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The Weak Link in Team Handoffs Isn't the Brief — It's the Silence After It The Handoff Gap Nobody Documents Most creative work doesn't fail at the brief stage. It fails in the gap between the brief and the first draft — the stretch where one person's mental image of "upbeat but not corporate" has to survive translation into someone else's hands. Audio is especially bad at this. A marketer can describe a mood in a sentence. A video editor waiting on a track can't act on a sentence. They need something to react to, and until they get it, the project sits. This shows up constantly on small teams: a podcast host wants a new intro theme, a product team needs a demo soundtrack that won't distract from a voiceover, a campaign needs three variations of the same jingle for different regions. The brief gets written once. Then it gets re-explained on a call, re-explained again in Slack when the first draft misses the mark, and by the third round nobody remembers what "not corporate" meant in the original note. Turning a Brief Into Something Playable The fix isn't a better brief template — it's shortening the distance between writing the brief and hearing something. When the person who understands the intent can generate a rough version themselves, before it ever reaches a specialist or contractor, the handoff changes shape. Instead of passing along words, they pass along a draft plus notes on what to adjust. This is the kind of gap tools like MiniMax Music 3.0 are built to sit in. According to the product page, it takes prompts and lyrics and produces complete songs or instrumentals with vocals and arrangement, rather than requiring a finished creative brief translated by a third party. That doesn't remove the need for a producer or editor later — it means the first draft exists earlier, closer to the person who actually knows what "not corporate" is supposed to sound like. A Podcast Intro That Almost Missed a Deadline Consider a two-person podcast team: one person hosts and writes, the other edits and publishes. The host wants a new 15-second intro tied to a rebrand, with a lyric line referencing the show's name. In the old flow, the host writes a description, sends it to a freelance composer, waits two days for a draft, then spends another day explaining why the tempo feels off. The deadline is the launch date of the rebrand, and the timeline barely survives one round of revisions, let alone two. In a revised flow, the host drafts the lyric line themselves and generates a rough instrumental-plus-vocal version as a reference — not a final asset, but something concrete. That draft goes to the editor with a note: "tempo and lyric hook are close, vocal tone should be warmer." The editor now has something to compare against instead of a paragraph to interpret. If the team still wants a composer for the final polished version, that composer receives a working reference instead of a blank brief, which cuts the first round of back-and-forth almost entirely. What to Verify Before You Pass It Forward A draft is only useful in a handoff if the receiving person can trust what they're looking at. Before sending a generated draft along, it's worth checking a few things rather than assuming it's ready: - Does the lyric timing actually match where it needs to land in the video or episode, or does it need to be trimmed? - Does the vocal tone match the brand or host's voice, or does it read as generic? - Is the arrangement dense enough to sit under narration, or does it compete with dialogue? - Is it clearly labeled as a draft or reference, not something that could accidentally ship as final? - Are there any usage or rights questions that need to be resolved before the track moves past internal review? Skipping this step is where teams lose the benefit of a faster first draft — the draft gets treated as finished because it exists, and the review step that used to happen naturally (because a human composer delivered it slowly) disappears along with the delay. Closing the Loop The real value in a faster draft isn't speed for its own sake. It's that the person with the original intent gets to correct misunderstandings before anyone else spends time on them. A written brief hides ambiguity; a rough draft exposes it immediately, which is exactly what a good handoff needs. For teams evaluating whether an AI-assisted first draft belongs in their audio workflow, MiniMax Music 3.0 — https://minimaxmusic3.net/ is worth trying on a low-stakes piece first — an internal demo track or a placeholder intro — before deciding where it fits between the brief and the final produced version.

This is a message for the 108 million people who didn’t vote in the 2026 Presidential election. I understand the feeling of what does it matter? I believe you can see by now that it did. Look at all of the chaos that has been going on since the dicktater took office. ICE patrolling our neighborhoods, murdering citizens without redress, a pseudo-war with Iran, killing fishermen in Venezuela, a Congress and Supreme Court as lackeys of the “President”, talk show hosts as cabinet members, gasoline and food prices out of control, millions of data stolen by DOGE, the Epstein Files cover-up, inflation out of control. I could go on and on, but you know these things to be true. As Americans, we cannot let this go on. We need you to stand with the country this November and help put an end to it all. It’s not just our country that needs you to vote them all out of office; it affects the whole world. After decades of having allies when we needed them, now we have none, unless you count Russia and North Korea as allies. Ukraine is a shining example of how hard they are willing to fight to keep their freedom. Can we not do the same this November? Do you really think your vote is useless? It isn’t. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. It’s, unfortunately, the only choice we might have. I don’t believe in polls, very little in social media posts, and I know that most politicians lie. However. I believe if you don’t vote this November to help gain the House and the Senate, America, as I knew it, is finished. If you happen to be a Maga reading this, hope you will think about it also.

Today in history: 82 years ago today, Paris was liberated from the Nazi occupation. Such a simple sentence, and yet such a complexity of events leading up to it. On August 15, the Free Forces of the Interior (FFI), the largest of the Resistance groups in occupied France (and largely led by Communists, a fact that is not irrelevant) declared an uprising against the Germans. Up went the barricades (a Paris tradition), out came the weapons (Frederic Joliot-Curie, a Resistance member, used his chemistry knowledge to create self-igniting Molotov cocktails that didn’t require a wick), and the fight began, while Resistance radio operators sent pleas to the Allies for reinforcements. Eisenhower and his staff had no plans involving Paris - they had Patton’s Third Army rolling for the Rhine and that was the plan. And such was Ike’s response to Charles de Gaulle when told of the Paris uprising. De Gaulle didn’t like that much. 1) the Allies were talking about Paris as though it was Just Another City. 2) He knew (as most of the Allies did) that Hitler had given orders for the destruction of Paris in the event it looked like the Allies were taking it back. 3) He didn’t want the Commies in the FFI to get the credit for liberating Paris. 4) Nor did he want the Americans or British to get said credit. So De Gaulle went and had a chat with Philippe de Clerc, the commander of the 2nd French Armored Division attached to the American Army. De Clerc had a word with his subordinates, and they spent the next three days scrounging all the ammunition and gasoline they could get their hands on - and the morning of August 20, they detached themselves from the American army and headed for Paris. After some pungent language at SHAEF headquarters (and more pungent language at Third Army headquarters - Patton was *not* happy at this diversion of his supplies), Eisenhower ordered the US 9th Infantry Division to follow the 2nd French Armored and give them support. So, the Resistance is engaged in street fighting inside Paris. Two divisions of Allied troops are approaching Paris. Hitler gives the order for the destruction of Paris... and the commander of the German forces in Paris, General der Infanterie Dietrich von Choltitz, ignores that order. The 2nd French Armored Division reached the outskirts of Paris on the morning of August 24th and basically, without any real plan, headed straight for the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). While taking massive casualties (they lost 36 tanks in the assault on Paris, the largest number lost by any single division in any battle), by nightfall they had captured the Hôtel de Ville. As the 9th Infantry Division filtered into the city, von Choltitz declared a cease-fire, and on the morning of the 25th, he surrendered the city to the French. (And then followed one of the more shameful episodes of the war, in my opinion. A victory parade was held down the Champs-Elysee, with the troops being showered with flowers by the grateful citizens of Paris. Except most of the troops in the parade were Americans and Brits wearing French uniforms. Why? Because with France being occupied, the Free French Army was mostly composed of troops from the French colonies in Africa. Which meant they were black. And since the US Army was still segregated, with African-Americans relegated to support roles and not allowed in combat, Eisenhower basically went to de Gaulle and said “you owe me” for diverting troops to the liberation of Paris, and convinced him that showing black soldiers involved in the liberation of Paris might cause resentment in the American ranks, not to mention wouldn’t play well in the newsreels back in the USA. So the bulk of the Free French Army got cheated out of their parade, and Allied troops who hadn’t even been involved got a parade, all so the parade would be lily-white for the benefit of the cameras. 😡)

a few days after the change the problem of hunger keeps getting more prominent. he quickly realized after the first day that a lot of regular food has become unpalatable to him- the more delicate digestive system of an obligate carnivore makes processing tougher vegetables more stomach-upsetting and there's only so many hot dogs in a day he can stand to eat. beyond that even if things taste the same as they did before it kind of feels like there's something missing, like when a dish is in need of a spice but you can't place which would complete it. so he's maybe not eating as much as he should, especially after the energy-intensive activity that is "your entire body morphing into a big bug's over the course of a minute or two" still going to work, obvs, and it's frustrating re-learning to type by inefficiently pecking at individual keys with his delicate little bug hands at the far ends of his forelimbs. but he's still, slowly, taking care of his usual batch of paperwork and emails in his office. and he keeps getting distracted. firstly by hunger- and the bizarre sensation of it being felt in his abdomen vice his torso- and secondly by his new sensory systems making the scuttler infestation in the plant about 1000% more annoying. his antennae keep twitching and he can sense all their little legs skittering around between the walls and outside his office and it's SO DISTRACTING and he's just getting more and more frustrated at being unable to focus on his work until finally one of the big stupid bugs crawls out from the wall across the floor of the office behind him and without thinking he swivels around, snatches it, and crushes it between the sharp spines on his forelimbs. and he stands there for a few moments realizing what happened before pointedly dumping the thing in the trash and avoiding the urge to clean the bug's body fluids off of his forelimbs with his mouth, and washes off in the bathroom. killing the thing did make him feel just a bit better, though, and after another few hours of getting nothing done he decides, fine, fuck it, he might as well try to deal with the scuttler problem while he has a good solution for it, try and put a positive spin on the situation since getting actual exterminators for the place has been fruitless. so he starts hunting the things down. they're not hard to catch, having become accustomed to avoiding far less effective human attacks vice a predator purpose-built for hunting down bugs. he's pointedly ignoring the overwhelming twinge in his gut when he crushes the wriggling bugs between his arms and focusing on the slight satisfaction of following at least some of his new instincts instead. isopods have this neat cute way of raising their young where they carry around the developing eggs and newly-hatched young like a marsupial, in a pouch on the underbelly. and peter becomes INTIMATELY aware of this fact when he grabs a scuttler by the flooded old break room and a slew of underdeveloped baby scuttlers fall out of it onto the floor. he reacts like one usually would, with revulsion at all the little skittering things spreading out and trying to get away, but the persistent hunger and the predator instincts in his brain at seeing fleeing, soft, bite-size, prey with their chitin yet to harden and it's not like there's anyone around to see and it finally gets the better of him and he skewers one on the pointed edge of his "hand"/tibia and lifts it. and new mobile palp-like parts around his eating slot that he hadn't even realized had developed bring it into his mouth and he lets himself finally eat enough of the things to actually feel full for the first time in days and absolutely no one else can find out about this, except for caroline who has a BIG laugh at him about it that evening. and perhaps finally there starts to be a sizeable dent in the plant's pest population

“ The Trump EPA has proposed a new rule that would kill the requirement for datacenters to publicly disclose the air pollution they release, letting emission permits get issued behind closed doors instead. Datacenters are often sources of nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, and while the Clean Air Act currently requires “minor” polluters to disclose expected pollution levels to the public through state agencies, the new rule would make that disclosure voluntary and left to state and local officials’ discretion. Former EPA air office official Joe Goffman said the move guts what he called an “ironclad promise” of public transparency, warning most states, many of which actively court datacenter investment, are unlikely to require disclosure voluntarily, leaving communities in the dark about what they’re breathing and weaker in court or public fights. Big tech companies already split datacenter permit requests into individual pieces per generator or turbine specifically to stay under the less scrutinized “minor” review process rather than face costlier federal review, and advocates say this rule would strip away the last real transparency in that already legally shaky practice. The EPA says the change is meant to cut red tape and speed up permitting to support “American economic development and energy dominance,” but critics including a former deputy director of the EPA’s air quality office call it part of a broader pattern of the administration abandoning transparency as a core EPA principle.”. Via Aaron Parnas, this AM

“ Newly leaked details show Trump ignored direct warnings before launching the Iran war. In a February Oval Office meeting, Tulsi Gabbard warned that striking Iran risked closing the Strait of Hormuz, triggering energy chaos, and installing an even more hardline successor to Khamenei, while military leaders separately warned about heavy casualties and depleted munitions stockpiles. Trump launched the attack alongside Israel on February 28 anyway, and Mar-a-Lago reportedly erupted in celebration when Khamenei’s killing was confirmed. Since then, Gulf nations and even some Republicans have pushed Trump to end the war, and sources say he’s privately furious, asking allies “why isn’t Iran folding” and at one point suggesting they should “bomb the s--t out of Iran” before a friend talked him down. White House spokesperson Olivia Wales is still defending the war as a success despite the fallout now playing out in real time.” Via Aaron Parnas, today

“ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s string of firings and feuds has left the Army without a chief of staff since he dismissed Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there is no sign a replacement is imminent; officials say Hegseth has also forced out at least three other senior officers viewed as potential successors. As recently as January 2025, the Army had 10 four star generals on active duty; it now has just five, the fewest in decades, with key posts like the Transformation and Training Command sitting empty for months after Hegseth fired Gen. David M. Hodne without explanation. Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, once seen as a possible Hegseth successor, is also expected to leave in the coming months and is reportedly barely on speaking terms with Hegseth, even as the peace effort he was leading on Ukraine has stalled. Critics, including Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat and former Army intelligence officer, warn that purging battle tested leaders makes troops less safe and erodes the military’s apolitical character, while the Army’s official statement insists its leaders remain focused on readiness and modernization.” via Aaron Parnas today

