https://99percentinvisible.org/article/v...nsumerism/
https://failedarchitecture.com/tropical-babel/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Helicoide

El Helicoide is a giant hill-shaped Modernist building designed to be a center of commerce, eventually turned into a edifice that dominates the dystopia below both visibly and in life, with unspeakable human rights abuses inside.

And I'm wondering if everyone else knew about this and I'm one of today's lucky 10,000.  It certainly could have been known to the makers of BGC, as the Venezuelan intelligence service moved in 3 years before production.  But probably the Tower of Babel is the archetype for GENOM Tower.

Posted here as opposed to General Discussion (or Eyrie Miscellaneous) because the human rights angle reminded me of DW2 the most.

So... I've had a note for a scene where Usagi joins her school's martial arts club in my notes for chapter 3 for some months.  And a couple days ago, I reached that point.

And I overdid it horribly.  Too much awesome Usagi too soon.  So I scrapped it and rewrote it.  (Well, "scrapped" is the wrong word -- I recycled about a third of the material.  But you know what I mean.)

Anyway, I thought you folks might get a kick out of what went into my discard file.  So here's a scene that will never appear in Drunkard's Walk S.

I just came across this article at Kotaku.com, which reports on a Japanese author (someone who goes by the pen name "Sow") who tried to estimate the values of several famous anime houses and tweeted his results.  (This was some time late last year; the article is dated November 2018.)  He points out that a standalone house with garden like the Tsukino home, located in Azabujuuban, would cost four million dollars in today's money.

Yow.

This is a childhood friend of mine, recently diagnosed with cancer. She needs about $12,000 to cover the second part of her treatment. Any donation will be appreciated.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/pro-fondos-tr...-christine

First, the story: https://www.vox.com/2019/3/15/18264399/c...ng-huffman

TL;DR these parents instead of going through the time tested “I’ll donate a building in exchange for accepting my kid at this Ivy League college” decided to instead actually commit several crimes.

Here is The Legal Eagle with some analysis of the charges:

Heatblur has just brough the F-14 Tomcat to Digital Combat Simulator

As a simulation it borders on indescribeable. It is meticulous in its recreation of the Tomcat - especially the twtchy and tricky low-speed handling. The simulation rattles and judders as you stress and maneuver the jet, and the weapons and systems work with all the clunkiness you'd expect of Mid-70's technolgy. Switches and controls in the cockpit need your attention. The Sim comes with an AI RIO pilot who's reasonably capable on his own and will work the Radar and weapons for you while you do that Pilot Shit.

And it definitely requires you do do that Pilot shit

There's still more to come - right now it's the relatively powerfule B model. The earlier, and much trickier, A model is to follow.

I've been fiddling with this making take-oiffs and landings, starting it up and occasionally chasing down the odd enemy bomber to dick with the weapons. It stresses my laptop to the point where it occasionally locks up solid spinning the disk.

So bear in mind, this will hammer your computer - especially the HDD and RAM. But it is so fucking worth it.

Oh, and it'll do carrier landings and launches also.

The screenshots below don't do it justice.

...and the X-Men and Fantastic Four are back in Marvel's hands.

Vox article here.

Okay, so once Ben gets his BIG Power-Up, because he has a biological M/AM reactor that can pump electricity into his nervous system, he's going to have an enhanced nervous system to make use of it.  It will be similar to the modification done to SPARTAN II's where their dendrites are changed to shielded electrical transduction.

Which means he can probably pump out a substantial amount of juice when needed...?

This doesn't grant him electrokinesis, but put him with one of the Misakas and it may be possible for him to act as a human 'booster unit'.

How this would be done/used, I'm not sure.  Thoughts?

Hino Rei, miko, knelt before the sacred fire of the Hikawa shrine
and performed her regular devotions. Eyes closed, she swayed
slowly to and fro, sending her long ebony hair swinging gently.
Before her the fire blazed, crackling and popping as the sweet
smoke from the incense sprinkled on the wood filled her nostrils.
Her hands were clasped before her, an ofuda entwined through the
fingers of her right, as she chanted.

She had been a shrine maiden since her grandfather had taken her
in when her father had all but abandoned her in the wake of her
mother's death. She had begun serving both as a way of filling
the day and pleasing her grandfather, whom she loved dearly, and
it had become a calling as she'd grown from a child to a young
woman.

And with that calling had come the visions. For the past year
and a half, the spirits would occasionally see fit to grace her
with cryptic glimpses of past, present and future, which she was
left to interpret for herself. Some were easy to understand, but
others would baffle her until events transpired which cast them
into sudden clarity.

Rei did not seek a vision today.

Rei never sought a vision. To be honest, while she felt honored
to be the recipient of messages from the spirits, they were ...
inconvenient at the best of times, and too often distressing.
She was fourteen! She couldn't do anything about most of the
things that were shown to her, which both frustrated and angered
her. What was the point if she was helpless?

But despite her frustration, the visions still came.

And one came this day.

Almost before she realized it, the flame surged upward and her
mind's eye opened; she caught a brief glance, once again, of the
guardian spirit of the shrine -- fierce, armored, a little like
an oni in its appearance, but its presence was comforting and
reassuring instead of frightening. Almost as soon as she saw it,
it vanished from her inner sight.

In its place the moon, brilliant silver-white against the black
of a starless night, swam into view. Nearly blinding at first,
it dimmed enough for her to make out the familiar shadowy form of
the Rabbit, eternally pounding mochi in the sky. Grey against
the brighter white of the moon, the Rabbit paused in its endless
task, laid aside its hammer and, to her shock and surprise,
climbed down from the moon. As it did so it changed shape, from
a realistic rabbit to a grey-furred humanoid form that she
suddenly recognized as a Western cartoon character. Chewing on a
carrot it held in one hand, it stood before her and studied her.

"Yup," it finally said, pointing at her with the truncated
carrot, its greens swinging wildly. "You're the right one,
kiddo."

Rei gaped at it. "I'm the right one for what?"

It chuckled and bit off another piece. "Eh, don't worry about
that right now. Yer gonna run into some old friends and a new
one who'll tell ya everything. In the meanwhile, though..." It
reached into a pocket that appeared in the fur on its hip and,
frowning in concentration, dug through it as though searching for
something. Its eyes lit up and it withdrew its closed fist from
the pocket, which immediately disappeared. "It's dangerous to go
alone," it said with a human-like grin. It took her hand in its
open one, and placing whatever it'd found in its pocket into it.
"Take this."

Rei looked down to find a red-yellow flame dancing merrily in the
palm of her hand, without heat or pain. She looked up, and the
rabbit-creature was gone. She glanced at the flame again, only
to find it was racing across her body. Before she could panic,
she had *become* the flame, and she knew there was no harm here.
In the distance, a bugle sounded a call that seized her heart and
demanded she answer. She turned from the moon to look where it
had come from...

And found herself back in the shrine.

A bit meta, but something that even the casual readers here can take part in. I'm offering up one of the more cliched fanfic ideas in recent history; you get to give a capsule description (or an entire story) showing how one of the fictional characters in our setting would approach the setup.

If you want to write it as a series of posts, here's Post #0: