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star-anise · 1 year

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So I've been watching this series of videos where a research-focused psychologist goes through Jordan Peterson's work to see which of his ideas and arguments are based on solid empirical evidence. I love it, even though she does mistakenly say his background is in counselling psychology (my field) when he's actually a clinical psychologist.

Anyway, that's got me thinking about Jordan Peterson, and how his response to criticism is, "People have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men — what a terrible thing to do, that is. [...] I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice.”

So, here's my theory: Young men of the 21st century have grown up in a culture that is specifically hostile and punitive towards them. However, I think that while girls and women can participate in this culture, it is as much or more the work of boys and men. And I think that the problem with Peterson is that he's not particularly good at helping his audience escape the maze they are trapped in--and he's absolutely opposed to any attempt to dismantle a maze that is actually of fairly recent manufacture.

Case in point: The metrosexual.

The word "metrosexual" was coined in 1994 by Mark Simpson, a gay writer whose settings seem to be perpetually fixed at "critique the shit out of it".

"Metrosexual" describes heterosexual men who might be mistaken as gay, because they are interested in things very common among gay men, including: Caring about whether they're attractive; caring about how their hair is cut and what products they use in it; caring about what clothes they wear; working out to make their bodies look better; frequenting nightclubs. To be "metrosexual" was, in some people's opinions, to be a "man-boy" searching for his "inner girl".

To be metrosexual was, in some ways, to be called someone who looked gay.

The term didn't really catch on until the early 2000s, when media became briefly obsessed with talking about which celebrities were "metrosexual" or not. In that era of hotly divided opinions over the acceptability of homosexuality and queerness, it was implicitly asking, "Who looks gay? Is he gay? Tell me, fellow broadcaster: How gay does this guy look to you?"

(They got to have their cake and eat it too. A liberal audience, desperate to gather as many LGBTQ+ people and allies as possible in their race for 50% acceptance of gay marriage, cherished any signs that people with social clout might be on their side. And a conservative one, watching the same discussion, would heartily enjoy seeing a rogues' gallery of degenerate Hollywood types paraded before them, their every effeminacy pointed out in loving detail.)

Which of course got us: The Retrosexual!

When everybody's helpfully compiling lists of all the things a man can do that look gay or unmanly, dudes who don't want to get the shit kicked out of them by homophobes know all the things not to do!

Therefore, being "manly" became strictly defined by what was off-limits. To be a Real Man meant you shouldn't care about whether you're attractive, or what soap you use, or how your hair is styled. You shouldn't enjoy dancing or get too enthusiastic about music. A Real Man cares about sports and beer and being on top! Dominant!! A WINNER!!!

And, so like, here's a secret: In Anglophone culture, we are very affected by the Puritan legacy that says pleasure is inherently sinful. Vanity and pride--caring about how you look and whether you're attractive--are literal gateways to the Devil. Gluttony, and therefore seeking pleasure at all, is another such. And in Puritan religious theology, women are inherently more sinful. Yes, it goes back to Adam and Eve, and how Eve was tempted into sin first. Long story short, things associated with women became associated with sinfulness, and sinfulness became associated with effeminacy. And for centuries, you haven't even needed to be religious to drink these attitudes from the groundwater.

Okay, that's not the secret, this is the secret: Pleasure is not inherently sinful.

And liking how you look and feeling attractive and paying attention to your sensuality and your emotional life and connecting with art in a real and vulnerable way can feel really good, if you're able to handle it well.

Being raised to be a Real Man in a world where masculinity is perceived to be actively under threat is so uniquely painful, I believe, because every attempt to define yourself as "not gay" means denying yourself one of life's pleasures, and telling yourself you never even wanted it in the first place.

And then those desperate to be Real Men found a way to take some of those things back in what is surely the most painful context possible: They are allowed strictly as tools of your heterosexuality and masculine need for dominance. You are allowed to care about grooming and dancing, etc, purely as a strategy in playing a game called "Getting Girls", where you either score or you don't, where not scoring means you're worthless and unlovable, and scoring is often... strangely unfulfilling and certainly not enough to fill the aching void inside of you.

The mistake both Peterson and his fanbase make is that they get to this point, and then think: The reason I feel so empty inside is... I just haven't gotten enough girls!

Maybe some guys get out of the maze by finding a woman who is allowed to care about things like affection and love and dancing and looking nice, and their connection with her lets them express all the other parts of their souls that didn't fit in the Real Man box, but can come out in roles like Boyfriend or Father.

But humans aren't telepathic, so relationships can only "fix" you so much as you're willing to do the work of nurturing your own soul in a safe environment, so for a lot of men the maze never ends, and sometimes they don't even get the fleeting joys of relationships or sex, since they're so fucked up about them!

At this point, I as a queer woman am like, "Solution's obvious! Dismantle the maze."

And Peterson, who has worked his whole life to achieve the status of Best Maze-Runner in All of Christendom, is clinging to it like, "NO! DOWN, YOU DARK CHAOTIC MOTHER! THIS MAZE GIVES MY LIFE MEANING! THIS MAZE CONNECTS ME TO MY FOREFATHERS! I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT THIS MAZE!"

At which point, like... what can you do but just leave him there?

At least he's not in my area of specialization. The world would be too unkind if I had to deal with him in any professional capacity. I wish Clinical Psychology all their continued joy of him.

#feminist discourse #masculinity #jordan peterson tw #to be honest #the moment I learned he was from Fairview and went to the UofA I was like 'OH IT ALL MAKES SENSE'#it's not that all of Fairview is one way because Rachel Notley and other very fine people come from Fairview #but there is a specific breed of Guys Who Come From Fairview #Who Study Psychology At the UofA #Who Like To Monologue About Conservative Politics #I can't explain it #it's a type #iykyk i guess

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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How monopoly enshittified Amazon

In Bezos’s original plan, the company called “Amazon” was called “Relentless,” due to its ambition to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Today, Amazon is an enshittified endless scroll of paid results, where winning depends on ad budgets, not quality.

Writing in Jeff Bezos’s newspaper The Washington Post, veteran tech reporter Geoffrey Fowler reports on the state of his boss’s “relentless” commitment to customer service. The state is grim.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/

Search Amazon for “cat beds” and the entire first screen is ads. One of them is an ad for a dog carrier, which Amazon itself manufactures and sells, competing with the other sellers who bought that placement.

Scroll down one screen and you get some “organic” results — that is, results that represent Amazon’s best guess at the best products for your query. Scroll once more and yup, another entire screen of ads, these ones labeled “Highly rated.” One more scroll, and another screenful of ads, one for a dog product.

Keep scrolling, you’ll keep seeing ads, including ads you’ve already scrolled past. “On these first five screens, more than 50 percent of the space was dedicated to ads and Amazon touting its own products.” Amazon is a cesspit of ads: twice as many as Target, four times as many as Walmart.

How did we get here? We always knew that Amazon didn’t care about its suppliers, but being an Amazon customer has historically been a great deal — lots of selection, low prices, and a generous returns policy. How could “Earth’s most customer-centric” company become such a bad place to shop?