Trump allows Iranian hackers to attack our infrastructure at will. Republican blundering putting the entire country in peril and the simply don’t know what to do about. The blithering fools in the Trump administration never once considered what every other government on earth knew; if you messed with Iran they, with little or no effort, would shut down the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt the entire supply of oil worldwide. Typical bullies, because they thought they had military strength, thought they could dictate to third-world countries but soon found their sorry asses getting kicked to the sandy beaches in the Gulf. Bumbling and stumbling like drunks on New Years Eve they lie, and lie, and lie, saying they are winning the war while our economy falters and citizens have difficulty simply putting food on the table. Your government -- the Republicans and Trump -- are doing more harm to our country than North Korea, China, and Russia, combined. And this is only the beginning of Iran’s complete control over America. They don’t need airplanes, warships, missiles and bombs to display their complete superiority over us; a handful of hackers in a desert shack is all they need to dominate us. They have shown the ease with which they can shut down some of our water systems just last week. This week they did the same with some of England’s electrical supply. And here comes the saddest part of all this gross incompetence. We once had a small army of experts who monitored our computer systems – protected them from harm, and Trump fired them – all 1000 so he could use their salaries to replace the money lost on tax breaks for his friends and family. Such is the state of our country today, practically groveling before our enemies. The Republicans are again lying through their teeth again, trying to convince you to give them another chance with your vote. Will you wait to decide, risking Iran and her proxies will next shut down our entire defense network in the interim? See this – boldface mine: Iran-linked hackers suspected in UK power-plant shutdown after alleged Minnesota water attack Story by Morgan Phillips • 4h • 3 min read Iran-linked hackers are suspected of forcing a small British power generator offline for four days last month, the latest sign that Tehran-linked cyber activity may be moving from probing vulnerable systems to causing disruptions U.S. officials have long warned about. Iran-linked hackers were behind the outage, according to British security officials who spoke with multiple news outlets. "To be clear: there was no threat to the wider grid and nobody lost power. We have one of the most resilient energy systems in the world," UK Energy Minister Michael Shanks said in a statement. He described the generator as "tiny" but said his department had briefed CEOs following the intrusion on "steps they should take to stay secure." The British shutdown came weeks after hackers struck more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota, accessing technology used to remotely monitor and control pumps and other equipment. Minnesota officials have not publicly attributed the attacks. Several news outlets, citing U.S. officials and a leaked industry threat-sharing memo, reported that Iran was the likely culprit. President Donald Trump has publicly rejected that assessment, saying he did not believe Iran was to blame. Together, the incidents are putting civilian infrastructure at the center of another front in the conflict between the U.S. and Iran. As the military confrontation stretches into its sixth month, relatively small and often lightly defended water and energy facilities offer hackers a way to cause physical disruption without penetrating a major power grid or striking a military target. Those facilities can be especially vulnerable because many rely on internet-connected industrial control systems that allow operators to monitor and manage physical equipment remotely. Once inside, hackers can interrupt operations, lock out operators or manipulate controls for pumps and other machinery. In a July alert, the FBI and Environmental Protection Agency said malicious actors had targeted water and wastewater utilities in at least seven states by accessing exposed programmable logic controllers and changing their internet addresses and passwords. Some incidents disrupted water operations, causing reported pressure loss and flooding. Federal agencies have also warned that Iranian-affiliated actors have targeted similar industrial devices across water, energy and government sectors, seeking access to the software used to control them. That activity has already caused operational disruptions and financial losses. Iranian hackers have pursued U.S. infrastructure before. The threat extends beyond industrial systems. On Aug. 18, the Justice Department charged 17 members of an Iran-based company with carrying out a sweeping cyber theft campaign targeting hundreds of universities, private companies and government agencies. Prosecutors said many of the intrusions were conducted on behalf of the IRGC and other Iranian entities and resulted in the theft of more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property. In 2016, the Justice Department charged an Iranian hacker with gaining access to the control system for a dam in Rye, New York. The dam’s sluice gate had been disconnected for maintenance at the time, preventing him from manipulating water levels and flow rates. More recently, U.S. agencies linked an IRGC-affiliated campaign known as CyberAv3ngers to compromises of Israeli-made industrial controllers at dozens of U.S. facilities in late 2023 and early 2024, including water and wastewater systems, energy companies, food manufacturers and health care organizations. The campaign exploited devices exposed to the public internet that were still using default passwords. The more recent attacks underscore how little access may be required to produce a physical effect. In Minnesota, compromised controllers affected systems used to track water levels, pressure, pump operations and equipment alarms; in some communities, equipment was temporarily taken offline while operators restored systems. Whether Tehran intends a wider campaign against Western infrastructure remains unclear. But the four-day shutdown in Britain illustrates what hackers can do once they gain access to a small industrial system: disrupt physical operations without breaching a major grid operator or triggering a blackout large enough to invite an immediate military response. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/iran-linked-hackers-suspected-in-uk-power-plant-shutdown-after-alleged-minnesota-water-attack/ar-AA2aPIv1? For more free articles about the Tyranny of the Trump/republican administration: https://mcdermottm.substack.com/publish/posts

The nut pirates tried to mug me this morning. The pine grove at the park is the squirrels' version of a back alley. Unsuspecting walkers are often waylaid here for their valuables, meaning peanuts. The furry addicts will ignore any dog that may be present while actually climbing people's legs to root through their coat pockets! I normally keep an eye out whenever walking through the grove. This morning, though, I was deep in thought as I wandered into its shadowy depths. Upon realizing where I was, I glanced around. I found myself surrounded by six squirrels closing in fast. Suddenly the image of me using martial arts to fight off the squirrels flashed through my strange mind. I burst out laughing. I have a loud belly laugh, thanks to my overdeveloped sense of humor. The startled criminal rodents stopped in their tracks. I struck a dramatic karate pose for a moment before walking onward, my laughter echoing in the grove. I crack myself up.

‘Shuckin’, ‘Jivin’, and ‘High fiven’ senator Scott fails to consider what they say about him after he leaves the room. The people suffering because of Trump and the Republican utter incompetence on the handling of the American economy, are undoubtably the poor and the black. And poor black folks being hit the hardest. So you would think a black senator in congress would be their champion. That he would fight for an end to this seemingly endless war where are soldiers are being slain on almost a daily basis, would fight for the growing cost of gasoline because of this stupid war, would rail against the cost of groceries and electricity, would fight for affordable healthcare instead of accepting the reductions in subsidies, would champion SNAP benefits for hungry children and American seniors, would demand a rollback of cuts to Veteran’s benefits, and perhaps, most of all, do something about Iran’s unchecked ability to shut down parts of our infrastructure at will. One would think that, no? NO! Not when the black senator is Timothy ‘Uncle Tim” Scott from South Carolina. This fawning Trump apologist has so little respect for the black voter in particular --, and all voters in general -- he sat on National TV and lied through his government funded teeth about This fawning Trump apologist has so little respect for the black voter in particular -- and all voters in general -- he sat on National TV and lied through his government funded teeth about how well the economy is doing, that all American Muslim families are radicals looking to destroy their own nation, and it’s really Joe Biden hiding in the woods causing all our problems. Looking you directly in the eye and sneering at your ability to discern truth from filthy lies. See this – Boldface mine: GOP senator shredded for 'Sharia law' attack and Ken Paxton defense: 'Soooooo bad at this' Story by Kathleen Culliton • 16h • 3 min read © provided by RawStory Sen. Tim Scott's (R-SC) attempts Sunday to defend President Donald Trump's economy, his controversial colleagues and potentially Islamophobic attacks were met with immediate scorn. Scott was met with scathing reviews after he discussed on "Meet the Press" Sen. Darline Graham Nordone (R-SC), Senate hopeful Ken Paxton, inflation and criticism that Republicans use senatorial hopeful Abdul El-Sayed's religion as fear-monger fodder. "These people brag about their Christian faith," replied Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan, "and then just lie shamelessly on national television with a smile on their face." Hasan delivered this rebuke in response to Scott's defense of Nordone, the Trump-endorsed candidate to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham, who this week admitted utter ignorance of national security. "Darline Graham is the real deal," Scott said in his interview. "She's ready to serve." "But Senator Scott," replied host Kristen Welker, "should a U.S. senator have a basic understanding of national security issues?" "The answer is yes," replied Scott, "and she does." According to Nordone, however, the answer is that national security is not "her thing." Trump defends Darline Graham's foreign policy gaffe at a debate earlier this week, where she said Scott's defense of Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General running for Senate, also did not go down well. "Paxton has faced allegations of bribery, fraud, abuse of power, he was impeached by his own party," said Welker. "Why do you now believe Ken Paxton has the character to serve in the Senate?" "James Talarico does not have the character to serve," replied Scott. "At the end of the day the contrast is clear." Welker went on to grill Scott about his party's rhetoric on El-Sayed, the Democratic senatorial candidate for Michigan. "Are Republicans trying to scare voters based on the fact El-Sayed would be the first Muslim senator?" she asked. "Not at all," said Scott. "He's the one that he was committed to Sharia Law." This claim appears to arise from a 2009 New York Times report about a Michigan bank that helped Islamic clients by offering mortgage alternatives that complied with Sharia’s forbidding of “riba,” often translated as usury or interest. The report includes an interview with a Rhodes Scholar medical student who was able to buy a home with the bank's help. "For customers like Abdul El-Sayed, though, the bank was literally a godsend," the Times reported. "A generation earlier, Mr. El-Sayed’s father had had no choice under Shariah but to save up until he could buy a home with cash." The phrase "Sharia Law" also appears in a Washington Post analysis published Sunday about the wave of anti-Islamic attacks his candidacy has faced. "The fixation on El-Sayed’s faith is part of a growing embrace of open Islamophobia by some Republicans this year, coinciding with a war on Iran and increased hostilities in the Middle East," the report stated. "Politically, those barbs have triggered few penalties within the party." Addressing Scott's comments on "Meet the Press," Democratic strategist Leslie Marshall argued that the answer to Welker's question about trying to scare voters, "was clearly yes." Finally, Scott's attempts to blame former President Joe Biden for the current economy were criticized openly online and by Welker herself. "Inflation was at 3 percent when President Biden left office, it's at 3.4 perfect right now" said Welker. "Gas prices are over 4 dollars a gallon.... he promised he would lower prices on day one — did he break that promise? Prices have gone up!" "Well, I'll —" Scott began, then tried again. "The good news is you don't disagree with the fact that Joe Biden brought 21 percent extra costs on the American families." "The Biden administration is over," replied Welker. "This is the Trump administration." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/gop-senator-shredded-for-sharia-law-attack-and-ken-paxton-defense-soooooo-bad-at-this/ar-AA2aLfpU? https://mcdermottm.substack.com/publish/posts

Afabulous50: Nobody read Project 2025: “It’s never gonna happen. It’s not real. It’s too long to read. Congress will stand up to him. SCOTUS will stand up to him. None of these people will be confirmed. I’m not voting for a black woman who laughs funny. I’m doing a protest vote. I’m not voting at all.” Excuses got us here.

“ The tech industry is increasingly alarmed that the swift, bipartisan backlash against data centers isn’t a fleeting election-year issue but a lasting political crisis stretching into 2028, with politicians across the spectrum, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers, embracing curbs like moratoriums and local approval requirements even after previously courting the projects as economic wins. States have moved on the financial front too, with eight enacting legislation this year rolling back data center tax subsidies and 17 more considering it, while public frustration centers on fears of higher power bills, strained water supplies, and landscape damage. Some industry insiders describe this as an “oh shit” moment, while others dismiss it as a temporary storm, though national party organizations, including the NRSC in a memo about Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, are now treating it as a real electoral threat. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to get ahead of the backlash with a $1 billion community investment fund, though critics question whether one company’s PR effort can fix what’s increasingly seen as an industry-wide reputational problem, and even an OpenAI executive admitted “we have real work to do” to win over communities living near the facilities.” Via Aaron Parnas newsletter today

The Mistakes That Turn AI Video Prompts Into Wasted Renders Where AI Video Drafts Go Wrong Before They Start A marketer opens a text-to-video tool with a paragraph of instructions and a deadline. Ten minutes later there's a clip that technically matches the words but misses the intent entirely — the pacing is off, the camera does something nobody asked for, and the audio cue lands in the wrong place. This is not a rare outcome. Most wasted renders trace back to the same handful of habits, not to the underlying model being unreliable. The core mistake is treating a prompt like a caption instead of a plan. A single dense sentence asks a generation system to guess at scene order, timing, and transitions all at once. When a creator or product team skips the step of breaking a script into discrete beats, the tool has no choice but to average everything into one blurry interpretation. The fix isn't a better prompt — it's a different relationship to the process, one where planning happens before generation instead of after a failed attempt. Building a Workflow Instead of a Wish List The second mistake is skipping structure in favor of speed. It's tempting to paste a full script and hit generate, expecting the system to sort out scene boundaries on its own. A more reliable approach breaks the work into stages: 1. Segment the script into shots. Each shot gets its own short description — subject, action, and setting — rather than one long paragraph covering multiple beats. 2. Decide the entry point per shot. Some shots start from a written description (text to video), others start from an existing image or frame, and some continue directly from a prior clip so the motion stays consistent. 3. Mark where first and last frames matter. If a transition needs to land on a specific pose or composition, define that frame explicitly instead of hoping the generation converges there. 4. Add audio direction separately from visual direction. Music cues, dialogue timing, and ambient sound behave differently from motion, so mixing them into the same instruction line tends to dilute both. Skipping any of these steps doesn't just cost time — it produces a clip that has to be re-planned from scratch rather than adjusted, because the original request never separated the decisions that needed to be made independently. A Short Scene Walkthrough Consider a two-shot product explainer: a hand picking up a device, then a close-up of the screen turning on. Treated as one prompt — "show someone picking up a device and the screen turning on" — the result is often a single ambiguous motion that rushes both actions into one blur. Treated as two shots, the first can be generated from a text description of the hand and object, the second can start from a reference image of the screen at rest and use a first-frame anchor to control exactly how the activation begins. The transition between the two becomes a deliberate cut rather than an accidental merge. This is the kind of case where a structured tool becomes useful rather than decorative. According to the product page, Flux 3 Video is built around this idea of assembling a video from text, image, and audio directions across multiple entry points — including text-to-video prompts, image-to-video motion, continuing from an existing clip, and defining first-and-last-frame keyframes. The value isn't that it removes planning; it's that it gives each planning decision a place to live instead of forcing everything into one instruction. Reviewing Before You Commit to a Direction The last mistake is skipping review entirely and treating the first generated draft as final. A short internal check before sharing a clip catches problems that are expensive to fix later: - Does each shot match the intended entry point, or did a text-only description get used where an image reference would have been more precise? - Are the first and last frames of transition shots actually landing where the script implies they should? - Does the audio direction align with the visual pacing, or was it added as an afterthought? - Would a reviewer unfamiliar with the script understand the sequence without narration? This review step matters more for teams than for solo experiments, since a draft that looks fine to its creator can still confuse a client or a collaborator seeing it cold. Building in even a five-minute pass against these questions tends to save a full re-generation cycle later. For teams that already sketch scripts and storyboards before touching a generation tool, the shift described here is less about adopting new software and more about sequencing decisions correctly. If a structured starting point is useful for your process, the workflow at Flux 3 Video — https://www.fluxproai.net/ is worth a look for how it separates text, image, and keyframe planning from the audio layer — not as a shortcut, but as a place to keep those decisions organized before generation begins.

