#western desert campaign

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Near Victory Turned to Defeat for British Forces," Kingston Whig-Standard. June 26, 1942. Page 10. ---- When these pictures were made in Libya a few short weeks ago things were going well for the British German tanks like the captured one above were being tested. German prisoners like these at left below were being taken. South African gunners like those at right below were blistering the desert with bullets. But Rommel came back with bigger, better armored tanks to take many more thousands of British prisoners, a large part of them South Africans.

[goryh0le]

TRICK OR TREAT! TRICK OR TREAT!!! -🎃

@mesonoxianmonster

For you my child

One (1) 5-litre container of Renardine (unopened, seal intact)

One (1) FEO-K1 universal lift key

[gayvampyr]

CNN:

Hundreds of families gathered in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina on June 15, plotting their escape from what had become a hellscape of blown-out buildings scrawled with racist graffiti and streets strewn with corpses. The state governor had just been executed and mutilated by Arab militia groups, leaving civilians with no choice but to flee.

What followed was a gruesome massacre, eyewitnesses said, believed to be one of the most violent incidents in the genocide-scarred Sudanese region’s history. The powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allied militias hunted down non-Arab people in various parts of the city and surrounding desert region, leaving hundreds dead as they ran for their lives…

…residents set off en masse from southern El Geneina, many trying to reach the nearby Sudanese military headquarters where they thought they might find safety. But they said they were quickly thwarted by RSF attacks. Some were summarily executed in the streets, survivors said. Others died in a mass drowning incident, shot at as they attempted to cross a river. Many of those who managed to make it out were ambushed near the border with Chad, forced to sit in the sand before being told to run to safety as they were sprayed with bullets.

“More than 1,000 people were killed on June 15. I was collecting bodies on that day. I collected a huge number,” one local humanitarian worker, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told CNN. He said the dead were buried in five different mass graves in and around the city.

Conflict erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese army in April. Since then, more than one million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration.

Now, a telecommunications blackout and the flight of international aid groups have all but cut off Darfur from the outside world. But news of the June 15 massacre began trickling out of the region from refugees who escaped to Chad. The evidence uncovered by CNN suggests that, behind a curtain of secrecy, the RSF and its allies are waging an indiscriminate campaign of widespread killings and sexual violence unlike anything the region has seen in decades.

The RSF’s official spokesperson told CNN that it “categorically” denied the allegations.

“To say you were Masalit was a death sentence,” said Jamal Khamiss, a human rights lawyer, referring to his non-Arab tribe, one of the biggest in Darfur. Khamiss was among those who said that they fled from El Geneina to Chad, surviving a series of RSF and allied militia positions by concealing his ethnicity.

The United Nations raised the alarm in June over ethnic targeting and killing of people from the Masalit community in El Geneina, after reports of summary executions and “persistent hate speech,” including calls to kill or expel them.

The vast majority of those who managed to make it out of El Geneina alive sought refuge in the Chadian border town of Adre, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) away from the city.

On June 15, the town received the highest number of migrants in a single day, along with the highest number of casualties — 261 — since the Sudan conflict broke out, according to Doctors Without Borders, widely known by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs the only hospital in Adre. The number of wounded people that arrived at the hospital was even higher the next day: 387.

“The last time we recorded the death toll in Geneina it was 884,” one local humanitarian worker from El Geneina, who works for a Western non-profit organization, told CNN. “That was June 9. After June 9, it was a different story. The dead became uncountable.”

Action Against Hunger is accepting donations to provide health, sanitation and nutrition services to Sudanese refugees in Chad.

[whencyclopedia]

The Allied Victory in North Africa

The Allied victory in North Africa was achieved in May 1943 after three years of indecisive battles across the region. Outnumbered and with its supply lines compromised, the Axis German-Italian army lost the Battle of Medenine before being overwhelmed at the Mareth Line of defences around Tunis. The massive Allied land, air, and sea presence combined US, British, British Empire, and Free French troops, who worked together to bring victory in the Tunisia Campaign. With control of North Africa, the Allies could proceed with the next stage of the war: the invasion of southern Europe.

Allied Victory Parade, Tunis, 1943

Sergeant Palmer - Imperial War Museums (CC BY-NC-SA)

The Importance of North Africa

Right from the start of WWII, North Africa was recognised by both sides as having crucial strategic value. Whoever controlled North Africa could also control vital Mediterranean shipping routes, while the Suez Canal was the lifeline between Britain and its eastern empire. In addition, Egypt remained a bulwark of defence for the British-controlled oil fields of the Middle East. For the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), North Africa presented a tantalising vision of an Italian Empire that could finally rival that of France and Britain on the continent.

The Western Desert Campaigns had gone back and forth between 1940 and 1942 as Axis and Allied forces shared victories and losses. The tide began to turn definitively following the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein (October-November 1942). Here the British Eighth Army led by General Bernard Montgomery (1887-1976) crushed the Axis army led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944). This was followed a few days later by Operation Torch, the amphibious landing of three Allied armies in French Morocco and Algeria. The Axis armies were pushed back into holding a small pocket in Tunisia around the port of Tunis. The Allied objective now was to take total control of North Africa, which would permit an invasion of Axis-occupied Europe starting with Sicily and then mainland Italy, as had long been promised to Britain's and the United States' ally Russia, then fighting alone on the Eastern Front.

The Axis powers had been cornered in Tunisia, but they still had some bite, as was shown in Rommel's victory against mostly inexperienced US troops at the battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943. In the long term, though, the Allies were now shipping in so many men and material to North Africa that the Axis days were numbered there, especially as their own supply lines became increasingly imperilled by Allied bombing and naval attacks. The Allies could field 19 well-equipped divisions against the depleted 13 Axis divisions left in Tunisia. "Nearly 1,200 Allied tanks were concentrated against 130 belonging to the Axis; in artillery 1,500 guns were opposed by just under 500; and in the air over 3,000 aircraft dominated 500" (Liddell Hart, 278).

WWII North Africa Campaign, 1940-1943

Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)

Continue reading...

[soulmuppet]

📣Inevitable is live on Backer-Kit!

Inevitable is an Arthurian Western ttrpg in which your party of disastrously sad cowboy knights fail to stop the apocalypse...

Knights and wizards have defended the Kingdom of Myth for centuries. These lands have known peace and prosperity, but soon they shall lie barren.

The Prophets have declared that your city shall burn and Myth will fall. All those who follow your King shall die. It is INEVITABLE.

But you shall defy fate. Myth will not end while you bear arms.

You will fail, but as long as there are still stories, they will sing of you!

Inevitable is a new roleplaying game system from SoulMuppet Publishing, the creators and publishers behind Orbital Blues, Best Left Buried, Stygian Library and dozens of other RPG systems and adventures.

The book is a focused system for a play-to-lose Arthurian Western campaign. But what does this mean?

Arthurian: Sad knights. A king who is doing his best (but badly). Foolish virtue quests doomed to fail. Women in lakes.

Western: Sweeping deserts. Dusty heroes wearing big boots, bigger hats. Can of beans cooked on a campfire. Six shooters.

Play-To-Lose: Your kingdom is going to be destroyed. It is Inevitable. Play to find out how, but there's no way to win.

