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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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Molly McGhee’s “Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind”

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is Molly McGhee's debut novel: a dreamlike tale of a public-private partnership that hires the terminally endebted to invade the dreams of white-collar professionals and harvest the anxieties that prevent them from being fully productive members of the American corporate workforce:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734829/jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-by-molly-mcghee/

Though this is McGhee's first novel, she's already well known in literary circles. Her career has included stints at McSweeney's, where she worked on my book Information Doesn't Want To Be Free:

https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/information-doesn-t-want-to-be-free

And then at Tor Books, where she worked on my book Attack Surface:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface

But though McGhee is a shrewd and skilled editor, I think of her first and foremost as a writer, thanks to stunning essays like "America's Dead Souls," a 2021 Paris Review piece that described the experience of multigenerational debt in America in incandescent, pitiless prose:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

McGhee's piece struck at the heart of something profoundly wrong in American society – the dual nature of debt, which represents a source of freedom for the wealthy, and bondage for workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

When billionaire mass-murderers like the Sacklers amass tens of billions of liabilities stemming from their role in deliberately starting the opioid crisis, the courts step in to relieve them of their obligations, allowing them to keep their blood-money:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

And when Silicon Valley Bank collapses due to mismanagement by ultra-wealthy financiers, the public purse yawns open and billions flow out to ensure that the wealthiest investors in the country stay whole:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/18/2-billion-here-2-billion-there/#socialism-for-the-rich

When predatory payday lenders target working people and force them into bankruptcy with four-digit APRs, the government intervenes…to save the lenders and keep workers on the hook:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud

"Debtor vs creditor" is the oldest class division we have. The Bronze Age custom of jubilee – the periodic cancellation of all debts – wasn't some weird peccadillo. It was essential public policy, and without jubilee, the hereditary creditor class became the arbiter of all social priorities, destabilizing great nations and even empires by directing production to suit their parochial needs. Societies that didn't practice jubilee (or halted it) collapsed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Today's workers are debt burdened at scales and in ways that defy comprehension, the numbers are so brain-breakingly large. Students who take out modest loans and pay them off several times over remain indebted decades later, with outstanding balances that vastly outstrip the principle:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Workers who quit dead-end jobs are billed for five-figure "training repayment" bills that haunt them to the end of days:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Hospitals sue indigent patients at scale, siccing debt-collectors on people who can't pay – and were entitled to free care to begin with:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/when-hospitals-sue-patients-part-2/

And debt collectors are drawn from the same social ranks as the debtors, barely trained and unsupervised, engaging in lawless, constant harassment of the debtor class:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

McGhee's "American Dead Souls" crystallized all of this vast injustice into a single, beautiful essay – and then McGhee crystallized things further by posting a public resignation letter enumerating the poor pay and working conditions in New York publishing, triggering mass, industry-wide resignations by similarly situated junior editorial staff:

https://electricliterature.com/molly-mcghee-jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-interview-debut-novel-book-debt/

Thus we arrive at McGhee's debut: a novel written by someone with a track record for gorgeous, brutally insightful prose; incisive analysis of the class war raging in the embers of capitalism's American Dream; and consequential labor organizing against the precarity and exploitation of young workers. As you might expect, it's fantastic.

Jonathan Abernathy is a 25 year old, debt haunted, desperately lonely man. An orphan with a mountain of college debt, Abernathy lives in a terrible basement apartment whose rent is just beyond his means. The only thing that propels him out of bed and into the world are his affirmations:

Jonathan Abernathy you are kind

You are well respected and valued by your community

People, including your family, love you

That these are all easily discerned lies is beside the point. Whatever gets you through the night.

We meet Jonathan as he is applying for a job that he was recruited for in a dream. As instructed in his dream, he presents himself at a shabby strip-mall office where an acerbic functionary behind scratched plexiglass takes his application and informs him that he is up for a gig run jointly by the US State Department and a consortium of large corporate employers. If he is accepted, all of his student debt repayments will be paused and he will no longer face wage garnishment. What's more, he'll be doing the job in his sleep, which means he'll be able to get a day job and pull a double income – what's not to like?

Jonathan's job is to enter the dreams of sleeping middle-management types in America's largest firms – but not just any dreams, their nightmares. Once he has entered their nightmare, Jonathan is charged with identifying the source of their anxiety and summoning a more senior operative who will suck up and whisk away that nagging spectre, thus rendering the worker a more productive component of their corporate structure.

But of course, there's more to it. As Jonathan works through his sleeping hours, he is deprived of his own dreams. Then there's the question of where those captive anxieties are ending up, and how they're being processed, and what new products can be made from refined nightmares. While Jonathan himself is pulling ever so slightly out of his economic quagmire, the people around him are still struggling.

McGhee braids together three strands: the palpable misery of being Jonathan (a proxy for all of us), the rising terror of the true nature of his employment, and beautifully turned absurdist touches that are laugh-aloud funny. This could be a mere novel of ennui and misery but it's not – it's a novel of hilarity and fear and misery, all mixed together in a glorious and terrible concoction that is not like anything else you've ever read.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/08/capitalist-surrealism/#productivity-hacks

#pluralistic #books #reviews #science fiction #molly mcghee #debt #graeber #capitalist realism #capitalist surrealism #dreams #gift guide

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bumblebeeappletree · 10 months

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In 20 minutes I share everything I wish I knew before I started designing my permaculture food forest.

This video covers strategies for capturing and storing water, improving and feeding your soil, creating a baseman for capturing your observations, swales, contours, guilds and layering your food forest and working with succession as well as some syntropic agroforestry techniques that you can use in your backyard.

