#new 2023 04

[jpf-sydney]

Yasuke

Book review:

It's 1579 and the end of Japan's warring age appears imminent. Few warlords remain who have not been crushed or enthralled by the might of Oda Nobunaga, the great unifier. Making inroads are firearms, European fashion and Christianity. Into this world steps Yasuke, a towering, dark skinned African bodyguard who ascends to Nobunaga's inner circle. More than a biography, this is a detailed account of martial, upper-echelon, pre Edo Japan.

Taking place amidst some of the most exciting and violent years of Japanese history, this is a riveting textbook camouflaged as a biography. Yasuke was an intriguing oddity. A singular black African soldier, he arrived at a time when Europeans were rare and himself nearly unique. He rises to become a confidant of the most powerful warlord the country had seen and officially gains elevation to samurai, complete with stipend and household. He's also a linguistic genius going from fresh off the boat, barely heard of Japan, and within a year he is conversing with the defacto head of state, not only without embarrassing himself but well enough that Nobunaga would specifically sought him out for discourse.

Yasuke's story is the backbone to two other major elements that contribute to the bulk of the 400 pages of content. Digressions are frequent and sometimes expansive. These cover relevant character backstories, the state of the world, the Jesuit order, scientific advances, ocean travel, regional history, local history, cultural notes and other circumstantial information. The other major element is Oda Nobunaga. His looming presence and monumental impact mean that Yasuke is sometimes an excuse for a massive infodumping of Nobunaga's manoeuvrings, political intrigues, regional factions, personal histories and warfare. This last point is not to be taken lightly. Another review goes as far as saying that "blood and gore ooze from the pages". Perhaps an exaggeration but  it does viscerally convey the martial activity prevalent to Yasuke's world.

Yasuke is the work of Thomas Lockley of Nihon University College of Law, Tokyo, in collaboration with Geoffrey Girard. Described by some sources as a debut novel, it certainly feels as if great care and attention have been lavished into its details. It was first published in 2019 as African Samurai. Arguably a much better and very literal title but perhaps confusable with the separate cult fiction property, Afro Samurai. The latter being an action slasher in a generic Edo-ish setting with light cyber and supernatural genre blending. More recently, an older, fictionalised Yasuke stars in a Netflix OVA adaptation, again featuring an altered history and very anachronistic Edo. 

Shelf: 210.48 YAS Yasuke : the true story of the legendary African samurai. by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard.

Paperback edition. London : Sphere, 2020. ISBN: 9780751571592 (paperback)

472 pages : illustrations, map ; 20 cm.

First published in Canada?, 2019 as African Samurai by Hanover Square Press. Includes bibliographical references and index (pages [457]-472).

#review #jcentral #non-fiction #history #biography #sengoku jidai #sengoku period #oda nobunaga #warring states #samurai #warfare #religion #christianity #jesuits #review 2023 04 #new 2023 04

[pigeonneaux]

Rose and her Doctor

#I thought i posted this here already but turns out i didn't #myart #Doctor who #Rose Tyler #Knights #Armor #Tenth doctor #Tenrose #I have only one complaint about dw. Its lack of Historical clothing >:((((((((((( #I want to see my blorbos wearing the coolest 14th century clothed or some 70's pattes d'ef is that too much to ask for #New who #04/01/2023 #I need to study her face fr #He looks like himself #She looks like no one :(

[glimmerofawesome]

#hannah wilkinson #thea bjelde #norwnt #nzlwnt #new zealand v norway #july 20 2023 #wwc23 #wwc 2023 #44:04

[louwhose]

~louwhose~

!!!COMMISSIONS OPEN!!!

hey! I'm lou, and I like reading, writing, drawing, cats, webtoons, kids, camping, fishing, food... uh, a lot of stuff, really! I don't like fruit, anything that requires effort, boredom, or coloring pieces (but I always do it anyway).

Currently really obsessed with The Legend of Zelda (I've played Breath of the Wild, Ocarina of Time, Skyward Sword, Majora's Mask, Minish Cap, Link's Awakening, A Link Between Worlds, Tears of the Kingdom, Wind Waker, and Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, currently playing ALttP). I have been obsessed with the Cosmere for about the past eight years and also love the Rithmatist and the Cytoverse. The Scholomance, Dwight in Shining Armor, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, Oresama Teacher, SPY X FAMILY, Full Metal Alchemist, webtoons (gonna say my current favorites are Cursed Princess Club, Who's Mr. President, and the Kiss Bet, in no particular order), Percy Jackson, and Phineas and Ferb are also things I love and would love to talk about.