Focused System: Your characters serve the King of Myth, and you are trying to prevent the destruction of his kingdom and your civilisation. The system is linked intrinsically to telling this story in this system, and finely tuned to create the perfect Arthurian Western campaign

Campaign: While Inevitable provides options for one-shots and short campaigns (including the one in our Quickstart), the material in the book supports a full length campaign with minimal prep. A traditional Inevitable campaign runs for 3-6 months, choosing 3 of the available 6 Dooms. However, should you choose to use all the material and embark on this quixotic, almost impossible quest to save the world you could well be playing for years.

[t34-mt]

northern winter uniform of GA soldiers, explanation on the history behind it under ->

21-06-23 edit:

Since GA is the first and last war altuyur had, well maanuls and kyhuines didn't know how to even battle properly. Many things related to that age have a sort of clumsy beginning, and so do uniforms. Firstly they used modified versions of the decorative armor that were originally used in theatrical plays, religious performances, and even sports. The modified versions had fewer metal pieces, and no decorations, but were completely inconvenient as they were not thought out for battle. Combined with the crazy temperature recorded in the battlegrounds (mostly in the southern desert) armors were just terrible! a literal oven. So quickly they abandoned the armor to just tissue, but uniforms stand out so much from how their clothing normally looks that looking back at them, it just feels alien to them. lifeless even. an example of an early armored uniform can be found here.

Now back to the northern uniform, when a small part of the north joined the red troupes by believing in their aggressive propaganda campaigns. They then had to make special uniforms for the recruits and soldiers, as in the north there are seasons when the temperatures get quite low. Much like what you have in western/central Europe, which makes the far north of altuyur stand out as the rest is hot with only 2 distinct seasons.

When making the northern winter uniforms they based it on already existing pieces of clothing (in this case basic northern winter hunting clothes with some pieces taken from dancing garments), but striping them off from any decoration, simplifying them to the bare minimum. Moving the ventilation holes to the side of the torso to protect the opperculums more, tho it makes them quite uncomfortable but recruits and soldiers just get used to it. The most "unique" thing about the uniforms is the patch on the arm with the person's name, and yet that piece is easily rippable, in case the owner dies so they can just rip it off and recycle it for new naive recruits that aren't even aware someone died in these clothes before.

They lack any creativity to them, for maanuls as well as a kyhuine these are soulless, as they highly value the art of crafting. There's no passion, no real purpose but a nonsensical war in these uniforms. Nothing to make them truly worthy in their culture. These are just morbid for them to look at during the silver age.

The maanul featured in this drawing is Qua'tuli, which easily translates to "one'whisker". He's a northeast maanul which explains his dark pelt, he has a singular whisker with a mole and is born without tahofahs which is a birth defect and also means he can't smell anything. Like many young influenceable people, he was tricked to join the red troupes thinking it would make him a hero for his people forever, that the war would just last a week, that they'll easily reach kaar'kchir in a week. And that after his service he will be granted special permissions (ex: being able to build his own fisherman's house, building permissions is a law that appeared in GA to force people to join the ranks). Although he started his service in the west as he was living there. When the north joined the war his division was then sent to the north.

here's a silly drawing to show the 3 layers

Fun fact, Monmartre and Qua'tuli meet as young recruits in the west. Enjoy monmartre that caught a cold.

[sissa-arrows]

Did you know during the Spanish Civil War, Moroccan soldiers who were allied with Franco would have rape "camps" for captured (or not) Republican women? One the most well-known perpetrators of such "campaigns" was Mohammed Mizzian, who was close friend of Franco, and after independence in 1956, he was personally invited by king Mohammed V to lead the newly Moroccan Army, and today even has a museum in his honour in Rabat..

And now the same thing is happening to Sahrawi women in the occupied territories.

Without removing anything from this type of horrors, that’s a very difficult subject for one simple reason. Part of Morocco was a Spanish colony.

Colonizers do use soldiers from the colonies to do horrific things. For example in Algeria a non negligible part of the soldiers who were sent by France to kill Algerians during the massacres of Setif, Guelma and the rest of the region, leading to the slaughter of 45000 Algerians, were Black infantrymen from other colonies. During the war against Vietnam keeping them from gaining their independence, some of the troops sent by France were Africans (Mostly Moroccan and Black men but they eventually started using them less and less because they were deserting the French army to join the Vietnamese revolution). Even without making them join the army France tried really hard to create division and use the colonized against each other. For example whenever Algerians organized an uprising the people would get arrested and either sentenced to death by guillotine or to forced labor and exile. For the “biggest” uprisings (excluding the war of liberation) they tended to avoid execution because they didn’t want to turn them into Shouhada in the eyes of the people. So the French often sentenced them to forced labor and exile. The exile always happened in other French colonies because the goal was also to use the Algerians to outnumber the indigenous people. Trying to turn the Algerians exiled into foot soldiers for French colonialism in those places (which didn’t work as well as planned but still).

So the colonized being forced to join the colonizers army and committing horrors in said army either by force or by choice is a subject that’s very complicated in my opinion. I don’t think they should be absolved of everything they did but I also don’t think they should be judged without taking into account the context. They were Black and Brown men at a time were refusing to fight for France could have easily gotten them under a guillotine. We all would love to think we would have chosen the guillotine over committing these horrors but the truth is we (myself included) don’t actually know what we would have done.

On top of it people (not saying that’s what you’re doing) LOVE to mention what the colonized did in the colonizer’s army while pretending white soldiers were not worst. So the colonized joining the colonizers armies is a very complicated subject in my opinion and not something I feel knowledgeable enough to talk about at length to condemn it.

That being said rape is definitely something that Morocco uses against the Sahrawi women. They also send tons of rape threats to Sahrawi and Algerian women online who dare be vocal against the occupation of Western Sahara. And this time they aren’t an army forced to act because the colonizers said so. They are not forced to join the army either. So there is absolutely no nuance. In this case they are the colonizers and they are hurting the colonized in horrific ways.

[radio-outcast]

⚡We're raising funds for the third and final season of RADIO: Outcast! ⚡

In order to be able to produce the final episodes, however, we need your help! For as little as $5 you can get some cool merchandise and help us complete the RADIO: Outcast story! 🤠 Visit our IndieGoGo Campaign Page for details and a video outlining everything!!

[thatgordongirl]

Ghosts Season 1 References to the ghosts’ lives

Finally got through the first season on all the references and inferences to the ghosts’ lives, hope everyone likes the results?

Episode 1 - Who Do You Think You Are? 