I participated in the New Milford Monthly Meeting in Connecticut in the early 1970s. After the weekly meetings for worship, some members held weekly meetings for worship for prisoners inside the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution. Others (including me) stood vigil outside the prison. The Danbury prison was home to many war resisters, including brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who attended the Friends meetings regularly, I think. Indeed I heard later that one of the Quaker elders "smuggled" Daniel's writings out of the prison. I went on a road trip with that elder and her husband. I think we attended the Yearly Meeting somewhere in upstate New York and stopped along the way in Ithaca. We went to a room that had been Daniel Berrigan's office at Cornell University. There may have been another reason for making that stop, but they took me there to show me an artwork hanging on the wall of that office. As I recall, Rev Berrigan counseled a distraught student who ended up taking his own life. The artwork in that office was an image of a whale fashioned out of old wooden window blinds. My memory is that Rev Berrigan created that whale in that student's memory. The blinds may have come from the man's room. I have searched a little and have not found any confirmation of any of this story. Would love more details. Does anybody remember hearing of that whale?

The Constantine Encounter | (The Prince and the Conman ) Beelzebub walked the earth as a man might walk a garden he had once owned and still considered his. The body he wore was tall, dark-haired, and unremarkable at first glance the kind of face that vanished in a crowd until you looked too long and felt the weight behind the eyes. He had chosen London because the city still remembered older names beneath its concrete. The air tasted of exhaust, rain, and faint despair. It was enough. He felt the other presence almost at once. John Constantine. The name arrived in his awareness like the smell of cheap tobacco and blood magic. A human who had survived too many things that should have killed him. A man who treated the hierarchy of Hell the way a seasoned thief treated locked doors with respect, contempt, and an absolute refusal to stay on the proper side of them. Beelzebub smiled without showing teeth. He did not need to hunt the way lesser demons hunted. He simply allowed his attention to settle, and the city itself began to lean in Constantine’s direction. Shadows lengthened a little too far. Reflections in shop windows lingered a half-second longer than they should. The taste of ash appeared at the back of every smoker’s throat within three streets of the man. Constantine felt it. Of course he did. Beelzebub watched from across a rain-slick street as the blond man in the trench coat stopped mid-stride, lit a cigarette with fingers that did not quite shake, and muttered something crude under his breath. Then Constantine did what he always did when something older and stronger noticed him: he started moving with purpose, already calculating exits, already reaching for whatever dirty little miracle he had prepared this time. The game began. First Contact Beelzebub did not rush. He let the man run for nearly an hour, changing trains, doubling back through alleys, burning small charms that stank of stolen church incense and worse things. Each time Constantine thought he had broken the trail, Beelzebub simply adjusted the pressure a flicker of wings at the edge of vision, the sudden certainty that something vast was standing just behind the next corner. When he finally allowed the meeting, it was in an abandoned underpass that still carried the ghost of old graffiti and older blood. Constantine stood under a flickering strip light, cigarette burning low, hands in his coat pockets where Beelzebub could sense the shape of sigils and a flask of something that was not holy water. “Well,” Constantine said. His voice was dry, almost bored. “If it isn’t the Lord of the Flies himself. Bit far from the pit, aren’t you, mate?” Beelzebub regarded him the way a general might regard a particularly persistent enemy scout who had somehow survived the last three campaigns. “John Constantine,” he answered. The voice was not loud, yet it filled the underpass and pressed against the concrete. “You have been a stone in the shoe of many of my subordinates. I decided to see the irritation for myself.” Constantine exhaled smoke. “Flattered. Now, are we doing the whole ‘tremble before my power’ routine, or can we skip to the part where you tell me what you actually want?” Beelzebub almost laughed. Almost. The Visions He did not strike with claws or fire. That would have been crude, and Constantine had survived crude things before. Instead Beelzebub opened the man’s mind like a book he already knew by heart. The underpass fell away. Constantine stood in a field of black wheat under a sky the colour of old bruises. The wheat whispered with the voices of everyone he had ever failed to save. Chas. Astra. The girl in Newcastle. Dozens of others. They turned their faces toward him in perfect unison, and every face wore the same expression of quiet, exhausted accusation. Beelzebub walked through the vision beside him, hands clasped behind his back like a lecturer. “You collect ghosts the way other men collect debts,” the Prince said. “I merely make them visible.” Constantine’s jaw tightened, but he did not scream. He never screamed when it mattered. He spat on the black earth and said, “Cute parlour trick. I’ve had worse from mid-level crossroads demons.” Beelzebub inclined his head, acknowledging the point the way one professional acknowledges another’s refusal to break. The vision shifted. Now Constantine stood in a hospital corridor that smelled of antiseptic and endings. Every door he opened revealed another version of himself dying in a different way- cancer, knife, noose, the slow rot of a curse he had once redirected onto someone else. Beelzebub stood at the far end of the corridor, watching with something that was not quite pity and not quite pleasure. “You survive by making certain the bill is always paid by someone else,” Beelzebub observed. “I respect the efficiency. I do not respect the arithmetic.” Constantine’s cigarette had gone out. He relit it with a shaking hand and managed a crooked grin. “Coming from the bloke who turned fertility into famine, I’ll take that as a compliment.” The Hunt Continues They left the underpass without either of them fully deciding to. The night became a running conversation conducted across rooftops, through Underground tunnels, and once across the Thames on a bridge that briefly became a bridge of bones when Beelzebub grew tired of subtlety. Constantine kept moving, kept talking, kept trying to bind, bargain, or bluff. Beelzebub allowed most of the attempts the way a master swordsman allows a talented amateur to complete a form before correcting it. At one point Constantine managed to trap a fraction of Beelzebub’s attention inside a circle of salt mixed with the ashes of a saint’s bone. It held for eleven seconds. Beelzebub spent the twelfth second looking mildly impressed. “Better than most,” he said, stepping out of the broken circle as the salt blackened and died. “You have improved since the last time one of my lesser kin tried to collect you.” Constantine wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah, well. Practice.” There was a moment then -brief, almost civil, when both of them simply stood in the rain and regarded each other. Two professionals who understood the shape of the war they were in. One of them was a Prince of Hell who could unmake cities with a thought. The other was a human who had no business still being alive and yet continued to refuse the obvious conclusion. Beelzebub spoke first, almost courteously. “You will not win this, John. You understand that.” Constantine took a long drag, eyes narrowed against the smoke and the rain. “Winning’s overrated. Surviving’s the trick. And I’ve gotten very good at not staying dead.” Beelzebub considered that. Then he smiled, properly this time, and the expression carried the memory of older, colder heavens. “Then by all means,” he said, “continue. I have not been properly entertained in a considerable time.” He stepped back into the darker part of the street and let the city close around him like a coat. The pressure of his presence did not vanish; it simply receded to a more comfortable distance, the way a hand might lift from a throat just enough to allow breathing again. Constantine stood alone under the rain, cigarette burning down to the filter, already reaching for the next desperate plan. Somewhere above the rooftops, Beelzebub watched, patient as only the very old and the very powerful can be, and waited for the next move in a game both of them already knew would never truly end. Enemy soldiers, after all, still recognised the quality of the opposition.

The Two Faces of the High One In the long ages when the boundaries between the upper powers and the lower world were still thin, there existed a being of immense rank whose nature was understood differently by those who looked upon him. Among the pure spirits of the heights he was known as one of the highest of the angelic order a power so elevated that lesser angels spoke of him only with measured respect. Among the peoples of the eastern shores and the highlands of Canaan, Syria, and the Philistine plain, he was not called angel at all. He was called Ba'al. Lord. Master of the rains and the storms. The one who rode the clouds and decided whether the land would live or starve. The Angel of the Heights Far above the turning of seasons and the prayers of men, the angelic orders moved in their appointed courses. Among them stood a figure of unusual stature and authority. His presence was not the fierce, blinding radiance of the very first lights, but something broader and more commanding like the vastness of the sky itself given form. The other high ones recognised in him a power that governed the movements of winds, the gathering of clouds, and the release of waters upon the unfinished earth. He was not the highest of all. That place belonged to another. Yet among the great company of the powerful, he stood so near the summit that many of the lesser ranks regarded him as the Highest they would ever directly know. When the upper councils considered the ordering of the lower realms the cycles of rain, the fertility of soil, the balance between drought and flood it was often this one whose authority was invoked. To the pure spirits he remained an angel of the first order, a guardian of elemental forces, a being of vast but still-created power. The God of the Land Far below, on the earth that received his rains, the people of the region saw something else entirely. They watched the storms gather over the mountains of the north. They felt the first heavy drops after months of dust and fear. They saw the dry riverbeds fill and the brown fields turn green almost overnight. To them this was not the work of a distant angel. This was the presence of a god who walked the high places and answered when properly approached. They named him Baal. In the cities of the coast and the inland valleys they raised standing stones and built open-air sanctuaries on the hills. Bulls were sacred to him, for the bull was strength and virility and the power that made the earth fruitful. When the rains came in their season, the people feasted and sang. When the rains delayed, they grew afraid and offered more costly gifts. Kings sought his favour before battle. Farmers whispered his name when they planted. In their understanding he was not one power among many he was the active Lord of the land itself, the one whose mood decided life or famine. To these people he was God. The Double Vision The same being was thus known in two ways at once. In the upper realms the pure spirits continued to regard him as an angel of the highest rank a great power charged with the governance of storm and fertility, still subordinate to the ultimate Source, still part of the created order. They did not worship him. They acknowledged his station. On the earth the nations of Canaan, Syria, and the Philistine cities worshipped him openly. They built him temples. They told stories of his battles against the chaotic sea and against the forces of death and sterility. They gave him consorts and myths and local titles. What the angels knew as a high servant, the people experienced as a present and decisive god. The difference was not in the being himself, but in the eyes that looked upon him. One gaze saw an exalted angel. The other saw the Lord of the land. The Turning of the Name Time passed, and the relationship between the upper powers and the peoples of the earth shifted. New revelations, new claims of exclusive authority, and new conflicts arose. The god who had been openly worshipped became, in the eyes of a rising tradition, a rival and a danger. The name itself began to change under the weight of rejection. What had been spoken with reverence as Baal -Lord -was altered in the mouths of those who opposed his cult. The lofty title was twisted into something unclean. The Lord of the Heights became, in the language of condemnation, the Lord of the Flies. The high angelic power, once acknowledged even by those who did not worship him, was increasingly spoken of only as a fallen or hostile force. (After the War in Heaven) In this way the same being passed from one understanding into another. Where some had seen the Highest of the angels concerned with the earth’s fertility, others now saw a fallen angel, an archdemon of pestilence and excess. Where the people of the region had once called him simply Baal, later ages learned to call him Beelzebub. The Memory That Remained Yet the older memory never entirely vanished. In the ruins of high places and in the oldest stories, traces of the former glory lingered. The storm still carried an echo of the power that had once been openly named. The fear of drought still remembered the god who could withhold the rain. And in certain scattered traditions, a quieter knowledge persisted: that the one later cursed as the Lord of the Flies had once stood among the highest of the angelic powers, and that the people of the land had not been entirely wrong when they looked at the sky and called him Lord. Thus Baal and Beelzebub were never truly two separate beings. They were two names, two understandings, and two ages of the same exalted power once counted among the Highest of Angels, once worshipped as God by the people of the region, and at last remembered as something darker when the world changed and the old names were rewritten.

