#15 million merits

[beegoould]

Black Mirror - 15 Million Merits aka Tumblr Live

#black mirror #15 million merits #tumblr live #just let me turn it off

[martiansodas-blog]

“Want a break from the ads? If you tap now to watch a short video, you’ll receive 30 minutes of ad free music.”

Allow “Website” to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites?

“This website uses cookies to improve your experience,”

#15 million merits #black mirror #adpocalypse #ads #spotify #youtube ads #dystopian

[cloudtinn]

Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits (2011).

#tv shows #netflix #netflix black mirror #black mirror #15 million merits #daniel kaluuya #jessica brown findlay #cloud_tinn

[sonictalismans]

I don't know if these (dark) visual puns in Black Mirror were intentional or no but

Hated in the Nation: the ADIs weaponized against people look and act like bees - cancel culture relies on mob mentality or "hive mind"

15 Million Merits: the prison cell-sized rooms the common folk appear confined to in their off time function and are treated in many ways like cell phones

#black mirror #15 million merits #hated in the nation

[psychopute]

"I haven’t got a speech, I didn’t plan words, I didn’t even try to. I just knew that I had to get here, to stand here and I knew I wanted you to listen; to really listen, not just pull a face like you’re listening, like you do the rest of the time. A face like you’re feeling instead of processing. You pull a face and poke it towards the stage and la-di-da we sing and dance and tumble around and all you see up here, it’s not people, you don’t see people up here, it’s all fodder. And the faker the fodder is the more you love it because fake fodder’s the only thing that works anymore, fake fodder is all that we can stomach — actually not quite all. Real pain, real viciousness, that we can take. Yeah, stick a fat man up a pole and we’ll laugh ourselves feral cause we’ve earned the right, we’ve done cell time and he’s slacking the scum so ha ha ha at him. Cause we’re so out of our minds with desperation we don’t know any better. All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That’s how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves is buying shit. I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new hat for our doppel, a hat that doesn’t exist. It’s not even there, we buy shit that’s not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful, you couldn’t. It’d break us, we’re too numb for it, our minds would choke. There’s only so much wonder we can bear, that’s why when you find any wonder whatsoever you dole it out in meager portions, and only then til it’s augmented and packaged and pumped through ten thousand pre-assigned filters, til it’s nothing more than a meaningless series of lights, while we ride day-in, day-out — going where? Powering what? All tiny cells in tiny screens and bigger cells in bigger screens and fuck you. Fuck you, that’s what it boils down to is fuck you. Fuck you for sitting there and slowly knitting things worse. Fuck you and your spotlight and your sanctimonious faces and fuck you all, for taking the one thing I ever came close to anything real about anything. For oozing around it and crushing it into a bone, into a joke, one more ugly joke in a kingdom of millions and then fuck you. Fuck you for happening. Fuck you for me, for us, for everyone, fuck you."

#15 million merits #le speech le plus poignant de cette série #j'ai limpression d'être la seul à avoir autant kiffé cette épisode #je me ferai bien tatouer bing avec son bout de verre sous le cou

[beanie-twink]

I think I deserve to have my Bing moment

#black mirror #15 million merits #fifteen million merits #just watched this again today #god.

[cpericardium]

Arguing with my gf and friends about whether it's morally right to fuck the pig to save the princess. I'm the only one making the hard choice here, I'm the khepri of bestiality

#black mirror #10 seconds of my life would kill a normal person #also I just watched my first black mirror episode ever: 15 Million Merits #watching the pigfucking episode now #no spoilers #i hope he fucks the pig

[portraitofadumbassonfire]

Daniel Kaluuya or Steven Yeun

If you asked me this before I saw Steven as Jupe I'd say Daniel but..

It's gonna have to be both for me

#twd and 15 million merits had that much of an effect on me

[midiport]

15 Million Merits

#this is so dystopian #inv.txt

[probablyasocialecologist]