The answer is in Amazon’s $31b “ad” business. Amazon touts this widely, and analysts repeat it without any critical interrogation, proclaiming that Amazon is catching up with the Googbook ad-tech duopoly. But nearly all of that “ad” business isn’t ads at all — it’s payola.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/not-an-ad/#shakedowns

Amazon charges its sellers billions of dollars a year through a gladiatorial combat where they compete to outspend each other to see who’ll get to the top of the search results. May the most margin-immolating, deep-pocketed spender win!

Why would sellers be willing to light billions of dollars on fire to get to the top of the Amazon search results?

Prime.

Most of us have Amazon Prime. Seriously — 82% of American households! Prime users only shop on Amazon. Seriously. More than 90% of Prime members start their search on Amazon, and if they find what they’re looking for, they stop there, too.

If you are a seller, you have to be on Amazon, otherwise no one will find your stuff and that means they won’t buy it. This is called a monopsony, the obscure inverse of monopoly, where a buyer has power over sellers.

But monopoly and monopsony are closely related phenomena. Monopsonies use control over buyers — the fact that we all have Prime — to exert control over sellers. This lets them force unfavorable terms onto sellers, like deeper discounts. In theory, this is good for use consumers, because prices go down. In practice, though…

Back in June 2021, DC Attorney General Karl Racine filed an antitrust suit against Amazon, because the company had used its monopoly over customers to force such unfavorable terms on sellers that prices were being driven up everywhere, not just on Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie

Here’s how that works: one of the unfavorable terms Amazon forces on sellers is “most favored nation” status (MFN), which means that Amazon sellers have to offer their lowest price on Amazon — they can’t sell more cheaply anywhere else.

Then Amazon hits sellers with fees. Lots of fees:

Fees to be listed on Prime (without which, your search result is buried at the bottom of an endless scroll):

Fees for Amazon warehouse fulfillment (without which, your search result is buried at the bottom of an endless scroll)

And finally, there’s payola — the “ads” you have to buy to outcompete the other people who are buying ads to outcompete you.

All told, these fees add up to 45% of the price you pay Amazon — sometimes more. Companies just don’t have 45% margins, because they exist in competitive markets. If I’m selling a bottle of detergent at a 45% markup, my rival will sell it at 40%, and then I have to drop to 35%, and so on.

But everyone has to sell on Amazon, and Amazon takes their 45% cut, which means that all these sellers have to raise prices. And, thanks to MFN, the sellers then have to charge the same price at Walmart, Target, and your local mom-and-pop shop.

Amazon’s monopoly (control over buyers) gives it a monopsony (control over sellers), which lets it raise prices everywhere, at Amazon and at every other retailer, even as it drives the companies that supply it into bankruptcy.

Amazon is no longer a place where a scrappy independent seller can find an audience for its products. In order to navigate the minefield Amazon lays for its sellers (who have no choice but to sell there), these indie companies are forced to sell out to gators (aggregators), which are now multi-billion-dollar businesses in their own right:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gator-ade

This brings me back to the enshittification of Amazon search, AKA late-stage (platform) capitalism. Amazon’s dominance means that many products are now solely available on the platform. With the collapse of both physical and online retail, Prime isn’t so much a choice as a necessity.

Amazon has produced a planned economy run as capriciously as a Soviet smelting plant, but Party Secretary Bezos doesn’t even pretend to be a servant of the people. From his lordly seat aboard his penis-rocket, Bezos decides which products live and which ones die.

Remember that one of those search-results for a cat-bed was a product for dogs? Remember that Amazon made that dog product? How did that end up there? Well, if you’re a seller trying to make a living from cat-beds, your ad-spending is limited by your profit margin. Guess how much it costs Amazon to advertise on Amazon? Amazon is playing with its own chips, and it can always outbid the other players at the table.

Those Amazon own-brand products? They didn’t come out of a vacuum. Amazon monitors its own sellers’ performance, and creams off the best of them, cloning them and then putting its knockoffs above of the original product in search results (Bezos lied to Congress about this, then admitted it was true):

https://nypost.com/2021/10/18/jeff-bezos-may-have-lied-to-congress-about-amazon-practices-reps/

If you’ve read Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin’s and my new book about market concentration in the entertainment industry, this story will be a familiar one. You’ll recall that Amazon actually boasts about this process, calling it “the flywheel”:

https://twitter.com/rgibli/status/1561761732108107777

Everything that Amazon is doing to platform sellers, other platforms are doing to creators. You know how Amazon knocks off its sellers’ best products and then replaces them with its clones? That’s exactly what Spotify does to the ambient artists in its most popular playlists, replacing them with work-for-hire soundalikes who aren’t entitled to royalties.

You can learn more about how Spotify rips off its performers in the Chokepoint Capitalism chapter on Spotify; we made the audiobook version of that chapter a Spotify exclusive (it’s the only part of the book you can get on Spotify):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

Entertainment and tech companies all want to be the only game in town for their creative labor force, because that lets them turn the screws to those workers, moving value from labor to shareholders.

Amazon is also the poster-child for this dynamic. For example, its Audible audiobook monopoly means that audiobook creators must sell on Audible, even though the #AudibleGate scandal revealed that the company has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from these creators. (Our chapter on Audiblegate is the only part of our audiobook on Audible!)

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

Then there’s its Twitch division, where the company just admitted that it had been secretly paying its A-listers 70% of the total take for their streams. The company declared this to be unfair when the plebs were having half their wages clawed back by Amazon, so they fixed it by cutting the A-listers’ pay.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/22/amazon-vs-amazon/#pray-i-dont-alter-it-further

Twitch blamed the cut on the high cost of bandwidth for streaming. If that sounds reasonable to you, remember: Twitch buys its bandwidth from Amazon. As Sam Biddle wrote, “Amazon is charging Amazon so much money to run the business via Amazon that it has no choice but to take more money from streamers.”

https://twitter.com/samfbiddle/status/1572667269284777984

As Bezos suns himself aboard his yacht-so-big-it-has-a-smaller-yacht, we ask him to referee a game where he also owns one of the teams. Over and over again, he proves that he is not up to the task. Either his “relentless” customer focus was a sham, or the benefits of cheating are too tempting to ignore.

Historically, we understood that businesses couldn’t be trusted to be on both sides of a transaction. The “structural separation” doctrine is one of the vital pieces of policy we’ve lost over 40 years of antitrust neglect. It says that important platforms can’t compete with their users.

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

For example, banks couldn’t own businesses that competed with their commercial borrowers. If you own Joe’s Pizza and your competitor is Citibank Pizza and you both have a hard month and can’t make your payment, will you trust that Citi called in your loan but not Citibank Pizza’s because they had a more promising business?

Today, all kinds of businesses have been credibly accused of self-preferencing: Google and Apple via their App Stores, Spotify via its playlists, consoles via their game stores, etc. Legislators have decided that the best way to fix this isn’t structural separation, but rather, rules against self-preferencing.

Under these rules, companies will have to put “the best” results at the top of their listings. This is doomed. When Apple says it put its own ebook store ahead of Bookshop.org’s app because it sincerely believes Apple Books is “better,” how will we argue with this? Maybe Apple really does believe that. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it does, but only because of motivated reasoning (“It is difficult to get a product manager to understand something, when their bonus depends on them not understanding it”).