Fanny is Heather’s Great-Grandmother

Mary could make baskets and died in a witch trial

Kitty ate and dislikes eggs

Julian mentions his by-election victory speech from 1991- very inspiring, very long, and a few smutty jokes. This particular by-election occurred after the death of a conservative member on 20th September 1991 in which a labour member took their place. Whether it is altering that by-election to insert Julian or if it is completely unrelated all together is unknown (Take with a grain of salt, I am an Aussie who doesn’t know the intricacies of British politics) 

Robin lived on the land first, but Fanny owned the house 

Both Alison and Captain love gardens/garden views 

When Thomas was alive, he heard a rumour that a plague girl could be heard singing in the pantry

Julian is wearing two rings: his wedding ring and presumably his Cambridge ring 

Fanny was pushed out of the window by her husband George

George was having an affair with two other men 

Mary could milk a cow

Episode 2 - Gorilla War

I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General was written in 1879, so Captain most likely heard it when he was alive 

Kitty sings The Lark in the Morning, dating back to 1778

Julian is a first from Cambridge

Once, a bear was able to see Robin

Julian references compact discs, but also seems to have some knowledge of technology

Robin references a cousin 

Julian claims to have, as a lead envoy, solved the Arabian crisis in 1991 by starting a war 

The plague ghosts know how to fix the old boiler, they were most likely there when it was fixed previously

Not a living thing, but Pat calls Thomas Tom in this episode and it’s adorable write that down

Julian refers to the Watney MP having sexual relations with horses (That’s right, plural) 

Julian references a liberal in a sailor sauna (And he was not there to learn about boats) 

Thomas most likely read Romeo and Juliet when alive

Episode 3 - Happy Death Day

Pat was killed when teaching his scouts archery, in which Keith accidentally shot him. He died calling out for someone to call his wife and driving the bus into a tree. (Self-explanatory, still horrified me)

Captain references a speech made by Winston Churchill

Robin talks about fighting with rocks and sticks and bears (recurring theme apparently)

Kitty thinks her father is dead, which may imply he didn’t die on the grounds 

Kitty’s sister Eleanor told her that people made babies by pressing their ears together 

Captain references The Blitz, a German bombing campaign that occurred during WW2, and the Luftwaffe, the German airforce 

The east wing’s drainage was put into the house in 1894

Pat’s death day was October 27th 1984

Julian mentions extending the Bramptons in 1986, he ran it through the MP expenses 

Robin has a flea in his ear and worms 

Julian shot fish in a barrel once at a Party Conference in Bournemouth

Pat’s family come every year on his death day to the tree that he crashed into, which came down after the storm of 1987

Pat has a son, Daley, and a wife, Carol

His best friend Morris had his own set of keys to their house

Pat came home one Sunday from camp and found all Morris’ clothes on the floor, he and Carol had an affair

Captain mentions the Western Desert campaign and Bernard Montgomery

Thomas had probably eaten figs and drank wine

Julian has taken part in a ‘Norwegian picnic’ and ‘Himalayan Campsite’ 

Mary says that when you saw a swan in her town it was the devil at play 

Julian is wearing a watch on his left wrist

Daley had (what I think to be) beige pants, he’s an accountant, he’s happy 

Carol is busy with the bowls club, Morris is sweet but very small

Pat’s grandson is named after him, and has Pat’s legs 

Episode 4 - Free Pass

Julian remarks that he was never fond of cornflakes 

Thomas liked eating an egg atop a cutlet, a thin slice of meat from the leg or ribs of mutton, veal, pork or chicken

Button House is from the 15th century, 1469 to be precise 

The facade is mid-16th century 

Captain assumes the actors will be dressed in loincloths, oiled up, and kissing each other. I don’t know if that’s a Tim period thing or if Captain’s just seen freaky stuff 

Henry VIII dined in the banqueting hall, he had swan, hog, dumplings and figs and stank out the privy (I’m dying rn)

Mary is from the Stuart era, Humphrey from Tudor, and Thomas from the Regency

Pat dislikes veggie sausages 

Julian likes to bet on horses 

Julian’s free pass was Samantha Fox

Both Julian and Margot had lists, Margot’s included Wolf, Cobra and John Fashanu from the 1992 show Gladiators 

Thomas’ rivalry with Lord Byron is mentioned 

Pat references video cassettes 

Thomas believes that Lord Byron stole one of his verses 

Robin asks why Toby is doing a rain dance 

Julian remarks that the free pass wasn’t a joke in his marriage 

Episode 5 - Moonah Ston

Fanny falls from the east wing window, and is notably dressed in grey

She’s Edwardian. This era is placed between 1901-1910, but some say it ended with the beginning of WWI in 1914. As Fanny mentioned having a ticket for the titanic, this would place her between 1910-1914

Julian met Barclay at a party fundraiser at Button House

Julian heard a funny story on a golf course involving Bruce Forsyth-Johnson, a British entertainer

Pat loves dogs so much he’s willing to get sick, bless him

Julian references The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Fanny possibly ate turtle soup, oyster rissoles and pheasant 

Captain is unsurprisingly able to shoot a gun

“Gleaming bundook op from the civvy” and “boshing jerry” is Captain just saying that the civilian is good at shooting and he’ll be out fighting Germans in no time 

Mary knows how to properly prepare a pheasant

Robin had his own site on the grounds that Stonehenge apparently copied, and he remembers the ritual reading 

Fanny is disgruntled by the cutlery and says they should be on the outside, which was how she was taught 

Fanny also seems to have knowledge on Barclay’s family 

Kitty says she’s wearing what she died in, pretty self-explanatory there

Thomas is well aware of techniques for public speaking such as dramatic pauses, but clearly wasn’t good at using them

Thomas references Saint Cuthbert

Pat references Betemax 

Julian is aware of Barclay’s poker ability and his bank account in Fiji 

Robin’s connection with the moon is rooted in it being the only thing that’s been around as long as he has 

Captain mentions light pollution, which only began getting addressed in the 1950s, though he could’ve learnt about it earlier or later

Episode 6 - Getting Out 

Robin liked eating cooked meat

Julian likes fondue 

The house was worth a thousand pounds in Fanny’s era 

Julian has committed fraud to get money 

The plague ghosts have had falling outs before, but they’ve never lasted longer than 20-25 years

Pat describes having music on the go, unaware that it already exists 

Fanny hid an Arabic jewel in a box under a floorboard, it was given to her husband by Queen Empress Alexandra. He pawned it. 

Captain has ear hair 

Captain’s limbs creak, it is a joke of course, but canonical so my hands are tied

Kitty likes to talk about balls and eligible men

Robin has seen many people come and go from the house

The plague ghost skeletal remains are under the house 

Captain was aware of the bodies in the basement 

[honourablejester]

Random Thoughts around D&D Westerns

Okay. So this started out as me thinking about character concepts for a D&D western-type campaign, and then moved to me thinking about setting elements for a western campaign, and then devolved into me thinking about both westerns and D&D style fantasy as genres, so like … bear with me? I’m trying to figure out how to pull this back and put it in order.

But. Okay. Let’s do it the way I did it. Let’s start from the characters.

So I’ve been noodling around the odd western type character concept for D&D the last little while, things like a druid/light cleric using guiding bolt for high noon style duels (and thorn whip as a lasso), and probably stemming originally from Kossi, my knowledge cleric/fey ranger frontier postwoman character that I’m playing in a solo campaign. So I was thinking about western characters in D&D, and thinking about the archetypes of westerns and how they’d fit.