TikTok was where I learned about SHEIN. For a while my For You page, which had accurately identified my interest in fashion’s more material impacts, served me videos of sustainable fashion influencers decrying SHEIN’s wretched labor and environmental practices. The textile industry is the second-largest polluter in the world, they said, and of all the fast-fashion producers, SHEIN is by far the worst offender. SHEIN uses toxic chemicals in their clothing production; SHEIN mass-produces fabrics like spandex that never decompose (at this point an image would flash across the screen: an overflowing clothing landfill, or a mountain of discarded clothes in the Chilean desert so large it is visible from space); SHEIN exploits and endangers its factory workers. Employees earn $556 a month to make five hundred pieces of clothing every day, work eighteen-hour days, and use their lunch breaks to wash their hair — a schedule they repeat seven days per week with only one day off per month. A more nuanced TikToker might point out, briefly, that conditions in SHEIN factories are not necessarily unique, or that focusing on suppliers — rather than the larger systems of Western consumption and capitalism that create these conditions — is a fool’s errand, but the platform isn’t built for that kind of dialogue. I clicked on the comments and invariably read ones with several dozen likes saying, “I’m so willing to die in shein clothes.” Before long I was watching SHEIN hauls. There are millions of them — the tag #sheinhaul has been viewed a collective 14.2 billion times on TikTok. In each haul, a woman rips open a plastic bag filled with smaller plastic bags filled with small plastic clothing. Sometimes the woman holds up each garment and narrates its merits, but often the clothes are disembodied, laid flat on a floor or a bed in an accidental stop-motion animation. A stretchy red skirt on a furry white carpet is replaced by a strapless watercolor bustier with a deep-V neckline. A zebra-print skirt is followed by a matching pink two-piece set, with a short-sleeve cardigan and miniskirt constructed from a fabric that looks like bubble wrap. Sometimes a haul is five pieces, and sometimes it is too many pieces to count. The garments appear and disappear in seconds, edited to the beat of a trending song. Rarely do we see the clothing on a body. Usually brand familiarity accrues in a slow drip, building from obscurity to instant recognizability over the course of months or years as a designer’s work intersects with the zeitgeist and gains traction on social media. SHEIN was different. One day I’d never heard of the retailer and the next it was inescapable: in thousands of outfit videos, on millions of social media feeds. The clothes weren’t distinct or cohesive; what united them wasn’t style but price. All those SHEIN hauls entered my feeds with such ubiquity that they began to feel like they’d always been there. I’d opened a door to a new part of the fashion internet: a place where girls bragged about their ultra-fast-fashion purchases, delighting in the cheapness of the garments. Here, SHEIN was the obvious choice for new clothes. Why not, when you could buy on-trend pieces at lightning speed for less than the price of a cup of coffee? It was uncanny to bounce between videos: here was a girl showing off her new halter, here was another girl giving a litany of reasons why it was unconscionable to buy clothes for so little money. Didn’t these TikTokers hear one another? But then again, how could they? “This is what we keep missing here in the whole conversation about sustainability in the industry,” Nick Anguelov, a professor of public policy from UMass Dartmouth, said to a Slate journalist writing about SHEIN in June. “We keep failing to understand that our customers are kids and they don’t give a fuck.”

#shein #fashion #fast fashion #tiktok

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By James Downie

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results.” That was former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, playing cute with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s question over whether he’d accept the outcome of Wisconsin’s presidential election. As my colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim pointed out, Trump has a long track record of similar statements, offering sham justifications to disguise the fact that he doesn’t feel bound by election results. The events of Jan. 6, 2021, laid bare the true consequences of this shell game.

But this latest instance — coupled with statements Trump recently made in his interview with Time magazine — highlight a disturbing and underappreciated aspect of his 2024 campaign. Trump’s approach to election results has become his approach (and his devotees’ approach) to the law more broadly. Even as their policies and rhetoric have become more extreme, Trump and his MAGA acolytes are already lining up the justifications — legal and otherwise — to buttress their extremist and authoritarian agenda in ways that simply didn’t occur to the first Trump administration.

The deportation of millions, the deployment of the National Guard and even the military domestically, the firing of prosecutors, the autocratic expansion of executive authority, the potential weaponization of the Comstock Act to ban abortion: all of these will have excuses that range from “tendentious” to “outright fiction.” Or, as Trump told Time: “I’ll be doing everything on a very legal basis.”

Take, for example, immigration: It’s easy to forget how Trump’s immigration policy has shifted in eight years, even as it has remained consistently bigoted. His 10-point plan on immigration in 2016 consisted of the border wall and a bunch of truisms. (“We’ll build safe zones, which is something I think all of us want to see.”) The military was absent; the word “invasion” was nowhere to be found, and the courts barely merited a mention.

Contrast this with the Time interview, where Trump defends deploying the military both at the border and inland to deport “15 million and maybe as many as 20 million” undocumented immigrants — the equivalent of deporting the entire state of Florida. With bigger autocratic moves come bigger fictions. Migrants are no longer just “bringing crime”; Trump has created a whole separate (and demonstrably false) category of “migrant crime.”

Domestic deployment of the armed forces would seem to violate an 1878 ban on using troops against civilians. But this Trump, unlike the 2016 version, has a legal facade ready to go: Undocumented immigrants are invaders, not civilians, and “I will be complying with court orders.” Those two sentiments may seem difficult to reconcile, given that the former categorization flies in the face of legal precedent. But as recent oral arguments over presidential immunity have illustrated, precedent means little to this Supreme Court.