A permaculture food forest requires upfront work, but the long-term rewards are huge! That is why I believe it’s the easiest way to grow food. No annual tilling, no toiling under the hot sun year after year, no need to purchase inputs once your forest is established. Once you set up a successful system, it will thrive for generations to come.

Links mentioned in the video:

Want to experience the magic of Goldifarms? Visit our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Goldifarms

The following are Amazon Affiliate links and I may receive a small commission if you purchase through these links:

Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins

https://amzn.to/441FP9w

Restoration Agriculture by Mark Stepard

https://amzn.to/422yG7k

About Goldifarms:

My name is Erin. I started Goldifarms in my backyard in January 2020 as part of my journey to heal myself and restore this land. I follow permaculture design principles to create regenerative abundance here on the Central Coast of California in zone 9a. My intention with this YouTube channel is to provide inspiration to connect with nature, grow your own food and medicine, and help create a more beautiful world together.

Thank you for all your support, I hope these videos will inspire you to follow your heart and pursue what lights up your life ✨ 🌼💛

Sending so much love to you on your journey. Thank you for watching 🐝💛🌻

Want to experience the magic of Goldifarms? Visit our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Goldifarms

For a brief history of Goldifarms, check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5z7...

For pics of the whole project, visit: https://www.instagram.com/goldifarms/

To learn more and contact Goldifarms, visit our website: Goldifarms.com

To support Goldifarms (which would mean the world to me!), you can become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/goldifarms

If you never want to miss a Goldifarms video, subscribe by clicking here: https://youtube.com/goldifarms?sub_co...

For access to exclusive videos, consider joining my membership channel: / @goldifarms

Music from Epidemic Sound. If you create videos and are looking for a huge selection of music, feel free to use my epidemic referral for a free month: https://share.epidemicsound.com/hlg6dg

Chapters

00:00- Intro

00:33 - Start with Why

01:20 - Imagine

03:03 - Observe

04:09 - Create a Basemap

05:18 - Design for Water

09:45 - Get that GoldiGlow!!✨

11:04 - Feed your Soil

13:52 - Layers and Succession

18:38 - Design Iteratively

#Goldifarms #solarpunk #permaculture #food Forest #agriculture #how to #how to make #how to make a food forest #farming #garden #gardening

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seoul-bros · 3 months

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Jikook Week 8 Complete ✔️(30/01/24 - 06/02/2024)

Their eighth week in the military is now complete. It's time to celebrate this milestone with a look back at this week in 2020.

BTS was in Phase 2 of their Map of the Soul 7 comeback......

...starting with the first single release Black Swan on 17th January.

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They flew to the US on the 18/01/2020....

..where they performed Old Town Road with Lil Nas X at the Grammys on 26/01/2020.

Cr. to Minkook Eclipse

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During the week 30/01 to 06/02 they were still in the US and doing the rounds of the talk shows. These videos of them at iHeart Radio came out on the 01/02 and 06/02.

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Everyone was in high spirits excited about the release of the album and the Map of the Soul tour which we now know was not to be. They returned to South Korea the next week on 10/02/20.

BONUS

On 30th January, BTS released the 2020 Winter Package in Helsinki with all these amazing Jikook photos. I've also included JK's GCF Helsinki which was released at the end of December 2019.

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Post Date: 06/02/2024

#jikook #park jimin #jimin #jeonjungkook #jungkook #bts in the military #2020 winter package #gcf in helsinki

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jockpoetry · 9 months

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golden lovers (2018-2023)

to the dead - frank bidart // njpw road to tokyo dome (photo credit) - 12/15/18 // langston hughes // starrcast 2 // njpw wrestle kingdom 15 01/05/2021 // i have some friends - robert w. service // aew dynamite - 10/31/19 // wrestling with angels - robert stock // njpw g1 climax 28 & aew full gear 2020 // song of myself - walt whitman // 01/30/2021 // wild geese - mary oliver // aew full gear 2021 // wrestling - louisa s. bevington // 09/15/22 // 01/04/23 // aew dynamite - 07/12/23 // to you - frank o'hara // aew dynamite - 07/19/2023 // to the dead - frank bidart

#kenny omega #kota ibushi #golden lovers #hangman page #aewedit #my edit #u: built a pyre and burnt himself up #long post

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pressnat · 1 year

Photo

MEUS CC’S MASCULINOS FAVORITOS + CC/ MY FAVORITE MALE CC || PART 1

⇢ basics ||

eyes. https://www.patreon.com/posts/d-o-l-c-e-v2-eye-68183687?l=fr

eyelash. https://kijiko-catfood.com/3d-lashes-version2-for-skin-detail-experimental/

skinblend. https://lamatisse.tumblr.com/post/612766683809136640/butterish-my-first-skinblend-i-made-like-two

skinoverlay. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lemonade-skin-62813813

skintone. https://www.patreon.com/posts/bare-skintone-40506361

skin detail. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

freckles . https://www.patreon.com/posts/40247063

nose shade. https://faaeishccpreviews.tumblr.com/post/648642853067800576/skin-details-nose-shaders-by-faaeish-download

blush. https://squeamishsims.tumblr.com/post/185846308452/booboo-blush-by-squeamishsims-so-ive-tried-so

eyebrows. https://www.patreon.com/posts/whispy-eyebrows-62391460?utm_source=Patreon&utm_campaign=Whispy+Eyebrows

lips. https://www.patreon.com/posts/55703083

mouth corners. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

~~~~

⇢ presets ||

lip. https://www.patreon.com/posts/memphis-lip-43736936

nose. https://poyopoyosim.tumblr.com/post/686774059407736833/male-nose-presets-n5n6n7n8-teen

jaw. https://www.patreon.com/posts/jiumiqaq-jaw-72054166