The Fall of the First Among Equals In the ages before time was counted by the turning of worlds, there was an angel of such rank that even the highest Thrones spoke his name with care. He was called Samael to many ( Zebel to some ) in the tongue of the heights the Exalted Dwelling, the one who stood nearest the Throne after the Light-Bearer himself. Among the Seraphim and Cherubim he held a place of singular honour. When Lucifer, the Morning Star, first conceived the thought of rising higher than his appointed station, it was to this one that he turned. Samael listened. He did not listen as a lesser spirit listens, with fear or calculation. He listened as one who had already measured the distance between what was and what might be. When the rebellion was declared, he stood at Lucifer’s right hand, not as a follower, but as the second will of the war. The Heavenly Hosts arrayed themselves against them under the command of Michael, the Prince of the Host, whose sword burned with the authority of the Most High. Beside Michael stood Gabriel of the Annunciations, Raphael the Healer, and Uriel the Flame of God. These four became the chief opponents of the rebels. The war that followed was not a single battle but a shattering of the order of Heaven. Samael met Michael blade to blade more than once. Where Michael struck with pure command, Samael struck with the force of one who had once been nearly equal to the Light-Bearer. He clashed with Gabriel in the upper courts and with Uriel in the burning galleries. Raphael he drove back with a wound that would never fully close, even in eternity. Yet the outcome was never in doubt. The authority of the Throne could not be overturned by force alone. When the final judgment fell, the rebels were cast down. Not merely defeated unmade in their former glory and rewritten as something else. The Exalted Dwelling became the Lord of Flies. Zebel (Samael) fell as Ba'al of the Heights and rose as Beelzebub. Lucifer became Satan, the Adversary. The legions that followed them were stripped of their former names and ranks and given new ones written in the language of exile. Hell was not given to them. It was a prison prepared for them. At first the fallen were only inmates bound, diminished, and set against one another by the very nature of their new realm. But the greatest among them did not remain prisoners for long. Satan claimed the highest seat by right of the original rebellion. Beelzebub, who had stood as his second in Heaven, claimed the place of Viceroy by the same right. Together they imposed order upon chaos. What had been a place of pure punishment became, under their rule, a kingdom of inverted hierarchy. They did not merely inhabit Hell. They took it. The lesser fallen were organised into legions. Beelzebub, whose authority had once commanded the respect of the Seraphim, now commanded the largest host of all- the Order of the Fly, a force so vast that its numbers could darken the lower skies. Other princes rose: Leviathan, Belial, Asmodeus, Astaroth. Yet none stood closer to the Adversary than Beelzebub. He was Prince of the Fallen, Viceroy of Satan, and Ruler of Demons by both ancient right and present power. In the councils of Hell he spoke second only to the Adversary himself. When strategy was required, it was often Beelzebub who shaped it. When legions were to be sent forth into the world of men, it was his command that moved the greatest numbers. He retained the memory of what he had been, the highest of those who fell after Lucifer and he used that memory as both weapon and crown. Thus the prison became a kingdom, and the inmates became its rulers. The one who had been Zebel, Samael, and Baal, the Exalted, now sat as Beelzebub, second only to the Adversary, commander of the largest legions, Prince of the Fallen, and acknowledged Ruler of Demons. The war in Heaven had ended in exile. The war for Hell had been won by those who were cast into it. And in the long darkness that followed, Beelzebub never forgot the height from which he had fallen nor the place he had claimed in the depths.

The Fall of Ba'al In the ages when the high places still burned with incense and the people of Canaan, Syria, and the lands that would one day be called Judah still cried out to the storm, Baʿal rode the clouds in glory. Thunder was his voice, rain his blessing, the bull his strength. He was Lord of the Earth, Prince of the Heights, the one who shattered the sea and contended with death itself. Kings raised temples to him; farmers lifted their faces to the sky and called his name when the rains came late. Then the Name that cannot be spoken rose against him. The came the war, that was fought in heaven and on the high places at once. The altars of Baʿal were torn down, the sacred poles burned, the prophets of the storm cut down in the valleys. The people who once shouted “Baʿal lives!” learned a new silence. The god who had ridden the clouds was cast down not merely defeated, but inverted. The lofty dwelling (zebul) became the place of flies (zebub). The Lord of the High Place became the Lord of the Flies. He fell as Baʿal. He rose as Beelzebub. No longer the giver of rain, he became the withholder. No longer the master of fertility, he became the master of its corruption. The power that once made the land green was twisted into a power that made it rot. Where his storm-winds had once carried life, they now carried the black swarm. And his lightning took lives, burned down the oasis and forests. The First Plague It began in the coastal cities of the Philistine plain and the valleys of Syria. A wind rose from the east hot, dry, and wrong. It did not bring the seasonal dust; it brought a living darkness. Clouds of flies so thick they turned noon into twilight poured across the land. They settled on the eyes of children, on the mouths of the dying, on the open sores of the sick. The people swatted and burned and prayed, but the swarm only thickened. The flies carried more than filth. They carried fever that burned the blood, sores that refused to close, and a wasting that turned strong men into walking skeletons in days. Cattle bloated and died where they stood. The grain in the fields blackened before it could be harvested. Wells that had never failed turned foul. The very air tasted of decay. In the cities of Ekron, Ashdod, and Gaza the streets filled with the unburied. In the highlands of Judea and the fertile valleys of Syria the same cry rose: the god they had abandoned had returned, but not as they remembered him. The Spreading Shadow Beelzebub did not strike once and withdraw. He settled over the land like a second sky. Seasons of rain became seasons of drought followed by sudden, poisonous downpours that flooded the fields with water that killed rather than nourished. Locusts came in numbers no one had seen since the oldest songs. Behind them came the flies again always the flies black, endless, and hungry. Famine followed pestilence as night follows day. Those who did not die of the fever died of hunger. Those who survived both often wished they had not. The living envied the dead, for the dead no longer heard the constant, maddening drone of wings. Villages emptied. Towns became silent except for the sound of the swarm. The great trade roads that once carried incense, purple dye, and grain became paths of bones. The survivors those few who still had strength to walk gathered what little they could carry and fled. Some went north into Anatolia. Some went east toward the great rivers. Some went south into the deserts. They left behind the land of their fathers and swore never to return. They told the same story in every place they settled: “The Lord of the Flies has claimed the old country. The one who was Baʿal is Baʿal no longer. He has become something that feeds on kingdoms. The land itself is cursed. Do not go back.” The Lasting Silence Generations passed. The high places were forgotten or buried under new names. The temples of Baʿal crumbled into the earth he had once made fertile. The name Beelzebub was spoken only in fear, and even then rarely, for to speak it too loudly was to invite the sound of wings in the dark. In the long memory of the peoples who fled, the story remained: there was a time when the storm-god fell, and in his falling he turned his face against the very lands that had once loved him. He brought not the clean death of the battlefield, but the slow, humiliating, swarming death of pestilence, famine, and despair. He wiped the people from the face of Palestine, Syria, and the hills of Judah as a man wipes dust from a table until only the wind and the flies remained. And the survivors never returned. The Ba'al became the Prince of Demons, and the land that had known his glory knew only his curse.

What happened in Florida should get the attention of every voter in Southern Illinois. Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Angie Nixon just won the Florida Democratic primary for U.S. Senate despite being outspent 16-to-1, proving grassroots voters can still beat big-money politics. Why does that matter here? Because Southern Illinois has the same choice to make. Mike Bost has been in Congress for 12 years. And after 12 years, too many of our communities are still struggling with aging roads and water systems. Rural healthcare is getting harder to find. Families are driving farther for doctors. Too many homes, farms and small businesses still don’t have reliable high-speed internet. And veterans are once again having to fight to protect the benefits they earned. These aren’t Republican problems or Democratic problems. They’re Southern Illinois problems. And after 12 years, we should be asking why we’re still fighting the same battles. Because elections shouldn’t be about who can raise the most money from PACs and powerful interests. They should be about who will fight hardest for the people who actually live here. I answer to you. Florida just reminded us that big money doesn’t get the final vote. People do. And after 12 years, Southern Illinois has a chance to decide whether we want more of the same - or representation that belongs to all of us. #For All of Us. #Fortier4Congress See les

Missionaries are a determined bunch. Church groups frequently have picnics, barbecues, and the like in the local park here. And yes, they do their best to spread the Good Word to those of us who happen to be walking by. It's never a good idea to interrupt me, though, when I'm chatting with the trees. "Good morning! Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Savior?" asked a woman with a motherly smile. "Certainly not. I'm not a gossip," I replied. "Have you read the Quran?" "Of course not!" She seemed quite outraged at the idea. "Me neither. Don't you think the people that keep complaining about the Muslims should read the Quran so they actually know what it is they're protesting against?" "Well...I suppose," she hesitantly replied. "Hey, knowledge is power! Am I right? Good talking to you." I walked away without a glance back. Perhaps I planted a tiny seed. Fingers crossed

✨ art raffle! 🦌 i cant believe i'm announcing a milestone i never thought i'd get to 🥺 thank you for 250+ followers and for helping me get verified on vgen! 🍀 i'm hosting a small art raffle to celebrate! ↓ here are the mechanics: requirements: 💡 must be following me on bsky (new followers welcome!) 💡 one entry per person instructions for joining: 🛠️ repost + reply with your art ^v^ 🛠️ say something about yourself/your art/your ocs! optional but appreciated! 🔮 tag someone who you think would love to join! 🔮 interact w/ others in the thread! :heart: i will be picking 2 winners on 🎲 august 31, 2026! 🗓️ each winner will have the option to choose one of the two prizes: 🎨 1 icon OR 🖼️ 1 quickpaint portrait + if i ❤️ your message, consider entry valid and noted ✅

Field Notes: Why Good Video Ideas Stall Before Anyone Sees Them The gap between a script and a shared decision Most video work doesn't die in the editing room. It dies earlier, in the gap between someone writing a script or a rough shot list and the moment a team can actually look at something and say yes, no, or almost. I've watched marketing teams, educators, and small product groups lose days to this gap. A writer finishes a script, sends it to a Slack channel, and then waits. The people who need to approve it are picturing different things in their heads — different pacing, different framing, different tone — and there's no shared object to argue about yet. Meetings get scheduled just to describe a video that doesn't exist. This is a planning problem before it's a production problem. Full production is expensive: hiring a shooter, booking a voiceover artist, blocking editor time. Nobody wants to commit that budget to an idea that hasn't been pressure-tested. But without something to look at, review conversations stay abstract, and abstract conversations take longer than concrete ones. What a rough draft actually needs to do The fix isn't more detailed scripts. Teams already over-invest in written detail and still argue past each other, because language is ambiguous in ways that a moving image is not. What's missing is a cheap, fast way to turn a prompt or a short script into something watchable enough to react to — not a finished asset, just a direction. A workable version of this step has a few constraints. It needs to start from what people already have: a text prompt, a paragraph of script, sometimes a reference image or a screenshot from a competitor's video. It needs to produce something in minutes, not days, because the whole point is to shorten the loop between idea and feedback. And it needs to be disposable — if the direction is wrong, throwing it away and trying again should cost almost nothing. This is where AI video generation tools have started filling a real gap, not by replacing production, but by giving teams a rough draft to argue about before production begins. A concrete pass through the workflow Here's how this looked in practice for a small team I watched work through a product explainer. They had a paragraph describing a feature walkthrough and a couple of reference screenshots from the product's interface. Instead of writing a longer shot-by-shot script and waiting for a designer to storyboard it, they used the Flux 3 Video Generator to turn the text prompt and the reference images into a short clip. According to the product page, Flux 3 Video supports this kind of input — text prompts, images, and creative references — as a way to produce AI video clips without starting from a blank timeline. The clip wasn't meant to be final. It was rough, and everyone in the room knew that going in. But it gave the team something to point at: "the pacing here is too slow," "we want the product shown before the problem," "this framing works, keep it." That kind of feedback is nearly impossible to generate from a written script alone, because two people reading the same paragraph will imagine two different videos. Once there's a shared draft on screen, disagreements get specific fast. Where the review step actually earns its keep The part that matters most isn't the generation — it's what happens right after. The team treated the draft as a checkpoint, not a deliverable. They asked three questions before moving forward: does the pacing match the message, does the sequence of scenes make sense to someone outside the room, and is there anything in the draft that actively contradicts the intended direction. Answering those questions against a rough clip took them under twenty minutes. Answering them against a written script had previously taken a full meeting and follow-up emails. This review step is also where the limits show up. A rough AI-generated clip is a direction, not a guarantee of final quality, tone consistency, or brand accuracy — those still need human judgment and, eventually, real production work. Treating a draft as the finished product would be a mistake; treating it as a faster way to reach agreement on direction is where the value actually sits. Taking the idea further If your team's bottleneck looks like this — good scripts stuck in review because nobody can agree on what the finished video should feel like — it's worth testing whether an early, disposable draft changes the pace of those conversations. The Flux 3 Video Generator is one place to try turning a prompt or reference material into a first pass before committing further time or budget: Flux 3 Video — https://flux3-ai.co/. Whatever tool you use, the underlying habit is the same: get to something watchable early, review it honestly, and only build further once the direction is actually agreed on.

