathing heavily and leaning against my counters. It took a few minutes to catch my breath, but eventually I stood up and was brushing my hair out of my face when something caught my eye.

Save Mike.

At least it works, I realized guiltily. I made sure to keep my arm in my field of vision as I looked up the doctor’s office and set the GPS on my phone to take me there. With the nagging voice coming from my pocket, I grabbed my keys and climbed in the car.  It took several wrong turns and a strong reminder not to throw my phone out of the window, but I eventually pulled up outside the nondescript clinic, squinting against the darkness.

I glanced around and saw no other vehicles at the clinic or even on the street nearby. Made sense, I supposed - whatever weird shit they were doing here, witnesses were probably a bad idea.  I was pretty sure that walking in the front door was still an awful idea, so I slowly made my way around the building looking for another entrance.  There had to be one for deliveries, ri - 

Bingo. Ugly standard door with a deadbolt, meet girl with a juvie rap sheet shorter than it probably should be. It took long enough to make me mad at myself, but I managed to get both locks open.  I held my breath and screwed my eyes shut, throwing a silent prayer to anything listening that the alarm wouldn’t be armed.

Apparently the right person heard, because the only sound was the creak of the door hinges and my heart thundering in my ears.  Not giving it a chance to catch up, I darted inside and made sure to lock the door behind me - if nothing else, it would hopefully slow someone down if I got caught.  Unfortunately, that left me in a dark, unlit hallway without even a moon to shine in.

I patiently stood, chanting “Save Mike, Save Mike, Save Mike” over and over while I waited for my eyes to adjust.  The words had started to lose any sense of meaning by the time it occurred to me that I should have been able to see something by now.  Carefully, I lifted a shaking hand in front of my face.

I may as well have been blindfolded. I blinked hard a couple of times to confirm that my eyes were, in fact, open, and tried again. Nothing, and I had to suppress a shriek when I accidentally touched my own nose. A deep breath later I held my hand as far out in front of me as possible and started carefully inching forward. “Save Mike” I mouthed silently while I tried to think how far into the building the front desk would be.

When I was roughly where I estimated a door would be in a normal doctor’s office, I started waving my hand in the vicinity of the right height for a door handle.  My fingers only touched more air, so I slid forward slowly, thinking I may have been off by a couple feet.  Still nothing.

“Save Mike,” I whispered, trying to remind myself why I was in such terrifying circumstances.  I kept moving forward, step by step, fingers grasping for anything.  When I was roughly three feet past where the front door of the clinic should have been, I still hadn’t reached so much as a wall.

This is it, I thought. I’m in another nightmare, that has to be it. Trying to orient myself, I squatted down and placed my palm flat on a cool, slightly damp floor.

Don’t think about why it’s damp, I sang nervously in my head. Save Mike…

I inched my hands in the vicinity of where I was, keeping my hand on the floor.  It was much rougher than I expected. Nonetheless, I didn’t find anything in the area right around me.  I sat down, stretched one leg to my left and my right hand in the opposite direction.  I wasn’t tall by any means, but if I really was still in a hallway, it would have to be pretty damned wide if I couldn’t touch either wall like this.

My hand still met nothing but air, but right when I was about to panic, I stubbed my toe on something very large and very blunt.

Bingo!  Scooting as quickly as I could on my butt, I soon had both toes and both knees against a hard surface.  I scrambled to my feet and reached both hands for a doorknob.

I regretted that decision for the rest of my life.

The second my palm flattened on the wall, my fully-dilated eyes were scorched by a bright light.  I bent over my knees, groaning involuntarily and rubbing away tears.  After several moments, the pain subsided and I carefully cracked one eye, shocked to still be alive.  Instead of being caught like I had feared, my eyes were greeted by blurry gold lights glowing from the walls of the hallway.  I blinked several times to clear my vision, turning to the other wall to be greeted by the same blurry shapes.  No matter how many times I tried to clear the spots, they only got clearer.

Instead of dull lights, I was staring at what looked like letters.  I had no idea what they said, and I don’t know why my brain thought “letters”, but there was no doubt in my mind that was what I was looking at. Confusion made me turn my head in the direction I came from, showing that the symbols went on as far as I could see.  When I looked in the direction I had been going, I saw the same thing.

“That makes no sense,” I whispered to myself. “There’s no way…”  When I spun again, I saw the words on my arm.

“Oh god,” I remembered in horror. “Mike. MIKE!” I took off at a jog, choosing a direction at random. “Michael!”

I jogged for what seemed an eternity, shoving down thoughts that tried to make me confront the impossible nature of the hallway I was in.  Mike and I could figure it out later, I just needed to find him first.  I saw nothing even vaguely resembling a door, however, and no matter how far I went, the hallway stretched as far as I could see in both directions.  My breath was getting shorter and shorter when I decided to distract myself by focusing on the letters lighting the infinite corridor.

I was able to confirm my hunch that they were either letters or a repeating pattern - some symbols were more frequent than others, with entire sequences repeating.  I was covered with a thin sheet of sweat when I realized that they all repeated after a certain point.  Over and over, to the point that I could measure how far I had come by each repetition. It was maddening.

When I was breathing heavily and shaking with exhaustion, I stopped and screamed in frustration.  “Dammit!” I shouted. “Where’s Mike!?  I just want to find him and I’ll go!  Hell, show me a door, and I’ll just leave. I’ll find another way, if he’s still alive.  Just stop running me around in circles!”