You have things like the lone wanderer seeking justice or vengeance. The sly gambler with the heart of gold. The fire and brimstone preacher. The fiery homesteader fighting to drive bandits or railway barons off their land. The taciturn bounty hunter more at home in the wilderness than the town. The bewildered easterner about to get a sharp lesson in the way of things out west. The civil war veteran (of either side) trying to make a new life out here where people don’t care who you were, and where the rough and tumble lessons of war won’t look too out of place. The foolish miner lured to his death by greed for gold. The desperado determined to die free, go out in a blaze of glory.

The western, as a genre, is evocative. And, well, of course it is. The western is basically an attempt to valorise and mythologise a particular period of history, to gild over or ignore or straight up heroicise the, uh, less than laudable elements of that era. It’s a mythology, so of course it has some very evocative imagery.

But it is, also, a product/reimagining of a very specific historical and cultural context. And there’s elements of that particular setting that maybe you don’t want to carry over. And others that you do, but they need some set up to build in.

So I started thinking about how to get a western setting, how to make a campaign that would feel like a western. And there are …

See, the thing is, D&D kind is a lot of the way there already? When you think about the kind of stories that show up in westerns, the band of heroes defending a town, or the hunters sent out into the wilderness to track down a dangerous foe. Westerns definitely are one of the progenitor genres for D&D’s whole brand of fantasy to begin with. So what would make a setting feel more deliberately western than just standard D&D?

And, I mean. You have your basic biome shift. Put the story somewhere more arid, like the stereotypical western desert, instead of in a European forest analogue, and already it feels a bit more western. There’s also technology. Firearms, a telegraph analogue, trains. Bring some Eberron elements in, that’ll shift things a bit. But are those just cosmetic changes? Well. Yes but no. Put a pin in that for later. For now, ignoring what a western setting looks like, what does a western setting feel like?

And I think, to a large extent, it comes down to theme. Westerns had a particular set of themes that ran through them, and that’s where the backbone of your setting will come from.

So. Some of the themes I think you see a lot in westerns:

Land Ownership/Land Custodianship/Territory. Westerns are about land, on an extremely intrinsic level. It’s where the colonial underpinnings of the entire genre really show up. Think of all the western books and movies and series you’ve seen that are about claiming land and then defending that claim. So many stories are about being driven off your land. The homesteader under threat from robber barons and cattle barons and railway barons. Towns under threat from ‘Indians’. Miners getting driven off their claims. Who owns what territory. Who has the right to hold what territory. Who can defend their right to that territory. And there is … there’s a cyclical kind of terror in there. A cyclical colonisation. Because the first settlers went out there and took land from the first nations, set up their own towns and ways of life, and then the great civilising forces of the east, the railways and the telegraph wires and the big ranches, rolled in and stole it from them in turn. There’s a kind of a ‘what you do unto others will be done unto you’ sort of terror underpinning a lot of the ethos of the genre. The central theme of a lot of westerns is, basically, the territorial dispute. The land, who owns the land.

Resources/The Lure of Gold. Linked to that, there’s the resources of the land, and who gets to use them, and how far do they get to use them, and who gets murdered in the process. Gold rush. Oil. Lumber. Water. Again, very much linked back to the territorial dispute, but often in a more directly destructive way. Who can not just own the land but destroy the land. How much does owning the land give you the right to use it. And, linked from that, if you own one bit of land, and you destroy it, how does that affect, say, everything downstream of your land? (Mines and mining has a lot of knock on effects).

Civilisation vs Wilderness/Urban vs Rural. Again, linked back, but a lot of the underlying mythology of the Wild West was about being that halfway place, between the full untamed wilderness (or the full ‘savagery’ of the native peoples) and the full civilisation of the big eastern cities. A lot of (particularly later) westerns are about valorising that lost freedom and independence and rough and tumble ‘honesty’, before the railways came through and the cities built up. Which leads to a smaller scale:

Personal Freedom vs Rule of Law. Outlaws. Sheriffs. Bounty Hunters. Gunslingers. The fundamental conflict between a person’s right to do what they think best, exacerbated by so many people feeling like they had to do things for themselves because they were on their own out in the ‘wilderness’, and the need for the civilising, but also potentially tyrannical, forces of law and order. Bringing law and civilisation to the wild frontier. Personal vengeance vs impersonal justice. Corruption. Freedom. Basically, a lot of the conflict in a western will primarily run along the law vs chaos alignment axis. Good and evil depend on your interpretations of the players involved, but the fundament of the conflict will be order vs chaos. And also:

‘Progress’ vs Preservation. The thing about westerns, particularly the ‘golden age’ between the end of the civil war and around about the 1890s, was that they were right in the middle of that 19th century theme of industrialisation. As well as the colonial theme of ‘progressive civilisation vs backwards barbarism’ (hence the inverted commas on ‘progress’). This is a whole bundling together of the above themes, but westerns had a definite theme of encroaching progress. The old way of life being bulldozed for the new. The railroads are coming. Law and order are coming. The old rough and tumble frontier life is dying. The last great gunslinger is about to have his final duel. The famous desperadoes are going out in a blaze of glory. Progress is coming. And it will destroy everything in its path. But will it be a better future? And again, that kind of ties back to the colonial thing. Westerns are weirdly poised where the white settlers are experiencing what they did to those before them.

So. With all of that said. How much of that do we want to emulate? How much of that do we need to emulate? Maybe I don’t want to get into colonialism and land ownership right now, maybe all I want is a setting where a lonesome spellslinger can wander up to a desert town seeking justice, or a rough and tumble party can get together to defend a town from some desperadoes.

But. On a macro geographic level. I do think there’s some elements you want about your setting to set up those kinds of stories.

On a basic level, you want a large region of contested, non-urbanised and non-agriculturalised land (at least in the European sense of ‘endless fields of tillage’), that is divided up into a lot of small territories, where the largest urban areas tend to be towns at best, and large sections of it are claimed by various different groups or even individual owners. This region needs to be bordered by one or several very urbanised and centrally controlled powers. Probably several, not necessarily because you want to directly mirror North vs South or America vs Mexico, but because this region has been the recipient of the leftovers of a lot of outside conflicts. It’s where people come to hide, or reinvent themselves.

And it’s also where people, powers, come to build themselves. So you want to give it resources. Things people want to come and take. The constant theme in westerns is, someone wants your land. Someone wants your gold. Someone wants your town. And why? What do you have that someone wants?

Maybe, since we’re in fantasy western territory, you want to give it a rare, mystical resource. Maybe you can link that up to the theme of progress, too. A particular mineral that allows the manufacture of more powerful, durable spellstones, that would enable someone to set up a network of sending stone stations that would allow news (and information for outside powers) to flow more easily. You know. A telegraph network. Anyway.

So. A large, divided, contested region, not directly occupied by but of interest to several nearby urbanised, civilised powers. An area where there has been a lot of successive waves of people coming in, often from conflicts in or between those surrounding civilised powers. An area with a distinctly fractured and individualistic ethos as a result. An area that maybe always did, because it was never natively inhabited by empire-building societies. Everyone is this land has always claimed their own piece, just big enough for themselves, and been content with that. Yeah, bigger groups wanted more, and wars were had, because people are people, but this idea of ever-expanding ‘progress’ is new and weird and kind of terrifying.

Is this sounding a lot like a typical D&D setting again? Well, I did say D&D has a lot of western in its bones.