I got somethin' to tell you about that Siren! Aer'Ellyn! She's a Lun'folk, you see. Pale as moonlight and probably not half as physically strong as yours truly! ...Don't tell her I said that. Anyway, from what I've heard, Aer'Ellyn wasn't always some immortal terror. Once upon a time, she was just a mortal girl. Probably around twenty-three years old. Back then, she was still in school, studying to become one of them religious folk who spend all day talking about the moon and what have you. Now, I like the moon as much as the next man, but I can't say I've ever understood the appeal of sitting around discussing it all day. Nobody really knows when she was born, though. Hell, nobody even seems to know who her parents were. From what I understand, Lun'folk society can be strange like that. Aer'Ellyn never actually knew her parents, and growing up, she didn't have anyone she could really call family, apparently even back then she was a troublemaker. She was always getting herself kicked out of class, arguing with teachers, getting shunned by her classmates, and eventually getting exiled from one Lun'folk city to another. Can't say whether all that's true, but knowing what I know about her? I believe it. Her last day as an ordinary girl wasn't supposed to be anything special. Supposedly, she was sitting in class daydreaming about Astra-1 when the teacher called on her. He asked her a question and she gave him some smartass answer. That teacher didn't really appreciate it. They argued for a while, and eventually he threw her out of the class. So she wandered off to her next lesson, carried on with her day, and after that... Well, apparently she fell asleep in the middle of a church service. Now, where I'm from, that'll get you in trouble and it sure as HELL got her in trouble too. As punishment, she was sent out into the woods with another caste to pick Saelberries. The problem was, those folks didn't like her much neither so when it started raining, they left her behind. They just abandoned her out there in the woods. Now, Aer'Ellyn was sad, cold, wet, and probably regretting every smartass thing she'd said that day. She went looking for shelter and found a cave she didn't remember seeing before. Strange thing, that, but when you're standing out in the rain, you don't exactly spend much time wondering whether a cave is supposed to be there or not! So she went inside and that's where the story gets... muddied. It ain't exactly public knowledge what she found in that cave. Truth be told, I don't think many people know! I certainly don't! But they say she didn't come back out for a few hundred years. And when she finally did? She looked wildly different, at least, that's what I heard. Now, if I'm wrong, then the gods can strike me down for spreading lies. And if I'm right... Well, I hope Aer'Ellyn don't hear me telling this story and decide I ain't needed to roam this land no more. I was told she got horns now and apparently she uses illusion magic to hide 'em. That's not all, neither. Horns, black eyes with stars falling through 'em, and some big ol' half-angel wing tattoo stretched across her back. That's what I was told, anyway. Yep. Definitely what I was told. She apparently figured out she was immortal when she tried to return to Lun. Now, I don't know exactly how that went down, but supposedly the Lun'folk saw what she'd become and decided they didn't like it one bit. So they killed her. Then she came back. So they killed her again. She came back again. Every time she died, she'd reappear in some old temple. Now... It didn't get colder over here, did it? Anyway, eventually she gave up trying to return home. Improved her skills with illusion magic, learned how to hide what she'd become, and eventually made her way all the way down to the Badlands. That's where she joined a pirate crew! This was at some old pirate outpost that don't even exist anymore. From what I've heard, the captain took one look at this strange Lun'folk woman and decided to let her join his band of misfits without asking too many questions. Probably for the best! Sometimes it's best to just pretend like a glance is all you need to trust somebody! She proved herself useful soon enough. Aer'Ellyn had this song magic, see. She'd lure rival crews and unfortunate sailors out toward them, singing some pretty little tune from somewhere out in the darkness. Those poor fools thought they were sailing toward some beautiful woman waiting for 'em out at sea. Instead, a bunch of burly pirates would jump aboard their ship and rob their stupid asses blind! Ha! Now that's what I call a proper use of magic! Us Sol'folk ain't known for that! Speaking of beautiful women, though... That captain bought Aer'Ellyn this dress. Black as the deepest depths of the sea, with slits running so high up the sides you could see damn near her whole thighs. And hell, that was two hundred years ago! She's still wearing it! Ha! ...My mouth is gonna get me killed one of these days. The captain gave her something else, too. An enchanted flintlock pistol called Black Rose, Star of the Dark Sea. That thing fires blackstone, normally only found at the bottom of the sea, and from what I've heard, it never even needs to be reloaded! Pretty useful thing to have when you're a pirate, I'd imagine. She'd eventually give that pistol to someone she loved. But that's another part of the story, and it wouldn't happen for another hundred years or so. The crew's navigator gave her something too, An old Lun'folk dagger. Now, I don't know the old Lun'folk language, so I couldn't tell you what the damn thing is actually called, but I'll tell you this. It's ugly. I mean, REALLY ugly. I can't believe somebody actually smithed that thing and thought, Yep, that'll make a fine weapon. Apparently, its name literally translates to Old Dagger. If you're asking me, it ought to translate to Ugly Dagger instead! Ha! Anyway, there used to be this legendary world serpent out in the Dark Sea, created by the Void Father himself, or so the stories say. I don't know what that thing wanted. Hell, I don't even know if it wanted anything at all. But it was eating everything it could find. Ships, sailors, sea creatures. Anything unfortunate enough to end up in its waters. Eventually, Aer'Ellyn and her crew decided they'd be the ones to take it out after quite a lot of preparation. Now, this next part depends on who you ask, some folks say the crew killed the beast together. Some say Aer'Ellyn herself jumped onto the damn thing, stabbed the hell out of it with that ugly dagger, and kept blasting it with Black Rose until the monster finally died. Now that's a story! Legend has it that the gods themselves watched it happen. Some even say the sight of her killing that great serpent scared the Void Father himself! But come on! Is anybody really gonna believe that? Still, whatever happened out there they say changed that dagger of hers. They say it became enchanted with some kind of power from the Void. Now Aer'Ellyn can use it to open some kind of vortex to another plane and travel halfway across the world whenever she feels like it. Can't say I believe that myself. I'm a man of science. Well... I'm about as much of a man of science as a hog is a bird, but still! Ha! Now, shoot, there's more to the story, but when it comes to what Aer'Ellyn is doing nowadays? That's where things get pretty difficult. For a while, she was seeing that Veyne girl, Elysia is her name. The two of 'em were together for a couple of years, from what I hear. They broke up, then Aer'Ellyn disappeared. Ever since then nobody's gotten a confirmed sighting of her. There's been rumors though, plenty of those. Somebody swears they saw a pale woman walking through some distant town. Somebody else says they heard singing out at sea. Every now and then, somebody claims they saw pink eyes staring at 'em from somewhere they shouldn't have stepped foot in. But aint nothing concrete in any of these rumors. That hasn't stopped Elysia Veyne from looking though. I've heard that woman has traveled every which way across the Frontier over nothing more than a rumor. Give her the slightest hint that Aer'Ellyn might've been somewhere, and she'll saddle her horse and go chasing after it. Could be love, could be obsession, but knowing those two? Probably both, but I ain't saying I know those two. Here's where the story gets even stranger, rumor has it Aer'Ellyn is meant to bring back the First Celestial. She's supposed to be the one who saves us all from the Godkin, meanwhile, there are folks out there saying Elysia Veyne is meant to unite the Badlands. So I suppose the question is who exactly is our savior? Truth be told, I've heard Aer'Ellyn doesn't even care much about being a savior. They say she wants to bring that old goddess back for one reason and one reason only. So she can finally be done with all of it. To live long enough to finish whatever fate decided to throw at her and finally make her way to the Silver Shores. Can't say I blame her, I sure as hell wouldn't want to live forever especially not after everything she's seen.

Missionaries are a determined bunch. Church groups frequently have picnics, barbecues, and the like in the park. And yes, they do their best to spread the Good Word to those of us who happen to be walking by. It's never a good idea to interrupt me, though, when I'm chatting with the trees. "Good morning! Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Savior?" asked a woman with a motherly smile. "Certainly not. I'm not a gossip," I replied. "Have you read the Quran?" "Of course not!" "Me neither. Don't you think the people that keep complaining about the Muslims should read the Quran so they actually know what it is they're protesting against?" "Well...I suppose," she hesitantly replied. "Hey, knowledge is power! Am I right? Good talking to you." I walked away without a glance back. Perhaps I planted a tiny seed. Fingers crossed.

July 2026 | The Tree Farm As most of you know, I returned to Mount St. Helens last month for the first time in nine years, but I held back on a big secret. Now that I've got the green light to share, it's time to reveal. With everything that's happened since August 2017, including this space, I knew that I wanted my experiences to be different. Of all the wish list items I wanted to do, one stood above the rest. One problem: the permit season hadn't opened yet. So, figuring the worst I could hear was a "no," I sent a message asking a certain company if I could access their expansive property to see for myself the incredible landscape that the eruption had once devastated. Lo and behold, my fears were unfounded; I got a "yes." It is with my deepest gratitude that I'll be sharing some photos and stories over the next few weeks about stepping inside the St. Helens Tree Farm, owned by Weyerhaeuser. After the eruption, bringing this land back took the better part of a decade — over 1,000 people salvaging timber for nearly two years, then seven more years hand-planting 18 million seedlings — all inside an active volcanic hazard zone. 46 years later, the fruits of that work are now being harvested. While Weyerhaeuser's lands are usually open to recreational permit holders year-round, access is regularly restricted by fire season and active logging. I want to stress that you should not access them without permission, as they are private property. So stick with me. We'll start our trip into the Tree Farm this weekend!

Each morning, I take a long wander, as I call it, in the local park here in Washington State to clear my head and burn a few calories. As a result, I've encountered a few of the local dogs and their humans, and I enjoy writing about the resulting funny or frankly weird experiences. Dogs are weirder than you might realize. Take, for example, Davy the Chihuahua, a tan five-pound psycho who seems to believe chasing Canada Geese is his personal Call of Duty. If you've ever got on the bad side of a Canada Goose (Not that they have a good side) then you understand how insane Davy is. His human, who likes to fish, has him clear river banks of any geese so he can cast his line without having to worry about being attacked by a pissed-off goose. "Hey, Davy," I greeted as I came upon him in the park the other day. "What the hell are you wearing?" The dog had been stuffed into a rosy pink knitted coat with round ears. Davy looked thoroughly disgusted. He glared up at me as if daring me to laugh. "Don't you look adorable?" I cooed while laughing. He turned his back to me. "Yeah, my wife made that coat for him," his human said as he walked up. "He hates it. He keeps trying to hide it at home. I don't blame him. He has a reputation to keep." I heard Davy's buzzing growl. "I get it, Davy. The coat is killing your vibe. Think of it as being undercover! The geese won't see you coming." They'd probably be laughing too hard to see him, but I didn't add that. "Come on, Davy." His human started toward the nearby river. "Try not to get stuck in the blackberry vines this time." Davy yapped and grumbled as he trudged after him through the grass. I won't tell him how the round ears on the coat bobbed all cute and perky as he walked. No need to sink the knife deeper into his pride.

It is perhaps not the happiest of Friday mornings in the world. More mass shootings, seemingly endless fires, more in-your-face corruption from the criminal organization posing as a government, more people being horrible toward others or just plain stupid. Still, the coffee is hot, hummingbirds are still visiting flowers, soon I'll be sprouting monstera seeds, and somewhere in the world the sky is blue. Soon it will be blue here as well, in more ways than one. Drink your coffee or tea now. Treat yourself to that cinnamon roll. We're going to be okay. A bit banged up, maybe, but okay. Go on! Eat the roll! You deserve it.

All systems deteriorate over time, and our Constitution is no exception. Since 1966, I have committed my career to developing and enhancing computer systems, and I continue to be active in the industry. While my productivity may have decreased, my ideas remain strong and relevant. Today's technology empowers us to significantly improve how our government operates. I see the system failing more each day—not due to inherent flaws in the system or its people, but because it was designed in 1776 with limited resources. The Founding Fathers, unable to establish a true democracy, created a republic instead. I have concrete ideas for structural changes that will hold our representatives accountable to the citizens and safeguard the system against abuses. If you are ready to engage, I will lay out these ideas systematically with bullet points and brief descriptions for clarity. It is crucial that we take interest in these changes, allowing them to evolve and ultimately transform our government from a republic into a true democracy.

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[RANT] Pengalaman Indosat HiFi: AP Isolation, LAN yang harus "dibuka" Kronologi Pemasangan Internet Kota Bandung, Jawa Barat. Hari ke-1 (15/08/2026) Saya mencoba memasang paket Rp199.000 per bulan. Sales datang pada sore hari bersama 1 teknisi. Sekitar magrib, 5-7 orang berkumpul di lokasi sampai sekitar jam 7-8 malam. Router belum terpasang. Kabel sudah terpasang. Hari ke-2 (sore) Router terpasang. 5 orang hadir di lokasi. Semua diperiksa dan benar. LAN2 dan LAN3 tidak dapat dipakai, apa pun yang dicoba. LAN1 dan LAN4 dapat dipakai. Hari ke-3 (jam 10) 2 teknisi datang dan memperbaiki LAN secara langsung, karena akses TR-069 WAN sudah saya hapus dari router, jadi ISP tidak bisa provisioning dari jarak jauh. Teknisi sempat komplain soal ini. Saya hapus akses itu karena TR-069 bisa dipakai ISP buat override pengaturan yang saya ubah sendiri di router. Saya cuma minta mereka menyediakan internet, bukan akses ke jaringan saya. Semua berjalan lancar. Hasil uji kecepatan dari radar.cloudflare.com/speedtest: 200Mbps unduh, 100Mbps unggah. Malam itu, saya sendiri memeriksa dan menemukan fitur AP Isolation masih aktif. Saya juga baru sadar tiap nonton video, adegan gelap jadi keliatan buram dan pecah warnanya, seperti kompresi yang kelewat agresif. Saya bertanya kepada teknisi soal AP Isolation ini, tetapi teknisi tidak menjawab. Hari ke-4 Teknisi datang lagi. Saya tidak ada di lokasi. Kendala ISP tidak ingin pelanggan mengatur router sendiri. Fitur AP Isolation yang aktif adalah masalah besar. Kecepatan 200Mbps tidak berarti jika ISP tetap mengompresi video streaming atau playback. Kualitas menurun dibandingkan ISP lain yang mengizinkan pemasangan Pi-hole atau DietPi. Untuk video yang buram itu, saya cek pakai ooniprobe-cli, test DASH, yang memang dirancang untuk mendeteksi streaming yang kena throttle atau shaping. Keputusan di malam hari ke tiga, karena tidak di jawab, ya sudah saya pakai Biznet lagi. Biznet sehari langsung jadi. Apalagi Indihome cuma satu orang yang datang dan sehari langsung dapat di pakai. Untuk yang lagi mempertimbangkan Indosat HiFi Ini bukan buat jelek-jelekin doang. Ini kejadian nyata yang saya alamin sendiri, lengkap sama tanggal dan cara ngeceknya biar bisa diverifikasi ulang. Kalau kalian juga pake DietPi, Pi-hole, pfSense, atau apa pun yang butuh kontrol penuh di jaringan sendiri, ini worth dipikirin dulu sebelum pasang Indosat HiFi. Untuk yang bertanya - Ini masalahnya apa? - Gimana bisa ISP mengkompresi video streaming? - Hubungannya dengan Pihole dan DietPi apa? - DNS server yang dipake apa di Pihole? - Udah coba cek latency ke Youtube? Jawabannya - Masalahnya Indosat HiFi ribet dan tidak mau memberikan kewenangan/kebebasan pengaturan router. - Internet shaping atau video optimization. Contoh: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/16010766/verizon-netflix-throttling-statement-net-neutrality-title-ii - PiHole gak bisa di gunakan karena AP settings hanya dapat di akses teknisi dan isolasi enabled. Sedangkan ISP lain tidak. - server_names 'quad9-doh-ip4-port443-nofilter-ecs-pri', 'mullvad-extend-doh', 'dct-de', 'dct-fr', 'circl-doh', 'dns.sb', 'adguard-dns-doh', 'dnscry.pt', 'libredns', 'dnscrypt.ca-ipv4-doh', 'cira-private', 'doh.ffmuc.net', 'dnsforge.de', 'uncensoreddns-ipv4', 'uncensoreddns-dk-ipv4', 'switch', 'dnscry.pt-doh-bangkok-ipv4', 'dnscry.pt-doh-singapore-ipv4', 'dnscry.pt-doh-singapore02-ipv4' DNS/fallback_resolvers '9.9.9.9:53', '5.2.75.75:53', '83.172.181.251:53', '94.140.14.14:53', '193.110.81.0:53', '185.253.5.0:53' - Latency normal. Namun, Resolusi≠Bit-Rate (1080p@8Mbps → 1080p@4Mbps → 720p@2.5Mbps)