My voice echoed, repeating the last word. Circles, I thought. Am I, though?  Am I running around in circles?  Out of ideas and desperate, I walked over to one wall and started slapping my palms against it.

I mean, it worked in the movies, right?  And it’s not like I had anything to lose - I was trapped in what seemed to be an infinite hallway, out of breath, with no food or water.  I had gotten in here somehow, so there had to be a way to get out.  I slapped and poked and prodded until my palms were numb and bleeding, nails broken back to the nail bed. There was just enough light that I could see the handprints I was leaving on the walls.

Absolutely nothing happened.

My back slammed against a wall in defeat, probably smearing bloody handprints as I slid to the floor. I banged my head back against the hard surface until I saw stars. As they cleared, I started laughing miserably. “I’m going to die in here,” I gasped, tears leaking from my eyes. “Why the hell did I think I could save anyone? I can’t even save myself…”  Twisting to the side, I started pounding on the wall with the so-far undamaged side of one hand. Something snapped in even that, and I ended up resting my forehead against the wall, sobbing.

No food, no water, no Mike, no dignity. I just sobbed and snotted with every last shred of energy I had left. I couldn’t even be bothered to wipe my face, and gave up breathing through my nose entirely. At one point, I was trying to catch my breath and turned my head to rest one cheek against the cool material.

Even that, I only got to enjoy for about five seconds, because the wall gave way and dumped me back on the floor. I was blinded by light again, although this time it was white and from overhead. “Ow, fuck,” I swore.

The groan that answered me from nearby sent me shooting to my feet, swearing even more.  I shaded my eyes from the bright light, squinting into the room I had somehow opened.  Something lay in a heap on a table, strapped down around various parts of its mass.

“Jesus fuck, Joanie,” it groaned miserably. “Learn some new shit for once…”

I ran over, my heart pounding. “I’m going to make your face some new shit, you son of a - well, no, your mom was a fucking saint, but still!”

“Took you long enough,” he managed through dry, cracked lips.

“They tried to make me forget you,” I admitted, bracing myself on the edge of the table while I tried to remove the restraints with trembling and painful fingers.

“Are you bleeding?”

“We can talk about it later. We still need to figure out how to get out of here.”

“I don’t even know if I can walk.  They injected me with something.  Said I keep resetting or something. That I never remember?”

“Don’t know what they’re talking about, don’t care.  Walking may be the least of our issues,” I rushed out as I got the next restraint loose.  “That door I came through was something way beyond locked.  I thought I was going to die before I found you.”

Poor Mike looked incredibly confused, and I couldn’t exactly blame him - I sounded like a lunatic. “The office isn’t that big… unless they moved me?”

“Hell, they could have moved us both to another planet for all I can tell.  That hallway is not standard issue, that’s for damned sure.”  As much as I loved Mike, I knew for a fact that if I told him anything else about the hallway now, the idiot would want to see it. “I solemnly swear to tell you everything once we aren’t here anymore.”

I barely managed to get the restraints removed completely because my hands were slick with blood by the end, although I never could have told whose it was at that point.  Carefully, I helped Mike into a sitting position and made sure he was somewhat steady before looking for something to drink for the both of us. After pausing to re-steady him three or four times, all I managed to find were bags of IV fluid.

Grimacing, I stabbed one and started sucking it dry, desperate for anything to keep me going. It tasted like stale electrolyte drink, but it took every ounce of willpower to stop halfway through the bag and give it to Mike. At the first taste, he jerked his face away and spat it out. Years of practice cleaning cuts and making him eat when he was sick at least left me well-equipped to grab the back of his head and stick the corner of the bag back in his mouth. “It’s the only thing I can find to drink,” I scolded. “So we can stand here until we die of old age and dehydration, or you can quit being a big baby.”

The scowl he threw at me before he started drinking ranked just below the top ten most terrifying things I had seen that day, but eventually the bag was empty. I snagged another, stuffed it in my bra, and shoved the scalpel in my back pocket for good measure.  From this side, the door was pretty obvious, so I mentally oriented which way I needed to turn when we went through it - you know, in case direction actually mattered when you were dealing with eldritch physics or whatever made impossibly long hallways with golden runes and invisible doors.

“Okay, bud,” I grunted as I helped Mike to his feet. “Time to boogie. Through the door, hang a right.”

“Uh huh,” he panted, nodding.

“Before you know it, I’ll be shoving you in the shower,” I promised, reaching for the handle and mentally bracing myself.

“Ass.”

“You very much underestimate how bad you smell,” I muttered. “You’ve been here at least a week.”

“Real fun….” he trailed off as the door to the lab or whatever closed behind us. “Where the hell are we?”

I hiked him higher up on my shoulder and started walking. “I told you, I don’t know. But there’s air, so that’s nice.”

“Are we underground? This is - “

“I. Don’t. Know,” I repeated slowly. “And I. Don’t. Care. This should be the direction of the door I came in if I’m remembering right, so we’re going this way. Not sure it matters to the hallway, but it matters to me, so let’s get going.”

“What do you mean, if it matters!?” Great. Mike was starting to panic. Doing an awesome job, Joanie!