Immigration is just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. In close advisers like Stephen Miller and aligned projects like Project 2025, we can see not only the policies but also the underlying justifications and legal authorities they have ready to go. Part of this effort is practical. Trump’s presidency was rife with policy efforts that either never got past the planning stage or wasted months (or even years) in false starts. The reality that Mexico wouldn’t pay for his border wall meant that less than 20% had been built when he left office. His administration spent the better part of a year tossing out different iterations of Trump’s self-described “Muslim ban,” searching for a version that could pass muster in the courts.

Trump’s supporters are determined not to waste time this round. There’s no better example of this than the Comstock Act: Rather than wait for congressional Republicans to pass a new national abortion ban, they could simply resurrect a “zombie law” to criminalize any materials used in abortions and count on the more Trump-friendly courts to back them up.

But mostly this effort is political. As writer Brian Beutler puts it, “To the MAGA core, he offers a bloody revanchism; to the uncommitted, a series of mollifying assurances.” Most of Trump’s signature policy proposals — such as a military deportation force and huge tariff increases — and those of his most devoted advisers are unpopular. So Trump balances the lawless extremes of his ambitions by minimizing how radical his plans sound, hoping to avoid scaring persuadable voters with his authoritarian signals. “When we talk military, generally speaking, I talk National Guard,” he says, as if those two terms are interchangeable. “But if I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military.” Just like he’ll accept the results “if everything’s honest.”

“I don’t think they’re bold actions,” Trump tells Time of his policies, “I think they’re actions that are common sense.” But phrases like “if everything’s honest” and “if things were getting out of control” create loopholes as wide as they are chilling. It’s easy to imagine, for example, a deportation force being sent to New York and then beefed up when local residents resist — with horrible consequences. But if the platitudes get him back in the White House, he and his followers will move swiftly to welcome that horror.

#us politics #news #republicans #donald trump #conservatives #trump administration #gop #2024 elections #2024 #op ed #msnbc #James Downie #project 2025 #time magazine #Milwaukee journal sentinel #Comstock Act #abortion bans #immigration #military deportations #us mexico border #tariffs #us military

[warningsine]

Many Easter Eggs in the first episode of season 6 ("Joan Is Awful"):

"Finding Ritman," a documentary about Will Poulter from "Bandersnatch"

"Loch Henry," a reference to season 6 episode 2

"The Callow Years," a reference to PM Michael Callow from “The National Anthem”

"Junipero Dreaming," a reference to "San Junipero"

"Rowdy and Peanut," a reference to "Cat Burglar," an interactive film by Charlie Brooker

A reference to Ashley O from "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too"

"Botherguts" and "Hotshots" a reference to two in universe shows in "15 Million Merits"

#black mirror #bm spoilers

[drdemonprince]

social media is so fucked up because Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik has 15 Million Youtube views and was even far more popular than that as a single in the 90s but i can completely fucking stunt on Duncan Sheik's Instagram by commenting on his posts bc hes a 10k follower lowbie and i have 76k followers. I have more followers than Harvey Fierstein. Like there is zero relationship to merit or actual fame level and on TikTok its even worse

[tgirljoker]

i hate commenting on these short lived discourses because ultimately everyone feeling the need to add their own two cents is exactly what causes these discussions to so quickly and widely perpetuate, and by engaging with the discourse in any capacity im only serving to stoke the flames but with all that said; the homestuck discourse happening rn is so pointless.

homestuck is a 15 year old webcomic with racist, ableist, and homophobic elements, unjustified but explained by virtue of being a story about the internet in the late 2000s written primarily by someone who was familiar with online culture in that era. people who deny any bigoted aspects of the comic are just flat out incorrect, and are being either intellectually dishonest and/or lazy. however i do think its also intellectually dishonest and lazy to suggest that out of all 8000 pages, 1.2 million words, and 7 years of production, homestuck should be defined solely by its bigoted aspects and has no real analytical merit.

and yes that one girl claiming that people jokingly threatening homestuck fans is transmisogyny is obviously wrong but shes exactly that… obviously wrong, and by parading her bad takes youre only giving her more traction and prolonging discourse that doesnt seem to have any real end goal? just take a step back for a second. this all started because a poll on tumblr pitted a 2009 webcomic against a 1983 newspaper comic strip, a handful of people jokingly threatened fans of said webcomic in general to complain that the votes were more or less equal, someone screenshots a few examples of this and cries transmisogyny, and now everyone feels the need to share their opinion on the webcomic and its critics/fans alike. what is the actual problem here and how is any of this productive to solving it?

i completely understand the need to be a hater and thats fine, but it does bug me when people try to hide their haterisms with a veneer of moral superiority.