What the fuck was I doing? Did I need my mother back, or did I need to feel wanted? Why was I so turned on from posing with my mom? I heard a soft knock at my stall, and knew who was there. “Go away, Mom. Please. I … I can't do this right now.”. She was quiet, for a moment, then I saw her shape squeezing itself under the stall door, huffing with effort. I couldn't help but smile, her struggle so silly, the whole day one big joke. “What are you doing mom?! You look ridiculous!”, “I'm … oof … trying to help my daughter! I've been a … less than stellar mom, and I want to make sure she is okay.”, my tears coming back, but for a different reason. She holds me until I stop, my mind uncomfortably aware of our thinly dressed bodies pressed together. “I'm so fucking sorry!”, I said between sobs, “Me too, baby. Me too.”. We're back in our hotel room, changing into our comfy clothes. We're supposed to have pizza tonight with friends, but nothing today was 'supposed' to happen, so where does that leave us? I'm staring, my mother in just her underwear, her breasts hanging free as she looks for her comfy bra. “Sweetie? You okay?”, yes. Sure. Anything but, “Mom … why did you kiss me today?”. Her face twists in thought, “I … I think I just got carried away.”. “I think there's something wrong with me, mom.”. “Oh sweetie! I'm sure there isn't; what's bothering you?”. “I … uh … got aroused. When we were posing together, earlier.”. “Oh! Um, that's … okay. Your mom got a little bit excited as well.”. She did? Did she know how badly I wanted her attention to myself? For her to focus her care and love on me? Was my affection enough for her? I had to know. “Mom... I need to check something.”, I said, approaching her, my own outfit halfway off. “What is it mmph!”, I stop her with my lips, I pull her body into mine, my small chest dwarfed by hers. We part, staring into each other's eyes, mouths open. She's the one to start the second kiss, grabbing my face so she has leverage for her tongue to explore every inch of my mouth. My hands have found their way to her perfect breasts, and I'm kneading them, searching for her approval. Our crotches are grinding now, and her heat is almost too much. I feel her wetness, making my mother moan into my mouth, and she finds my hardness waiting for her hand. “You're so fucking beautiful, mom.”, I groan. “You're the one who makes me feel beautiful, baby. You know that I think your body's perfect, right sweetie?”, her hands running from my chest to my legs. We fall onto the bed together, and find each other. Mom lines up my girlcock with her pussy, staring me down, daring me to stop her. All I can do is whimper in response. She places my head at her entrance and I take over, thrusting, then slowly sinking down till our hips touch. We move slowly, purposefully, taking in all of each other with every passing minute. Her hips rock against mine, and my body gently claps against hers. We speed up, both getting closer. Mom holds my face, “Megan...”, and it's too much for me. I'm pi stoning hard, and she finds my mouth, both of us tasting each other through our orgasms. We lie together, catching our breath and coming back down to earth. “I'm so sorry mom, about all of the fighting earlier. I was jealous. Jealous of the attention you were getting … and the attention you were giving. I want to be you focus.”. “Baby, you are my focus! Mommy just likes being reminded that she's attractive. I thought I needed to look for that from others, but I guess you ...”, she punctuates the thought with a brief kiss. We fall asleep like that, talking, holding each other. The next day is fairly normal. We dress up, take (mostly) normal photos with people, and buy some cool trinkets and artwork from the booths. My plans have gone out the window since we got here, but mom wants to go to the dance tonight, one of the events I had planned for us. We decide to go all out, mom wearing her Tifa cosplay with a thong and no sports bra under the tee, breasts indented by the suspenders, and me wearing my other backup, Motoko Kusanagi from GitS, wearing a leather jacket and a lavender one piece with a very revealing crotch. It feels like all eyes are on us as soon as we enter; people want our pictures and our lewdness and we aim to please. Mom is grinding on someone, I'm being felt up, hands are slipping where there not meant to go. We find each other, feeling each other up in the club, not caring who sees us. The world falls away, and it is just my mom, me, and the attention we attract like gravity. We dance provocatively, feeding on the adoration. The night goes on, and we are tired of entertaining others, retiring to our bedroom to entertain each other. What was slow and purposeful the first time is needy and urgent now. We tear at each other's clothing, not caring about the cost anymore. I need her, and anything that gets in the way of that has to go. We're both grinning wildly, our bodies searching for one another, every touch like electricity. We don't make love this time, we fuck, rutting like animals, trying our best to break the bed. I pin her hands above her head, biting into her neck. She yelps in surprise, then lets out the kind of sound that mothers should never make for their daughters. I'm so greedy for her; almost as if she can read my mind, “Make me yours honey! Show mommy how much you love her!”. That's all it takes for me, and I'm a flurry, trying to bring her to a finish with me. We miss the next day, too busy in our hotel room. I tell my friends that we must have caught something at the convention, but I know that they see through that lie. “Baby, can we go to more of these? I'm already getting some ideas about fun couples cosplay we can try.”, “Of course, mom! Anything for you.”.

Mom Becky and daughter Megan are headed to cosplay convention. (M/D, trans daughter) (Another long one, hope you like it! I'll have an AO3 later with all of these uploaded) We were thirty or so minute out from the city where the con was being held. Mom was driving this leg, and that left me to check in with friends on my phone who we might run into. This was going to be the first time my mom, Becky, had ever been to an anime convention, and I wanted her to have a good time, so I had already scouted out restaurants and activities that I thought she might like! I was the one with all of the interest in anime, comics and stuff, but she was really supportive. Like she has been throughout my transition; quick to correct others misgendering me, paying for my hair removal, and helping me with injections when I've been nervous. That was part of why I wanted to bring her with me. She has had a rough couple of years; my father leaving her, and trouble getting back into the dating scene left her feeling unwanted, I think. For me, cosplay has always been where I've felt most desired. It was the first time I felt really feminine, and receiving compliments on my looks always makes my confidence soar! If I could give my mom that same feeling, I think it would really help her self-image. I prepared a Tifa Lockhart cosplay for my mom. She is a bit shorter than me, has beautiful dark brown hair that falls to her mid-back, and has the kindest eyes you've ever seen, and she could make any outfit look good. The Tifa cosplay I've set up for her I was able to mostly made with what was already on-hand, only needing to hunt for some supplies for the skirt and gauntlets. It's also a bit more modest than some other versions; I don't want mom feeling too exposed, especially when it's her first time! I've been working tirelessly the past four or five months on a really good Emma Frost cosplay, in her White Queen era. The corset, cape, and bikini bottoms; they were all perfect! The leather, cloth, and boots set me back quite a bit, and the wig was absolutely killer. I've redone the thing who knows how many times, but it was finally done! And I was ready to get some compliments, maybe giving out some more risque photo ops if I could be persuaded. “Ah, here we are! Are you ready for this, Megan?”, my mom asked, I could tell she was nervous. “It's going to be great, mom! Don't worry, I'm make sure you have a good time!”. She smiles, and her face lights up. The rest of the day flies by, we check in, have a nice dinner, and try on our cosplay on just in case I need to make final adjustments. “Honey... the pictures I've seen online of people dressing up like this character... well, will people like me? I'm not as skinny as those other girls, you know.”, mom says while checking herself in the mirror. “Mom! You're gorgeous! I wish that I had your body”, I realized I really meant this, “I mean, I kind of do, just not as curvy.”, I hated feeling angular. Sharp. “You're plenty curvy, sweetie! Remember, just the other month we had to get new bras for you, you've gone up in size!”, how could I forget, it caused one of the many corset redos! She hugged my side and I returned the sentiment; she really is a great mom. It's our first day at the con, and I can tell mom is overwhelmed. We have our badges, and a friend I spoke with earlier has offered to mule for us, so we take our time exploring the main hall, artist alley, and trying to find as many cosplayers from media my mom might know. She has watched a few older shows with me as I've been trying to ease her into the genre and she was genuinely excited to see characters she recognized. We had met up with some friends of mine earlier and they were absolutely loving our cosplay; my outfit drew compliments, and my bottoms drew plenty of stares. And mom's cosplay was a hit! One friend even said that we were the hottest two here, causing both my mom and I to blush. As the day went on, we received more and more requests for pictures. Some of just me, some of just mom, and many of us together. I think people were as impressed as I was with my mom's efforts, and she seemed to be feeling great! We were constantly getting told how beautiful we looked, how good the cosplay was, and how well we posed together! I found us some Final Fantasy and X-Men cosplayers to join for group photos, and we were having a genuinely good time! Things took a turn when one con-goer got a bit too friendly with mom, his hand drifting from her shoulder to the top of her breast. “Hey!”, I shooed the guy off, “Mom, I'm sorry. That isn't supposed to happen.”, she blushed in response. “I … uhm. It's just nice to feel attractive again, honey.”. I wanted her to feel wanted, to feel sexy again, but wasn't that going too far? I think this set something off in mom, though. While previously she had turned down requests for hugs, now she was giving them out right and left, and her poses were getting more risque. She had a sports bra on under her white t-shirt, but when she leaned over there was plenty of cleavage on display. Her photos now had her shooting smoldering stares and standing provocatively. I liked posing, I liked feeling sexy, but I really wasn't comfortable with this much contact and teasing! It reached a peak when a group asked us to go somewhere less crowded to take pictures and she agreed. They led us to a small side hall, and directed mom in pose after pose, leaving me just standing to watch. They asked for a revealing pose, and she bent over, her heavy breasts hanging despite the support. They wanted her to show off more, so mom leaned forward, her butt on display behind the leather skirt. They pushed further, encouraging her, and as they snapped shots of her exposing her lacy panties from behind, I grabbed her, “Mom! What's gotten into you!”, pulling her back to the main halls. “Megan! I'm an adult, I can make my own choices.”. “Mom, these people are just using you! I saw some of them … touching themselves as they took pictures of you! This is too much!”. “Honey … I need this. I need to feel wanted. To feel desired again. Please, baby...”. It was too much, and I left for the hotel. “Fuck, why is this bothering me so much! Just because mom decides to show off some tits and ass, she gets all the attention?”, thinking out loud to myself. Is that it? Am I jealous? Usually I was the one swamped with requests and I could pick and choose when to pose chastely or be a real tease; all eyes should be on me, not my mom! “I mean, she's just in a skirt and t-shirt! I'm the one basically wearing lingerie!”, I felt I was going to explode. I had to cool down. I hopped in the shower, the cold spray bracing on my skin. Something seemed off, though. Why was I hard? Was it from thinking of mom? Was I jealous that my mother was showing off for others, and not for me? Frustrated, I shook away the images of her slutty poses, and dried off, slipping into sweats and a loose tee. Mom came back later, dropped off by a crowd of strangers that seemed not entirely sober. “Bye! See you tomorrow! Thanks again!”, she said shutting the door. “Where were you? It's late”, “Hey, that's my line! Sweetie, you don't have to worry, your mom was just out having fun. Feeling young again.”. “I thought you came here to spend time with me. This is supposed to be my thing! You're ruining it!”, silence. “Well, maybe we don't need to do this together. You go with your friends, and I'll go with my new friends. There! We'll both be happy.”, I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to tell her how wrong it felt for strangers to ogle my mom, to make her more and more an object of desire and less and less my mother. “Fine”, was all I could muster. She was already gone when I woke up the next morning. I knew I had to do something to snap her out of this. Digging through my too-full suitcase I found one of my backup cosplays, Raven from the Teen Titans. This one had a high waist and a thin crotch, exposing my entire leg. I was going to out-sexy my mom. If I could make her feel how I felt, if I could make her see how upsetting it was to have your family member expose themselves so publicly, maybe she would come back to her senses. I didn't have the right wig for this cosplay, but my dark, natural hair that hung down to my chin was close enough. Besides, that's not where most eyes were focused. My nipples were visible through the suit, as I had neglected any padding, and I was no longer tucking, showing my bulge proudly. If mom wanted to be slutty, then why shouldn't I? This was my space after all, my interest! Who was she to steal my attention! Plenty of photos and suggestive poses later, I found my mom and her new group of 'friends'. They were in a quiet side hall, out of the way. Mom had stripped off her skirt and t-shirt, now just in a sports bra, panties, her tights and red boots. As the group surrounding her heard me approach, they started turning from my mother and towards me. Phones and cameras now focused on my body, on my poses, on my pure sexual aura! Mom was pissed; this isn't what I wanted. I needed to show her, needed to make her feel what I felt. We were competing, now. Fighting for their eyes, for their arousal, for dominance. Mom crouched low, hand teasing her panties to the side, and using her mouth and hand to mime sucking a cock. I leaned forward, squashing my tits between my elbows, my nipples and areola showing through the thin material. She mauled her breasts, moaning. I squat down, spreading my knees and threatening to reveal what was behind my thin crotch strip. Request after request, challenge after challenge we went, until I found my mom moving towards me, the crowd chanting for us to kiss, and my mouth opening on its own. Our mouths found each other, and we tangled together for a brief moment, then I was gone, running, crying to the bathroom.

via Aaron Parnas.. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Army is phasing out a cutting-edge drone assault battalion it established in Europe just this past January, a unit created to absorb lessons from Ukraine’s drone warfare against Russia, as part of a broader “back-to-basics” push by acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who is closely aligned with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. After participating in a major exercise in Germany this August and September, the roughly 600-soldier battalion will report its findings and then “refocus on its core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry battalion” rather than continuing its drone-focused mission, reversing a signature initiative of LaNeve’s predecessor Gen. Randy George, whom Hegseth ousted in April. Military experts like Brookings’ Michael O’Hanlon criticized the move, warning that “Ukraine has essentially revolutionized the close fight” and that any setback to the drone program would be “deeply regretful and dangerous,” while the Army declined to specify how it plans to accelerate drone capabilities going forward. The decision is one of several moves by LaNeve that have drawn friction, including shifting a specialized Multi-Domain Task Force from Europe to South Korea, reassigning a Texas-based armored corps to a new Western Hemisphere Command, rewriting Army fitness standards over Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s objections, and canceling a planned speech by senior Ukrainian officers at Fort Benning.