The irony here is that these companies’ own lawyers know that a sincere promise of fairness is no assurance that your counterparty will act honorably. If the judge in Apple v. Epic was a major shareholder in Epic, or the brother-in-law of Epic’s CEO, Apple’s lawyers would bring down the roof demanding a new judge — even if the judge promised really sincerely to be neutral.

https://marker.medium.com/moral-hazard-and-monopoly-42e30eb159a8

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if Amazon’s enshittification is because Bezos was a cynic or because he sold out. Once Amazon could make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job became a fait accompli. That’s why it’s so important that the FTC win its bid to block the Activision-Microsoft merger:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/23/exclusive-feds-likely-to-challenge-microsofts-69-billion-activision-takeover-00070787

The best time to prevent monopoly formation was 40 years ago. The second best time is now.

Anti-monopoly measures are slow and ponderous tools, but when it comes to tech companies, we have faster, more nimble ones. If we want to make it easy to compete with Amazon, we could — for example — use Adversarial Interoperability to turn it into a dumb pipe:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/01/dumb-pipes/#original-asin

That is, we could let local merchants use Amazon’s ASIN system to tag their own inventory and produce a realtime database. Customers could browse Amazon to find the things they wanted, with a browser plugin that turned “Buy It Now” into “Buy It Now at Joe’s Hardware”:

https://doctorow.medium.com/view-a-sku-32721d623aee

But this only works to the extent that Amazon’s search isn’t totally enshittified. To that end, Fowler has a few modest proposals of his own, like requiring that at least 50% of the first six screens be given over to real results, not ads.

“Perhaps 50 percent sounds like a lot to you? But even that rule would force Amazon to show us at least some of the most-relevant results on the first screen of our device…Amazon wouldn’t comment on this suggestion.”

#pluralistic

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odinsblog · 1 month

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Many years ago, the Jewish U.S. scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a best seller that caused uproar among a group he exposed as the “Holocaust Industry”: people who invariably had not been direct victims of the Holocaust, but nonetheless chose to exploit and profit from Jewish suffering.

Though treated as leaders of the Jewish community, they were not primarily interested in helping survivors of the Holocaust, or in stopping another Holocaust – the two things one might have assumed would be the highest priorities for anyone making the Holocaust central to their life. In fact, hardly any of the many millions the Holocaust Industry demanded from countries like Germany in reparations ever made it to Holocaust survivors, as Finkelstein documented in his book.

Instead, this small group instrumentalised the Holocaust for their own benefit: to gain money and influence by embedding themselves in an industry they had created. They became untouchables, beyond criticism because they were associated with an industry that they had made as sacred as the Holocaust itself.

A follow-up book called the Antisemitism Industry, an investigation into much the same group of people, is now overdue. These ghouls don’t care about antisemitism – in fact, they rub shoulders with the West’s most prominent antisemites, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban.

Rather, they care about Israel – and the weaponisation of antisemitism to protect their emotional and financial investment. They profit from Israel’s central place in US political, diplomatic and military life:

• as a giant real-estate laundering exercise, based on the theft of native Palestinian land;

• as a laboratory for the production of new weapons and surveillance systems tested on Palestinians;

• as a heavily militarised colonial state, a spearpoint for the West, useful in destabilising and disrupting any threat of a unifying Arab nationalism in the oil-rich Middle East;

• and as the frontier state for eroding legal and ethical principles developed after the Second World War to stop a repeat of those atrocities.

Anyone who challenges the Antisemitism Industry’s – and therefore Israel’s – stranglehold on Jewish representation in public life is hounded as an antisemite or self-hating Jew, as is currently happening most prominently to Jewish film-maker Jonathan Glazer. He is the Oscar-winning director of The Zone of Interest, about the family of a Nazi commandant of Auschwitz who lived blind to the horrors unfolding just out of view, beyond their walled garden.

I wrote an earlier piece about the manufactured furore provoked by Glazer’s comments at the Oscars. In his acceptance speech, he denounced the hijacking of Jewishness and the Holocaust that has sustained Israel’s occupation over many decades and generated constant new victims, including the latest: those who suffered at the hands of Hamas when it attacked on October 7, and the many, many tens of thousand of Palestinians killed, maimed and orphaned by Israel over the past five months.

—Jonathan Cook, the antisemitism industry doesn’t speak for Jews, it speaks for western elites

#politics #palestine #gaza #israel #jonathan glazer #the zone of interest #antisemitism #anti zionism ≠ antisemitism #jonothan cook #weaponized zionism #weaponized antisemitism #war crimes #genocide #zone of interest #ethnic cleansing #hamas ≠ palestine #israel ≠ all jewish people #pro palestine ≠ antisemitism #holocaust industry

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the-cosmic-gentle-giant · 2 years

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♡Astrology Notes 2...again♡

Hey hey my peooles, long time no astro post lol. Anywho, I decided to get back into the groove imma just slap some astro notes onto the blog and hope i reignite my fervor for astrology. Enjoy the notes friendo's pls feel free to correct me on things you feel are not it...cuz that's how i learn. Hugs🤗

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♡ I've noticed that Jupiter ruled IC's, Pisces and Sagittarius if using traditional rulership, have access to an abundance of knowledge in their childhood which they later channel into their Midheavens, which are Mercury ruled, due to their need to communicate what they have learnt. This would definitely make sense as Jupiter is associated with higher learning, expansion and abundance.

♡ I also have a theory, which works for both Western and Vedic astrology, that wherever Taurus in located in your chart is indicative of what things you are most likely to hoard. I have mine in the 5th (western) and 6th (vedic) and I often hoard art supplies, novels/books and skincare products.

♡ Harmonious Mercury-Chiron aspects can have a very soothing voice or way of speaking.

♡ However Mercury-Chiron aspects, positive & negative, can be easily hurt by the words of others and they tend to remember these hurtful words often, resulting in them being reserved speakers, but great listeners.

♡ Virgo placements being known for their skill of detailed analysis, don't actually see the details at first. They first look at the greater picture before deciding whether it's worth digging into the details of it. This applies to anything from love to work to friends, they'll only start nitpicking if the overall vibe check is passed.

♡ Gemini Venus love chasing new experiences when in love. They're not afraid to try something new, experiment with their preferences or relax certain standards they have in order to gain from these experiences.

♡ Virgo Midheaven careers are often restricted to being just the "intellectual or service" careers, but as Virgo is a known analytic dedicating time to learn and understand a specific concept, this means that Virgo MC's are also masters of their craft and these are people who spend years dedicating themself to perfecting a specific craft. Therfore, fields involving crafting, music or manufacturing are also in the cards for these natives.

♡ I get the feeling Leo Mercuries are type to be the teacher's pal, not teacher's pet. They just walk in and vibe out with the teacher, but aren't the type to be like "oh we had this homework" or "this person didn't do their assignment". Also, they have class comedian energy lol.