~~~~

⇢ hair/cabelos ||

01. https://www.patreon.com/posts/oh-my-god-were-58952703

02. https://jny-sims.tumblr.com/post/685668030601117696/jny-redo-hair

03. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pelo-bueno-male-33392785

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/male-hair-pack-2-65951700

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/kent-hair-62397490

06. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

07. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

08. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

09. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

10. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71551981

11. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71827369

12. https://www.patreon.com/posts/72827056

13. https://www.patreon.com/posts/levi-hair-73080895

14. https://www.patreon.com/posts/79061220

15. https://allabouthatcc.tumblr.com/post/656904403834503168/grimcookies-hair-dump-ive-updated-all-of-my-old

16. https://aharris00britney.tumblr.com/post/187194346870/axa-2019-official-release

17. https://okruee.tumblr.com/post/684075013010243584/sylvester-hair-hi-babes-info-masculine-frame

18. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58261906

19. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lorenzo-by-54215805

20. https://www.patreon.com/posts/marco-by-56792600

21. https://www.patreon.com/posts/federico-by-70185929

22. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

23. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

24. https://www.patreon.com/posts/70428613

25. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58551246

26. https://liliili-sims4.tumblr.com/post/691837200658219008/bruno-hair-bgc-hat-compatible-24

27. https://qrqr19.tumblr.com/post/673612023225073664/hair-24-fluorite-hair-25-peridot-hair-26

28. https://qr19sims.blogspot.com/2022/03/hair-27-28-29.html

~~~~

⇢ beard/barba ||

01. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

02. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

03. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

04. https://www.veigasims.com/2018/07/beard-facial-hair-style-12.html

05. https://www.veigasims.com/2020/11/beard-facial-hair-style-15.html

06. https://www.veigasims.com/2022/08/facial-hair-style-33.html

~~~~

⇢ acc/acessórios ||

01. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

02. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/696230540558385152/equinox-collection-its-the-start-of-my-favorite

03. https://www.patreon.com/adrienpastel

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/warm-5-item-set-60918114

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/round-square-38706995

06. https://maxismatchccworld.tumblr.com/post/190436912960/liliili-sims-scarf-collection-scarf-no1-45

07. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

youtube

#ts4 #ts4 sims #ts4 cc #ts4 lookbook #ts4 create a sim #ts4 male sims #ts4 male hair #ts4 male clothing #ts4 male cc #the sims 4 #the sims 4 sims #the sims 4 cc #the sims 4 create a sim #the sims 4 lookbook #the sims 4 male cc #the sims 4 male hair #the sims 4 male clothing #mc #pressnat

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yessa-vie · 7 months

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❝PIRATE KINGDOM❞ . CHOI SAN . SMAU!

→ SUMMARY. It all starts when you and your friends are kicked out of your shared apartment, causing you to ask your childhood best friend (and idol) for help, which leads you to live with him and the other members of his kpop group. From there on, you completely enter the world of kpop, creating the best friendships you could ask for, and, as if working with kdramas wasn't enough, your life ends up becoming the best example of one with each passing moment. and your best friends are the main spectators and commentators of all the drama that has surrounded your life since it all began.

→ PAIRING. idol!Choi San x actress!afab!reader (main) || Juyeon x reader || some platonic pairing as well.

→ TYPE. social media au.

→ GENRE. stranger to friends to lovers, fluff, a little angs (on ocasion just bc), slow burn (!). if any part is to be written, it will be complementary and not a necessity to read it, but I don't really plan on having them atp.

→ WARNINGS. the story starts officially on febuary 2020, I'm not gonna focus a lot on the hair colors and their agendas or else I'll go insane to match everything but I'll do my best, idol! au, she/her pronouns, normalization of drinking/getting drunk, toxic envyroment (lightly), body dismorphia, idols are human beings. [more to be added if needed]

→ FEATURING. stray kids, astro, itzy, the boyz, oneus, txt, enhypen, aespa, and other. NOT ALL FROM EVERY GROUP WILL APPEAR, NOR WITH SUCH A PRESENCE LIKE ATEEZ AND STRAY KIDS.

→ STATUS. on going.

↪ started: 07.10.2023 (dd/mm/yyyy)

↪ ended: [ON HIATUS]

→ UPDATES. when I can and most likely on the weekends or whenever there's a hollyday and I get my hands on the laptop so I can update.

→ TAGLIST. open (here's the form).

→ IMPORTANT. the ATEEZ guys appear first in chapter 07, with some interaction with the members, but Wooyoung is the first one to interact directly with the reader, then progressively, the others start to interect and to become friends.

if you want to support me and my writing, you can buy me coffee here! I already thank you for you time and attention.

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, PLAGIARISE OR REPURPOSE.

twitter profiles: y/n babies || skz || teez || extras

teaser 01 || teaser 02 || teaser 03 || teaser 04 || teaser 05

PART I: princess.

01. me and jisung need help

02. Chan, can we keep her?

03. but I do love Moonbin more than you

04. crushing my dreams again

05. my baby?

06. keep the real ones close

06.1. happy birthday princeling 📝

07. 8M1T

08. I dare you

09. she did what now?

10. happened during rehearsals

11. Eric YES!

PART II: kingdom.

12. denial stage

12.1. catching fire 📝 12.2. 8Makes1AmazingTeam 📝

13. it's not how it looks

14. what you share online (??)

