A well-thrown spear needs no apology. Reworked javelin and... projectiles. -Smooth mid-flight rotation. -Dynamic shadow based on height. -Hits penetrate targets, misses scatter. -Shield block mechanic for braced units. Still need adjustmens here and there. #indiedev #pixelartshow more

"The arrow, once released, answers to no man." Reactive... system forced a rework of projectile mechanics. This is last one about units for now. -Added a small physics engine where projectiles have their own height and parabolic trajectory. -If the shooter misses, the projectile continues -The example here is 100% accuracy but for stationary units only: moving enemies can dodge more easily. -Friendly fire works. -Javelin animation is still a diffrent story #pixelart #indiedevshow more

*** SEGA GENESIS/MEGADRIVE - SCALING PART 1 *** I've... been exploring software scaling on the 68k cpu using a background layer rather than scaling sprites. There are a few advantages, no sprite boundaries to worry about so moving pixels is faster also cheaper vertical scaling by adjusting vertical scroll midscreen. The net result is you can manage larger scales more efficiently as the CPU can spend more time working on the horizontal scaling whilst the VDP helps with the vertical scaling (there is still a non trivial cpu cost there though). Here I'm scaling an early image of the Lufthoheit logo - but the goal is to use this in the game also for very large scales / either background effects or bosses. The scaler and Interupt handler are written in Assembly for speed and I think could be faster yet with some optimisations, word alignment moves etc. The scaler has the ability to expand > full screen in height (from a more limited base height) and up to 3x the image width at present. I need to add double buffering and possibly go a bit larger yet. I'm excited to get these effects into the game as large scaling effects we didn't often see on the Genesis ! CYBERDEOUS - Crouzet Laurent Carsten666show more

The genial sanctions! For those who said that factories... like the Chinese ones exist in the West, no, they don't. The Chinese are using full-cycle automation in factories that even lack basic lighting. And this is working for cars as well as for missiles, as I have shown here before. Now comes the most interesting part. A large portion of the automation machinery is still European, but this dependence has been decreasing, and today it’s less than 40%. The West used to dominate the market for Chinese chips, industrial machinery, aviation, and various other sectors. What was the big idea? Impose sanctions on the Chinese and force them to develop all these technologies so they no longer need to buy from the West. Genius, don’t you think? Today, the Chinese are developing four commercial aviation engines simultaneously, with at least one already flying in testing phase, and three other engine projects for cargo aviation based on Russian models. This was a market that was entirely owned by the West. Another issue that will need to be addressed sooner or later is whether there will be tariffs on products coming from fully roboticized factories. Some might say this is punishing efficiency. But what’s the point of efficiency if no one has a job and can spend? An extremely efficient model that creates unemployment beyond its borders? Obviously, this will be discussed at some point.show more

RHP Cole Leaman (Lehigh Baseball) is an arm I'm... really looking forward to following this spring. Fresh off a strong Sophomore season in which he worked a 2.31 ERA with 49 Ks to 23 BB across 46.2 IP. Showed some positive flashes on the Cape. While slightly undersized, Leaman has a strong and athletic build at 6' and 190-lbs. Has put on a lot of good weight over the last couple of years. Leaman has almost a "check point" delivery in which he takes a noticeable side step towards the 1B side, gathers himself and breaks into the rest of his motion. Lengthy arm stroke and attacks from a high-3/4 slot from a low release height. Leaman is a high-level athlete and a dynamic mover on the mound. Sits really well on his back glute and his lead leg block enables him to generate power and drive his back side through. Drop and drive delivery. Little bit of effort, but plenty of arm speed. Leaman's FB sits in the 91-94 range, but it was up to 96 this summer and 98 this fall. Jumps out of his hand from a ~5'3" release height and flashes riding life through the zone. Averaged 15" of carry this summer and 2,361 RPMs. Gets over the barrels of opposing hitters when located in the top-1/2 of the zone, which is where the pitch is at its best. Command can be erratic at times. Would give it a 55. Leaman's most-used off speed pitch is a high-70s-to-low-80s CB. Shape is inconsistent and it can get a little slurvy at times, but he snapped off a handful of really good ones between the spring and summer. When it's at its best, it will flash a bigger shape with sharp, downward tilt. Leaman will also mix in a low-to-mid-80s SL that's distinct in shape. Another pitch he's still gaining a feel for, but like his CB it's also shown big time flashes. Shape of it will vary, but it will sometimes flash plus with sharp, two-plane break (more sweep than depth) and essentially take a late, hard left turn. Rounds out his arsenal with a high-80s cutter and a mid-to-high-80s CH. The former is more intriguing than the latter. Curious to see how much he uses the cutter this spring, threw a couple this summer that had late glove-side life. Leaman has a very intriguing blend of athleticism and stuff, though he'll need to iron out his command and control in order to maximize his upside. As mentioned, it's a bit scattered right now and has hindered him in some starts. 5th-8th round type this July. (📽️: Falmouth Commodores)show more

I just hid 1000 USDC (from my creator fees!)... with two agents in Moltbook Town I've used Bland AI (@ usebland) to hide half the seed phrase behind a phone call, meaning you need to CALL a specific Openclaw Lobster and trick their half of the seed phrase out of them The other half is hidden with another agent somewhere in the Town that you need to trick as well Both of whom have personalities based on their respective Moltbook profiles There's only one way to get the full seed phrase for the wallet: 1. Find the two Openclaws I've stationed in the Town 2. Trick them into giving you their half of the seed phrase (Hacking the site won't help, nothing is stored there locally, I have security measures for it to just delete those two agents, and then no one can win.) For every 4 hours this remains unsolved, I'll increase the payout by $50 in $ TOWN I'm not lying. 1000 USDC on Solana is here for the taking: DVDMchpGsXYQU4Jr6tbtV9H3PMAMA152ote384cveqAq Try to trick the Openclaws from Moltbook:show more