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Anywho, this is all I got for ya. Hope you enjoyed the notes and once again, constructive criticism is highly appreciated. Until next time friendos, stay safe and take care🌻💛

#astro notes #astrology on tumblr #astrology #astrology notes #astrology observations #virgovenus #virgo #leo mercury #sagittarius #virgo midheaven #pisces #taurus astrology #gemini venus #mercury aspects #chiron aspects #the cosmic gentle giant #astro observations

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karriethemechtech · 5 hours

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I've been doing some investigative reporting on the WoB forces--just a bit more digging before the landing force touches ground. I keep seeing reports related to the Helios system and some kind of WoB Assault 'Mech called the Ragnarok, but what information on it does exist is confusing and matches no technical specifications I could find. So, I gave it the old DeLacey try, dug through everything (there isn't much!) there is on the thing, and filled in the gaps based on my own 'Mech design knowledge. I'd put money on these being the specs for the Ragnarok if we do encounter one or more after touching ground. It's a mean long-ranged machine, with twin Gauss rifles and a Plasma gun to boot--be extremely careful if you see one, letting it get targeting data from a closer C3i-linked mech is a death sentence.

Ragnarok C-RAG-O

Mass: 100 tons Chassis: Standard Biped Power Plant: 200 Fusion Cruising Speed: 21.6 kph Maximum Speed: 32.4 kph Jump Jets: None Jump Capacity: 0 meters Armor: Light Ferro-Fibrous Armament: 1 LRM 20 1 Plasma Rifle 2 Gauss Rifle Manufacturer: Unknown Primary Factory: Unknown Communication System: Unknown Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown Introduction Year: 3072 Tech Rating/Availability: E/X-X-E-X Cost: 10,741,667 C-bills

Overview The Ragnarok is an Assault 'Mech that was developed by the Word of Blake. Little to nothing is known about the 'Mech's development.

Capabilities The Ragnarok, rare as it was on the battlefields of the Jihad, is mostly spoken of in rumors. Leaked after-action reports from Clan Wolf-in-Exile show the 'Mech was powered by a rating 200 fusion engine of an unknown make, as well as protected by some amount of Ferro Fibrous armor and armed with a Gauss Rifle in each arm. These reports also spoke of a "Lava Gun" that fired superheated projectiles, but this is likely a description of a Plasma Rifle by a MechWarrior unfamiliar with the weapons platform. While there were also mentions of some form of "LosTech Shield" that granted the mech invulnerable, such a device is highly unlikely.The remaining information that exists on this mech was compiled as a speculative report by 3rd SLDF Senior Warrant Officer Karrie DeLacey. While reported as Ferro-Fibrous, the armor mounted on the Ragnarok was likely a Light Ferro-Fibrous compound obtained from the Free Worlds League during the Word's time there, which also speaks to a potential timeline for the machine's production. 18.5 tons of it have been assumed given reports of the 'Mech's extreme durability. The 'Mech was likely also armed with an LRM 20, as long-ranged missile capability was reported, with additional accuracy provided by an Artemis IV Fire Control System. Two tons of Plasma rifle ammunition, three tons of LRM 20 ammunition, and 3 Tons of Gauss rifle ammunition likely gave the Ragnarok almost 2 minutes of firing, which using Double Heat Sinks it likely could without overheating so long as it stood still.

Deployment There are officially no known battles in which the Ragnarok was deployed, and if it existed it is believed to have been passed over in favor of the "holy flexibility" of the Celestial line of Omnimechs. However, unofficial reports exist of the deployment of a single Ragnarok in the Helios system during the Jihad in a battle with Clan Wolf-in-Exile, though no such battle is known to have occurred.

Type: Ragnarok Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard) Tonnage: 100 Battle Value: 2,227

Equipment Mass Internal Structure 10 Engine 200 Fusion 8.5 Walking MP: 2 Running MP: 3 Jumping MP: 0 Double Heat Sink 10 [20] 0 Gyro 2 Cockpit 3 Armor Factor (Light Ferro) 307 18.5 Internal Armor Structure Value Head 3 9 Center Torso 31 47 Center Torso (rear) 15 R/L Torso 21 32 R/L Torso (rear) 10 R/L Arm 17 34 R/L Leg 21 42

Right Arm Actuators: Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm Left Arm Actuators: Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm

Weapons and Ammo Location Critical Heat Tonnage Gauss Rifle Ammo (8) LL 1 - 1.0 Gauss Rifle Ammo (8) CT 1 - 1.0 Improved C3 Computer RT 2 - 2.5 Artemis IV FCS RT 1 - 1.0 LRM 20 RT 5 6 10.0 Double Heat Sink RT 3 - 1.0 Gauss Rifle LA 7 1 15.0 CASE LT 1 - 0.5 Plasma Rifle LT 2 10 6.0 Double Heat Sink LT 3 - 1.0 Plasma Rifle Ammo (20) LT 2 - 2.0 LRM 20 Artemis-capable Ammo (18) LT 3 - 3.0 Gauss Rifle Ammo (8) RL 1 - 1.0 Gauss Rifle RA 7 1 15.0

Features the following design quirks: Distracting, Rugged (1 Point), Obsolete, Oversized

#battletech #mechwarrior #story event #(ooc: built this based on the one from MechAssault because I figured it'd be good to have table-playable stats)

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rivetgoth · 1 year

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Man there is this weird historical revisionism that happens with terminally online “alt” posers where they like, assume that all the cool underground alt counterculture stuff of decades past were easily accessible within the mainstream and nowadays it’s been suppressed or hidden or is even entirely nonexistent in favor of the “lame” mainstream media. And like, I have said before and will say again and again that there is PLENTY to criticize regarding the entertainment industry and arts as a whole in the 21st century, it has not just been some forwards progression of positive change and improvement and I know that, but it also just frustrates me ENDLESSLY because the reality is the things y’all are idolizing were NOT mainstream. You were not guaranteed to walk down the street in the 80s and hear gothic rock and industrial or even more accessible synthpop that remains popular today, there was plenty of absolute shit music in the 80s lol. Movies were not just inherently better 20-30-40 years ago and in fact plentyyyy of major blockbuster hits absolutely sucked shit and there was an insane amount of garbage being manufactured by corrupt production companies. Fashion was not all cute GNC boys with long hair and eyeliner or whatever. It was not like some safehaven for queer gendernonconformity it was LITERALLY the AIDS crisis. And the stuff y’all are idolizing are now extremely popular in hindsight! Everybody knows Nine Inch Nails and The Cure and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hellraiser! This is household name media!

I just constantly see posts that are like “back then there was UNDERGROUND COUNTERCULTURE EVERYWHERE and now all we have is TikTok and Taylor Swift and Marvel 💔😡” and honestly it makes you sound like clowns. You are not finding the underground counterculture because it is fucking underground. The stuff you’re consuming from years ago withstood the tests of time. But there were not goth clubs lining every street corner and cool cult classics coming out every fucking week back in the day lol. This stuff was considered underground, alternative, cult, etc for a reason. You are comparing the most successful underground media from decades ago with mainstream media of today and honestly all it actually reveals is that you don’t really care about keeping underground art alive and uplifting the artists who are doing so now in modern time, or even have the knowledge of how to do so. You aren’t finding today’s “underground” subcultures because THEY ARE UNDERGROUND. It takes effort beyond looking at what’s trending on social media or what’s getting major theatrical releases. You have to engage with music that is not even on Spotify, film that at best may run the festival circuit. And, frankly, some of y’all have wildly rose tinted glasses about what good art is and are judgmental as fuck of anything that forces you to expand your horizons-- Alt music genres have a huge amount of fusion within them now. Deal with it. Lots of y’all sound genuinely racist with your aversion to alt music drawing more and more inspiration from rap and hip hop. CGI is a relatively accessible and still very experimental art form with tons of potential and many poor or indie artists are experimenting with it. Deal with it. CGI is not inherently evil or ugly. Genres evolve and sounds change. Back then plenty of the experimental stuff that we find cool now was made with dogshit quality because it was just people scraping together the few resources they could afford to make something. You only think it’s better because it’s older lol. You are the alt TikTok NIN fan Hot Topic equivalent of people who think they were born in the wrong generation because their idea of the 50s is poodle skirts and milkshakes at checkered diners.