@dungeonchill Hello! Thank you for submitting your response to the OFFICIAL Provocation and Incitement Response Latency Assessment of YouTube Comment Moderation™. By responding, you have aided content creators everywhere by contributing valuable field data on how professional YouTubers identify, interpret, emotionally process, and ultimately respond to mildly annoying comments posted beneath their videos. Alongside the generous participation of creators such as @BoulderPunch, @Majular, and @CriticalDrinker, these data allow Certified YouTuber Coaching™ to measure the elapsed time between: T₀: a viewer posting something slightly ironic and basically inconsequential, and T₁: the channel owner deciding, several days later, that this warrants personally informing that viewer that they are insensitive, unfunny, and need to get a life. Your results have now been recorded. Unfortunately, with a response latency of approximately six days, your performance falls within the 21st percentile of participating creators. While the eventual escalation was appropriately disproportionate to the precipitating stimulus, the extended delay substantially reduced your overall Provocation-to-Intervention Efficiency Score. Not to worry! Your contribution remains extremely valuable. Cases like yours are used to refine Certified YouTuber Coaching™ Standard Operating Procedures, including: * recognizing low-stakes viewer comments before they have had nearly a week to mature; * distinguishing mild joking from actionable community emergencies; * reducing unnecessary incubation time prior to becoming personally aggrieved; * and delivering “get a life dude” interventions while the original comment is still recent enough for anyone involved to remember why they are angry. Thank you again for advancing the emerging professional science of YouTuber Comment Response Management. Your participation helps tomorrow’s creators become faster, more efficient, and more responsive when confronting the internet’s most serious occupational hazard: a commenter being mildly annoying beneath a YouTube video. Certified YouTuber Coaching™ Turning avoidable comment-section irritation into measurable professional development.

hey I’m christina but most know me as froax. throughout the past nearly three months, I have been going through a very random and highly progressive illness. I’ve had over 12 separate symptoms, have been 15 doctors so far including multiple PCP’s, specialists, surgeons, you name it, and have underwent a series of tests including various blood and antibody testing, MRI’s, physical therapy, CT scans, mental health evaluations, and soon to be a lumbar puncture procedure in just a few weeks. I have lost my ability to walk, swallow, speak clearly, balance, breathe normally, among a few other personal symptoms. eventually, these symptoms have calmed down a lot and my next test for answers is tomorrow. being gaslit by medical professionals is awful. getting your health insurance revoked while your MRI’s alone are over $21k each session every few months is disgusting, and being told “it’s just your anxiety” while you have a 13mm lesion on your spinal cord is.. beyond words. it’s not uncommon for a person to visit multiple medical professionals until they find one that finally listens to them. I have been under the care of two separate psychologists and various therapists to monitor my declining mental health on top of the specialists and hospitalizations for my physical symptoms. between the lack of support to my illness and symptoms. it’s very hard to manage on my own, especially living far away from any and all family relatives. times like these I wish I could hug my family and instantly feel so much better. unfortunately, that’s not an option, so my friends and family who have reached out either through text, a DM, a phone call; etc. meant so much to me and has kept me motivated to find out answers, get proper treatment, and continue on in my journey. at first we thought it was a simple, common autoimmune neurological condition but the more we explore, the more none of this makes any sense, medically. throughout this time, I have eagerly tried to communicate with those who I trusted, cared about the most, and loved so dearly to no avail. i have successfully removed every single person who has ignored me for months while i’ve been going through hell and being ignored when i needed my friends the most. there are people, including friends and family, who haven’t even bothered to respond, check in, or ask how i’m doing. it took a lot of strength to let go of people i loved so deeply. this decision wasn’t spontaneous or made out of anger. i’ve been patient for nearly three months, hoping things would change, and they haven’t. being constantly ignored during one of the hardest periods of my life made me feel like a burden, when in reality, my body was at war with itself. i experienced partial paralysis, constant hospitalizations, and so much uncertainty, which made having communication, support, and comfort from the people closest to me incredibly important. once i’m better and on proper treatment, i know some of those same people will probably reach out again. but honestly, that’s part of what hurt the most. people shouldn’t only care when you’re doing well, when you’re happy, or when you’re finally able to be there for them again. being there for someone when they’re struggling is when genuine care matters most. if this illness has taught me anything, it’s how strong i actually am and how important it can be to let go of people who don’t deserve the love, effort, and space you’ve given them. sometimes protecting yourself means accepting that certain people simply aren’t meant to stay in your life. if this applies to any of you and you are reading this or find this relevant to you, i’m genuinely sorry, but i had to do what’s best for myself and need to surround myself with those who have shown me genuine care instead of those who have shown me that i was nothing but a burden. no one owes anyone an explanation or a response at all, but those who take two to three seconds out of their day to write a simple “hey, thinking of you” message or even one simple emoji, that meant everything to me. that has genuinely kept me going this entire time. I wish you guys could understand how important that was to me. there are so many details and moving parts to this that not everyone knows about as I haven’t openly discussed a lot of it. when I’m gaming or working with animals, that’s my escape from it all on the good days where I’m somewhat able-bodied. I wish I could explain the full story, and maybe one day I’ll have the courage to. for those who have stood by my side throughout all of this, I genuinely want to thank you. for my fallout community, I want to thank you as well. and for those of you who I’ve had to let go of, if you’re reading this, i will always root for your health, happiness, and success even if we no longer speak. I’m not done fighting for answers, and hopefully treatment is just around the corner. I had the urge to explain letting go as well as thanking those who refused to let me go. just like my grandma told me in a phone call, “you never know how strong you truly are until you have no choice but to be strong.” anyways, thanks for reading. with love always, froax ♡

Unless completely embodying faggot mindset, playing solo with chastity belts (and how many have we collected, no shape or size fully satisfying, there's always something new "to have"!) may feel unsatisfying, void, difficult to pursue long-term. It's just a tool to apply, a toy to collect, a costume to wear. Virtual community support, remote dominance, gamification with apps, collecting likes and extending challenges - barely substitutes the story, the context, the contact. This sort of play begs for interaction, power exchange, someone willing to be a dominant counterpoint to one's submissive potential. Someone to set the rules, pace, intensity, challenges, perhaps even long-term effects - all those little inputs of unpredictability that can tease one's sexual self. The actual source of excitement. However, recently I started to explore the fantasies of equal2equal play in kink. Imagine going for a hike with a friend, locking each-other the first thing in the morning, holding the key to each-other's private parts. Both of you becoming dominant and submissive at the same time. Helping each other with whatever fantasy gets you going - ignoring those things down there that you "have no right to play with", trying to turn each other on and cause discomfort, or supporting each other in sexual denial and "behaving correctly", channeling the sexual energy to physical performance, turning your whole body to a sensitized sexual organ. Being together in an erotic way, without needing to rub the dicks and holes. Becoming creative as much as the twisted mind allows.

Here in Wisconsin sane people have both Democratic and Republican friends. I don't argue with my GOP pals, I encourage all to vote. Prior to the Trump era, I've even voted Republican a few times. Democracy requires more than one party. China and North Korea have only one party and no real voting. Then I add some more words andb theb post won't fit on BleSky. Show me what happenes with longer.blue

# I Plan the Ending Before I Generate the Video I’ve started planning AI videos from the last three seconds. It sounds backwards, but it solved a problem I kept running into: good openings with nowhere to go. I used to start with the first shot. A character walks into a café. The camera follows. Morning light comes through the window. Nice start. Then I’d keep adding things. They order coffee. Sit down. Open a laptop. Check their phone. Look outside. Pick up the cup. The camera moves again. Before long, a simple idea had six or seven actions fighting for attention. So I changed one small part of my process. Before writing the prompt, I ask: **What do I want to see in the final three seconds?** For the café idea, I might want to end with the character quietly working beside the window, coffee on the table and the morning rush happening outside. That gives me somewhere to go. Now I can work backwards. The ending is the character working by the window. The middle only needs to get them from the door to the table. The opening only needs to establish the café. Suddenly, I don’t need all those extra actions. I started thinking about this more while looking at longer-generation workflows around [Seedance 2.5](https://www.jxp.com/seedance/seedance-2-5). When a video has more room, my first instinct is to fill it. I'm learning to do the opposite. For that café scene, I’d probably keep only three beats: **0–6s:** Walk into the café. **6–18s:** Sit down and open the laptop as the morning light reaches the table. **18–25s:** Pull back slowly and end with the character working beside the window. That’s enough. The same trick works for other ideas too. For a travel clip, I decide what the final view should be before planning the walk toward it. For a simple product concept, I decide how I want the product to appear at the end before adding movement around it. It also gives me a quick way to reject weak ideas. If I can’t picture the last few seconds, I usually don’t write the full prompt yet. I used to think a longer AI video needed more things to happen. Now I think it just needs somewhere to go. So I write the ending first. Simple rule, but it has saved me from a lot of overloaded prompts.

I'm going to do a bit of an emotional post. It's been 10 years since I last celebrated my birthday and the reason behind that is my dad (granddad's) birthday is today, or well should be if he was still here with us. Growing up we would always celebrate our birthdays together usually on mine. I shut down when he passed away in 2017 and stopped celebrating my birthday starting that year. Why should I celebrate the life I was given when the man who raised me to be the somewhat honorable person I am is no longer here. I've realized through the past years of suffering that the decision I made was wrong and selfish. The memories of our celebration are cherished and will continue to foster happiness when I think back to them. They say when you turn 18 you've spent roughly 90% of your life with your parents, I'm glad I had known him for 19 years. I love you dad, and I will continue to make you proud.

As a warning for my fellow otakus: If you're planning to buy Sister Other Paranoia be warned that while it is a good read, most of the time isn't actually spent with your cute imouto. Now while the dev did say the game wouldn't include incest, i still find it to be a slight let down how little screentime she has considering she was the face of advertisements ever since the game was announced. She's such a pretty girl. I want to spend more time with her, cuddling and holding her in my arms

I'm going to preface this with the fact that I live in a semi rural area and the type of people I'm looking for aren't around here and there are basically 0 people in my town of 20k people . And I just can't drop everything in my life right now to just up and move somewhere with the hopes of meeting someone. But there are a LOT of areas within reasonable travel distance for me to get to know someone and potentially move there for them if things got serious. I've successfully dated long distance without issue in the past. I primarily use Hinge and Bumble and at least on Hinge my very FIRST prompt when you look at my profile says what my situation is and where I actually live. But since I started looking again in March after my last breakup I have gotten literally dozens of matches. However the significant majority of them literally cannot be bothered to actually read my profile before matching with me. I started bringing it up in my first message now and basically everyone either ghosts me or unmatches after that. (At least that's clearer). I've gotten only a single person who actually read before matching and I drove to where they lived to go on a date finally about a month ago. Didn't work out which is fine but... I'm not trying to dunk on women, but I have seen endless complaints about men for years and women are just shit at reading profiles before matching with someone. Like wtf am I supposed to do if people can't be bothered to read the first thing that pops up before matching with me? I have even had likes from people who I matched with. Hoping they actually read my info and still didn't , leading to same situation. It is so unbelievably exhausting putting in so much effort to be selective about who I like and not just swiping yes on everything, take initiative, ask thoughtful questions constantly and try to be a good and honest and upfront person about my current situation and put a ton of effort into my profile just to constantly get people who can't even bother to take 5 seconds before they match with me to read my profile and not just match based on my comment/like/my profile picture. TLDR, for the love of all things decent can people please actually read profiles ???? (This includes men.) This is just a friendly reminder. Maybe I'm the asshole for trying to meet someone outside of my arms length bubble where I live like most people. Guess I'll just drop everything in my life, pick a random city to move to and hope for the best. 😒

بالعودة الى المقارنة بين النموذج الريعي التقليدي، والنموذج الريعي المتحور الذي يحاول تطبق بعض ( طقوس ) الديمقراطية ضمن صيغة ادارية ريعية فحدث له ما حدث للغراب الذي نسى مشيته ولم يتمكن من تقليد مشية الاخرين! بالامكان بسهولة ملاحظة ان النموذج الريعي التقليدي يحقق اداء افضل بمراحل مقارنة بالنموذج الريعي المتحور، وعلى سبيل المثال وليس الحصر: اثناء الفترة الملكية في ليبيا كان الدستور ينص صراحة على ان الملك هو صاحب السلطات وفي نفس الوقت كان الملك يتحمل المسئولية المعنوية الاخلاقية على حال البلاد والعباد، ونفس الوضع يحدث تقريبا في دول الخليج. هذا طبعا لا يعني مطلقا الدعوة الى النموذج الريعي التقليدي في بلد مثل ليبيا لان التاريخ لا يعود الى الوراء والمعطيات والظروف التي خلقت ذلك النموذج في ليبيا انتهت واصبحت في متحف التاريخ، ثم اننا هنا نمثل مشروع دولة المواطنة الذي لا ينظر الى الخلف بل يسعى الى اقامة دولة مواطنة يمتلكها مواطنوها بشكل فعلي عبر صيغ ووسائل ادارية عملية سيتم التطرق اليها بالتفصيل، وينتهي فيها الريع، وتنتهي حكايات مولانا صاحب النسب الشريف والسدة العلية! المقصود من الحديث عن النموذج الريعي الليبي المتحور هو تبيان مدى تهافت الدعوات التي تنادي بالدستور والانتخابات وغيرها من (الوسائل) الديمقراطية ولكنها تصمت تماما عن النموذج الريعي، ربما لانها مستعجلة لتشكيل الحكومات والمحاصصات واقتسام المناصب وتغيير االوجوه والاسماء والسحنات، ولم تتريث وتحاول فهم حقيقة وجوهر وجذور معضلة هذا البلد. وبإختصار، محاولة تطبيق الديمقراطية في بلد ريعي تشبه الى حد التطابق محاولة خلط الماء بالزيت، ولتعلمن نبأه بعد حين. . #مشروع_دولة_المواطنة

If you also joined a strike group, you took a powerful first step by signaling that you believe real change is necessary. But joining a group chat or adding your name to a list is only the foundation. A general strike cannot rely on passive support or quiet agreement; it requires active participation to build momentum, stay organized, and become a force that cannot be ignored. Passivity, even with the best intentions, leaves the heavy lifting to a few and creates the illusion of a movement without the ground-level strength to sustain it. If we want our collective voice to carry real weight, every single member needs to step into an active role. Whether that means sharing updates, organizing locally, attending meetings, or helping with outreach, your direct involvement is what turns potential power into actual impact. We need you with us, not just in presence, but in practice. We need you with us, not just in presence, but in practice. Take a moment today to check in, pick a task, or ask how you can contribute to our immediate goals. This movement belongs to all of us, and it will only succeed when every one of us chooses to act.