Hiking him higher on my shoulder again - dragging a man six inches taller than you was not an easy task - I took as deep of a breath as I could. “When I got here on the outside, this was the fake doctor’s office, complete with fake back door. As soon as I got inside, the door closed or vanished, or something. It was pitch black, I couldn’t find a wall, and because I couldn’t see, it took forever to realize I had walked way too far to not have slammed into the front door. Blah, blah, blah, kept going like a dumbass, blah blah, turned around, found a wall, it lit up…” I waved my spare hand around. “So at least there’s light?”

That seemed to help, because he at least started walking instead of half-stumbling, half-being dragged. “Whatever they injected me with messed up my eyes, I think.” He rubbed them, almost punching me in the cheek.

“Hey, we don’t want to barf, so that’s something,” I joked. I am soooo not telling him that he can probably see them fine, they’re just gibberish.

“Are there any more people missing?” he asked after a few minutes of walking.

“Not that I can tell. You were the last one, so far. And your house is still… you know, your house. Maybe the program or whatever got stuck?”

A rueful chuckle shook him as he stumbled against me slightly. “Sure. Leather houses, people who don’t exist anymore, hallways that can’t exist but do…. A program makes as much sense as anything.”

“That, a psychotic break, magic, or aliens are pretty much our options.” I dragged him more towards the middle of the hallway as he stumbled again.

“Sure,” he sighed. “All of the above, hell. Why not?”

A damp skittering noise made me look down. “Did you kick something? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Huh?” Mike stopped and stared dumbly at his feet. “What would I have kicked?”

“The… gravel…” I trailed off as I realized the gravel I had cut my hands on before was gone. The floor was completely smooth now.

Which explained the noise even less.  Especially when I heard it again.

“Mike, we gotta move. I think the tunnel is closing up behind us, or falling apart, or just found a new way to fuck with me.” I gripped the wrist over my shoulder firmly and grabbed his waist hard enough to make him yelp. “Let’s go…” I urged, dragging him as fast as I could.

“Joanie,” he tried to complain, panting slightly. “I can’t…”

A loud, sucking, grumbling noise cut him off.

“Never mind,” he finished, finally picking up the pace. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

“That’s the spirit!”

We were both panting soon - Mike from trying to run after whatever they did to him, me from trying to keep him upright as he kept stumbling sideways.

“Fuck!” I swore when my shoulder barked into the wall. “Dammit, Mike! I get that you’re unsteady, but at least try to wobble in both directions!”

That damned skittering again. Every nerve ending in my body was now set to ‘gotta go, don’t get eaten, don’t get buried’.

“Then quit steering me into the wall!” he argued back. “I’m doing my best, here. But I can go forward or where you send me, not both!”

“I’m just trying to keep you from running me into the wall, dumbass!” Nopenopenope, I did not hear another gurgle, I definitely did not. Nope.

“Running me into the other one isn’t -” This time he steered me into the wall hard enough to knock me down, wrenching my arm from around his waist painfully.

Swearing, I pushed myself up from the floor and leaned my back against the wall, bracing myself to get up. “Damn it, that’s what I was talking about!” I managed to get up, but Mike was still in the way.  How he hadn’t fallen when I did was beyond me, but nonetheless I ducked back under his arm and started walking as fast as I could away from whatever was making those horrible noises behind us.  I gave up entirely on steering him toward the middle and just focused on going forward and avoiding walking into the wall on my side.

“Janie,” Mike panted eventually.

“Mm hmm.”

“Those noises are getting louder.”

“Nope. No they aren’t. There aren’t any noises.”

“It sounds like a really big stomach full of marbles is behind us.”

I groaned, curling my shoulder away from the wall again. “If you keep talking about it, I can’t keep pretending not to hear it, Mike.” 

The wet growling noise happened again, and this time Mike was the one sent stumbling.  Fortunately for us both, he flung his left arm out and braced himself on the wall beside me.

Well. I thought it was fortunate, at least.

“What the fuck!?” he shouted, jerking his hand away like the wall burned it. “That can’t be there!”

“Keep walking….” I insisted, nudging him forward. “And I told you that you kept walking me into the wall!”

“Walking…. Walking….” he singsonged before hissing in my ear. “Janey that wall can’t be there because of this.” He grabbed the hand I had wrapped around him and stretched my fingers out.

Dragging them against a wall.

“Oh, hell no,” I muttered, gently pushing him ahead of me. Bracing my hands on his hips, I kept leading him. “Go, go, gogo go go go.”

He started jogging. “Don’t need to tell me again…”

“Great,” I complained. “First time in my life you ever listen to me the first time, and it’s because a hallway is trying to eat us.”

He jogged a little faster. “Not helping, Joannette!”

“You’re going faster, so I beg to differ, Michael!” The growling and skittering happened again, close enough and loud enough that I smelled something rank and my hair blew against my face.

“Heard it!” was the only thing Mike said before speeding up.

By this point I could touch both walls with my fingertips, something I very much regretted wishing for previously. “Do you see anything ahead?” I cried, panic edging into my voice. “A light, eyes, words, anything?”

“I think I see a door, but it’s too far away!”

Like hell it was. “I don’t care what that receptionist at work told you, you are not disabled, dude! You did cross country… Move your ass!”

“That was in high school!” he shouted back, speeding up more anyway. “And I’ve been tortured for a week!”

Another fetid growl brushed against my cheek. “And I’ll make that seem like a fucking vacation if I get eaten by the Hall of Eternal Stench!” I squeaked, bracing my hands on his shoulders and pushing as hard as I could to make him go faster.