15. ?? (??.??.2024)

16. ?? (??.??.2024)

17. ?? (??.??.2024)

18. ?? (??.??.2024)

bonus (just extras that i did for fun):

↪ mostly will be smau, not sure if I'll put a written part here yet, but I do have some ideas. if they are written parts they will have the emoji that says they are written, other wise, they'll be smau.

⤳ pre debut han (??.??.????)

⤳ jung 'big mouth' wooyoung (??.??.????)

⤳ house warming 'party' 📝(??.??.????)

⤳ i'll prove it 📝(??.??.????)

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lindalofbroome · 7 months

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Roddacember 2023!!

Roddacember runs during December to celebrate all of Emily Rodda’s books. With a new prompt every day, make a piece of fan content of your choice. You can draw some art, write fic, make a playlist, rant about something, or whatever you vibe with! Remember to tag it #Roddacember 2023 so we can check it out <3 I’ve also created an AO3 collection for those who would like to write fics!

Update

This is my attempt at taking the best of the past years and bringing something for everyone. What I've come up with are three levels of abstraction that (hopefully) serve as different levels of difficulty. The first week-ish draws more from 2019's style, and the last couple weeks are the more recent style, with the middle being a segue between them. (i kinda struggled to make questions, but you're welcome to use the prompts as keywords for your own!)

Notes

A reminder that you don’t have to commit to every day. Take care of yourself. You can make it more manageable by skipping days. It’s also okay to alter the prompt slightly for grammatical purposes, if you so wish (e.g. growth –> growing) or to cut out irrelevant words (e.g. animal or monster -> animal). Feel free to interpret the prompts as metaphorically or as literally as you want! If there’s anything you are confused about, feel free to ask me in the notes or DMs or whatever. You can also check out what the fandom did previously at #Roddacember 2022, #Roddacember 2021, #Roddacember 2020 and #Roddacember 2019.

Prompts in text below:

Your Favourite

01. Character 02. Place 03. Animal or monster 04. Something you wish was real 05. Magic 06. People, culture, or tradition 07. Filli❔ 08. Relationship of any kind 09. Symbols or signs

Memorable Moments:

10. Epic 11. Courage 12. Deception 13. Power 14. Foreshadowing 15. Playful 16. Envy 17. Solution

Abstract:

18. Ripples 19. Design 20. Trade 21. Nurture 22. Technology 23. Intricacy 24. Mend 25. Twisted 26. Pathway 27. Watch 28. Growth 29. Time 30. Unity 31. Essence of Rodda

#roddacember 2023 prompts #roddacember 2023 #roddacember #roddacember prompts #postlyn #emily rodda #roddaverse #deltora quest #rowan of rin #star of deltora #the three doors #and all the other rodda books <3 #//#lads im so sorry i meant to post these earlier but life just hasnt been It lately :)#(sarcastic smiley face)#alas rejoice for prompts arrive #we got red left so at least one more roddacember and we have a colour set

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nevermindirah · 3 months

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Who talks to who, for how long and about what, in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince Bythewood?

I got curious and so I watched the movie taking a lot of timestamp notes. way back three and a half years ago now, I watched this movie for the first time bc I like gritty action movies, and it's a really good one of those. I'm still obsessed with it all this time later because it's full to the brim with well-drawn characters who have compelling relationships with each other, and boy howdy does the data show it.

I was especially curious about who spends how much time alone together on screen, so I coded all the scenes with that in mind, and I found some really interesting patterns in the breakdown of scenes where just two characters talk, where one character is the sole focus, and when three characters talk.

the winners of course are Nile and Andy, our dual protagonists, who spend 10% of the movie's total runtime alone together. they also spend a lot of time with our dual friendly antagonists, Booker and Copley. scenes featuring combinations of just these four characters make up 40% of the total runtime.

Joe and Nicky show up less in this analysis because they're side characters who mostly appear in group scenes, but wow are they richly drawn side characters. they're key players in all but two scenes where four or more named characters talk.

read on for many numbers and much analysis of what it all means!

Andy Nile 0:12:20 Nile Booker 0:06:00 Andy Booker Copley 0:05:22 Andy Booker 0:05:01 Andy Nile Booker 0:04:56 Nile Copley 0:04:18 Nile alone 0:04:07 Andy alone 0:03:31

Andy Celeste 0:02:49 Merrick Copley 0:02:41 Joe Nicky 0:02:24 Nile Dizzy Jay 0:01:33 Andy Quynh 0:01:31 Andy Nile Merrick 0:00:52 Booker alone 0:00:32 Copley alone 0:00:28 Nicky Kozak 0:00:27 Booker Quynh 0:00:21 Copley Keane 0:00:09

(the spreadsheet, if anyone's interested in digging deeper with me)

of the 12 min that our main characters are alone together on screen, almost fully half is super duper antagonistic:

4:26 is the kidnapping sequence

1:29 is their conversation outside after Nile's nightmare featuring the iconic "me and those three men in there will keep you safe" "like Quynh?"

and 7 seconds is Nile glaring daggers at Andy after walking over all those bodies in the church

the other half breaks down like this:

2:14 is them connecting over their mortal families — where Andy makes Nile give her phone back at the end

1:45 is Nile telling Andy she's not doing this, that she's going back to her family — Andy pushes with "we'd do the same for you" but then relents and gives Nile the car

50 seconds of them gearing up for the last segment of the fight — Nile tries to get Andy to wear a bulletproof vest, she jokes around with "is this gonna be like the last signal?" — it's operations-focused but there's a real warmth between them by this point in the movie (this scene starts at 1:41:45, just 13 min before the credits roll)

and 1:29 of Andy looking at Nile like she hung the moon (which, extremely valid and relatable!) and Nile saying that the time Andy's got left "you're gonna spend it with us"