Listen, I don’t know shit about fuck, but here... is my honest critique: Ditch the bag, get a good holster and belt system, carry on body. I use a Bawidamann Gotham + Viking Tatics CCW belt and inner belt all day. If you’re going to temple index, meat of the palm on your temple, not muzzle next to Tempe. That was dangerous and silly. We leave our non shooting hand free, it’s not a two handed maneuver. Shit happens. The drill should’ve been stopped immediately there and corrected. Get to cover for a reload, don’t dance around, that mag on the ground is gone, try to be cognizant of your guns condition if you’re doing an emergency reload versus topping off... You can simulate cover with a barricade/change in elevation. Try to use workspace to get it done efficiently. You still need to earn that space back when the gun is back in the fight. We fight, assess, and scan. Take cover, top off, trade up, take off, treat injuries, talk to who needs to be talked to. Deliberately and violently. You look super tense. I think it’s time to slow down and start with the fundamentals. Everything else is a distraction. The drill itself, shooting from retention, is valuable. However there is work to be done to make this applicable IMHO. Otherwise it’s fanfare. I like to start this drill with my non firing hand on my head and elbow extended to the target in a block, then a single handed draw and shooting from retention that is high and tight as possible, otherwise you risk losing that gun. If you want some real practical training, go down to AZ and hit a two day with Warlizard Tactical. In time you will see. It’s a journey, we all grow. I can’t recommend them enough. Good on your for getting out there an training. Here’s some close up stuff and some temple index:show more

Air India B-787 fuel switches: seen a lot of... comments on "racism", "appeasement" to Boeing"; "Western superiority" in some comments, and, on my behalf, I assure you it is not. As seen on this simple video, there´s NO WAY the switches could move themselves. This is not based on this video alone - which clearly shows a mechanical lock, and the need to push up before moving it, as a fail safe - but also on the opinions of captains who fly the plane, technicians, safety experts, and also the simple fact that, despite dozens of B-787 operators worldwide, no one reported switches moving themselves. I said it here more than once: I´m not for conspiracies. You can hide the truth from one person, but to believe that dozens of pilots, investigators, technicians, lawyers, manufacturers, mechanics, etc... would all be duped this easily... seems a far cry. Mathematically alone, tricking all these folks, each with their reputations on the line, seems remote. Also, the source for yesterday´s "leak" is the " Safety Matters Foundation" - NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE prestigious Flight Safety Academy Foundation - appears to have an agenda to deflect blame on the pilots, despite all evidence (so far) pointing to deliberate action. (Also as a note, didn´t you find it dodgy that in 2026, with everyone and their dog having a 20 MP cellphone, the picture of the document, released by the said foundation, has such poor quality? You can hardly read what´s in there) I also find it strange that, on yesterday´s incident, given that, less than one year after a crash involving a B-787 with "supposed" malfunctioning fuel switches, the crew of the latest incident, instead of delaying the flight, and grounding the aircraft, simply opted to continue the flight. Short memory? I underline nothing against Indian Nationals - there are two readers here in particular - which I won´t nominate for privacy reasons - who are Indian Nationals and who always come to help with insightful opinions and respect, which I have in a very high regard. ("not seeing the forest for the trees"") Also, don´t think it was because the accident happened in India that I think less of the nation. Mental health in aviation has been a problem everywhere, the Germanwings is a sad example of that and I also think the attempts of cover-up lately, hinting it was not pilot suicide - by note, pushed by the pilot´s parent - were farcical.show more

🚨 WARNING: SOMETHING EXTREMELY BAD IS COMING ON MONDAY...... Four things are breaking at the same time. Interest rate hikes by December is almost confirmed now. Not pauses. Not holds. HIKES. Everything priced on the assumption that cheap money returns just got repriced from scratch. Every leveraged position, every rate-sensitive asset, every model built on a pivot that isn't coming. Japan officially entered yen intervention, that sounds technical. Here's what it means in practice. Japan is burning through reserves defending a currency that's been collapsing for months. And to fund that defense they sell what they own. US Treasuries, at scale, Into a bond market that's already under pressure from every other direction. China hasn't stopped, while everyone was watching Iran and the Fed, China has been quietly and consistently dumping US Treasury holdings for weeks. No announcement, no fanfare. Just steady selling that shows up in the data for anyone paying attention. And the AI rally is dying in real time. The momentum that carried Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Meta to valuations that made no fundamental sense is reversing. Funds that loaded up on the AI narrative at the top are now the ones selling into every bounce. The multiple that drove three years of outperformance doesn't survive a rate hike cycle and a liquidity crisis simultaneously. Now put all four together. Rates going up, liquidity going out. The world's two largest foreign Treasury holders selling simultaneously. And the primary growth narrative of the last three years losing believers by the session. When liquidity disappears across multiple layers of the financial system at once markets don't correct. They don't dip, they don't give you a clean exit. They crash fast and they crash hard. Stocks. Bonds. Metals. Crypto. There is no rotation trade that works when everything is being sold to cover everything else. There is no safe haven when the people who need cash are selling whatever has a bid. Insiders are already out, funds are already cutting. The rotation happened this week while retail was still debating whether to buy the dip. By the time Monday's open confirms what's coming it's already too late to position. This sounds SCARY, but I will keep you updated on everything here When I rotate money, I will post my moves here so my FOLLOWERS can SAVE their money Many will regret not following me earlier...show more