The further we went, the tighter the hall was getting, much more noticeably now. My elbows were tucked against my sides, palms still dragging on both walls, by the time Mike shouted that we were almost there.

“It’s not locked!” I screamed. “I didn’t lock it behind me!”

My blood turned to ice as something sharp drew down my back. I bolted forward, slamming into Mike and knocking him to the floor. I barely managed to steady myself before what felt like the same thing dragged past my ankle.

Not five seconds later, Mike started screaming. Not from fear… this was like the time he had broken his ankle and seen bone sticking out.

He was screaming in pain.

Before I realized what I was doing, I grabbed the scalpel from my back pocket and slashed as far as I could behind me, whipping my whole body around from the force of adrenaline.  Whatever was behind us hissed, and I could see a dark flicker retreat past my ankles.

“Mike?” I asked as calmly as I could, trying to force my eyes to see whatever it was. “Are you still alive?”

Panicked, wheezing shrieks answered me.

“That works,” I tried to assure him. “I need you to crawl forward until you feel the door, okay?” My voice was trembling, but I wasn’t screaming, so I counted that as a win.

After some scuffling noises behind me, I heard his voice smaller than it had been since he’d hit puberty. “I’m.. I’m there.”

Thinking hard and still trying to see something in front of my face, I carefully backed up until my feet bumped into him. “That’s you, right?”

“Ye-yeah.”

“Awesome. The door handle should be on the right.” No. It was on the right from the outside. “Left! Left! The handle should be on the left. I need you to scoot as far to the left of the door as you can, okay?  You can sit against my legs if you need to.”  Something as dark as the hallway was flickering across the now-faint runes on the walls.   I couldn’t even force my brain to make up a shape, there were too many… somethings. Limbs, things, creatures - 

“I - I - I moved.”

“Can you climb up my back to stand? We’re only going to have one shot at this.”

Clumsily, he used me as a ladder to get to his feet.  Something had him leaning against me heavily.

“Mike, can you walk?”

“My foot, I… I think it cut something. I tried to stand on it, but it won’t take any weight. Like my ACL, but lower.”

Fuuuuuuuck, that wasn’t good. “You’re my best friend, Mike.  My best person.  I wouldn’t have done all this stupid shit if you weren’t.”

“I know,” he answered hesitantly. “And I’m glad to be your person.”

The shapes on the walls were incredibly close, but still too far away for me to hit anything as I slashed outward.

“How close is the door?”

“My hand is on it.”

“Awesome.”  Still lashing out at the darkness, I could tell the sigils were fading and we were running out of time.  Mentally, I mapped where the door and handle were, arm burning as I ran out of energy.

“You love me, Mike?”

“Love you. You’re my best friend.”

“Love you, too. And I’m sorry.” Closing my eyes, I whipped around and reached past him.

<Prev Masterpost Next>

[nuri148]

So... I've been a bit MIA bc this past weekend I was in my dear London for the 7th time and omg, it never gets old! There is SO much to see, and do, and discover, and revisit! And this has been the 2nd most eventful London trip ever (after the first one when we were still student-poor and the pound was super high and we crammed so much stuff in it no one believed us it'd been just 3 days.)

The excuse for this trip was concerts- We saw Billy Joel at Hyde Park on Friday and Blur at Wembley on Saturday. Both were great, my only gripe being that BJ didn't play my favourite song of his (The Downeaster Alexa), but he did play Piano Man and we had the surprise of the night when he sang Uptown girl with guest... Joe Jonas. Blur did play all their songs I like and it was endearing to see Damon Albarn being actually moved by being upstage in a full Wembley stadium.

An aside to say that, just like when we went to see U2 at the O2 arena a few years ago, I can only applaud the flawless organization of London transport around moving so many people in and out of venues. You'd think you'd have to wait forever for the tube afterwards, and that you'd travel like a canned sardine, but no, though we moved along throngs of people, we only had a bit of a queue for tapping in into the tube, but the train came right away (past 10:30pm!) and it wasn't particularly crowded. All hail TFL!

From the "typical tourist spots" in the city, my favourite is the Picadilly/Chinatown/Leicester sq./Covent Garden area, and the only that's been a constant on every trip. We returned to Greenwich (we'd gone to the Observatory in 2013) for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Maritime Museum, walked around bit the neigbourhood before it opened and, after it, we visited the Queen's House, which we didn't know existed but it was free and I never get tired of visiting palaces, because EveryGirlIsAPrincess and shit. Even me.

Did you know there is a 121 year old pedestrian tunnel under the River Thames? I found out only a few days before the trip, and of course we crossed it. The tunnel south entrance is right next to the Cutty Sark - and we emerged on the north side on a normal neighbourhood on the Isle of Dogs (no, not the Wes Anderson film. It's really called like that). Headed for Canary Wharf, and to shield from the strong midday sun, we cut through Mudchute Park and... found the farm there. THEY HAVE ALL KINDS OF ANIMALS OMG!!! I spent a good while petting and feeding the sheep and goats, god, I love goats! I could have stayed for hours if it wasn't for my poor Husband and his please-can-we-go face. It was the highlight of the trip.