Nile has an uninterrupted 4:18 sequence with Copley that speed runs the same general shape of her arc with Andy, hella antagonistic to teamwork, though the latter here is more of a professional camaraderie than the real warmth we see Nile develop for Andy.

in this context Nile's arc with Booker is remarkably different. their first scene alone together is 1:11 in total, intercut with Andy killing mercs elsewhere in the church, and it's sort of their only scene with friction between them. Booker keeps telling Nile to wait for the signal without explaining what that means, annoyingly continuing Andy's grand tradition of not fucking answering Nile's reasonable questions, ugh. though another way of framing this is of course that he's too busy packing her a change of clothes while showing off his tits for her. as I noted in a previous meta, the end of this sequence is the one time Booker lies to Nile (claiming he doesn't know who the mercs are when he has at least a basic idea, though we don't know for sure whether Copley involved him in this specific plan).

after this Nile and Booker have two more scenes alone together and they're both extended conversations: 3:14 for their conversation alone in the cave after Andy leaves, and 1:18 when Nile joins Booker on the balcony outside the bar. both of these conversations are remarkably intimate for how little these characters have interacted beforehand. remember, 6:02 total of Nile and Andy alone together with heavy animosity (Andy shot Nile in the head ffs!) before things between them started to warm up. granted, the conversation where they first start to warm to each other is right after Nile's cave scene with Booker and Andy's scene with Celeste, so an argument could be made that this was the point in the movie where Nile started to feel ready to open up to the other immortals generally and her first one-on-one conversation once she got there was with Booker before Andy. I'm not saying you have to ship them just because they get so close so quick, but the numbers sure do make it clear that us BoNers aren't making this shit up out of nowhere.

Nile and Booker's heart-to-heart in the mine is the third-longest one-on-one conversation in the whole movie — third after Andy kidnapping Nile and Nile's sequence with Copley, which are both heavy on action and exposition and antagonism, making this the longest intimate conversation in the movie. their other heart-to-heart, 1:18 on the balcony outside the pub, is on par with Joe and Nicky's 1:17 in the van.

there's also a 51 sec sequence during the Merrick tower fight where it intercuts pretty much equally between three subsets of the action: Andy going off on her own with an axe, Joe waiting for Nicky to wake up after that head shot, and Nile and Booker being drift compatible when Nile's gun jams. we're not making this shit up out of nowhere.

ok back to our blorbos in chief. we get 4:07 of Nile as the sole focus, and 3:31 of the same for Andy.

the sequence of Nile going through hell on base just because she fucking lived (laser eyes @ her squad forever) lasts 1:14 and includes a few lines from minor characters. we get 15 sec of her first dreaming of the others and waking up unmoored, then a 20 sec reprise with her nightmare of the first person she killed. the sequence of her driving away from Copley's then figuring out what the empty gun clip means is 48 sec. and then, one of the things that stood out to me the most in really digging into these numbers: just how frequently and for how long the camera lingers on Nile's face in this movie.

extended closeups of Nile with no dialogue and no montage:

10 seconds staring at the car she crushed, killing Merrick in the process but somehow not herself

36 seconds in the elevator

and a whopping 44 seconds of listening to Frank Ocean

that's fully 1 minute and thirty seconds of this movie's 2 hr 5 min credits-included runtime devoted exclusively to long takes of Nile Freeman's face.

Andy's sole-focus time is a little less tidy, because the majority of it isn't precisely focused on her like with Nile. we get 15 sec of her staring at her hand, realizing her immortality is gone. I could have coded all the pieces of the movie more granularly to find all the moments where we get Andy reaction shots, but I also could've done that with all of them and I'm but one humble spreadsheet lover, and it's more interesting to me that Gina primarily uses other kinds of film language to put us into Andy's perspective.

1:35 of her cutting through all those mercs in the church — other people are active in this scene, but they're not shown as people, and the horror of that is exactly the point, for the viewer, for Nile, and for Andy herself

41 sec of her voiceover at the opening of the movie, over clips of the kill floor scene

1 min of her moodily sitting in the car after the pharmacy and flashing back to Lykon's death

the Andy/Quynh flashback sequence that's a subset of Nicky and Joe narrating to Nile is 1:31, so counting that alongside this flashback here brings us to a total of 2:31 of Andy/Quynh(/Lykon) alone together screen time. almost precisely equal to Joe and Nicky's total 2:24 alone together.

further underlining Booker and Copley as our tritagonists, we get one scene of on-screen alone time for each of them: 32 seconds of Booker being drunk six months later and 28 seconds of Copley reacting to the kill floor footage. it's easy to focus on the Andy in a Union uniform element of this Copley scene, but a photo of his late wife is visible in almost every frame. I went back and double checked — only 3 sec of those 28 don't contain that photo of his wife displayed proudly between the kill floor footage and the Civil War photo, 3 sec of Copley in closeup. now that's what I call environmental storytelling.

we get almost exactly 5 min each with the sets Andy + Booker + Copley, Andy + Booker, and Andy + Nile + Booker. ABC and ANB conversations tend toward driving the plot and fleshing out detail about immortality, though a decent chunk of ANB in the "is this a Rodin?" part of the cave scene is Nile and Booker talking about following the money (their first moment of drift compatibility!) while Andy angsts nearby, and a decent chunk of ABC at Copley's place is Andy and Booker's heartbreaking "this is what you wanted" "not like this" exchange while Copley awkwardly hovers. just under half of Andy and Booker's 5:01 on screen alone together is about his betrayal, 2:13 across three scenes. the other half breaks out pretty evenly between them talking about Nile, making battle plans, and just being pals.

has any mid-budget gritty action movie ever done it better? even the infodumps are full of character and relationship details.