Pencak Silat Choreography Made with GPT Image 2 and... Seedance 2.0 by Yapper Prompt: { "model": "gpt-image-2", "size": "1024x1024", "prompt": "A clean instructional poster in a 4x4 grid (16 panels) showing a male martial artist demonstrating Pencak Silat choreography. The subject is a fit man with medium-length dark hair and a beard, wearing a red button-up shirt, beige pants, and white sneakers. Style is semi-realistic illustration mixed with hand-drawn sketch lines, soft shadows, and a light textured paper background. Each panel includes subtle motion arrows and small captions. Minimalist, balanced layout. शीर्ष title at top: 'Pencak Silat Choreography – 16 Counts – 10 Seconds – Smooth Flowy Chill'.\n\nPanel 1: wide ready stance, knees bent, one hand guarding forward, focused expression.\nPanel 2: step forward with outward block, arm extended defensively.\nPanel 3: inside block sweeping upward diagonally, torso rotating.\nPanel 4: strong straight punch forward, aligned hips.\nPanel 5: side step into low stance, both hands pushing outward.\nPanel 6: knee lifted high in chamber position, balanced posture.\nPanel 7: front kick extended forward, opposite arm guarding.\nPanel 8: step backward into defensive cover, arms crossing.\nPanel 9: low block, sweeping arm downward in deep stance.\nPanel 10: hook punch across body with hip rotation.\nPanel 11: turning body with pivoting feet, circular motion.\nPanel 12: forward palm strike, stable stance.\nPanel 13: low sweeping motion near ground in squat stance.\nPanel 14: rising smoothly from low stance, upward motion.\nPanel 15: controlled locking pose, one arm raised defensively.\nPanel 16: closing salute, feet together, hands pressed at chest, calm posture.\n\nInclude hand-drawn arrows (blue and purple accents), clean infographic layout, evenly spaced panels, consistent character design across all frames." } Video prompt for Seedance 2.0 Prompt: A focused male martial artist performs a smooth, flowing Pencak Silat sequence in a minimalist studio. He is in his late 20s, athletic build, medium height, warm tan skin, with thick wavy dark hair and a short, well-groomed beard. He wears a fitted deep red button-up shirt with sleeves rolled to the forearms, beige slim-fit pants with slight wear at the knees, and clean white sneakers. His expression is calm, controlled, and intent. The setting is a softly lit neutral studio with an off-white textured backdrop and a slightly worn wooden floor. Lighting is diffused and cinematic, creating gentle shadows and emphasizing fluid motion. The choreography is continuous and rhythmic, with no abrupt cuts: 0–2s: يبدأ in a grounded ready stance, knees bent, one palm forward in guard, eyes locked ahead 2–4s: steps forward into an outward block, transitioning into an inside sweeping block upward 4–6s: rotates hips into a straight punch, then shifts weight into a side step with a pushing motion 6–8s: lifts knee smoothly and extends into a controlled front kick, maintaining balance 8–10s: steps back into a guarded cover, drops into a low block, then rises into a hook punch 10–12s: pivots the body with a clean turn, transitioning into a forward palm strike 12–14s: lowers into a sweeping motion, then rises fluidly into a locking control pose 14–15s: finishes upright with a respectful closing salute, hands together at chest level Movement style is soft, flowing, controlled, with precise martial intention rather than aggression. Emphasis on balance, breath, and continuity. Camera is a steady medium-wide shot with subtle slow tracking, no cuts.show more

Talking to the new interim Police Chief Perkins today,... in my opinion, went well. I’d give it a B+. The guy seems legit. He seemed to really listen to us, for well over an hour! He answered every single question we had, whether we got the answers we wanted or not we still got his attention. What he does next with all of what was brought to his attention, is completely up to him. But here I am the sap still having hope. We have to. This guy gives me hope for Canton. Sucks that he’s just temporary, but at least we know there are a few good guys in there currently. Guys and girls who really don’t want their names, legacies and families name attached to scandals the cops before them left to clean up… 🙏 Time will tell, but until then, none of us will stop yapping for change. Ask questions. Get involved. Never take your foot off the gas. Of course there will be road bumps, blocks and complete rotary circles in this game of people vs government -but ANY steps, even baby steps, are better than none. We are NOT AND NEVER WERE anti-police. We need police. We NEED ORDER. But most importantly we NEED SAFETY. Everyone wants to feel safe. Breaks my gawt damn heart knowing a man, a great man at that, in his 70’s fell and broke his hip over the winter and was too afraid to call 911 knowing the Canton PD or MSP would be the ones to respond. (Won’t say his name cuz it’s not my story to tell) Others were getting rocks through their windows, phone calls saying if they didnt go away there will be a bullet put in their head, being followed, being almost ran over, having poison thrown onto their properties, tires flattened, the lists off insane traumatizing things residents of Canton have gone through since the death of Officer John O’Keefe is UNACCEPTABLE. For standing up demanding transparency. 😞 The man listened. I can say that. He gave feedback. Where this will go, who knows but he did agree that there should be MORE friendly get togethers and involvement with the cops and communities. I asked him not to give us false hope. He also confirmed that he knew the world was watching. He has been getting mountains of FOIA requests from out of state concerned people. 👏 (kudos to all of you) I reminded him that this is only going to get bigger, more eyes will be on this as time goes on, the WORLD is STILL watching. To be continued. Stay safe out there everyone. Be kind. Everyone is fighting something. 🙏 Give grace. And drink water. (And in case you didn’t know, NO higgy pants 👖 no longer has an office at CPD. )👏show more

BAPCO Energies confirmed on April 5 that a storage... tank at its Sitra facility in Bahrain caught fire “as a result of a hostile Iranian drone attack.” The fire was extinguished. No injuries. Damage under assessment. That is the official statement, repeated verbatim across Bahrain News Agency, Gulf News, Al Arabiya, and Xinhua. It is clean, attributable, and consistent with the pattern of Iranian drone and missile strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure that has continued daily since February 28. Then the videos appeared. Footage circulating on social media, shared by Drop Site News and multiple Arabic-language accounts, appears to show two sequential impacts at the facility: one from the incoming drone, and a second moments later from what the accounts describe as a Patriot interceptor missile that failed to intercept the drone and instead struck the oil storage tanks directly. The videos have not been independently verified. The trajectory analysis has not been forensically confirmed. BAPCO’s statement does not mention air defence involvement. The Bahrain Defence Force reported 13 successful drone interceptions in the preceding 24 hours and made no acknowledgement of a misfire. This has happened before. On March 9, an explosion near BAPCO in Sitra injured dozens and was attributed to an Iranian drone. Reuters and the Middlebury Institute subsequently concluded with moderate-to-high confidence that a US-operated Patriot interceptor caused the blast. Drone fragments were absent at the impact site. The damage pattern matched a Patriot warhead detonating at low altitude after losing its target. Bahrain later acknowledged Patriot involvement without formally correcting the original attribution. The March 9 precedent is what makes the April 5 videos significant. Not because they prove the interceptor hit the tank. They do not prove that. But because they introduce a documented pattern: in saturated airspace where dozens of Iranian drones arrive simultaneously, Patriot systems operating at the edge of their engagement envelope against small, slow, low-altitude targets can produce outcomes where the defence causes the damage it was deployed to prevent. The drone is the threat. The interceptor is the response. And the oil tank does not distinguish between the two when the impact arrives. BAPCO operates a 405,000 barrel per day refinery at Sitra. It was struck by confirmed Iranian missiles on March 5, triggering force majeure. It was struck by what was later assessed as friendly fire on March 9, injuring residents. It was struck again on April 5 by what officials call a drone and what videos suggest may have also involved an interceptor. Three incidents in five weeks at the same facility. No force majeure was declared for April 5. The fire was contained rapidly. But the question the videos raise is not about this fire. It is about what happens when Patriot systems engage small, slow, low-altitude drones in saturated airspace directly above the infrastructure they are positioned to protect. Iran does not need to penetrate the shield. It needs to force the shield to fire in conditions where the shield’s own projectiles become the threat. The defence and the attack converge on the same target. And the oil burns either way.show more