So. How do you make it distinct, then? Is it just cosmetic elements, biome shifts and different technology? Give it a more directly desert, 19th century vibe? And, well, that is part of it. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be technology. You don’t have to give everyone a gun. There just has to be a theme of progress. Maybe it is that sending stone network. Maybe you do want to invent a fantasy railway. But you don’t necessarily need gunslingers directly.

As an option for the gun thing, you could give every character, regardless of class, a free ranged attack cantrip. Make it part of the local culture. Defense of home. Every kid in these parts gets taught enough magic to manage that. Shit, hon, everyone teaches their five year olds how to throw a firebolt around here. What if they meet critters out there? Or worse, people?

Mostly, you want to theme your adventures around small, independent towns and groups. You want a lot of the conflict to be over land, over who has the right to be where, over who has the right to take what. You want external regional threats that are attempting to push into the area, often under the guise of for its own good. You want a theme of freedom vs law. You want wilderness vs civilisation. Or ‘wilderness’ vs ‘civilisation’, given how loaded those terms are from a standing start. You want progress as both a promise and a threat. You want natural resources, you want greed, you want boom towns and magical mining and the communities downstream that are paying for it. You want bands of outlaws running from foreign wars and making it everyone else’s problem. You want folk heroes of dubious morality. You want big powers talking about big projects, like driving a new trade route straight through someone else’s territory, like stealing rivers to bring water to cities two hundred miles away, like carving out a whole mountain that doesn’t belong to them to fuel a magical revolution in another city just as far.

And, yeah. Looping back to character concepts and plot elements. Some specific elements and ideas that I might personally include:

An apprentice wizard who’s working as a sending stone operator for the newly established United Sending Corporation station in the local town. It’s the big new thing! You can send messages instantly to any town that has one! Think of how easy it’ll be to get news! It only costs a bit per message. And yeah, the USC high ups are all big city folk from down on the coast, but hey! All the operators are local, and it is a good idea! So why not, huh?

A local druid who’s been seeing strange new afflictions in the plants and animals in their area, and who has come to town to see if anyone else has been having similar issues. And a few people have, mostly along waterways leading back to a particular area of the mountains. Incidentally, there’s also a lot of wagon traffic and provisioners moving through town. Miners and supplies moving out to a big new claim in the mountains …

A wandering itinerant preacher-slash-teacher of a gentle god who, this last little while, has been found themselves moving through towns where another, clearly much more militant preacher has been there ahead of them, and who has been riling up local tensions in ways that they’re beginning to suspect are deliberate. Setting towns on towns, tribes on tribes. Misplaced zeal, or perhaps a more long-reaching attempt to clear a path through the area for something else?

A genteel gambler who’s maintained a careful circuit around some of the local settlements for some time now, taking care not to over-harvest their flock at any one place, has started hearing whispers of a new group of bandits in the area, and some of the whispered names are worryingly familiar, echoes of the good old bad old days, when they were a different person in a different place, and under a different name …

A lean, hard, soft-spoken ranger, who ain’t got no home, who hasn’t had a home in forty years, who gets paid good money to track people down and bring ‘em in, and who has been wondering, after these last couple jobs, just who exactly has been setting the bounties in this area. Because there’s starting to be a pattern in their targets, and they’re starting not to like it.

A tired fighter, not even forty years old and already grizzled, with an albatross around their neck in the form of a legend. A bright young child who watched everything they loved be destroyed, home burned, family killed, and land stolen, and who became the fastest, meanest, most dangerous spellsword in the land in response. But that was thirty fucking years ago, and vengeance can only sustain you for so long, and now they’re broke down and broke up, and so fucking tired of all these young idiots trying to make a name for themselves out of their hide.

A charming, vicious sorcerer with a very visible scar who tends to respond dramatically to threats, and who takes a certain amount of perverse pride in being the ‘bad element’ in any town they wind up in, but who maybe, if it was offered, wouldn’t say no to chance to be better regarded than that. At least in one place. At least by one person.

Because, you know, as tangled and thorny as the genre is, westerns do have some really fucking iconic archetypes, and they are fun. Throw magic on top of it, and it is a vibe. I do enjoy it. Just, you know. You’ve got to set it up a bit carefully around the implications. Heh.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"HISTORIC MEETING -Dramatic highspot of Montgomery's sweep from El Alamein to Tunisia was this historic meeting between armored patrols of the British 8th Army and troops of the United States 2nd Corps. Tommies and Doughboys waltzed, pounded each other on the backs, swapped chocolates and cigarettes." - from The Province (Vancouver). May 8, 1943. Page 9.

[honey-andmilktea]

✎ Welcome to Night Vale: Glow Cloud

🤎𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Scientist!Bang Chan x GN!RadioShowHost!Reader | 🌙𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Fluff, Crack Fic, 1st Person | 🖊️𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2,789 Words | ✏️𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: Most of the dialogue is from the Night Vale podcast and transcriptions! I recommend checking out the podcast it’s so cool and funny! There's not a lot of Chan in this one but other groups and other group members are mentioned! [Lee Felix, Lee Minho, Choi San, Lee Minhyuk (Monsta X)] | ❌𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: Mentions of dead animals, more oddities, slightly offensive humor (?)

🍁𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: A mysterious cloud looms over Night Vale plus the change of the Boy Scouts hierarchy, community events, and a PTA bake sale!

“June, July, August. Every day, we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by Van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes.” - Mary Oliver, ‘August’

The desert seems vast, even endless, and yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow. Welcome to Night Vale.

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️☀️[Monday, 8 am]

I get everything ready for the morning’s broadcast. I sit with my regular cup of coffee in hand as I move my mic close to me and start the morning’s announcements. “The Night Vale Tourism Boards ‘Visitable Night Vale’ campaign has kicked off with posters encouraging folks to take their family on a scenery filled jaunt through the trails of Radon Canyon. Their slogan: ‘The view is literally breathtaking.' Posters will be placed at police stations and frozen yogurt shops in nearby towns, along with promotional giveaways of plastic sheeting and rebreathers.”

I clear my throat as I continue on to the news of the morning. “And now, the news. Have any of our listeners seen the glowing cloud that has been moving in from the west? Well, Lee Felix, you know, the farmer? He saw it over the Western Ridge this morning, said he would have thought it was the setting sun if it wasn’t for the time of day. Apparently, the cloud glows in a variety of colors, perhaps changing from observer to observer, although all report a low whistling when it draws near. One death has already been attributed to the glow cloud.” I raise my brows at that last part feeling it was a little extreme but also made some sense in a crazy predetermined way. 

“But listen, it’s probably nothing.” I turn away from the mic and snort. It most possibly is something, but the listeners don’t need to start freaking out now. “If we had to shut down the town for every mysterious event that at least one death could be attributed to, we’d never have time to do anything, right? That’s what the Sheriff’s Secret Police are saying, and I agree, although I would not go as far as to endorse their suggestion to ‘run directly at the cloud, shrieking and waving your arms, just to see what it does.’” I shake my head but smile with a tiny sigh. I was right though, our community was full of oddities, if we shut down every time something happened, we would basically not exist. I roll my eyes as I read what comes after in my notes.