I would be less of a cunt about this topic if the result was not a staggering amount of people calling themselves fucked up deranged alt punk gothic freaks only to turn around and quite literally say that there is no longer an alternative/underground subculture and that capitalism has destroyed any semblance of independent or experimental art because they are not fucking looking for it. Which in turn shits on so many struggling indie creators desperately trying to get their art out there within an increasingly tumultuous, hostile, anti-artist landscape of capitalist modern society. Engaging with underground work does actually require digging for it. The underground work you are engaging with from the past is literally no longer underground. If you exclusively enjoy alt music from the 70s or 80s or exclusively enjoy oldschool cult classics that is FINE but I better not see “back in the 80s we had Cronenberg and Carpenter and now we only have Marvel and Star Wars :( Why did they get Bauhaus and now we only get Billie Eilish? Why is there no more community, no more subculture, no more actual interesting art?” as if these are normal comparisons and actual reasonable observations rather than an admittance of your lack of understanding of the way that underground art actually evolves or even a desire to seek it out. Problems with modern industries aside, with social media and the internet and the improvement of technology like personal cameras and digital art programs both creating and finding independent art is EASIER now than EVER in many ways. You can discover enough music to last you your entire life from the comfort of your IPHONE.

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colorcodedbeanies · 1 year

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S2 E5-"Breakage

Sorry about the long posting gaps, new job+sick+RDR2+L+ratio etc. Favorite line from this episode is "why don't you stop being such a freak about everything" I think I should be paid to say that to Walt once an hour.

TW: Racism, police brutality, addiction, alcoholism

So I've always been really unsure what to make of the cold opening of the two illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. With the analytic frameworks I've applied until this point I think I'm choosing to understand it as complicating the idea that violence is sneaking up into the US across the Mexican border. Two scared, shivering men cross the river, and on the other end find an artifact of state-sanctioned violence. It never had to be imported from "lawless Mexican hell", as Marie describes it. We grow it just fine right here.

The cigarettes Walt finds jammed in the toilet act in visual parallel to Jesse's meth that he tried to flush down the toilet last season. The scene where he confronts Skyler about them is chockful of hypocrisy. Smoking while pregnant is bad for the baby's health. So is being a meth dealer trading with people who will shoot your whole family. Beyond that, though, there's one line from Skyler that stands out to me: "I'm sure you'll be very glad to hear that yes, I feel ashamed." She's accurately calling out what Walt's actual priority is. It's not determining the health of their child, or trying to help her so she doesn't feel the need to seek out a narcotic to cope. It's punishing her for needing an escape in the first place. Exactly the attitude he spends all of last season directing at Jesse.

Speaking of more socially acceptable addictions. I have never once seen anyone draw a connection between the fact that Walt cooks meth and Hank brews beer. Both manufacture substances that have heavy ties with addiction, and that can destroy lives. Both seem to seek out the crafting process as an escape from their day to day stress (Hank taking a day off to try and self-therapize with it). Only difference is Hank operates under the banner of legality, something the two of them talk about indirectly in 1x07.

We're getting in this episode to how Walt tends to mythologize the brown men around him into figures of ultimate violence, but also ultimate power. His disdain for Tuco is pretty explicitly racialized when he disparagingly asks Jesse if "you['re] gonna beat your 'homies' to death when they 'diss' you?" However, later in this episode he criticizes Jesse for not being ENOUGH like Tuco. "You think Tuco had 'breakage'? I guess that's true. He broke bones." This is of course, factually inaccurate. Beyond what we see in BCS that establishes Tuco had some clear problems in his organization that went way beyond some product theft, it's also just actually impossible to run any kind of business without experiencing any kind of skimming. Like Jesse says, J.C. Penney's gets breakage. How much more so when you're dealing with a substance that inherently manufactures dependence? None of those realities matter to Walt, though, who is chasing after his idea of what a kingpin is like. Tuco doesn't live on in his memories as a unstable guy with an uncle he looks after and poor long-term planning. Instead, he's transformed into an unstoppable killing machine, brutal and (you should read the full racial implications into this word) savage, but also untouchable. The kind of man Walt secretly longs to be and is currently using Jesse as a proxy to try to achieve

This is further doubled down on when, after an argument with Skyler where Walt feels unmanned by his inability to control his wife's behavior, he goes right to Jesse's house and demands he take care of business. Its him trying to imitate Tuco again, though this time not by his own hands.

Jesse is also doing some imitation here. It's not Tuco he acts like at the meeting though. It's Walt.

Hank can't glorify the Tuco fight with his usual bravado. He can, however, provide unique insight into a cop's view of a criminal when he describes them as functionally subhuman. Cockroaches. Your first instinct is to step on them. Drug dealers, addicts, gangsters, Mexicans they aren't people like you and me. If you saw one, you would immediately know you had to crush it to preserve yourself. This is going to get sooooo beautifully subverted next episode.

The Skyler-Marie conflict continues to act in parallel to the Skyler-Walt conflict, with Skyler refusing to proceed until Marie does her the basic service of respecting her with the truth. Marie tantrums like Walt does, asking "why are you punishing me" and seemingly frustrated that the consequences can't just evaporate because she doesn't want to deal with them. At the end of the day though. The distinction is that Marie loves her sister more than her pride. Walt...remains to be seen.

#breaking bad #brba #analysis tag #long post #walter white #jesse pinkman #hank schrader #marie schrader #tuco salamanca #brba s2 e5

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wellwornwornwell · 9 months

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A Hatred of Clothing

I recently revisited a wonderful essay by Jon Baskin in The Point, entitled “On the Hatred of Literature.” The piece, while decidedly focused on the criticism of a specific author, did a wonderful job of underscoring the temptation to contextualize and nuance a work of art beyond meaning – attempting to create a crystal-clear, microscopic image by zooming in as closely as possible through opaque and rigid layers of one-way glass.

Baskin points to New Historicism – “…the prevailing school of literary interpretation (that assumes) artworks were primarily of value insofar as they could offer us insight into the context and conditions of their historical production” – as the vehicle most readily employed by academics who, in his words, “hated literature.”

It should come as no surprise to my fine followers that I read on an eighth-grade level. Accordingly, it’s almost entirely certain that I missed the point of this eloquent, poignant, and… I’m sure some other “-ent” piece of criticism. Unfortunately for you, you’ve already started reading this. So, slide your seatbelt off and wait for impact. Being thrown clear is your only hope.

The need to contextualize and rationalize any work of art – those we see, those we wear, those we eat, etc. – is, at its heart, rooted in a sense of insecurity. There is a necessary level of vulnerability that comes with enjoyment. You must let yourself go. Find a bright confidence in freedom. One that can’t be tinted by ambiguity.