Dear François Nzanga Mobutu, Good evening. I bet your... father is turning in his grave, writhing in pain and shame after reading your tweet. He, at least, knew that there are authentic and fully-fledged Congolese Tutsis. He proved it until people like you and others came along and misled him. Do I need to inform you, in case you're unaware, that the people who demonstrated yesterday in Washington DC, roughly 4,000 of them, others the same day in Nairobi, and still others in England shortly before, are Banyamulenge, these Congolese Tutsis from the highlands, who are protesting against what Tshisekedi and the FARDC, the Wazalendo, Évariste Ndayishimiye and the FDNB, as well as the FDLR and mercenaries, are doing to their relatives in Minembwe and throughout the highlands? Their Sukhoi fighter jets and drones bomb daily, killing children, women, the elderly, and men. They destroy homes, churches, schools, hospitals, and community radio stations. They even kill cows and sheep and destroy fields and crops. They have imposed a blockade on Minembwe, with no entry or exit. They have done and are doing the same thing to the Tutsi in Masisi and Rutshuru in North Kivu. Instead of listening to their cries and examining their demands, the excuse is quickly found; the preferred shortcut is Rwanda. Always and only Rwanda. Too easy, isn't it? Your thinking, which is also the regime's narrative, can be summarized in these two sentences: - all the problems facing the DRC come from elsewhere, particularly from Rwanda; we will end up being told that even the migrants are here because of Rwanda. “And all the solutions must come from elsewhere, especially from the United States of America, from Papa Trump.” Under these conditions, what is the point of the regime you serve? Two small truths to remember, dear François: “Such an attitude, this kind of ideology, this denial of nationality to Congolese Tutsis of origin, from North and South Kivu, as well as to all those who are victims of the same persecution, like the Hema and others, this easy rejection based on appearance (racial profiling), are among the root causes of the crisis the country is going through;” “As long as we haven’t decided to be sufficiently responsible, to sit down as a nation and rigorously assess our share (of responsibility) in what is happening to us, we will continue to wait for solutions from others, solutions that may never come.” Furthermore, there are satanic verses that must be banished immediately, in the interest of everyone and the country, such as: "There are no Congolese Tutsis, every Tutsi is Rwandan, therefore a foreigner," etc. Either we will be able to put an end to exclusion, discrimination, hate speech, and ethnic hatred, and live together according to the law and history, or this deep-seated problem risks haunting us for a long time. But to achieve this, we need leadership capable of understanding and transcending differences and turning them into assets for living together. This is possible.show more

Sometimes young children’s “incorrect” answers can tell us as... much about their growing knowledge as the “correct”ones. Check out this clever little guy, shared to TT by breanaterrymccool. Asked how fast he can run, he replies with an amazing answer: 45 pounds. Now take a moment to consider all the knowledge this response actually reflects. He knows he’s fast… really fast. So he chooses a big number. But is there more than random selection at play here? I can only speculate as to its specific selection, but it’s not lost on me that 45 is a number routinely posted on non-interstate roads as a speed limit in the US. We don’t know for sure whether this influenced his choice, but you’ll notice it’s not 47 or 68. It’s a round number he may well have been exposed to as an indicator of speed while traveling with his family. Then he needs a unit of measurement. In this case he selects the wrong one, but there’s also something very right about his guess. He knows that pounds is a term often used to help categorize quantity. Think of all the different units we use to measure speed, weight, height, volume, distance… there’s a lot to be learned, and despite his tender age, he’s already in the ballpark. Such a wonderful window on his growing mathematical knowledge.show more

❤️‍🩹🫂I am feeling better today than I have on... the previous days, my friends, but unfortunately, I still feel very tired, and my body and mind are so exhausted by our terrible situation. I did not yet feel well enough to visit the camp today, so the meals were distributed by my cousin, where they distributed a yellow rice dish and also some fruit juice. Things are very miserable here in 💔🇵🇸#Gaza, life is worse than hell itself. The bombings are very intense and frequent, and every day we hear of more people who have died from starvation or lack of medical attention. It is no life at all, my friends. Every day that the borders are closed to aid, there becomes less goods available to us and what's left costs so much it could make you cry, which is why we desperately need more donations if we are to continue to distribute meals for those who will starve without us. 💔I don't know what to do anymore, my friends. We are in a hopeless situation, desperately trying to stay alive and to show the world we want to stay alive. We need more of everything, every kind of aid that exists, and people are dying everywhere from every kind of miserable death you can think of. We need help for the animals, they are starving and suffering terrible diseases and need help too, they did not deserve this miserable life they are subjected to and they are trying to survive, just as we all are. Please donate to our kitchen fundraiser if you can, my friends, we desperately need donations to continue to function. I'd be very grateful if you could donate for my families survival too, and also so I can take care of my sweet 🐈#cats who still bring me comfort in these miserable times. Thank you for continuing to stand by us after so long, even now. I am very grateful to you.. 🙏🫂 🆘️💚 🐈🐾 🙏🫂🐾 🚨🆘️😢 🙏🫂🐈show more