We also went to Battersea Power Station, recently reconverted into a shopping centre. I knew, of course, that the former power station was an iconic building in the London skyline; it's huge and for many years provided a good chunk of the electricity to the city, not to mention its appearance in Pink Floyd's Animals album and films like Children of Men. What I didn't know was that it was also a fucking masterpiece of Industrial Art Deco. And I fucking love Art Deco. Not only that, they have made an incredible, amazing, absolutely stunning job at restoring the building to its original Art Deco glory. The butchers that turned Barcelona's former Arenas bullring into the current pastiche could learn a thing or two from them. The respect for the original building is such that one of the control rooms has been turned into a glamorous cafe, keeping all the control panels at the back; and the bar is like stepping into the 1940s, from the decor to the old furniture, to the design of the coffee cups and the delightful menus mimicking a power plant instruction boocklet. We could've stayed for ages but we had tickets for Lift 109 - a different tour that takes you to the top of one of the chimneys. The tour starts with a gallery about he plant's history and a somewhat silly videomapping with more of the same (cool lights, bad audio, couldn't understand the guy much). Then you take a lift, climb a set of stairs and take the second lift to the top of the chimney, at 109 metres high. The twist is: you don't exit the lift. The glass lift becomes the observation deck. Even with the rain, the views were spectacular, and the wow factor of emerging from inside the chimney is really something new. Price? Ridiculously expensive, but I indulged husband because he indulged me in...

My personal highlight of the trip: we went for Afternoon Tea. But not just anywhere, no. If I was going to do Afternoon Tea I was going to do it with all the glamour that I deserve, so I booked us a table at Fortnum & Mason, no less. Do I need to say I felt like a princess? Everything was just so nice and fancy! The salon is just beautiful, so luxurious but without feeling heavy. The bathrooms had individual fabric towels to dry your hands.

We could each choose which tea we wanted; Husband went for the Afternoon Blend (that's my fic's #8!) and I had the Wedding Breakfast blend, because I hadn't tried it before. It was nice, mild and balanced. They came in this nice china that you can buy on the store first floor for a lot of money.

The food was great as well. The sandwiches were excellent; my favourite was the egg one; Husband preferred the salmon one. There was also chicken, ham, and cucumber. For the scones, I was a bit weary because I'm not a cream lover and the scones I'd had so far tended to fall on the dry side. But, oh my goodness, these scones were absolutely delish, and the cream + jam (or lemon curd) passed so well to them!

The sweets were, surprisingly, the least fabulous of the lot. Maybe it's a matter of local taste vs. my own; the quality and presentation was of course top notch. It could also be that I was already pretty full. I once read an iterview where a chef said something like, dessert is a thing people order when they're not hungry anymore. So it has to be totally scrumptious and tempting and delish to fully please the guest. For me, only one of the five samples filled that criteria, the cream tartlet with a freaking pansy encased in jelly on top. Both the mousses (Earl Grey + bergamot jelly, black cherry) were delicious, but not so much as to wow me. The chocolate cup could've been number one save for the raspberry filling - I love raspberries, but fruit in chocolate is a pet peeve of mine. Finally, the rose eclair definitely ticks the decadent checkbox (anything with rose does, IMO), but it's not a flavour I'm wild about. Much like truffle, to name another fancy eat, I feel it's easy to go overboard with it.

On top pof all that, we visited the Tate Britain and the Design museum, had breakfast(s) at Pret, bought rare-colour M&M's at the Leicester Square shop, walked down Portobello Street Market, visited Holland Park and Japan House and had lots and lots of fun!

[wesandersonpowerplants]

We left the Malabar Coast on an ocean liner named 'Surya' and sped through the Arabian Sea on our way to Ethiopia. We'd researched Merv's contact—a man working in Abebe Etefu, Ethiopia. After several phone calls, the man arranged for us to dock at Djibouti. Then, he would send a car to collect us.

The drive into Abebe Etefu was fascinating. From sparse landscapes grew a bustling city that had been built into the surrounding geological features. The driver brought us to a small downtown cafe where we had a standing meeting with Merv's contact, Abdu Senay Shale.

Abdu was already sitting on the cafe's patio when we arrived. We sat and ordered drinks, ready to talk about Wedefīti.

"It will be Ethiopia's first nuclear power plant," he declared. "It's groundbreaking. We wanted you here to document our opening day. The engineers and technicians have been on site for the last two months. We've all been preparing for this moment."

We felt honored that Abdu had chosen us and wondered what Merv had told him when he'd initially brought our team up in conversation.

Abdu placed several images on the table.

"We've been working on this project for years," Abdu continued. "Our staff is top-notch university talent from across the country. Safety is our priority, but so is doing everything 120%... We're the first, it has to exceed expectations."

"That there is Wedefīti. And a few of our top technicians: Nanni Trefe Kelile; Asnake Fekadu Hagos; Enku Tiruneh Bsrat. You will meet them tomorrow?"

We agreed to meet at Wedefīti the next morning; Abdu told us he would send a car to our hotel to take us to the outskirts of the city, where the nuclear power plant had been constructed.

Wes Anderson Power Plants is a work of fiction. All images are AI generated.

[awigglycultist]

My hatchetfield oc guide!

A little guide so you can know more about my ocs in the Hatchetfield rp

Alfie

@dancing-with-the-deaddd

Okay so Alfie isn't actually an oc, he's a character from the cut story Ethan Doesn't Die, but I felt like I should include him since that was a cut story and we don't know a whole lot about him and some ppl might not know about him or EDD.