“The Apache Tracker, and I remind you that this is that white guy who wears the huge and cartoonishly inaccurate Indian headdress,  has announced that he has found some disturbing evidence concerning the recent incident at the Night Vale Post Office, which has been sealed by the City Council since the great screaming that was heard from it a few weeks ago. He said that using ancient Indian magics, he slipped through Council security into the Post Office and observed that all the letters and packages had been thrown about as in a whirlwind, that there was the heavy stench of scorched flesh, and that words written in blood on the wall said, ‘More to come…and soon.’” I scoff lightly as I shake my head and continue to talk. “Can you believe this guy said he used ‘Indian Magicks’? What an asshole.”

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️🌑 [Monday, 2 pm]

I purse my lips as I go to sit, having noticed something on my little trip down the hall. “Here’s something odd: There is a cat hovering in the bathroom at the radio station here. Seems perfectly happy and healthy,  but it’s floating about four feet off the ground next to the sink. Doesn’t seem to be able to move from its current hover spot.” My smile turns into a little pout at that fact. It must be so lonely being all stuck there. “If you pet her, she purrs, and she’ll rub on your body like a normal cat if you get close enough. Fortunately, because she’s right by the sink, it was pretty easy to leave some water and food where he could get it, and it’s nice to have a station pet.” I smile and coo to myself at the fact that we now have a little pet to call our own in the station. “Wish it weren’t trapped in a hovering prison in the bathroom, but listen, no pet is perfect. It becomes perfect when you learn to accept it for what it is.” I clear my throat and continue with our next segment for the afternoon. “And now, a message from our sponsors: I took a walk on the cool sand dunes, brittle grass overgrown, and above me, in the night sky, above me, I saw. The bitter taste of unripe peaches and a smell I could not place, nor could I escape. I remembered other times that I could not escape. I remembered other smells. The moon slunk like a wounded animal. The world spun like it had lost control. Concentrate only on breathing and let go of ideas you had about nutrition and alarm clocks. I took a walk on the cool sand dunes, brittle grass overgrown, and above me, in the night sky, above me, I saw.” I hum and nod as I read the paper, flipping it over to continue.

“This message was brought to you by Coca-Cola.”

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️🌑 [Monday, 4:30 pm]

“The City Council, in cooperation with government agents from a vague, yet menacing, agency, is asking all citizens to stop by the Night Vale Elementary School gymnasium tonight at 7 for a brief questionnaire about mysterious sights that definitely no one saw and strange thoughts that in no way occurred to anyone, because all of us are normal, and to be otherwise would make us outcasts from our own community.  Remember: If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.” I move my finger from the button, reading over the rest of my notes a small pensive look on my face before I continue. 

“The Boy Scouts of Night Vale have announced some slight changes to their hierarchy, which will now be the following: Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Blood Pact Scout, Weird Scout, Dreadnought Scout, Dark Scout, Fear Scout, and, finally, Eternal Scout.” I used my fingers to count off everything, a small smile spreading on my lips as I continued. “As always, sign-up is automatic and random, so please keep an eye out for the scarlet envelope that will let you know your son has been chosen for the process.”

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️☀️[Tuesday, 7 am]

I started my day with some interesting news. Well more like everyday news, normal in Night Vale but news is always interesting, isn’t it? I sat myself down with a bagel in my mouth. I took a bite and started the broadcast. “This is probably nothing, listeners, but Lee Felix, you know, the farmer? He reports that the Glow Cloud is directly over old town Night Vale, and appears to be raining small creatures upon the earth.” I nod along to what I read, typical for our lovely little town. Taking another bite of my bagel I continue. “Armadillos, lizards, a few crows. That kind of thing. Fortunately, the animals appear to be dead already, so the Night Vale Animal Control department has said that it should be a snap to clean those up.” I bring my mic with me as I move to make myself a coffee. I’m quite happy that I decided to set up a coffee maker in my little office. “They just have to be tossed on to the Eternal Animal Pyre in Mission Grove Park, so if that’s the worst the Glow Cloud has for us, I’d say go ahead and do your daily errands, just bring along a good, strong umbrella, capable of handling falling animals of up to, let’s say, 10 pounds.” I smiled as my coffee finished walking back to sit down passing by an umbrella I had perched against one of the walls of the office. I sit and take a sip of my coffee with a satisfied hum. “More on the Glow Cloud as it continues to crawl across our sky. And hey, here’s a tip: Take your kid out and use the cloud’s constantly mutating hue to teach them the names of colors! It’s fun, and teaches them the real life applications of learning.”

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️🌑[Tuesday, 1 pm]

I quickly run to my mic half throwing off my jacket as I get back from picking up lunch. There was a breaking news alert and I had to report on it right away. “Alert! The Sheriff’s Secret Police are searching for a fugitive named Lee Minho, who escaped custody last night following a 9 pm arrest. Mr. Lee is described as a black cat hybrid, about 5’8” in height, with yellow cat eyes, and about 145 pounds. He is suspected of insurance fraud.” I settled in my chair, catching my breath before continuing the rest of the alert. “Mr. Lee was pulled over for speeding last night, and the Secret Police became suspicious when he allegedly gave the officers a fake driver license for a 5’10” man named Lee Minhyuk. After discerning that Lee Minhyuk was actually a black cat hybrid from somewhere other than our little world, the Secret Police searched Mr. Lee’s vehicle.” As I talk I open up the container my lunch was in taking a bite of it since I couldn’t handle being hungry any longer. 

“Representatives from local Civil Rights organizations have protested that officers had no legal grounds to search the vehicle, but they ceded the point when reminded by Secret Police officials that our backwards court system will uphold any old authoritarian rule made up on the fly by unsupervised gun-carrying thugs of a shadow government.” Rolling my eyes a little at that but nodding as that is true continuing to enjoy my lunch as I wrap up the alert for the day. “The Secret Police say Mr. Lee escaped custody by scratching at one of the Secret Police officials. He was last seen jumping and hissing along the Red Mesa. Secret Police are asking for tips leading to the arrest of Lee Mimho. They remind you that, if seen, he should not be approached, as he is an uncontrolled cat hybrid. Contact the Sheriff’s Secret Police if you have any information. Ask for Officer Changbin. Helpful tipsters will earn one stamp on their Alert Citizen Card. Collect 5 stamps and you get Stop Sign Immunity for one year!” 

I sit back and decide to finish my lunch before continuing the broadcasting of the rest of the events of the day.

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️🌑[Tuesday, 1:30 pm]

I clean up my station humming happily to myself satisfied with the meal I just had. I sat in front of my mic before pulling out the rest of my papers. “And now, a look at the community calendar.” I clear my throat and start to read the next couple events for the week and next week. “Saturday, the public library will be unknowable. Citizens will forget the existence of the library from 6 am Saturday morning until 11pm that night. The library will be under a sort of…renovation. It is not important what kind of renovation.” I make a mental note of that which in honesty I might end up forgetting either way-. I shake my head and continue to read.

“Sunday is Dot Day. Remember: Red Dots on what you love. Blue Dots on what you don’t. Mixing those up can cause permanent consequences.” I shiver at the thought, knowing those consequences are real and to always remember the difference between Red and Blue dots on Dot Day.