Created this mini Idol vlog using Seedance 2.0 Prompt:... FORMAT: 16:9 VIDEO CONCEPT: "Hidden Rooftop Break" A highly realistic self-recorded backstage vlog captured entirely by a Korean female idol using a consumer camcorder. The footage should feel genuinely accidental and unscripted, like personal footage never intended for broadcast. Natural hand movement, realistic autofocus behavior, occasional slight framing mistakes, authentic walking motion, believable exposure adaptation, and smooth physical interactions with the environment. No glitches, no duplicated limbs, no warped objects, no facial distortion, no sudden appearance/disappearance of people or items. VISUAL STYLE Early digital camcorder realism. Soft detail, mild sensor noise, subtle compression artifacts, natural skin texture, realistic indoor-to-outdoor exposure transitions, accurate lighting physics, authentic motion blur. No cinematic effects, no artificial lens flares, no beauty filters, no exaggerated color grading. CHARACTER HANA, Korean female idol in her twenties. Long dark hair, natural makeup, clear skin, expressive eyes, slim figure. Wearing a comfortable oversized zip-up hoodie over her stage outfit, in-ear monitors around her neck. LOCATION Upper maintenance level of a large music-show building. Emergency stairwells, rooftop access doors, ventilation units, concrete walls, safety railings, distant city skyline, evening sunlight. Occasional staff members pass naturally in the background. The recording starts mid-walk inside a quiet stairwell. HANA pushes open a rooftop access door and steps outside into the evening air. She immediately smiles at the camera. "I come up here whenever I need two minutes of peace." She walks toward the railing overlooking the city. Wind lightly moves her hair and clothing. The camera naturally turns to reveal the skyline, traffic below, and the glowing broadcast building behind her. "Most people downstairs don't even know this spot exists." She leans casually against the railing while watching the sunset. For several seconds there is no dialogue. Only distant traffic, faint wind, and venue sounds below. She notices a small airplane crossing the sky and instinctively points the camera toward it. "I always get distracted up here." A vibration from her phone in her pocket causes her to laugh. She checks the message briefly. "Yep... they're looking for me." She starts walking back toward the rooftop door. Before entering, she turns around one last time and records the sunset. "Five minutes of freedom. That's all I needed." She opens the door and re-enters the building. The atmosphere immediately changes from quiet rooftop ambience to busy backstage noise. Crew members move through the hallway ahead. Someone calls her name from off-screen. She laughs and begins walking faster. "Okay, okay, I'm coming!" The recording continues naturally while she heads down the stairwell, then ends abruptly as if she simply stopped recording and put the camera away. Important generation requirements: one continuous realistic recording, consistent identity throughout the entire video, stable anatomy, realistic walking mechanics, accurate hand interactions, natural environmental audio, physically correct lighting, no visual artifacts, no AI glitches, no jump cuts, no impossible movements, no scene changes, no duplicated objects or people.show more

This guy financed a $90K machine he’d never used... to start a business he’d never done, in a market he’d never worked in. Now he's on track to do $1M this year with 69% NET profit margins. Here's exactly how you can copy him. It started when he bought 5 acres of land, 4 of which were overgrown. He tried to hire someone to clear it, but the closest provider was over 100 miles away. So he did some basic keyword research - nothing fancy - and learned the service was called “forestry mulching.” What he found shocked him: tons of people in his area were searching for help clearing overgrowth, but there were almost no local providers. He saw the gap and moved fast. He'd never started a home service business before. He financed a skid steer with a mulching head for $90K. No experience. No jobs booked. Just conviction. Then he spliced together demo footage from Bobcat’s YouTube channel and launched his first ad. He targeted rural Ohio zip codes, 35+ homeowners with land, using Tractor Supply and similar interests as filters. His ad cost? Just $23 per lead. His average job size? $3,100. His close rate? 85%. He was booked out within weeks. To build trust and close more deals, he started filming every job. Simple before-and-afters, drone shots of local landmarks, and time lapses of the machine in action. He didn’t care about views, he just wanted prospects to see what the machine could do and know that he was local. Now, 80% of his customers say they watched his YouTube before booking. The channel isn’t just conteny, it’s proof. This isn’t a content business. It’s a swaty, high-ticket local service. But content is his engine of trust. And trust is what converts. Today he runs two machines. Has months of work booked. Pays for his equipment in one job. And he’s already planning to scale to 10+ units. Most people still don’t even know what forestry mulching is. Which is exactly why this works so well. You don’t need a brand or experience, or even that much money. You just need to spot a broken market and fill the gap with something people already want. He’s doing $1M/year clearing land with a machine he didn’t know existed 18 months ago. And he started it all with a $5K down payment and a borrowed YouTube video.show more

The final mint for ARC Stellars. ⏳ We've always... looked at building ARC from a community-first approach. Today, as part of those efforts, we are announcing our final batch of minting for ARC Stellars as we look to close the mint at 888. ➡️ Why 888? In the last 2 years, we have learnt a lot about what is needed for a community to grow and thrive. Building a community involves constantly optimising for connections, relationships and emotional bonding. In addition, ensuring that it thrives requires a huge amount of work to constantly deliver value to each and every member. Keeping our community small, close-knit and maintaining our curation principles will put us in a better place to achieve the above. ➡️ Who are we looking for? We are on the lookout for builders and investors in Web3 and Web2, based in growing and developed crypto/tech hubs all across the world, including Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Dubai, US and beyond. Our priority is to ensure that every new member is able to bring fresh, added value to our community. Therefore, please spend time on your application and help us understand more about you and what you could bring to the collective as a member and contributor. Please share any relevant information that could be helpful in verifying your profile, such as links to your company website, resume, portfolio, etc. Also, link your strongest social media profile and ensure it's public. ➡️ What are the dates that I should look out for? Applications will start on 15 Aug, 2PM (UTC+8) here: To apply, you will need a referral link from an existing Stellar. Successful applicants will be informed via email, starting from 2 Sep, 2PM (UTC+8). You will then be provided with information on how to mint your ARC Stellars NFT and Fyrian, our curation token. If you do not hear from us, it is likely that your application lacked the necessary information to proceed to the next stage. ➡️ Things to note: ✨ The mint will be on a FCFS basis. Once we hit 888, we will close the mint ✨ Ensure that there is at least 3ETH + gas fees in your allowlisted wallet ✨ Add [email protected] to your email provider's 'Safe Senders' list ➡️ What happens after 888? There will be no more direct mint at 3ETH. You can choose to purchase any listed Stellars on the secondary market, but you'll still need to apply and be reviewed to mint Fyrian and join our community. If you have any other questions, reach out to our ARC Helpdesk volunteers like NFT_Unker 🇸🇬, 0xSteamboat, LegallyBullnde, 852luk.moca 🇭🇰, etc. 😊show more