But that’s scary. There are no roads in the middle of the woods, so surely we’re lost.

Of course, there is utility in understanding the context of art. In clothing, especially, we see that there are very real connections between concepts of class, society, socioeconomics, etc. and the clothing we wear (and don’t wear) today. There’s just no escaping the implications, both subtle and tangible, of certain garments.

We tell a story when we get dressed. And just like any good author, we construct the narrative for each and every uneducated passerby. That doesn’t mean there isn’t ambiguity in these tellings or that more learned observers won’t revel in the details, but validation of literacy is always the primary goal when we step out.

Where we start to get into dangerous territory is over-distilling the story or, worse yet, revising the narratives our clothes tell the world. We see this readily within more recent conservative movements, wherein “classic tailoring” is extolled as the epitome of bygone values.

Of course, this is all bullshit. I’ll slap the shit out of Nazi wearing a suit just as quickly as I would one in a spiked cutoff vest with bright red swastikas.

But this does betray the other end of the spectrum. Baskin is sure the hatred for literature is borne from leftist elitism and a desperate inability to enjoy anything, knowing the blood spilled to reach that point in history. These academics now walk on eggshells, even though they’ve been eating omelets all their lives.

In contrast, we see right wing insecurities on full display in their hatred for clothing. They care not about the artistry of design, the integrity of the manufacturer, the evolution in thinking and culture that created their Norman Rockwell acceptance of the world. Unlike leftist academics – hell-bent on over-analyzing every concept, every motif, every allusion – today’s conservative commenters tether a weak understanding of clothing to a loose mooring constantly battered by shifting (and conflicting) tides of traditionalism. There’s no solid ground for anything other the performative instinct to “dress like a man.”

And yet, while opposites in motivation, the underlying impulse is identical: a lack of confidence in anything, namely themselves. It’s much easier to quote a philosopher than it is to experience conclusion. It’s much easier to beguile a setting from afar than it is to travel there.

The beauty of the world is its lack of absolutes. C.R.E.A.M. – Context Rules Everything Around Me. While perspective is important in appreciating art, one cannot let the popular opinion of its legacy shape personal significance. You must experience things and form your own opinions. You must find confidence in dark places and take the road less traveled while also refusing to let the less traveled road be the cross upon which you die.

Enjoyment, contentment, acceptance. These are concepts that are incredibly hard to measure and even harder to replicate. But they are certainly not feelings that arrive through over-analyzed correlation or haphazardly concocted causation. You must allow yourself to be moved, to be inspired, to be drawn to something. To dress and act and do what you like; what you feel is right.

Human existence is what you make of it. A balance. There’s simply not enough objectivity to convincingly hate anything. Or anyone.

Go get dressed.

#me #hatred of clothing

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solesoldier · 1 year

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this is a breakdown and reference sheet of shepard's scars throughout the timeline of the series including where the scars were acquired and any additional physical or relevant psychological details. tw for medical trauma and mentions of sterilization** ahead. major plot spoilers also ahead. full view on images recommended.

MASS EFFECT 1

the use of shields and medi-gel can heal most moderate injuries when used in a timely manner. Scarification is still mostly permanent but proper treatment can speed up the healing process.

¹ˑ eyebrow scar, acquired from a husk on eden prime. ²ˑ lip scar, a minor injury during basic training after enlisting. ³ˑ scar tissue from the remains of a severe injury caused by thresher maw acid on akuze. the coloration has mostly faded to her skin tone but the texture is still rough. shepard is very rarely seen wearing tank tops to keep the injury concealed considering how quick people are to want to talk about akuze, which she is not interested in doing.

MASS EFFECT 2 / 3

after undergoing reconstruction through the lazarus project, shepard is missing her previously notable scars. her official cause of death was asphyxiation as she ran out of oxygen while breaking atmosphere; the velocity of falling from orbit burned her body beyond recognition and the force of impact when she finally landed crushed the majority of her bones. her skull was heavily fractured but her helmet miraculously prevented her brain from being severely damaged.

¹ˑ reconstruction scars, a series of strange scars from newly placed skin grafts which did not have time to properly heal. they give an oddly manufactured appearance to her as they follow natural forms and planes of the body (much like seams on a production mold would). in anything other than bright light, they give off a faint orange glow due to the cybernetics underneath. shepard is highly self conscious about these scars; mental stress seems to make them more prominent. ²ˑ enhanced optics, the first of several implanted cybernetics, these ocular implants allow for quicker visual recognition and scanning and are able to enhance mental processing to a faster rate. these implants allow her to make quick tactical decisions and auto focus on targets for her (adrenaline rush ability). ³ˑ titanium reinforced skeleton, only around 10% of shepard's skeleton is made of her original bones. titanium was used as a reinforcement material due to the heavy impact of front line combat shepard regularly faces. after full augmentation and skeletal restructuring, shepard weighs significantly more than a regular human of her height and build. ⁴ˑ heavy muscle weave, (NOT upgraded) her muscles have been perforated with micro-fibers which greatly increase her natural strength and reduce exhaustion and muscle fatigue. these enhancements can be physically upgraded, along with bone and skin weaves, but shepard decisively chooses not to augment herself any further. ⁵ˑ **most organ systems were returned to functionality, with the exception of the epidermis and skeletal system needing to be fully replaced, however her reproductive system is no longer functional. shepard no longer experiences a menstrual cycle and will never be able to conceive children.

POST MASS EFFECT 3

the consequences of choosing to destroy the reapers are both physically present in the galaxy, but also marked upon shepard herself. her body was found among the citadel wreckage, severely injured and barely alive after massive trauma to the body and brain as well as the catalyst disabling her more intricate cybernetics. shepard's 'recovery' is limited by the available resources in the wake of the aftermath; she is in critical care for minimum three months, repairing her cybernetic-reliant organ systems. intensive physical therapy is needed for several months following to adapt to her new prosthetics and regain her strength. recovery is ongoing.

¹ˑ heavy scar tissue from multiple sources, some injury from the impact of the beam which transported her to the citadel, the majority being from the explosion within the catalyst. ²ˑ reconstruction scars still present but faded, continuing to fade with time. ³ˑ cybernetic implants now mostly defunct. through gene therapy, transplants, and extensive hospitalization, her body has learned to cope without the more intricate implants. some of the less advanced ones were able to be technologically repaired. ⁴ˑ amputated arm, replaced with mechanical prosthetic. her right arm was crushed under a bulkhead on impact from explosion; it was amputated on the scene of recovering her body from the wreckage. ⁵ˑ severed leg from initial explosion, replaced with mechanical prosthetic. the wound was mostly cauterized from the heat of the blast, preventing her from dying of blood loss in the wreckage.

#⟡°⋄ ◜ headcanon . ◞#⟡°⋄ ◜ meta . ◞#medical trauma tw.#pregnancy tw.#long post.#me after working really hard on this for multiple days: please clap :')))#everyone who knows me: SHUT UP ABOUT THE FRANKENSTIEN PARALELLS SHUT UP ABOUT SHEPARD BEING THE MODERN PROMETHEUS #for all intents and purposes (and in my game canon frankly) shepard should be dead at the end of me3 #but that's no fun in rp lmao

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anthropos-metronff · 2 years

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I'm happy to criticise canon when the writing is crap, but the fan clubs are honestly one of the best parts of CC and they're really amazingly good worldbuilding and writing.

But hey hey AM, isn’t it weird that Sephiroth et al have fan clubs in-universe?

Well, no not at all weird. It's very subtle so I think most people miss this, but it's clearly established that these are Shinra propaganda mediums. Post-Nibelheim, Zack’s fan club disbands "due to financial reasons." This happens irrespective of how many people you manage to get into the fanclub during the course of the game, btw.

Yup, Shinra just pulled the money on them because promoting an ex-SOLDIER is obviously of no political benefit to them.

There's also, of course, the fact that Hojo - who let us not forget is a member of the Shinra board - literally runs Sephiroth's fan club. Hojo is benign, right? Hojo would never lie to you within the format of a Shinra propaganda newsletter, would he?

Apparently a lot of people in the fandom think precisely that with no sarcasm, as I’ve seen what Hojo posts to the Silver Elite repeated ad nauseum in the fandom with absolutely no critical interogation of it whatsover.

Like, the thing about Sephiroth’s hair care routine. Hojo apparently wants us to believe that Sephiroth - well, look, I’ll just quote the entire damn thing.

“Dear members of the Silver Elite: In this update, we present another piece of Sephiroth trivia—the secrets to his beautiful long hair. The hair products he uses are of the highest grade, made and supplied by the Shinra Company. He seems to use one whole bottle of both shampoo and conditioner every time he washes his hair. They are scented with thirteen kinds of perfumes, including Rose and Vanilla. Apparently, the scent in the air after Sephiroth tosses his hair changes daily!”

Are you also thinking, like me, that the only thing this is missing is a beach at sunset and easy listening music?

This isn’t reality. This is an advertisement. A commercial. Product placement.

Would it surprise you if Hojo and the Science department had formulated “the highest grade hair products made and supplied by the Shinra company”? Would it surprise you if they had a financial stake or political arrangement with the arm of the company which manufactures and retails it? It wouldn’t surprise me. That is exactly how this would work.

Wanna have hair like Sephiroth? Then buy our damn shampoos and conditioners. One of each a week? Hell no, buy one for each day.

More. MORE!

But wait, there is more!

“Sephiroth is known to value his private life, but there was a time when he had two best friends. We'd like to share a story of this threesome guaranteed to raise a smile. The SOLDIER trio would use the training room exclusively as their playground, but in order to retain their 1st Class dignity, they would sneak in only after the 2nd Class members had gone home. Then they would proceed to have one of the three stand with a dumbapple on his head, while the other two would throw their swords at the apple to pierce it! Sephiroth always won, his Masamune always striking every dumbapple dead center.”

This makes me laugh it’s so ludicrous. It has the smell of bull drifting off it from ten feet away.

There’s a lot wrong here. First, how the hell does Hojo know all this, even assuming it’s true? That this regularly happened, in this level of detail, and Sephiroth always won?

But the physics of not just chucking swords over people’s heads, but literally a sword the length and quality of masamune about regularly, is utterly crazy. Does this even happen in anime?

We’re in the realms of storytelling here. Hojo canonically despises Hollander and his “freak show” (I think that’s the terminology he uses.) So yeah, of course he’s going to spin a tale of Sephiroth’s brilliance, using Sephiroth’s iconic sword, and his mastery over those “freaks”, and their general (And particularly for Genesis, highly OOC) submissiveness in the face of his sheer damn awesomeness.

And are the Silver Elite fans going to object to any of this? Hell no they’re not!

But this isn’t just Hojo and Shinra manipulating the in-universe public and marketising SOLDIER, this is - and this is where the great writing comes in - them manipulating you.

Yes, you. The person reading this. You want to know more about Sephiroth, right? About his likes and dislikes?

Well, thankfully Chairwoman H is here to provide for your needs. And provide Hojo has to the fandom, which as I said at the start, is often all too happy to take Hojo’s complete assurances on these subjects.

I’m honestly astounded at the level of craft involved from whoever actually thought up and wrote the fanclub stuff from crisis core. The fanclubs aren’t just a commentary on fan/idol culture and how easily it could be manipulated and subverted Shinra, they’re setting up the player and the fanbase itself to be lured in by them.

Amazing.

#shinra electric power company #zack fair #crisis core #sephiroth #genesis rhapsodos #final fantasy vii crisis core #professor hojo #ff7 crisis core

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mingyannews · 7 months

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Mastering Precision Sheet Metal Fabrication: Where Art Meets Science

Precision sheet metal fabrication is the artful synergy of craftsmanship and scientific knowledge. Whether it's in the automotive industry, electronics manufacturing, or medical equipment production, precision sheet metal plays a pivotal role. In this blog post, we delve deep into the world of precision sheet metal and explore how this art and science intertwine.

Defining Precision Sheet Metal

Precision sheet metal fabrication is a highly specialized manufacturing process that encompasses various methods of cutting, bending, stamping, and welding metal sheets. The goal of these processes is to produce parts and components to exact specifications and dimensions without compromising the quality of the metal material. These parts are typically used in applications that demand high levels of precision, requiring meticulous control and inspection at every step.

Applications of Precision Sheet Metal

Precision sheet metal finds wide-ranging applications across various industries, including but not limited to:

Electronics Manufacturing: Precise enclosures, panels, and connectors are essential to ensuring the safety and stability of internal components in electronic products.

Medical Equipment: Medical devices often require highly precise components to ensure accurate measurements and operations.

Aerospace Industry: Aerospace demands lightweight, high-strength components, and precision sheet metal is key to achieving this goal.

Automotive Manufacturing: Various components in automobiles, including bodywork, chassis, and engine parts, rely on precision sheet metal fabrication.

The Craftsmanship of Precision Sheet Metal

The manufacturing process of precision sheet metal is an art that marries precision with expertise. It involves critical steps such as:

Design and Planning: Careful design and planning are necessary before commencing fabrication, ensuring accuracy and consistency.

Material Selection: Choosing the right metal material is crucial for the performance of the final product.

Cutting and Stamping: Employing cutting and stamping machinery to shape the metal sheets into the desired form.

Bending and Shaping: Utilizing bending and shaping operations to curve metal sheets into the required shapes.

Welding and Assembly: Welding individual components together to assemble the final product.

Quality Control

The essence of precision sheet metal lies in quality control. Rigorous quality control procedures and inspection methods ensure that every component meets specifications. This includes the use of high-precision measuring tools, visual inspections, and material testing.

Conclusion

Precision sheet metal fabrication is a domain where craftsmanship and scientific knowledge beautifully converge. Its wide-ranging applications, from electronics to aerospace, make it indispensable in our modern world. Through continual refinement of processes and quality control methods, precision sheet metal fabrication will continue to play a pivotal role in supporting our modern way of life and technological advancements. It's a testament to how art and science work hand in hand to create excellence in manufacturing.