“Monday, Choi San is offering bluegrass lessons in the back of Louie’s Music Shoppe. Of course, the Shoppe burned down years ago, and San skipped town immediately after with his insurance money, but he sent word that you should bring your instrument to the crumbled, ashy shell of where his shop once was, and pretend that he is there in the darkness, teaching you. The price is $50 per lesson, payable in advance.” I scrunch my eyebrows at this, shaking my head in disbelief but shrugging. Just another person of good old Night Vale.

“Tuesday afternoon, join the Night Vale PTA for a bake sale to support Citizens of a Blood Space War. Proceeds will go to support neutron bomb development and deployment to our outer solar system allies. Wednesday has been canceled due to a scheduling error. And on Thursday, there is a free concert.” I blink as I look over the paper and tilt my head. “That’s all it says here.” 

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️🌑[Tuesday, 2:00 pm]

“New call in from Lee Felix, you know, the farmer?” I’m leaning back on my chair absentmindedly throwing a ball up in the air. There is so much that can keep me entertained. “Seems the Glow Cloud has doubled in size, enveloping all of Night Vale in its weird light and humming song. Little League administration has announced that they will be going ahead with the game, although there will be an awning built over the field due to the increase in size of the animal corpses being dropped.” I pulled out a paper squinting at it before perking up. “I’ve had multiple reports that a lion, like the kind you would see on the sun-baked plains of Africa, or a pee stained enclosure at a local zoo, fell on top of the White Sand Ice Cream Shoppe. The Shoppe is offering a free dipped cone to anyone who can figure out how to get the thing off.” I hum as I try to figure out a way to fit in a visit to the Shoppe. Who knows I could win myself a free dipped cone.~

“The Sheriff’s Secret Police have apparently taken to shouting questions at the Glow Cloud, trying to ascertain what exactly it wants. So far the Glow Cloud has not answered. The Glow Cloud does not need to converse with us. It does not feel as we tiny humans feel.” It felt like I was in a trance as I kept speaking. My mouth is just moving and no thoughts in mind. “It has no need for thoughts or feelings or love. The Glow Cloud simply is. All hail the mighty Glow Cloud. All hail. And now, slaves of the Cloud, the weather.” 

ೃ⁀➷ 🦇🕰️🌑[Tuesday, 7 pm]

“Sorry, listeners. Not sure what happened in that earlier section of the broadcast. As in, I actually don’t remember what happened.” I blink a little rubbing my forehead as I try to remember. “Tried to play back the tapes but they all are blank and smell faintly of vanilla.” I take some of the tapes and give them another sniff before my eyebrows scrunch up again. They really do smell like vanilla. Kind of pleasant actually. “The Glow Cloud, meanwhile, has moved on. It is now just a glowing spot in the distance, humming easy to destinations unknown. We may never fully understand, or understand at all, what it was and why it dumped a lot of dead animals on our community. But, and I’m going to get a little personal here, that’s the essence of life, isn’t it?” I hum in thought to myself as I think over my words going off script now.

“Sometimes you go through things that seem huge at the time, like a mysterious Glowing Cloud devouring your entire community. While they are happening, they feel like the only thing that matters, and you can hardly imagine that there’s a world out there that might have anything else going on. And then the Glow Cloud moves on, and you move on, and the event is behind you. And you may find, as time passes, that you remember it less and less. Or absolutely not at all, in my case. And you are left with nothing but a powerful wonder at the fleeting nature of even the most important moment in life, and the faint but pretty smell of vanilla.” I smile to myself as I pull out a sticky note ready to end the broadcast for the night.

“Finally dear listeners, here is a list of things:

Emotions you don’t understand upon viewing a sunset.

Lost pets, found.

Lost pets, unfound.

A secret lost pet city on the moon. 

Trees that see.

Restaurants that hear.

A void that thinks.

A face, half-seen, just before falling asleep.

Trembling hands reaching for desperately needed items.

Sandwiches.

Silence when there should be noise.

Noise when there should be silence.

Nothing, when you want something.

Something, when you thought there was nothing.

Clear plastic binder sheets.

Scented dryer sheets.

Rain coming down in sheets.

Night.

Rest.

Sleep.

End.

Goodnight, listeners. Goodnight.” I end the broadcast with a smile. I move to the couch in the room and decide to do a little gazing out into the night sky. See what else our little strange town can offer me.

✎ @honey-andmilktea - 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝, 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭, 𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭, 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞, 𝐞𝐭𝐜. [2024-2025]

✎ Thank you for reading! Since you've made it this far please consider reblogging, commenting or getting a coffee at the Coffee Corner! [Ko-fi]

✎ Taglist: @armysantiny, @faywithlove, @moonprismo, @iridescentxstars, @monsterhigh-cb, @mo0nbeams

[mariacallous]

On a stifling April afternoon in Ajmer, in the Indian state of Rajasthan, local politician Shakti Singh Rathore sat down in front of a greenscreen to shoot a short video. He looked nervous. It was his first time being cloned.

Wearing a crisp white shirt and a ceremonial saffron scarf bearing a lotus flower—the logo of the BJP, the country’s ruling party—Rathore pressed his palms together and greeted his audience in Hindi. “Namashkar,” he began. “To all my brothers—”

Before he could continue, the director of the shoot walked into the frame. Divyendra Singh Jadoun, a 31-year-old with a bald head and a thick black beard, told Rathore he was moving around too much on camera. Jadoun was trying to capture enough audio and video data to build an AI deepfake of Rathore that would convince 300,000 potential voters around Ajmer that they’d had a personalized conversation with him—but excess movement would break the algorithm. Jadoun told his subject to look straight into the camera and move only his lips. “Start again,” he said.

Right now, the world’s largest democracy is going to the polls. Close to a billion Indians are eligible to vote as part of the country’s general election, and deepfakes could play a decisive, and potentially divisive, role. India’s political parties have exploited AI to warp reality through cheap audio fakes, propaganda images, and AI parodies. But while the global discourse on deepfakes often focuses on misinformation, disinformation, and other societal harms, many Indian politicians are using the technology for a different purpose: voter outreach.

Across the ideological spectrum, they’re relying on AI to help them navigate the nation’s 22 official languages and thousands of regional dialects, and to deliver personalized messages in farther-flung communities. While the US recently made it illegal to use AI-generated voices for unsolicited calls, in India sanctioned deepfakes have become a $60 million business opportunity. More than 50 million AI-generated voice clone calls were made in the two months leading up to the start of the elections in April—and millions more will be made during voting, one of the country’s largest business messaging operators told WIRED.

Jadoun is the poster boy of this burgeoning industry. His firm, Polymath Synthetic Media Solutions, is one of many deepfake service providers from across India that have emerged to cater to the political class. This election season, Jadoun has delivered five AI campaigns so far, for which his company has been paid a total of $55,000. (He charges significantly less than the big political consultants—125,000 rupees [$1,500] to make a digital avatar, and 60,000 rupees [$720] for an audio clone.) He’s made deepfakes for Prem Singh Tamang, the chief minister of the Himalayan state of Sikkim, and resurrected Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, an iconic politician who died in a helicopter crash in 2009, to endorse his son Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, currently chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh. Jadoun has also created AI-generated propaganda songs for several politicians, including Tamang, a local candidate for parliament, and the chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra. “He is our pride,” ran one song in Hindi about a local politician in Ajmer, with male and female voices set to a peppy tune. “He’s always been impartial.”