He's like he is in EDD. Ya know, has a brother named Jake, and can revive dead things/is a necromancer, he's around the same age of Hannah. He uses he/they pronouns. Jake takes care of him, they discovered his abilities when he was pretty young, around 9 years old, it just started with plants but grew from there.

Arche Lowell

@worse-than-my-bark

Arche uses he/they/she pronouns. He's 18 and a senior at Hatchetfield High. They're a werewolf, he's siblings with @sunshineinabags-blog and they both got bit by a werewolf one night when they were out in the woods. She used to be a great student, top of the class and all A's, but ever since that incident they've just stopped trying and are only just getting by. They are street smart though and constantly have to stop Sunny from doing dumb shit. He has a crush on Lily.

Lily Darrah

@liliesandflowerfields

Lily uses she/they pronouns. Also 18 and a senior at Hatchetfield High. Has a crush on Arche. They live with her single mother. She actually died a few years ago but her mom is apart of the Church of the Starry Children and was able to revive her, and yes she is aware of this. Nerd, all A's, gamer, ect.

David Anderson

@hatchetfieldhistoryteacher

He's a world history teacher at Hatchetfield High and also knows a lot of Hatchetfield's history... He's pansexual, uses he/him pronouns and lives alone with his pet cats, a gray & white one and a black one. One of those teachers that is sarcastic but also actually really sweet. One of those teachers a lot of kids go to, especially the queer kids ofc ("especially" pft what am I saying? Everyone in Hatchetfield is queer). Also he has other outfits

Fiona Brooks

A gifted kid, friends with Arche and Lily although she's two grades below them (she's ahead and some classes). He powers are water related. She'd also cousins with Sofia/Spitfire. Her name in the ring is Tidal Wave.

[365runesoftheamalgamations]

Unusual Character Associations [ 01 ]

hello and how are you?

Once again going to put the single poor soul into the ringer for a third time and making things its problem bc we are happily answering its call for our participation!

Thanks to the wonderful @fearofahumanplanet for tagging us! You can find its response right here! [ it is of our blood god, the glorious Huītz, so you SHOULD go see it, we love them. ]

Rules? Find the Associations of a Character with each Topic!

Tagging with no pressure: @did-i-do-this-write | @memento-morri-writes | @blind-the-winds and open tag for anyone who wants to join in! c:

Grayland Shade Anderson | Grayland's Shadow

Seasoning : Garlic Powder

Weather : Rain while Sunny | Sunshowers

Color : Lilac | Pale Lavender

Sky : Clouds rolling in, blotting out the Skies, before the Storms

Magical Power : Possession | Monster Tamer

House plant : Mini Rose Bush [ Hybrid Colors ]

Weapon : A sharpened, decorative crystal pocket Knife

Subject : Human Biology | World Religions

Social Media : Instagram

Makeup Product : Concealer | Body Paint

Candy : Caramels

Fear : A Tool | A Sign

Ice cube shape : Miniature Sculptures

Method of long-distance travel : Valet

Art Style : Watercolors

Mythological Creature : a Shade | Immortal

Piece of Stationary : Handwritten Letters

Celestial Body : Jupiter

[quotesfrommyreading]

The U.S. remains the world’s R&D factory, but when it comes to building, we are plainly going backwards. We’ve lost out on industrial opportunities by running Bush’s playbook so strictly. But there are other problems, too. Since the early 2000s, the U.S. has closed more nuclear-power plants than we’ve opened. Our ability to decarbonize the grid is held back by environmental regulations that ironically constrict the construction of solar- and wind-energy farms. It’s been roughly 50 years since Asia and Europe built their first high-speed rail systems, but the U.S. is almost comically incapable of pulling train construction into the 21st century. (A 2008 plan to build a high-speed rail line in California has seen estimated costs more than triple and deployment delayed by a decade, and it’s still uncertain if it can be completed as planned.)

“New ideas are getting harder to use,” the futurist and economist Eli Dourado told me. If the U.S. wanted to unleash geothermal power, we could simplify geothermal permitting. If we wanted to build the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors, we could deregulate advanced nuclear reactors. These measures would not require inventing anything new. But they would stimulate progress by making it easier to bring our best ideas into the light.

The United States once believed in partnerships among the government, private industry, and the people to advance material progress. The Lincoln administration helped build the railroads. The New Deal helped electrify rural America. Dwight Eisenhower signed the Price-Anderson Act, which guaranteed government funds and limited liability for nuclear-energy firms in case of serious accidents, facilitating the construction of nuclear-power plants. John F. Kennedy’s space ambitions made NASA a major consumer of early microchips, which helped reduce their price by a factor of 30 in a matter of years, accelerating the software revolution.

“And then, around 1980, we basically stopped building,” Jesse Jenkins, who researches energy policy at Princeton, told me. In the past 40 years, he said, the U.S. has applied several different brakes to our capacity to build what’s already been invented. Under Ronald Reagan, the legacy of successful public-private partnerships was ignored in favor of the simplistic diagnosis that the government was to blame for every major problem. In the ’70s, liberals encouraged the government to pass new environmental regulations to halt pollution and prevent builders from running roughshod over low-income neighborhoods. And then middle-class Americans used these new rules to slow down the construction of new housing, clean-energy projects—just about everything. These reactions were partly understandable; for example, air and water pollution in the ’70s were deadly crises. But “when you combine these big shifts, you basically stop building anything,” Jenkins said.