I also find it noteworthy that Booker and Copley are never alone together, and they never directly acknowledge anything about their relationship. we know from what they tell other characters that they've been in contact before the events of the movie, probably for some time in some detail. we know they worked together to ultimately enable the cartoon-villain antagonists to do their villainy. Copley is direct about how these results were absolutely not what he intended, and we can infer from Booker's behavior that he wasn't aiming for decades of medical torture either. but we get no information about how they feel about each other. now that I'm looking at it with this frame, it seems like the absence of information is itself a kind of telling — Booker and Copley maybe purposefully avoiding 1:1 contact, purposefully treating each other as mere acquaintances when others are around, because to do otherwise would be to look their guilt in the eye. oh shit I think I might have given myself a whole new meta idea on this tangent here: Copley and Booker as mirrors for each other.

disclaimer as we're nearing the end that there's inevitably going to be bias and error in something like this. I measured by seconds not milliseconds and I wasn't always precise about where I paused to note timestamps at scene changes. sometimes I included what ended up amounting to several seconds of establishing shots and sometimes I didn't. and there are a bunch of edge cases where there's more than one way to count who was an active part of which scenes, like for example:

I separated out Andy and Booker's opening motorcycle stalking and Don Quijote chat from the later part of what was probably just one scene in the script, where Booker talks to the hotel clerk while Andy interacts with tourists nearby

I included all as one Nile + Dizzy + Jay scene the sequence where Dizzy and Jay talk to each other about Nile before they go into the med tent and act shitty to her face about how Nile's still alive

I counted as Copley + Merrick the conversation in the car where Keane and Kozak are present and react on camera but don't have lines per se

similarly I counted as Andy + Booker the "she wants to talk to her family" exchange after Nile and Nicky leave the dinner table; Joe's still sitting there next to them but he doesn't say anything and the camera doesn't focus on him

I didn't try to delete the time where Andrei said/did stuff from the 4:26 Andy kidnaps Nile sequence but I did remove a Keane cut-away from a later Andy + Nile scene

so much has already been lovingly written about how well Joe and Nicky spend their short on-screen alone time and rightly so. I don't have anything new to add there so I'll take a moment instead to shout out to the 27 sec of Nicky telling Kozak to go fuck herself, and also the iconic Joe headbutting Merrick. fuck, this movie is so so good. every moment is a delight.

#the old guard #tog meta #tog #mine

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whumpetywhump · 9 months

Text

The Romance Of Tiger And Rose (2020)

Han Shuo

01:

- Pretends to have a heart attack, collapses into his friend’s arms, taking medication

- Coughing, clutching his chest

02:

- Forced to kneel, humiliated, coughing and clutching his chest, fed medication

- Humiliated, almost stripped in public

04:

- Coughing, breathless, clutching his chest

05:

- Clutching his chest, struggling to breathe, passes out, dragged to a bed, cradled, medicated, needs help to stand

06:

- Shot in the chest with a dart, collapses and passes out, chained up, cut across the chest so one of his ribs can be removed, protected, volunteers to let them cut out his rib to save his wife

11:

- Slashed across the back

12:

- Has the wound from last episode cleaned and treated, flinching

- Drugged with an aphrodisiac, dizzy, collapses to his knees, slapped in the face, fighting the effects, punches a wall, bloody knuckles

13:

- Still fighting the effects of the drug from last episode, collapses, passes out

15:

- Forced to wear a copper bracelet that brands him as his wife’s property, flinching in pain while it’s fitted, later seen with his wrist bandaged

17:

- Alternate Time Line: Face cut and bruised from battle, stabbed in the chest, pulls the blade out himself, witnesses his friend’s death, stabbed again, vomiting blood

18:

- Drugged, passes out, wakes up in a cell with his hands chained

- Betrayed by his wife, rips off the copper bracelet, bleeding from the wrist

- Exiled, still chained during transportation

21:

- Slashed across the arm in a swordfight

- Locked in a cell, sentenced to death, tied up and forced to kneel at the chopping block, rescued and protected

24:

- Stabbed in the chest, bleeding from the mouth, collapses and passes out, barely conscious in bed, diagnosed with terminal lung damage

- Trying to sit up, weak and coughing, falls while trying to stand, vomiting blood

- Unable to walk without support, vomiting blood again, collapses, cradled

- Alternate Time Line: Recovering in hospital after a car accident

TW: Contains themes of domestic abuse and noncon

#the romance of tiger and rose #cdrama #whump #cwhump #asian whump #whump list #ding yu xi

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msb-lair · 1 year

Photo

Scene Banners and Dividers - Post 12 of 12

[Post 1] [Post 2] [Post 3] [Post 4] [Post 5] [Post 6] [Post 7] [Post 8] [Post 9] [Post 10] [Post 11] [Post 12]

Decided to do a set of banners and dividers based on the scene images that would match, in style and size, my set of Coliseum Dividers. As new scenes get added to Flight Rising, they’ll get added to this set of photosets.

When linking from these images, make sure you’ve clicked on an image in the photoset and are doing your right click -> copy image link from the full size (640 pixel width) images, not from the downsized dashboard images. You are also welcome to copy these images and host them somewhere else if you find that more convenient. When attributing these images (not required) please link back to the first post.