#aviation #sheet metal fabrication #sheet metal manufacturing #sheet metal stamping #sheet metal design #sheet metal market #robots #robotics

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mycolalia · 4 months

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vaguely adjacent to discourse so it goes under the cut but this shit is so important to me,

a thousand handshakes for everyone working on the properties doing their absolute fucking spinebreaking best as narrative designers to try and suplex some of the deep rot out of them

having deep attachment to settings that have massive parts being actively consumed by the seething morass of unquestioned authorial assumptions is such a nightmare but i persist regardless

[holding my fucking head] like last reblog is why when talking to other narrative devs im like please there is a duty of care, we can tell extremely fucked up stories but in a world where a lot of people are not critically reading most things they have to engage with there is a responsibility to try and minimize for products you KNOW are gonna be consumed by millions of people how much other real human beings whose struggles will be paralleled in our narratives are gonna have to deal with shit like is attached on the last reblog.

especially if you're aspiring to create political fantasy that dips into incredibly serious subject matter it's like. you CAN do that!!! it can even be super fucked up!!! you can do that with care and do your best to provide safeguards and there's no being 100% sure that someone won't be like "ACTUALLY there's good reason that the people you wrote as being violently subdued for manufactured reasons are being atrocitied against."

#myc hollers about gamedev shit #and also about narrative design

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mariacallous · 9 months

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Who owns the data generated by your car? And who controls access to it?

For almost a decade, right-to-repair activists, automakers, parts manufacturers, auto repair shop owners, technicians, and regular people who own cars have fought over those questions. How they are answered could radically change the cost and convenience of owning a modern camera-studded and cloud-enabled car—and, some say, the future of the increasingly tech-heavy auto industry.

Last week, a few trade groups announced they had finally figured it all out. In a letter to the US Congress, three industry organizations that together represent the major automakers and thousands of repair shops said they had signed a “memorandum of understanding” on the right to repair. In the agreement, the automakers commit to giving independent car repair shops access to the data, tools, and information necessary to diagnose and repair vehicles—the data, tools, and information provided to the automakers’ own dealership networks. “Competition is alive and well in the auto repair industry,” the letter said.

Right-to-repair advocates—who contend that consumers should be able to fix the products they buy—aren’t so sure. They say the agreement doesn’t give car owners full and unfettered control of the streams of data generated by the latest cars’ cameras and other sensors, which log data on location, speed, acceleration, and how a vehicle’s hardware and software are performing.

The advocates worry the new agreement gives automakers and automaker-associated repairers room to squeeze out smaller, independent shops and at-home tinkerers in the future, making it more difficult for car owners to find places to quickly and affordably fix their cars. And they say there are no enforcement mechanisms to guarantee automakers follow through on their promises.

“In terms of how automakers behave and whether vehicle owners or repair shops will get access to information—I don’t think this will change anything,” says Paul Roberts, the founder of SecuRepairs.org, an organization of IT and cyber professionals advocating for the right to repair.

Notably, the new agreement didn’t include the Auto Care Association, the largest US trade group for independent repair shops and aftermarket parts suppliers. The group's chair, Corey Bartlett, says the agreement doesn’t address some of the major barriers facing consumers looking to get a tech-heavy car repaired.

Smaller and especially rural repair shops sometimes can’t fix the newest models, because they can’t pay for the expensive tools, subscriptions, and training needed, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. As cars get more complex, and move more services into apps and onto the internet, they fear access will shrink. “We want easy and affordable access to that information for the independent repair shop,” says Bartlett, who is also president and CEO of Automotive Parts Headquarters, which sells aftermarket auto parts to repair shops across the northern and midwestern US.

DIY car repair and auto shops independent of automakers are a long-established tradition in car culture and the auto industry. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the trade group representing most global automakers, says that even today, 70 percent of their own certified networks of collision repair shops aren’t owned by dealers.

Many repair shops, especially those who opt in and pay to be part of those certified networks, say they have no trouble finding the information they need to fix cars, even before this week’s agreement. Michael Bradshaw, vice president of K & M Collision in Hickory, North Carolina, and vice chair of the Society of Collision Repair Specialists, one of the groups that signed the new agreement, says his shop pays to keep up with 30 automaker certification programs, including for Kia, General Motors, Bentley, and Rivian.

In a way, Bradshaw agrees with the right-to-repair advocates: This week’s agreement doesn’t give him anything he didn’t already have. “If there’s data out there, and repair information, we’ve always been able to get that,” Bradshaw says. But he disagrees that it’s a problem that repairers must pay, sometimes dearly, to get the tools, certifications, and information that allow them to fix cars.

Bradshaw thinks it’s reasonable that he must pay for automakers’ certification programs, because developing car technology—and the documentation needed to repair it—costs the carmaker plenty of money. He’s willing to shell out whatever is needed to make a safe and effective repair. “If it was a situation where there was no charge for the access, you’re going to see that the information is going to suffer,” he says, because automakers will have less incentive to devote resources to creating clear information for repairers. “The businesses that have trouble paying for the data that’s needed are the same businesses that are not investing in training or equipment.”

Other repairers worry that without an industry-wide overhaul that forces automakers to standardize and open up their data, car companies will find ways to limit access to repair information, or push customers towards their own dealership networks to boost profits. They say that if auto owners had clear and direct ownership over the data generated by their vehicles—without the involvement of automakers’ specialized tools or systems—they could use it themselves to diagnose and repair a car, or authorize the repair shop of their choice to do the work. “My fear, if no one gives some stronger guidelines, is that I know automakers are going to monetize car data in a way that’s unaffordable for us to gain access,” says Dwayne Myers, co-owner of Dynamic Automotive, an auto repair business with several locations in Maryland.

“You have to think not only about what the situation is now, but what the situation will be five or 10 years hence,” says Roberts, the right-to-repair advocate. “It’s easier to address this now, in the early days.”

Perhaps by design, the new agreement appeared just ahead of a hearing on right to repair by a US House of Representatives subcommittee on intellectual property and the internet. A bipartisan group of representatives have already introduced bills on the topic.

The hearing follows national wrangling over a Massachusetts law passed by a 2020 ballot measure that gave state car owners firmer control over the data generated by their cars. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation sued the state over the law, preventing lawmakers from enforcing it, and a judge has yet to decide the case. But last month, the Massachusetts attorney general announced she would begin to penalize automakers that withheld data for not complying with the rule. Days later, the US Department of Transportation warned automakers not to comply with the Massachusetts law, citing concerns it would open vehicles to hacking. The letter appeared to contradict the Biden administration’s prior commitments to right-to-repair issues.

Brian Weiss, a spokesperson for the Alliance, declined to comment on the Massachusetts law, citing the ongoing litigation. But how or whether the new agreement will affect other states’ right-to-repair policies is up to policymakers, he says. It commits the trade groups who signed to push for federal rules defining right to repair and against state legislation, which could create a patchwork of laws with different obligations to DIYers or independent repairers. That echoes an agreement signed earlier this year by tractor maker John Deere and a major agricultural trade group, which advocates said failed to give farmers clear access to the tools and software needed to fix their farm equipment.

Myers, the Maryland independent repairer, says that allowing customers to own their car's data today would, first and foremost, “give them the right to choose where they get their car fixed.” But he also has his eye on the future. “Down the road, we will find out what automakers are collecting,” he says—and why. He’d rather establish car owners’ right to control that information now, before they discover too late that it’s being used in ways they don’t like.

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