  —  Why the Age of American Progress Ended

[glenngaylord]

All That Baz - Film Review: Babylon ★★★★

Quite frequently, new filmmakers will, as I like to say, chew off more than they can bite, trying to throw in every idea they’ve ever had over the 20+ years they’ve waited for their shot. They direct as if they’ll never get the chance to do so again, resulting in an excessive filmgoing experience. Damien Chazelle, who has already had his turn at bat with Whiplash, La La Land and First Man, has written and directed his latest, Babylon, as if it was his first. Perhaps he felt the sensory overload of his first three films seemed a little slight, so he thought he’d turn things up to Baz Luhrmann levels of “too much is never enough” with his 3+ hour epic about the depravity of 1920’s Hollywood. I suspect I’ll be in the minority on this one, but I loved every ridiculous, over-the-top minute of this trope-filled, hot mess in much the same way I enjoyed Ken Russell’s Tommy and yes, Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge. It wouldn’t feel off-base to call this the over-stimulated cousin to Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Take the bare bones structure of the forgotten 1975 Merchant/Ivory dud, The Wild Party, add mountains of cocaine, orgies, a powerful and original look at blackface, and many references to films by Paul Thomas Anderson and you’ll get just the slightest hint of what this movie has to offer. Back when Los Angeles looked like a combination of orange grove fields and desert, the film opens on our hero, Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Spanish immigrant hired to transport an elephant up the hill to a lavish Bel Air party. In a scene highly reminiscent of the backwards truck sequence in Licorice Pizza,  Manny impresses the powers-that-be enough to land an invitation to the evening’s festivities. There, he’ll meet an A-list crowd virtually guaranteed to serve as an entree to his film career ambitions. He fatefully meets Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a newbie from Jersey who’s already a star in her own mind even before her first audition. It’s love and other drugs at first sight as they bond over a Scarface-level mound of nose candy. Manny also impresses fading silent star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) enough to open doors for him, while Nellie lands a film role after another starlet meets her end in a Fatty Arbuckle-like tragedy.

The story follows these crazy kids, along with dozens of others in a way similar to Robert Altman’s classic Nashville but never loses sight of our central pair. Chief among the huge cast are Jovan Adepo’s Sidney Palmer, a talented Black jazz trumpeter at the party who rises to movie stardom but encounters racism at almost every turn,  Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) as a tuxedo clad Morocco-era Marlene Dietrich type of chanteuse who acts as a sapphic Greek chorus to the proceedings, and Jean Smart as an unnecessarily English-accented Hedda Hopper-esque gossip columnist named Elinor St. John.

The film follows our characters through the advent of talking pictures and beyond, and in one bravura sequence, we watch the repetitive yet hilarious struggles of a film crew attempting to get a single successful take using the then-novel concept of microphones planted on the ceiling. Olivia Hamilton, in a deft turn as the slightly butch Dorothy Arzner-style helmer and P.J. Byrne as her increasingly flummoxed Assistant Director really sell each agonizing moment with Robbie serving up a perfect Jean Hagen from Singin’ In The Rain homage. Her honking voice instantly putting her at odds with the Mid-Atlantic accents favored at the time.  That Arzner herself created the boom microphone out of a similar situation doesn’t get showcased here, but this memorable scene could stand as its own masterful short film.

Same goes for many set pieces in the film, including a supremely creepy Tobey Maguire taking us into the bowels of hell, a scene which would not look out of place in a David Lynch movie. I also loved the scene in which Margot Robbie feebly attempts to seem “classy” to impress the people who run the town. To say the moment spirals out of control would not be accurate since the entire film is one big spiral.

Many will throw their hands up at it. I get it. Robbie’s character is pretty much one note, oh, but what a note! She gives it her all by tearing up the screen, inhaling said torn-up screen, and vomiting it back out all over your face. She’s like Cabaret’s Sally Bowles but ballsier and, pardon the pun, she bowled me over. Chazelle doesn’t have the same cinematic vocabulary of a Baz Lurhmann, so many of the stylized moments get repeated endlessly, such as the zoom ins and outs of Sidney Palmer’s trumpet. I was sick of it already just from watching the trailer. I also wish filmmakers would stop with the close-ups of people watching films in awe. Even Sam Mendes employs the same trope in his new Empire Of Light. Cinema Paradiso and Purple Rose Of Cairo did it so beautifully over 30 years ago, so let’s give that a rest, please and thank you. It doesn’t take a genius to know what to expect when one character walks off camera for what’s supposed to be a shocking moment, because we’ve seen it a thousand times before.

Still, if you connect with this overstuffed epic, gems abound. Diego Calva spends much of the film observing the action silently, but when he takes charge in the second half, you won’t find a more soulful, aching performance this year. Pitt appears to have entered his middle-aged coasting through it phase of his career, much like Robert Redford did after a certain point, but he still knows how to keep things fun and light while still providing some dark undercurrents. Smart, despite that accent, gets a choice monologue late in the film which expertly illustrates the depressing themes in such a gorgeously calculated way. Adepo shines in a big moment in which he’s faced with a difficult choice and just try taking your eyes off Li Jun Li’s brief but stunning work. Rory Scovel, so good on Physical, brings an offbeat, fresh energy to the film as The Count, an Agent of Chaos who hilariously shrugs it all off.