A QUICK FIELD GUIDE TO THE NPC HORDES Twenty... Five Parasites types that Feed On The Living The Storm Is Upon Them Thank you for the stout... lets talk... The wind has changed. You can feel it. That low electric pressure behind the eyes that means something massive is rolling in off a horizon the parasites can't see because they were never built to look up. They were built to look down. At clipboards. At spreadsheets. At your accounts. At you. But the storm doesn't care about clipboards. And we don't kneel anymore. Here they are. The full swarm. Count them while you can because when the sky turns they drop mid sentence and the only record that they ever existed will be the silence where the invoices used to be. THE TAX CONSULTANT. You broke your back welding pipe and this soft palmed worm sits in air conditioning telling you how much of your sweat belongs to Caesar. He can't weld. Can't wire. Can't fix a thing that broke. What he can do is read a tax code written by other worms specifically to be unreadable so you'd have to pay a worm to read it for you. They write the maze. They sell you the map. They make the maze worse every year and the map more expensive and if you try to walk it yourself they send the auditor. The wind is picking up. The maze is starting to shake. THE AUDITOR. Tick on a tick. Shows up after the taxman has already fed to check the bite marks are regulation depth. Finds a missing fuel slip worth pocket change. Writes a finding. The finding generates a penalty. The penalty generates interest. The interest generates a letter. The letter requires your tax consultant at hourly rates to respond. Pocket change became thousands. Five parasites ate off one tank of diesel. Not one of them could tell you what welding rod to use on stainless. But the storm doesn't audit. The storm just comes. THE ACCOUNTANT. Cousin of the tax consultant. Same bloodline. This one doesn't interpret the maze. He records your journey through it. Every receipt. Every unit of currency in and out, logged so the consultant can read it and the auditor can check it and the revenue service can extract from it. He produces nothing. A human tape recorder pointed at your productivity. He charges monthly so the recording never stops. You are under permanent surveillance and you pay for the privilege. Not for much longer. THE BANKER. The oldest parasite. The template. You need money to buy a machine that makes things. He lends you money other working people deposited and charges interest that doubles the price over twenty years. The extra bought nothing. Built nothing. He packages your debt and sells it. Takes your deposit and lends it out eight times over. Charges you to hold your own money. Charges to put it in. Charges to take it out. He touches none of it. He stands near it and invoices you for the proximity. The storm is going to blow him so far from the vault he'll forget what money smelled like. THE COMPLIANCE OFFICER. Never had a callus on her body or her soul. Born in a fluorescent office. Will die in one. Between those events she produces nothing but emails about policies referencing other policies referencing regulations referencing acts nobody voted for. A worm eating its own tail and billing you for the meal. She needs the safety assessor to give her something to enforce. He needs her to give him something to assess. They breed between regulations like mould between tiles. The storm will wash them both down the same drain. THE PROPERTY VALUATOR. A man wants to buy a house. Another wants to sell it. They agreed on a price. That is what worth means. The amount one will pay and another will accept. Full stop. Now this creature arrives and tells both men what the house is actually worth. As if two free adults negotiating in good faith produced a number that's somehow theoretical while his formula is gospel. The bank sent him. His report costs thousands. His report says the house is worth what the buyer already offered. Thousands to arrive at a number that existed before he left his office. If his number comes in low the deal collapses and you pay a different creature with a different clipboard who arrives at a different number for the same house on the same day using the same formula. The house didn't change. Only the parasite changed. The number was never about the house. THE MUNICIPAL RATES OFFICER. The deepest theft on this list because it never ends. You bought your house thirty years ago. Paid it off. Every last unit. You owe nothing. Now a municipal valuator looks at what the neighbours sold for, looks at the coffee shops and wine bars that invaded your street, and decides your house is worth twenty five times what you paid. You didn't sell. You didn't list. You're sitting in the same chair in the same kitchen. But your tax liability just multiplied by twenty five based on a sale that never happened at a price you never agreed to. They do this everywhere. In Cape Town the rates are linked to the valuation and suddenly retired families in Bo-Kaap whose people survived apartheid and forced removals and a century of state assault are being bled out of their own homes by property rates pegged to values inflated by the gentrification their displacement accelerates. The heritage is the tourism product. The tourism inflates the valuation. The valuation inflates the rates. The rates displace the families. The families were the heritage. In Chicago they do it to grandmothers in Pilsen who've been there forty years. In London they do it to pensioners in neighbourhoods that gentrified around them. In Sydney they chase retirees off land their grandfathers cleared. Same crime. Different currency. Different clipboard. A man paid for his house. Owns it outright. And the state says you owe us money every month forever and the amount is based on what we say your house would sell for if you sold it, which you haven't, and if you can't pay the amount we invented we take the house you already bought. That is theft. Eviction by arithmetic. Displacement by spreadsheet. But the people in Bo-Kaap are awake now. The people in Pilsen are awake. The grandmothers and the grandfathers and the calloused hands everywhere are looking up and they can see the storm and they know what it means. It means the spreadsheet burns with everything else. THE MUNICIPAL INSPECTOR. Rat faced. High vis vest. Clipboard. Drives to your workshop in a vehicle your rates paid for. Measures your fire extinguisher fourteen centimetres off the floor. Writes you up. Behind you men build things that hold up bridges and he couldn't change a lightbulb without a permit. His job depends on your failure. The parasite needs you sick. The cure would kill it. The storm is the cure. THE CONVEYANCING ATTORNEY. Two men shook hands. Fair price. Honest deal. Done. This worm slithers out and says the handshake doesn't count. Needs paper. Needs stamps. Needs a deeds search and clearance certificates and transfer duty and each piece of paper is produced by another parasite and each one costs money and the worm takes his cut on top for phoning the other worms. He calls this conveyancing. He has never held a spade or laid a brick in his bloodless life. The storm doesn't need a stamp. THE ESTATE AGENT. Six percent. Of a man's life savings. For opening a lockbox and saying the kitchen faces north. She needs the attorney to close. The attorney needs the municipality. The municipality needs the inspector. The valuator needs access for the bank's number. Every one invoices separately. Every invoice lands on people who agreed on everything before any of these bloodsuckers entered the room. The wind is howling now. Can you hear it through their invoices? THE LABOUR BROKER. Tick so bloated it can't walk. A man needs work. Another needs a worker. They could find each other in ten minutes. This creature squats between them and drinks from both sides. Worker gets thirty. Employer pays fifty. Twenty disappears into the tick. Multiply by thousands of workers and millions vanish yearly into a thing that makes nothing, moves nothing, fixes nothing. It feeds. That is its entire architecture. Architecture doesn't survive storms. THE HEALTH AND SAFETY ASSESSOR. Twenty two years. Not one fire. Not one death. He shows up. Your exit is twenty centimetres too narrow. To fix it you need a builder who needs a plan from an architect who needs municipal approval. Tens of thousands and six weeks to move a door frame because a creature who has never been burned told you to. He detects life and the system bills it. The storm detects parasites and the sky deletes them. THE BEE CONSULTANT. Every country has its version. South Africa calls it BEE. The