Reporters met with OBL long before 9/11:

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=131512

This guest contribution by the team at Reedsy explores ways to subvert character clichés for a less predictable story.

Here are five easy ways to inject life into familiar character types:
1. Subvert archetypes to avoid character clichés

To subvert your own characters:

    Identify a list of character clichés usually associated with their type (e.g. ‘warrior’ equals ‘strong’).
    Think of how stock character types (such as “mentors”) have typical behavioural features. Dumbledore or Charlotte the Spider will always be wise and cautious.
    Then create a character to fit that mold perfectly… before revealing that, say, their “wisdom” is just stolen from a book of idioms. Subversion such as these add surprise complexity to your characters and story.

2. Parody the clichéd character archetype

Every archetype has a set of recognizable traits. That, naturally, is what makes them archetypal. Subverting them means ignoring expected traits, even though your audience may expect them. To parody them is to exaggerate those traits to their absolute extremes.

3. Deconstruct the archetype

Deconstructing a stock character gives your story emotional depth and style. It does require a lot of critical thought to pull off well. To nail it, try these three steps:

    Identify the attributes of a character type — say, the likable and frivolous Comic Relief character.
    Explain them in a surprising way — perhaps they’re not just a class clown, but use humor as a coping mechanism.
    Reveal something deeper and true about the character and archetype — (e.g. that clowns are often sad behind the joker mask). Make readers wonder if they’ve misjudged the archetype you’re portraying.

4. Lampshade the archetype

lampshading is the technique of countering your reader’s disbelief in a character’s ‘reality’ by acknowledging how blatantly they fit a cliché.

5. Imply the archetype

If a bit player only appears in a scene, they don’t have to be a deep deconstruction of every similar character ever. Instead, you can imply depth, and leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks.

https://www.nownovel.com/blog/subverting...r-cliches/

Character Writing Hub

On paper, Antony and Cleopatra seemed assured to win the war, given their combined resources and experience with military strategies and campaigns. Yet Octavian ultimately prevailed. According to Strauss, it was Octavian's reliance on Roman General Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who successfully waged a naval campaign to cut off supply lines to Antony's army, giving Octavian the upper hand. That campaign included the seizure of the city of Methone, a strategically significant port in an obscure corner of southern Greece.

"Actium was a great battle, but it did not stand alone," Strauss writes in his introduction. "It was the climax of a six-month campaign of engagements on land and sea. Nor were all of the operations military. The war between Antony and Octavian involved diplomacy, information warfare—from propaganda to what we now call fake news—economic and financial competition, as well as all of the human emotions: love, hate, and jealousy, not least among them."

Ars spoke with Strauss to learn more.

Ars Technica: You went to great lengths to reconstruct the actual battle. But you also spent considerable effort examining the role of Agrippa, arguing that Octavian gained a strategic advantage by waging war from the sea.

Barry Strauss: Yes. I was particularly interested in this event that took place about six months before the Battle of Actium: the Seizure of Methone. It's pretty clear that was a major turning point because it cut Antony and Cleopatra's supply lifeline. We know that Agrippa took the place from the sea, but we don't really have any details, and we know that it's difficult to take places from the sea. It's not easy in modern times, and it was very difficult in ancient times—especially because he was coming from Southern Italy. He had to cross the Ionian Sea and get to Greece undetected.

So I wondered, "Well, how did he do it?" I interrogated the ancient sources and read as much as I possibly could about war from the sea and naval sieges. Then I talked to Navy SEALs and other modern military people who engage in amphibious warfare.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/04/a...cleopatra/

If you look at electrical circuitry it very much so resemble magick sigils

https://twitter.com/jaxx681/status/1177617253916798977

https://greekcitytimes.com/2022/04/02/an...xcavation/

The subreddit r/place was first created as an art project and social experiment on April Fools’ day in 2017 and has since been revived for a second time five years later on the same day in 2022.

The rules are simple. Each user can place one tile, a single pixel from a 16-color palette, on a 1000×1000 canvas every five or so minutes.

This year, r/place reached around 3.3 million users, over three times that in 2017, prompting the canvas to double in size to 2000×2000 alongside 16 new colors. People from all corners of the internet, including Discord servers, subreddits, and Twitch channels, quickly formed alliances in an effort to leave their mark on the canvas before its eventual end date. The result was a melting pot of memes, pop culture references, and the truly bizarre.

https://hypebeast.com/2022/4/reddit-r-pl...iment-info

The Life and Death of r/Place, Home to the Internet's Greatest Art War

Over the course of four days, Redditors battled across an open canvas. Until the void came for them all.

What is r/Place?

r/Place is a social experiment that launched on Reddit back in 2017. Its founder, Josh Wardle (founder of Wordle, ever heard of it?) called r/Place "a screenshot of the Internet at this moment in time." Five years later, on April 1, 2022, the subreddit made its massive and triumphant return. r/Place offers a giant, open canvas that allows anyone and everyone to place one colored pixel. Each pixel has its own timer, meaning no individual or group can endlessly spam their shapes, which forces either coordination between users (if you want beauty), or absolute chaos, if that's what you're into. r/Place mixes art, teamwork, and sheer randomness into an awe-inspiring tapestry that the designer in me finds truly beautiful.

There's been wars between communities, countries, and streamers hilarious and frightening shows of force. One thing that's for sure? This was some of the most fun I’ve had on the Internet in years.

The White Void

On Monday evening, r/Place came to a random, stunning end. The community was suddenly left with only one color option: White. The r/Place community proceeded to erase all of the work they did over the weekend. It was surprisingly sweet and reflective, wonderfully concluding a phenomenal experiment. Like many of r/Place's admirers, I hope it becomes a yearly thing, opposed to something we only see every half decade. r/Place brought new collaborations between streamers, broke language barriers, gave way to more than a few incredible stories, and created some damn fine art while doing it. I can't wait to see what could possibly rival the Dick Meteor next year.

https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a39636...explained/

Quote:Within the enclosure known as Universe 25, several pairs of mice bred a population, which swelled to 2200. Learn about the science behind the experiment!

The Western Tradition with Eugen Weber.


Set of documentaries detailing western world history in chronological order.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...blfcFTXwRH

 

 

TSA Demands Internal Passport for Domestic Travel
 
Over the Christmas season, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) quietly announced that America was walking down that path. By 2016, all domestic air travel will require either a traditional passport or a federally-compliant ID card called “Real ID.” State driver’s licenses will no longer allow Americans access to domestic flights, as they do now. Real ID will constitute an internal passport. (The drop-date date is commonly reported as January.)
 
http://www.infowars.com/tsa-demands-inte...ic-travel/
 
Papers Please! Ain't this one just rich:
 

 
A graphical adventure game about Cold War-era immigration control, where players take the role of an immigration inspector who must control the flow of people entering a fictional Soviet-style nation. Glory to Arstotzka!
 
http://www.giantbomb.com/papers-please/3...200-26920/
 
:The-Devil-animated:
 

 

Quote:

Nice tool for dirty cops to plant dirty evidence to bolster their balloon headed egos.