While Rathore isn’t up for election this year, he’s one of more than 18 million BJP volunteers tasked with ensuring that the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi maintains its hold on power. In the past, that would have meant spending months crisscrossing Rajasthan, a desert state roughly the size of Italy, to speak with voters individually, reminding them of how they have benefited from various BJP social programs—pensions, free tanks for cooking gas, cash payments for pregnant women. But with the help of Jadoun’s deepfakes, Rathore’s job has gotten a lot easier.

He’ll spend 15 minutes here talking to the camera about some of the key election issues, while Jadoun prompts him with questions. But it doesn’t really matter what he says. All Jadoun needs is Rathore’s voice. Once that’s done, Jadoun will use the data to generate videos and calls that will go directly to voters’ phones. In lieu of a knock at their door or a quick handshake at a rally, they’ll see or hear Rathore address them by name and talk with eerie specificity about the issues that matter most to them and ask them to vote for the BJP. If they ask questions, the AI should respond—in a clear and calm voice that’s almost better than the real Rathore’s rapid drawl. Less tech-savvy voters may not even realize they’ve been talking to a machine. Even Rathore admits he doesn’t know much about AI. But he understands psychology. “Such calls can help with swing voters.”

[whencyclopedia]

Operation Torch

Operation Torch (aka the North Africa landings) landed Allied troops in French Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942 with the aim of removing German and Italian forces from North Africa. The first jointly-planned Allied operation of the Second World War (1939-45), Torch overcame difficulties such as the testing logistics of shipping troops directly from the United States and Britain and the large presence of Vichy French forces in North Africa, but the landings were ultimately successful, establishing the region as a launchpad for a future invasion of Italy.

The Importance of North Africa

Right from the start of WWII, both the Axis powers of Germany and Italy were interested in controlling North Africa because a presence there would help protect shipping in the Mediterranean and provide support for such campaigns as the attacks on enemy-held Crete and Malta. The Allies, particularly Britain, had the same strategic interest but were, in addition, anxious to protect the vital Suez Canal and the Middle East oil fields. In addition, in the early years of the war, North Africa remained the only place where Britain could fight a land war against the Axis powers and so hopefully gain much-needed victories that would encourage the British people after the debacle of the Dunkirk Evacuation and the horrors of the London Blitz. Here in the great desert plains of Libya and Egypt, then, a series of battles were fought, which became known as the Western Desert Campaigns (June 1940 to January 1943).

The Desert War became something of a pendulum affair. First, the Italians pushed across from their colony of Libya into British-held Egypt but were then pushed back by the British and its empire forces in Operation Compass (December 1940 to February 1941). The German army arrived in February 1941 with superior armour, weapons, and training compared to both the Italians and the Allies. Axis forces in Africa came under the command of General Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) who proceeded to win a number of battles, notably the Battle of Gazala, which ended in the capture of the port of Tobruk in June 1942. Rommel was then held back at the First Battle of El Alamein (July 1942) and roundly defeated by the British Eighth Army led by General Bernard Montgomery (1887-1976) at the Second Battle of El Alamein (October-November 1942). Rommel was obliged to retreat back to Tunisia. Without sufficient supplies, Rommel recommended to Adolf Hitler, who was wholly preoccupied with the Russian Front, that North Africa be abandoned, but he was ordered to continue the desert campaign as best he could.

The Allied commanders, in sharp contrast to Rommel, were keener than ever to control North Africa as they realised this region could be used as a platform for a full invasion of southern Europe, in particular, Sicily and the Italian mainland. Such a plan would fulfil a long-made promise to their ally Russia that there would be a second front to the war after the Eastern Front had opened in the summer of 1942. In order to finally remove Axis forces from North Africa, then, a massive and complex joint landing operation was months in the planning: Operation Torch.

WWII North Africa Campaign, 1940-1943

Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)

Continue reading...

[usafphantom2]

possible clues about what its strategy would be in the event of conflict.

The images, taken by Google Earth on May 29, feature a model aircraft carrier and more than 20 replicas of jets resembling US stealth fighters.

"Chinese PLA Air Force pilots are learning to practice air strikes on American F-35 and F-22 mock-ups," said a post containing four satellite pictures published on X, formerly Twitter, by the Turkey-based Clash Report.

The military blogging account identified the location as Qakilik in the Taklamakan Desert. The Post has not been able to verify the images and there has been no official confirmation from China.

Several of these replicas appeared to be severely damaged.

The exercises reflect the People's Liberation Army's efforts to build up its long-range ballistic and cruise missile systems to neutralise the threats from US naval forces, according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

"US and allied naval forces in general would be a natural target because of their power projection capabilities, which are perceived by Beijing as a threat," he said.

Koh continued that it would be in line with Beijing's growing emphasis on simulating realistic campaigns and "by and large, Beijing's wartime scenarios appear aimed at counter-intervention against the Americans" especially in the event of conflict in the South China Sea or Taiwan.

If the drill involved the PLA's intercontinental-range systems, it may have been practising strikes on targets such as Guam, Alaska and Hawaii, he added.

The PLA has long held that its exercises are not aimed at any specific party, but mock targets can sometimes give away its thinking - either by accident or design.

In 2015, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast footage of PLA troops taking part in mock battles near a building that closely resembled Taiwan's presidential office.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the exercise appeared to fit the PLA's counter-intervention strategy, designed to deny US and allied naval forces in the Western Pacific access to potential war zones further east.

"This implies the PLA's strike capabilities will probably have either an electro-optical or synthetic aperture radar terminal guidance system to image the target and guide the warhead prior to precisely striking at a specific location on a military base," he said.

The exercise would allow the PLA to improve its precision in scenarios such as a ballistic missile "seeking to strike a moving target at sea, such as an aircraft carrier".

He also said that practising in the desert would help the PLA to improve its ability to carry out long-range conventional precision strikes on land targets, such as airfields.

Hong-Kong based military commentator Leung Kwok-leung said the satellite images suggested a simulated strike on Alaska, where most F-22s were based.

"Alaska is also the base of the most important national missile defence system in the United States. Last year, an F-22 was used to shoot down China's so-called spy balloon, which shows that the F-22 also undertakes the task of the missile defence system," Leung said.

Timothy Heath, a senior international defence researcher at the Rand Corporation think tank, also said "the Chinese are not hiding the mock-ups, so they may not care if Westerners observe them".

"It may also be the case that the Chinese want the US military to see this as a reminder that China is serious about military training and preparation and as a warning against the United States," Heath said.

[octy-in-boots]

My husband will be running a campaign for us and he asked for my help. This is my first attempt at making a fantasy map (still very much a WIP, if you look at the doodle far to the right)!

I think I want to swap the colors of the top right forest with the western rainforest. There will be more cities and villages, etc. added as time goes on, as well as filler to make it look less bare. Lakes, cliffs, tributaries, a port city, a desert city, and a pirates' cove to the southwest!