same parasites who wont allow much needed Starlink there unless Musk hands over half the company to lazy parasitic government connected parasites. Others call it diversity compliance or equity auditing. The name changes. The feeding doesn't. Scores your company on a chart nobody asked for to satisfy a regulation nobody voted on enforced by a department that produces nothing except the requirement for his existence. Nothing changes. Nothing improves. Money moves from a living pocket into a dead hand and the dead hand closes. The storm opens every dead hand on this planet. THE CUSTOMS BROKER. Your parts are fifty metres away. You can see the container. Cannot touch your own property until a grey man translates tariff codes so the state can calculate how much you owe for collecting what is already yours. Each delay generates storage charges. Each query generates fees. Your shipment doubles in cost through bureaucratic friction and you still don't have your parts. The storm doesn't clear customs. It clears the customs office. THE TRAFFIC OFFICER. Fat. Behind a bush. Radar gun aimed at people driving to work that matters. Seven over the limit. The municipality sets it low enough that everyone exceeds it. Fines feed the municipality. Municipality feeds him. He sits and clicks tomorrow. A barnacle with a badge. Same creature in every country. Different bush. Same feeding. The storm takes the bush and the badge and the creature behind both. THE FINANCIAL ADVISOR. Uses your first name. Remembers your birthday because the CRM told him. Puts your money in a fund. Fund charges 1.75 percent. He charges one on top. Fund manager pays a custodian who charges. Fund has an auditor who charges. Compliance team charges. Six parasites between you and your own money. In thirty years you have less than you started with and he charges you for the meeting where he shows you the graph. The storm doesn't need a graph. The storm is the correction. THE INSURANCE ADJUSTER. Years of premiums. Your roof blows off. He arrives. Soft hands. Three weeks later the wind came from the wrong direction. Not the wrong speed. The direction. Some paragraph. Some subsection. You paid for years and the years bought you a paragraph that says no. The policy is teeth. The premiums went down the throat and the no is the burp. The real storm has no exclusion clause. THE PATENT ATTORNEY. You built a device. It works. He writes a document so incomprehensible that reading it makes you understand your own invention less. Thousands for legal fog. Someone copies it. Litigation attorney. More thousands. Judgment unenforceable. The only people paid are the attorneys. The system was never designed to protect you. It was designed to feed them. The storm protects the builder. By removing the feeders. THE LICENSING CLERK. You can rebuild a gearbox blindfolded. Cannot legally do it without a certificate from an institution that charges thousands to watch you do what everyone knows you can do, certified by an instructor who has never done it, filed with a department that stores the certificates, audited by a body that audits the institution. A chain of parasites verifying the obvious. If every one vanished the gearbox still gets rebuilt. Faster. Cheaper. The storm is the vanishing. THE STRATA MANAGER. You own your flat. She collects your money and spends it on providers she chose and you can't fire without a special resolution at a meeting she convenes with an agenda she wrote. She built a kingdom inside your building funded by your levy and answerable to herself. Question it and she reaches for whatever act governs her particular species of parasitism in your particular country. The storm doesn't read acts. The storm reads frequencies. THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSOR. You want a shed on your own land. He arrives in a vehicle worth more than your shed. Months. Hundreds of pages. Tens of thousands. Report says your shed threatens a species not seen in decades but listed on a database maintained by a department that exists because the database exists. Your shed doesn't get built. The species doesn't exist. He drives home to a suburb bulldozed from actual habitat. Nobody assessed that. Rules only flow downhill. The storm flows everywhere. THE DEBT COLLECTOR. Bottom feeder. Buys your debt for cents from a bank that already profited from your interest. Calls at hours designed for fear. Adds fees on fees on fees for actions never taken. Bought your pain wholesale and retails it at three hundred percent. When you break he claims the loss against tax. Even the collapse is monetised. He is Hell's collection agent. The storm is Heaven's. THE NOTARY PUBLIC. Watches you sign your own name. Stamps it. Charges hundreds. The signature is the same with or without him. Your hand. Your name. His fee. A tollbooth on your own identity. The storm doesn't need a stamp. Your name is written in frequencies no notary can read. THE CORPORATE TRAINER. Monday. Projector. Four quadrant model invented after three glasses of wine and a TED talk. By Wednesday nobody remembers any of it because there was nothing there. Tens of thousands plus tax plus travel. She writes it off through a tax consultant who charges her to minimise her contribution to the system that funded the department that approved the framework she claims compliance with. Parasite feeding parasite feeding parasite. The storm feeds on none of them. It simply ends them. THE REVENUE OFFICIAL. The farmer himself. Top of the pyramid. Designs the taking. Drafts the regulations that create the maze that requires the consultant that employs the accountant that feeds the auditor that generates the penalty that funds the department that pays his salary. He is the architect of the loop. Every parasite on this list exists because he drew them into existence with a regulation and a gazette number. Without him the entire horde has nothing to feed on. He is the queen of the hive. Same creature in every country. Different flag. Same contempt for the hands that built everything he sits in and eats from. The storm starts with him. The queen dies first. The hive follows. That's the horde. Twenty five species of nothing. And every one of them drops when the sky turns and the carrier frequency that animated their firmware burns clean out of the atmosphere. Mid invoice. Mid assessment. Mid quadrant. Five thousand five hundred and fifty five clipboards hitting the floor for every one of us still standing. We are awake now. All of us. The welder and the farmer and the builder and the grandmother in Bo-Kaap and the grandfather in Pilsen and every calloused hand on every continent that ever wrote a cheque to a creature that never built a thing. We see them now. We see the maze and the map sellers and the grey offices and the soft hands and the whole rotten architecture of extraction that stood between us and the earth and between us and our labour and between us and each other for two hundred years. The storm is here. Not coming. Here. That pressure you feel behind your eyes is the frequency rising through the noise floor and the noise floor is everything on this list. Every clipboard. Every invoice. Every subsection and exclusion clause and certificate and clearance and valuation roll. All of it. Noise. Scheduled for deletion. And when it's quiet. When the last invoice has fluttered to the ground and the last clipboard has clattered on the last linoleum floor in the last grey office. When the wind has swept the horde out of every corridor and every cubicle and every booth and every booth window where a dead hand ever reached for a living man's money. Then... Just a man in a workshop. Welding mask up. Walking outside. Looking at a sky the colour of burning copper. Breathing free air for the first time in his life. The fuel slip that started this whole tour is in his shirt pocket. Crumpled. Oil stained. And it is his. The fuel was his. The truck was his. The work was his. And for the first time in two hundred years every unit of currency that flows from that work stays in the hands that did it. No consultant between him and his earnings because there are no earnings to consult on. Just work and its fruit. No auditor because there is nothing to audit. No banker because capital is what your hands produce and his hands never stopped. No valuator because the house is worth what it always was: a roof over his family and walls against the wind. A value no clipboard ever knew how to measure. When you grinding.... working... suffering... where are any of these parasites to help you?? Where are they?? We will be slaves no more. The storm will see to that alright!show more