Technically, this film astounds. Between Cinematographer Linus Sandgren, Costume Designer Mary Zophres, Production Designer Florencia Martin, Editor Tom Cross and especially Justin Hurwitz and his blisteringly propulsive score, you will always have something great to see and hear. By the time the film ended, I felt exhausted with the feeling that I had watched every movie ever made. Some inclusions, such as Avatar (!!!???!!!) seemed odd, although the synchronicity of the timing, with its sequel on hitting theaters, makes Chazelle seem more brand aware than I had thought. Yes, it’s all a little too much, but this loving homage to Hollywood exposes the festering slime barely under the surface while still managing to make all of us want to sit in a theater, the lights of the projector beaming just so, and go all Nicole Kidman in her AMC ad as we look at the screen in awe.

[adrianodiprato]

+ “You can't use up creativity. the more you use, the more you have.” ~ Maya Angelou

Game Changers | Series Sixteen Reflection

For Series Sixteen, we immersed ourselves in the essence of creativity and explored why it's such a fundamental aspect of human existence where we unpacked the provocation - Why creativity matters?

In Series Sixteen of the Game Changers Podcast, we spoke to seven remarkable individuals – the Chair of the Global Institute of Creative Thinking and Co-Founder of Rethinking Assessment, the Associate Director of Creativity, Culture & Education (CCE), the Associate Principal of Global Village Learning, a Professor of Education from The University of Sydney and Co-Founder 4C Transformative Learning, an Adjunct Professor from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and author of Design for Belonging, an Advertising Guru and Broadcaster, and an Experience Coordinator and author of Everyday Creative. 

Each one of these remarkable people challenged our binary thinking of creativity. Game Changers who planted the seeds for each of us to grow in our understanding of how we cultivate the character of creativity in our learning communities, and across business and society. 

Episode One | Bill Lucas

Key learnings – Our discussion with Bill Lucas, Chair of the Global Institute of Creative Thinking and Co-Founder of Rethinking Assessment, actively promoted creative thinking in schools and the development of creative learning habits in the classroom. Bill’s insights, much like those in his book Creative Thinking in Schools: A Leadership Playbook, underscored the value of Curiosity—encouraging educators and students alike to engage deeply with creative processes and think beyond conventional boundaries.

Episode Two | Lamis Sabra

Key learnings – Our conversation with Lamis Sabra, Associate Director of Creativity, Culture & Education (CCE), illuminated the transformative power of creative thinking in education. Lamis emphasised how creativity can support young people from diverse backgrounds in their learning journeys and prepare them for the world of work. This conversation highlighted the importance of Compassion—understanding and addressing the diverse needs of learners to ensure they thrive in all aspects of life.

Episode Three | Mykel Dixon 

Key learnings – In our dynamic and deeply honest conversation with Mykel Dixon, Experience Coordinator and author of Everyday Creative, we delved into the power of storytelling and joy in unlocking our full creative potential. Mykel's deeply honest insights into overcoming barriers to creativity and reclaiming our vibrant selves resonated with Curiosity—a drive to actively engage with and explore our inner creativity and the world around us.

Episode Four | Pip Cleaves

Key learnings – Our conversation with Pip Cleaves, Associate Principal of Global Village Learning, was a compelling example of Courage. Pip’s willingness to challenge traditional educational paradigms and embrace innovative approaches demonstrated the boldness required to transform schooling and make a significant impact on students’ lives.

Episode Five | Susie Wise

Key learnings – Susie Wise, Adjunct Professor from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University and author of Design for Belonging, shared valuable insights on using design tools to foster inclusion and collaboration. Her approach to creating environments that nurture belonging, and transformation highlighted the role of Conviction—committing to ethical practices that prioritise inclusivity and genuine engagement in learning and leadership.

Episode Six | Russel Howcroft

Key learnings – Engaging with Russel, Advertising Guru and 3AW Broadcaster, provided a unique perspective on creativity through the lens of Courage. Russel’s ability to lead and push boundaries in the creative industry showcased the fearless attitude needed to embrace and mainstream innovative ideas.

Special Series | Michael Anderson 

Key learnings – In Phil’s special series conversations with Michael Anderson, Professor of Education from The University of Sydney and Co-Founder of 4C Transformative Learning, they explored tools for future-focused educational transformation. Michael’s insights into advancing learning and leadership underscored the importance of Courage in pioneering change and preparing schools for the future.

Creativity is the pulsating life force of our civilization, an intricate thread woven into the fabric of our progress. It's the driving factor behind our cultural evolution, from the ancient cave paintings that spoke of our stories to the digital art that articulates our contemporary narrative. It transcends time and medium, shaping our understanding of the world and propelling us forward.

Thank you to Bill, Lamis, Mykel, Pip, Susie, Russel and Michael for sharing your story, your purpose, your creativity with us all.   

And finally, we should never forget that each person in a learning community is home to a unique life. It is as simple and complex as that. Born from the construct of love – of self, for place, for planet, and for the other.

Listen to our Series Sixteen | Epilogue via streaming platforms - SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts & Spotify.

Adriano Di Prato is a best-selling author, broadcaster, co-host of the Game Changers podcast series, and the Academic Operations Manager at LCI Melbourne, a progressive art, design + entrepreneurship private institute of higher education.