Photoset #1:

Autumn Clearing

Foxfire Grove

Frostbite Falls

Moonbeam Aquaduct

Pillow Palace

Photoset #2:

Remembrance

Rocky Refuge

Royal Chamber

Shoreline Serenity

Starksand Dunes

Photoset #3:

Titan’s Fall

Wedfiend Cave

Lightweaver’s Domain (added 2020-06-22)

Flamecaller’s Domain (added 2020-11-14)

Stormcatcher’s Domain (added 2020-11-14)

Photoset #4 (added 2020-11-14):

Voyage of the Tenacity

Arcanist’s Domain

Plaguebringer’s Domain

Earthshaker’s Domain (added 2020-12-10)

Golem Workshop (added 2020-12-10)

Photoset #5 (added 2020-12-24):

Strange Chests

Quaint Parlor

Dusty Attic

Serpent Shrine (2021-01-22)

Icewarden’s Domain (2021-02-06)

Photoset #6 (added 2021-02-06):

Flowering Wasteland

Shadowbinder’s Domain (added 2021-02-24)

Training Field (added 2021-05-24)

Windsinger’s Domain (added 2021-05-24)

Tidelord’s Domain (added 2021-05-24)

Photoset #7 (added 2021-05-24):

Greenskeeper Gathering (added 2021-05-24)

Sandswept Delta (added 2021-06-02)

Blooming Grove (added 2021-06-02)

Arena (added 2021-06-02)

Waterway (added 2021-06-02)

Photoset #8 (added 2021-06-08):

8th Anniversary

Sunparched Prowl (added 2021-06-18)

Target Practice (added 2021-08-05)

Armory (added 2021-08-05)

Battlefield (added 2021-08-05)

Photoset #9 (added 2021-09-12):

Drakeharvest

Mire (added 2021-10-22)

Frigidfin Expedition (2021-12-20)

Enchanted Dungeon (2021-12-20)

Haunted Museum (2021-12-20)

Photoset #10 (Added 2022-02-12):

Lovebird Landscape

Garden Arches

Thunder Lizards (added 2022-02-18)

Kelp Beds (added 2022-03-19)

Ancient Harpy Canyon (2022-05-21)

Photoset #11 (2022-12-08):

Summer

Pirate Town

Autumn

Elder Sea

Harpy City (2022-12-15)

Photoset #12 (2022-12-22):

Witch’s Kitchen

Enchanted Library

Winter

#Flight Rising #Scenes #Scene Dividers #Banners #Dividers #Bio Resources

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

Text

Kashmir Hill’s “Your Face Belongs to Us”

This Friday (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. That night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

Your Face Belongs To Us is Kashmir Hill's new tell-all history of Clearview AI, the creepy facial recognition company whose origins are mired in far-right politics, off-the-books police misconduct, sales to authoritarian states and sleazy one-percenter one-upmanship:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691288/your-face-belongs-to-us-by-kashmir-hill/

Hill is a fitting chronicler here. Clearview first rose to prominence – or, rather, notoriety – with the publication of her 2020 expose on the company, which had scraped more than a billion facial images from the web, and then started secretly marketing a search engine for faces to cops, spooks, private security firms, and, eventually, repressive governments:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

Hill's original blockbuster expose was followed by an in-depth magazine feature and then a string more articles, which revealed the company's origins in white nationalist movements, and the mercurial jourey of its founder, Hoan Ton-That:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/facial-recognition-clearview-ai.html

The story of Clearview's technology is an interesting one, a story about the machine learning gold-rush where modestly talented technologists who could lay hands on sufficient data could throw it together with off-the-shelf algorithms and do things that had previously been considered impossible. While Clearview has plenty of competitors today, as recently as a couple of years ago, it played like a magic trick.

That's where the more interesting story of Clearview's founding comes in. Hill is a meticulous researcher and had the benefit of a disaffected – and excommunicated – Clearview co-founder, who provided her with masses of internal communications. She also benefited from the court documents from the flurry of lawsuits that Clearview prompted.

What emerges from these primary sources – including multiple interviews with Ton-That – is a story about a move-fast-and-break-things company at the tail end of the forgiveness-not-permission era of technological development. Clearview's founders are violating laws and norms, they're short on cash, and they're racing across the river on the backs of alligators, hoping to reach the riches on the opposite bank without losing a leg.

A decade ago, they might have played as heroes. Today, they're just grifters – bullshitters faking it until they make it, lying to Hill (and getting caught out), and the rest of us. The founders themselves are erratic weirdos, and not the fun kind of weirdos, either. Ton-That – who emigrated to Silicon Valley from Australia as a teenager, seeking a techie's fortune – comes across as a bro-addled dimbulb who threw his lot in with white nationalists, MAGA Republicans, Rudy Guiliani bagmen, Peter Theil, and assorted other tech-adjascent goblins.

Meanwhile, biometrics generally – and facial recognition specifically – is a discipline with a long and sordid history, inextricably entwined with phrenology and eugenics, as Hill describes in a series of interstitial chapters that recount historical attempts to indentify the facial features that correspond with criminality and low intelligence.

These interstitials are woven into a-ha moments from Clearview's history, in which various investors, employees, hangers-on, competitors and customers speculate about how a facial-recognition system could eventually not just recognize criminals, but predict criminality. It's a potent reminder of the AI industry's many overlaps with "race-science" and other quack beliefs.

Hill also describes how Clearview and its competitors' recklessness and arrogance created the openings for shrewd civil libertarians to secure bipartisan support for biometric privacy laws, most notably Illinois' best-of-breed Biometric Information Privacy Act:

https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004&ChapterID=57

But by the end of the book, Hill makes the case that Ton-That and his competitors have gotten away with it. Facial recognition is now so easy to build that – she says – we're unlikely to abolish it, despite all the many horrifying ways that FR could fuck up our societies. It's a sobering conclusion, and while Hill holds out some hope for curbing the official use of FR, she seems resigned to a future in which – for example – creepy guys covertly snap photos of women on the street, use those pictures to figure out their names and addresses, and then stalk and harass them.