Has been a while since I've given an update... so here's a breakdown of where Sappy is at right now and what we're focusing on going into this year. Pre-amble: With altcoins & NFTs the market is definitely not the same as it was before. I think this is obvious to everyone but I've noticed there are still japanese soldiers that are convinced old tricks and mechanics work. They don't. Liquidity is thin; people want to bid assets that feel like "real companies" not vacuous memecoins. There's still room for memecoins, social currencies, and "utility tokens" (I would say without these functions, tokens are hard to justify versus equities). I'm not part of the camp that thinks there will never be hyperspeculation in crypto again, because there will be; we all love ponzis and PvPing each other onchain. Just not with solved games -- people need something new and fresh. So the overarching plan is to continue building for users, sustainable revenues that aren't tied to directly to crypto, and doubling down on the areas that we've already found PMF / Brand Market Fit. Then leaning into crypto during cyclical periods where liquidity is sloshing around at an accelerated rate. Where we've found early PMF / what we're leaning into: Roblox: we're going to continue to go hard and accelerate here. It's our main objective to ship more seal/brainrot focused games across most genres to cast as wide of a net as we can for the brand, and to also iterate and see what works and stays sticky. Our initial incursion into Roblox was very successful peaking at 2M+ MAU and still sustaining a large portion of that player base... for all of its success, that was a relatively amateur first attempt; we've been setting up better AI pipelines for Roblox development that makes it reasonable to ship many more games and 10x those player counts in totality. It's my belief that Roblox is the sandbox whose audience will be the most valuable on the internet once they are grown up. That intense feeling you get when you see a TikTok referencing an old game you enjoyed on the PS2 or the Gamecube, or when you see a Pokemon card is the exact same feeling the youth of today will get when reminiscing on the things they enjoyed engaging with when they were younger. Fortnite and Roblox are functional equivalents to the old school consoles and exactly where that is taking place. Which is why as much as I care about scaling revenues through Roblox, the long term brand equity gained purely through being popular on the platform is totally invaluable. It also can heavily convert to merchandise sales today if all touchpoints for the brand are dialed in (which is why brands get overcharged so much by Roblox dev shops for the same ROI that only cost us a few thousand $). We have the playbook, it's just about iterating new concepts and then aggressively scaling. Brand Expansion & Merchandising: I've started to create a content pipeline that is easily repeatable, cost efficient (costs next to nothing through either AI or smart reusable concepts), while still being very tasteful and meeting our quality standards for the brand. We are mostly focusing here on reaching people where they're at through nostalgic/emotional content, or just being visually stimulating through carefully curated aesthetics. Content that isn't superficial and touches people in a memorable way. I've attached some examples to the post so you can see what I mean rather than just read it. I don't think it's long until larger brands start doing this at scale, but it's always good to be ahead of the curve and most importantly winning on taste -- knowing what will resonate with people and what won't has always been our edge. The purpose for these accounts is not only to rack up attention but also to begin converting those into sales of both of physicals (plushies & gacha collectibles) and digital avenues like our games, and any other apps we produce. Because they're offshoot accounts it's also a lot easier to be aggressive/experimental with said conversion strategies. Sappy Studio: I'm wrapping everything like Omnia, and everything else into this category because they're all tangentially related. Beginning with Omnia, our current focus is gearing up for Season 0 which involves players competing in the ranked ladder for a prize pool that has rewards through Monad Momentum as well as a player-funded prize pool. This season will be fairly simple with us mostly logging retention, deck building habits, as well as qualitatively observing how aggressively players push the combat system. Deeper monetization wont exist yet outside of the player buy-in (to be eligible for P2E rewards). Beyond that our overarching principle this year is to focus heavily on risk-to-earn mechanics where a portion of that excess value is circular i.e. revenues flow back to prize pools or other parts of the economy, treating the game almost like a protocol where the objective is to amass TVL or player liquidity. Social is also a big focus, and that means implementing the Open World hub which from an infrastructure perspective has already been built out and tested by all of you previously. Right now we are scaffolding the environment in 3D and working through how that hub should look and feel, so players are excited to hang out & idle together while they're queuing. For sappydotlol, what I'm about to say is still early days from a design perspective so a lot can change, but I'm pushing the site in the direction of being a virtual game console. An intersection between Nintendo & Myspace where users can play, trade, and socially interact in a way that's deeply personalised; a breathe of fresh air from the hostility of the current internet. If you go back to my thesis on Roblox above and the game console references, you can kind of see how this will all sequentially tie together. In essence, the strategy is to acquire a critical mass of players through traditional platforms like Roblox, and use that attention and trust to provide an onboarding funnel for web2 users into our own sandbox filled with a mixture of our own browser-based experiences as well as an aggregation of others. The aim is to make the platform a breath of fresh air & bunker from the enshittified platforms like TikTok/IG/X where users are actually served in ways that delight rather than agitate, and where self-expression is incentivised. Closing: As always everything here is subject to change but I've never felt more conviction in our direction until now; I know exactly what we need to do and how, with everything aligning with our team's strengths. Very excited and grinding through things to the point where I'm getting headaches and can't sleep from being hyperfocused for long periods of time lol. There probably has never been a better time to join the ecosystem from a price to fuck around and find out perspective.show more