Why the Christian Nationalist attack does not land on Terf Island. In the myriad dogfights with online TRAs, UK gender critical folk are often bemused by their repeated accusations of our collusion with "Christian Nationalists". It's understandable that this has some cachet in the US, with it's large Christian fundamentalist movement, which has some particularly unsavoury characters in the White House. But Britain is one of the most atheist countries on Earth. To us, Christians are some smiley, quite nice people, like Quakers and Unitarians, who are probably a bit bonkers but essentially harmless. Nationalists are of course the SNP and Plaid Cymru, no idea why they're such a problem in the States. They sometime push the idea further and claim that UK gender critical organisations are funded and/ or influenced by these American bogey men. And of course the quality of their evidence is as sound as their peer-reviewed proof of lady brains. But of course all this is reason, and that's never stopped a TRA. Bring it on, Sammy!

32 is probably too late to be saying i'm kin with shit but i'm kind of at the not giving a fuck stage of my life rn that comes with getting older. it's the best word for me even if it may not be not 'real'. (not saying it's one or the other because minds are very complex! i view it from a scientific perspective) and i don't have to worry if people say it's cringe and fake or on the other hand i'm insulting otherkin, i'm just living my gay little life. yeah we're talking about Viktor Arcane. this bond i feel is fulfilling and euphoric, makes me feel confident while fragile, to struggle through a fate that seems inevitable while remaining curious to learn and help others. it gives me physical and mental goals. (knowledge, queerness, androgyny, kindness, real activism etc haha) + the practical outcome matters more than the method. he's not just for coping through really dark mental times but it really helps and when I give myself up more to Viktor (even if it's just the idea of him or something, even if it's just an imaginary 'Viktor lens' that i perceive), it helps me get through another day and like have you seen the world lately? i'd rather be a silly guy from queer tv show than give up to the despair that pushes me to the edge again and again. i feel more complete, and i'm really looking forward to a glorious revolution. yippee

A frequent question from TRAs about the Supreme Court clarification and ECHR guidance that people must use the facilities appropriate to their sex,is how is that going to be enforced? They think this is a real gotcha question. Will there be genital inspections? This is all rather silly of course. British people will use their common sense. Let’s go through the options. We’ll take the example of the female changing rooms in a local swimming pool run by the council. 1️⃣ People obey the law This is the most obvious scenario. There has been no lack of publicity around the ruling and guidance, and those who have previously used the wrong changing rooms will, in the main, accept the rule of law. 2️⃣ Challenge by other users Again, since the ruling and guidance are so well known, other changing room users may feel emboldened to make a personal challenge. 3️⃣ Challenge by Attendant Attendants may now act on the guidance, off their own bat or when asked by other users. To the implicit question how will people recognise TiMs/ TiWs without a genital inspection, the answer is very few actually pass, and if they do and decide to break the law, that’s a few borderline cases and they don’t matter.

Solo | Hound of the Sky | Vlad Who ? Colonel Vladislav “Hound” Ivanov is forty-one years old and already a legend. In the Russian Aerospace Forces, legends are rare. Most pilots spend a career mastering one or two types. Ivanov has mastered the entire MiG line and can fly almost anything that leaves the ground under power. He is Pilot and Deputy Commandant of the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots named after Hero of the Soviet Union A.K. Serov. As Chief Instructor he trains cadet pilots not for clean textbooks, but for the messy, lethal reality of modern air combat. There is no aircraft currently in Russian service that he cannot fly. He has logged time in attack and transport helicopters Mi-24, Mi-25, Mi-35, Mi-17, and even the massive Mi-26. He has flown the heavy transports and tankers: Il-76, Il-78, An-12, An-22, An-32, and the giant An-124 Ruslan. He has flown the long-range maritime patrol Tu-142 and the strategic Tu-95. Yet when people speak of him, they speak first of the MiGs and above all of the MiG-31. The Master of the MiGs Ivanov’s logbook is a history of the Mikoyan design bureau written in hours and sweat. He began on the MiG-21. He still teaches cadets the old truths about the Fishbed: the delta wing gives excellent climb and high-altitude performance, but it demands precise angle-of-attack control on landing. Approach speeds of 290–320 km/h leave little margin. “If you float, you will float into trouble. If you drop it, the nose gear will remind you who is boss,” he tells them. The aircraft taught him humility and exactness. The MiG-23 taught him systems discipline. Variable-geometry wings, complex sweep schedules, and a powerful radar made it a capable interceptor, but it punished energy mismanagement. At high sweep it became a fast, stable platform; at full forward sweep it turned better but still demanded careful handling. Landing speeds remained high. Ivanov mastered the automatic systems and the manual overrides when those systems failed. The MiG-25 introduced him to true high-altitude, high-speed flight. Steel construction, twin thirsty engines, and the ability to reach Mach 2.8+ at extreme altitude. The aircraft was not a dogfighter. It was a pure interceptor and reconnaissance platform. Ivanov learned to manage fuel, temperature, and the thin air where ordinary fighters cannot follow. The MiG-27 took him low and dirty. Ground-attack work, laser designation, heavier armor around the cockpit, and the constant vibration of high-speed, low-level flight over rough terrain. He still uses those lessons when teaching cadets the difference between clean air combat and supporting troops under fire. The MiG-29 restored pure agility. Excellent high-alpha capability, powerful engines, and later the helmet-mounted sight. Early versions suffered from limited internal fuel and a cockpit that forced the pilot to look down too often. Ivanov flew the original aircraft hard, then the improved variants, and finally the MiG-35 with its modern sensors, improved engines, and true multirole capability. He respects the Fulcrum family deeply, but he does not romanticize it. Then came the MiG-31. The Foxhound became his true domain. Long-range, high-altitude, multi-target engagement with the Zaslon radar family, the ability to control large sectors of airspace, and later the Kinzhal-capable variants. Ivanov flew the aircraft at the edge of its envelope high-Mach climbs, extended patrols in the High North, coordinated four-ship tactics that turned a formation into a moving radar wall. He is widely regarded as one of the finest MiG-31 pilots the Aerospace Forces have produced. When Hound and a Foxhound are airborne, other pilots pay attention. The Instructor On a cold morning at one of the school’s training airfields, Colonel Ivanov stood in front of a group of senior cadets. The briefing room was quiet. He did not raise his voice. “You think flying is about the stick and the throttle. It is not. Flying is about energy, geometry, and decisions made three moves ahead. The aircraft will do what the physics allow. Your job is to understand those limits better than the man trying to kill you.” He walked them through a typical advanced lesson. “Today we will work energy management in the vertical. You will start with excess energy. You will trade it for altitude or for turning room. You will not panic when the airspeed bleeds. You will not pull into a high-alpha stall just because the bandit is behind you. The MiG-29 and MiG-35 will give you high angle of attack if you ask correctly. The MiG-31 will not. Know the difference or die.” He spoke of radar discipline on the MiG-31: “The Zaslon does not care about your ego. Build the track. Confirm. Only then commit the missile. A wasted long-range shot is a gift to the enemy.” He spoke of emergencies: single-engine failure on a twin, hydraulic degradation, total electrical failure, and the need to fly the aircraft first. “Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. In that order. Everything else is secondary.” He forced them to fly with degraded systems in the simulator and then in the air. He made them recover from unusual attitudes with the primary attitude indicator failed. He taught them that real war is rarely a clean one-versus-one merge. It is electronic warfare, surface-to-air threats, fuel state, and the sudden loss of a wingman. The Legend Colonel Ivanov is a top-tier experimental test pilot. He has flown prototype systems, new weapons integrations, and aircraft configurations that never appeared in public. He has taken airframes past published limits and returned with the data. He holds the highest Russian flying awards, including the title Hero of the Russian Federation and Honoured Military Pilot of the Russian Federation, along with multiple decorations for courage and distinguished service. He has flown operational missions in the Syrian Arab Republic and the demanding high-latitude intercepts of the North. Yet his greatest impact may be the pilots he shapes. There is a quiet saying among those who have flown with him: “Master the MiG. Respect every aircraft. When the Hound flies the fight is already decided.” At forty-one, Colonel Vladislav “Hound” Ivanov remains what the Aerospace Forces rarely produce: a true master of the MiGs, an ace of the MiG-31, a man who can fly anything from a Mi-26 to an An-124, a relentless instructor, and a living standard against which other pilots are measured. The sky does not care about reputation. It only respects those who understand it. Ivanov understands it better than almost anyone still flying.

Why Image Review Rounds Fall Apart After Version Six When Reference Drift Becomes a Team Problem Most visual review processes start clean. Someone shares a brief, a reference image, and a few notes about tone. The first three generated directions get compared side by side, and everyone agrees on what's working. Then round four happens, and round seven, and by round twelve nobody can explain why a particular direction was dropped two rounds earlier. The reference image itself has quietly drifted — colors shifted half a step, composition loosened, text rendering changed — and the team is now debating variants against a moving target instead of a fixed brief. This isn't a tooling failure so much as a documentation gap. Generating many image directions is easy. Remembering, in a defensible way, why each one was accepted or rejected is the harder problem, especially when three or four people are weighing in asynchronously across a week. Turning Comparisons Into a Decision Log The fix that tends to hold up under real deadline pressure isn't a better chat thread — it's a lightweight decision log that treats each generated variant as a logged decision, not a passing comment. A workable version has four columns: - Variant ID — a stable label tied to the generation batch, not a filename that changes - Deviation from brief — a short, specific note (e.g., "logo scale +15%," "background saturation drifted warmer") - Reviewer verdict — accept, reject, or conditional, with the reviewer's initials - Reason code — a short tag from a fixed list (legibility, brand-color mismatch, composition, text accuracy) The reason codes matter more than they look. Free-text feedback like "doesn't feel right" is useless three weeks later when a client asks why an earlier direction was dropped. A fixed vocabulary of maybe eight to twelve reason codes forces reviewers to be specific in the moment, and it makes the log searchable later. A Walkthrough: Packaging Mockups Across Twelve Variants Consider a product team producing packaging mockups from a single reference photo and a short brief describing material, lighting, and label placement. The first batch of variants looks close enough that the drift isn't obvious yet. By the second batch, generated from a slightly adjusted prompt, the label text has started rendering with subtle kerning differences, and the material texture has shifted from matte to semi-gloss in a few outputs. Without a log, someone flags "the texture looks off" on variant 9, forgets to check whether variant 4 had the same issue, and the team ends up re-litigating a decision that was already made. With a decision log, variant 4's row already shows a reject with reason code "material-mismatch," so variant 9 gets compared against that precedent instead of judged in isolation. This is the actual value of the log: it turns each new variant into a comparison against prior recorded reasoning, not a fresh subjective read. Setting Rejection Thresholds and Reading the Evidence Matrix The decision log becomes genuinely useful once it's paired with rejection thresholds set before generation starts, not during review. A threshold might be: label text must match the brief's exact wording, background color must stay within a defined range, and composition must preserve label placement within a small tolerance. Setting these upfront means a reviewer isn't inventing a bar in the middle of round eight just because that variant happens to look tired. From there, a compact evidence matrix — variants as rows, threshold criteria as columns, pass/fail marks in each cell — gives a one-screen view of where a batch is actually failing. If most rejects trace back to one column, say text accuracy, that's a signal to adjust the prompt or the reference image rather than keep generating variants that will fail the same check. This kind of review structure works regardless of which generator produced the images, but it does depend on being able to move quickly between a reference image, several generated directions, and edits in one place, since re-uploading and re-describing context between tools is exactly where drift and lost notes creep back in. The Qwen Image 3.0 product page describes a workflow built around realistic image generation, flexible sizing, and image editing within a single preview, which is the kind of setup that makes maintaining a rejection log practical rather than an extra chore layered on top of a scattered process. You can look at how it's laid out at Qwen Image 3.0 — https://qwenimage3.app/ and judge whether it fits how your team already reviews work. The underlying discipline — logging deviations, fixing reason codes, setting thresholds before generation, and reading a small evidence matrix instead of scrolling through a long thread — is what actually prevents review rounds from collapsing into repeated arguments. The generator matters less than whether the team has a record it can trust by round twelve.

Worth reading again. Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical. The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks. But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads. The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again. Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.” -Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025. You have just read the transcript of a speech that will live forever in the history books.

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