AO3 | Instagram | Fic Masterlist | Art Masterlist

Art tag (lou draws) | Writing tag (lou writes)

#new pinned post for the new year #pinned post #note to self: last updated 04/11/2023 #starting to think that it would be easier to say the loz games I HAVEN'T played #also probably want a full redo of this soon... hmmm

[happywebdesign]

https://yondercontent.com/

#Yonder #production #company #Portland #NYC #New York #portfolio #video #videos #typography #type #typeface #font #Apercu #2023 #Week 04 #website #web design #inspire #inspiration #happywebdesign

[just-slightly-chayotic]

thank you sos for reminding me that it's april fools, that was actually a pretty decent way to find out

#just because i saw the reply first #where they go 'april fools!' #and also because i can't read dates so when i saw the 01/04/2023 new song thing i just went!!! oh cool!! new jeff song in like a month!! #studio on saturn #tea's ramblings

[alpha-mag-media]

‘My lazy anti-aging tip costs $1 and is good in the bedroom too,’ Jackie Siegel gives first look inside new luxury home | 1V2GD37 | 2023-12-31 04:08:01 | December 31, 2023 at 05:08AM

‘My lazy anti-aging tip costs $1 and is good in the bedroom too,’ Jackie Siegel gives first look inside new luxury home | 1V2GD37 | 2023-12-31 04:08:01 Read More … Check full articles at Source: ALPHA MAG

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#‘My lazy anti-aging tip costs $1 and is good in the bedroom too #’ Jackie Siegel gives first look inside new luxury home | 1V2GD37 | 2023-12-31 04:08:01 #Politics #ShowBiz #Sport #Tech #UK #US #World

[heybrine]

Crystal Clutters Pack

Heeeey people! Crystal Creations came out (bugged as hell) and I loved these bookcases sooo much but it desperately needed changes, atleast for me. The *dust* two colored wood tones needed to go and it surelly needed the ladder for both sides! And so I did that!

I went even further making more swatches and making two swatches for each wood color, one with a version already with books in and one without anything! And also I made some clutters to put on your new bookcases!

Oh and all items in this pack are Base Game Compatible, so you dont need crystal creations to use this.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do! 📚💛

You can see more info on my patreon here!

And if you wish, you can get early access here! -- *available for everyone 04/14/2023*

#early access #sims 4 #ts4 #ts4cc #heybrine #ts4 custom content #ts4 maxis match #the sims 4 #s4cc #ts4mmcc #simblr #living room #living room pack #s4 maxis match #s4 custom content #s4 download #s4 cc #sims 4 maxis match #maxis match cc #maxis match #ts4 maxis cc #the sims 4 custom content #the sims 4 cc #build/buy #decor #bookcases

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

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/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #release energy #channel 4 #amazon #corporate intelligence #labor #unions #amazon labor union #the great Amazon heist #catfish uk #oobah butler #delivery service partner

[muslimstage1]

04/05/2023 ঈমাদারের ৫টি শর্ত | New Bangla Waz | Amamgir Hossain | আমির হ...

#youtube #04/05/2023 ঈমাদারের ৫টি শর্ত | New Bangla Waz | Amamgir Hossain | আমির হামজা কপি

[sadstarryeyes]

#my new plants #21/04/2023

[aimdotcom]

beep boop new blog smell

#idky i always make this post on new blogs #04/20/2023 #happy weed day beeteedubs

[almahiphop]

Dom Pachino - Cyborg

Dom Pachino lanza su primer sencillo Cyborg que hace parte de su ultimo álbum Terroristshit lanzado el 14 de febrero de 2023.

Dom Pachino lanza su primer sencillo Cyborg que hace parte de su ultimo álbum Terroristshit lanzado el 14 de febrero de 2023. Domingo J. Del Valle aka Dom Pachino es un rapero estadounidense nacido en el año 1970 en la ciudad de Nueva York, conocido también como The General, P.R. Terrorist o Dom P. Es miembro fundador del grupo Killarmy formado en Staten Island en 1995 jutno a los miembros…

View On WordPress

#02/14 #04/16 #2020&039;s Hip-Hop #2023 #Alma Hip Hop #D #Dom Pachino #Hip Hop Videos #Napalm Recordings #New York Rap #Rap Videos #Wu Tang Family

[muslimmember1]

যুবতী মেয়েদের সালামের উত্তর দেওয়া যাবে কি⁉ sheikh Ahmodullah | 12/04/202...

#youtube #যুবতী মেয়েদের সালামের উত্তর দেওয়া যাবে কি⁉ sheikh Ahmodullah | 12/04/2023 new waz

[happywebdesign]

https://officeofoverview.com/

#Overview #office of overview #design #studio #Brixton #portfolio #more new less déjà vu #typography #type #typeface #font #Monument Grotesk #Arizona Serif #2023 #Week 04 #website #web deisgn #inspire #inspiration #happywebdesign

[triaelf9]

Hey creators, mostly artists, heads up: Redbubble has added another fee. 

A HUGE fee. They make 85% off your sales now. Here’s a bit of a breakdown, using their numbers that I got from their own page: https://blog.redbubble.com/2023/04/how-account-fees-may-apply-to-you/

You sell $300 in products. You earn $75 from it. THE REST GOES TO REDBUBBLE. 

That’s already like WHAT REALLY, but now, with the new fee, you earn $47 actually. they get 85% now. They take nearly half of the pittance we were getting. Are you KIDDING ME

Their page says  "Let’s say you earn $15.50 in May. Then you will be charged $6.15 as an account fee. Your earnings for May are ($15.50 – $6.15) = $9.35."

Half of $15.50 is $7.75. $9.35 is only $1.60 from $7.75 

I make MAYBE $30-50 on redbubble, on a GOOD month. now it'll be $15-25. HECK

#redbubble #does anyone know a POD site I can use for prints #bc Japan postal service is still not fully reliable since Covid started #and POD is the only thing I #can use for anything over the size od a postcard #artists #artists on tumblr