If she's right, this is Ton-That's true legacy, and the legacy of the funders who handed him millions to spend building this. Perhaps someone else would have stepped into that sweaty, reckless-grifter-shaped hole if Ton-That hadn't been there to fill it, but in our timeline, we can say that Ton-That was the bumbler who helped destroy something precious.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/20/steal-your-face/#hoan-ton-that

#pluralistic #books #reviews #gift guide #clearview ai #facial recognition #biometrics #eugenics #crime #privacy #cop shit #hoan ton-that

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kanmom51 · 10 months

Note

Hi. I know you've talked a lot about the jikook number theory, and I MAY have found something? Emphasis on the MAY because I was bored and my delulu mind became active for a little while(sorry, not sorry🙇‍♀️).

Anyway, I stumbled onto a k-army's post on twt, according to which, one of the posts made by JM on June 15th at 23:23 about waiting for 2 more hours, meaning the 16th, means it would be 1108 since still with you was released(5th June,2023).

Now, as I said I was bored and it was past midnight here so I checked and it wasn't 1108 days since SWY. 1108 days from that date would me 18th of June, 2023, the day JK posted two selcas on weverse.

But I did find a couple of coincidences and I maybe totally out of my mind, but hear me out for a sec!

1. JM's post on the 15th was at 23:23 KST. It contained something about waiting for just 2 more hours. Which would mean 1:23 KST. (Reference to the infamous 123 jikook theory)

2. JK's selcas on the 18th of June marks 1108 days since still with you and it was posted at 11:39 KST. The numbers are a combination of various things. 11, their speculated anniversary month, 13 JM's birthday and both of their fav number and even JK's birthday can be found.

Was I so bored that I just overanalysed it? Was it all just a coincidence?

I'd honestly love to know your thoughts as well!

Ok, @beardedcolorduck so let's see where we are with this.

JK's Weverse post was posted 18 June 2023 11:39 am KST or 17 June 2023 7:39 pm or 19:39 LA time.

Still with you was released on 4 June 2020 or on June 5 2020.

See, there is a question mark regarding the date of release, or more like difference I am assuming that arises from the difference in time zones.

In any case I can't explain this:

When I share this link the date that shows is 4 June 2020.

When I go into the link the date that shows is 5 June 2020.

I can't explain it, maybe you guys know why (seeing that both of them are me writing from the same IP address in Australia).

Anyway, I digress.

If we count the days from 4 June 2020 to 17 June 2023 or from 5 June 2020 to 18 June 2023 (see, I'm assuming that the differences are due to the time zones) we get this:

Huh.

It works.

Interesting indeed.

Another coincidence do you think?

So yeah, not JM's post, but JK's post the one landing 1108 days after Still with you.

As for the numbers working otherwise, let's see what we can get.

If we look at the date alone as 17.6.23 we get 1+7=8 and 6+2+3=11

8/11

7:39 gives us 7+3+9=19

1/9

The next one is a bit far fetched I think, but then, again, I'm not taking this all too seriously (just to clarify - there are numbers that I do, this specific calculation I don't).

With the 19:39 we ate the 1+9=10 and we have the 3+9=12 bring that down to a one digit which will be 1+3=3

10+3=13

Now to your first insight.

JM's 23:23 post telling us to wait another 2 hours. I have to tell you that on the day that one puzzled me. I thought maybe something was coming, an announcement maybe. And when that didn't come I was baffled as to what was JM telling us. Was he waiting a couple of hours for JK to wake up? But then why mention it? JM is very precise as to what he mentions. Super calculated. There is always meaning behind it, even if we don't understand what that meaning is.

His 23:23 comment: Let's hold on for 2 hours. Just 2 hours.

Very specific, and repeating the 2 hours.

What you are suggesting is very interesting, you know?

23:23 plus 2 hours will bring us to 01:23, which is definitely giving us the 123.

The whole thing with the 123 theory is that we think we know where it originated (might have meant something to them way before but that's the first time it's mentioned) - Festa 2014 JM's profile Just one day MV at 1:23 min. represents him best. JK was by his side while filling out that profile. Since then we have had song recommendations ending at 1:23 min., posts timed at 12:30 or 1:23 am, posts on January 23rd etc. We know there is very possibly something going on with that sequence of numbers, but what it is exactly or more so, what it means to them exactly, we don't know.

Anyway, 123 is a very interesting result, and I definitley wouldn't put it past JM that this is what he was aiming for.

Another path with the numbers is:

1:23 16.6

We have the 1 from the time.

If we take the 2+3+1+6+6=18

1+8=9

You end up with:

1/9

Or the simpler path:

1:23 is just that: 123

And the date: 16.6 which easily is 1+6+6=13

123 and 13

I'm sure there is something I'm missing. Him repeating the 2 hours twice kind of makes me think maybe he was aiming for 3:23 am, but I can't seem to get the math mathing. Or maybe it is? Not sure how legitimate this one is with Karmy, but I'll put it out there anyway:

3:23 16.6.2023

6+2+3=11

1+6+2+2+3+3=17

1+7=8

11/8

Like I said, no idea if this is legitimate mathing, but it's fun and the numbers work.

End of the day, I have zero idea what JM was aiming for. All I am sure of is that he doesn't waste words with his posts, and he was clearly hinting to something.

#Jungkook #JK #JK Weverse #Jimin #JM #JM Weverse #Jikook #Kookmin #Minkook #Jikook numbers #Jikook 123 #Jikook 11/8

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