#tldr this is literally a non issue why is it the biggest topic of the last couple days #that was rhetorical. #its because this is the internet and discourse gets engagement even if it neither aims to nor succesfully accomplishes anything

[agbpaints]

I wanted to Post about another interesting design I found while combing thru lists of Ghost Bear/Dominion mechs that doesn't seem to get a lot of love. The Arcas.

Originally built by Clan Ghost Bear at the start of the 3060's, the Arcas was intended to mark in a new age for the Clan in the Inner Sphere. As a second line battlemech, the Arcas is a more sculpted and less utilitarian design than a lot of the invasion era omnis befitting it's lack of configurability. And boy am I glad they did that because they decided to make the thing look like a big angry viking in furs and lamellar. A portent of things to come what with Ghost Bear's eventual melding with the culturally similar Rasalhague.

Despite being a second liner, the Arcas uses a supremely expensive clan XL power plant, though it puts this to good use paired with its jump jets to propel it up to a pretty spookily fast 5/8/5 movement profile. Offensively, it packs a pair of Clan-spec ER large lasers for long range engagements, two medium pulse lasers for medium range, and a trio of streak-4 SRM packs for close in work. With 15 double heat sinks it can run and fire its energy weapons while staying neutral, while the Streaks' missile locks mean you'll only seriously spike the heat up close when you're putting a lot of warheads on foreheads. This relatively light armament for a clan heavy (or as I, a primarily IS pilot say, an extremely, enthusiastically acceptable bonanza of high quality dakka) comes as a cost for protection- the Arcas has 13.5 tons of standard armor, making it nearly as durable as the 10 ton-heavier madcat and twice as well armored as the similarly weighted and engined Hellbringer.

All this combined makes for a very good heavy cav mech- a good Arcas pilot can start a beat down at range and continue to ramp up the pressure as she closes headlong at the opponent, safely protected by her speed and armor. It does pay hellishly for this, Clan XLs are worth slightly less than sending a 4k copy of the Bee Movie to every great house capitol by way of HPG network. 14.77 million C-bills makes this thing an almost perfect 10 on the urbanmech price index, and for 2484 BV I could bring a pretty darn solid pair of medium mechs to a fight. But it's also a heavy mech that moves like a medium and wasn't designed by someone whose brain was 93% nasally-imbibed glue, so if I can buy/borrow/steal one I'll take it.

The Arcas comes in 2 non-standard flavors, both have some merit so we'll go thru them quickly

The Arcas 2 is an energy boat sniper build that trades the large lasers and missiles for a pair of ERPPCs and a few extra heat sinks. It can handle the heat off the headchoppers fine and only really needs to start making descisions when it brings those MPLs into play. Effective, but a PPC's mech is generally to find a place to sit and stand there making shots so that massive engine is wasted. Next.

The Arcas 3 goes back to being interesting. It yet again strips the ER larges and two of the missile systems, this time in favor of a heavy large laser, a targeting computer to handle the accuracy problems, and 7 improved jump jets. While the damage on this variant is lower than that of the Standard or Model 2 5/8/7 is an absolutely disgusting movement profile, the heat management allows for jumping alphas where you're worried about building *any* heat as opposed to hitting move/GS penalties, and the improved accuracy on the pulse lasers will make this thing an absolute pain to fight. It's also almost 200 BV cheaper than the Standard, leaving you move room in a list for other bullshit.

#battletech #mech talk #arcas #heavy mech #battlemech #mecha #mech

[lazbotronence]

5 minutes with... TEDxBrighton's Laurence Rickard [x]

8 Oct 2015

TEDxBrighton caught up with this year's host Laurence Rickard. Larry (as he would prefer you all to call him) is a BAFTA-winning comedy writer and actor, probably best known for his work on the hit BBC sketch show Horrible Histories and the Sky 1 fantasy comedy Yonderland.

What are you doing right now?

I'm on a train, which is where I spend a fair proportion of my life. I find I get huge amounts of work done on trains, because I can't procrastinate by making a sandwich or going for a walk... Well, not for a very long walk anyway. Though answering these questions means I'm not doing the re-write that I've promised my producer. If she shouts at me, I'm going to give her your number.

What was your first thought when invited to host this year’s event?

Honestly? I was worried that I'd taken on something I wouldn't have time to do. But then I feel that when I agree to do most things. It'll be fine. I just like to worry.

You’re undoubtedly extremely busy this year with your writing and acting, and also with the release of your first film, Bill. With this in mind, what persuaded you to add this role to your already crammed to do list?

I went to school with Sam, one of the organisers, so he probably has quite a lot of dirt on me. I thought it best not to cross him, in case he had a copy of that demo my band did when I was 15. I wouldn't want that getting out. Also, it's TED, isn't it. It's an institution. I felt very privileged to have been asked.

This year’s conference is about losing control. When was the last time you lost control and why?

Well, I'm five days away from the release of a film right now (it's called Bill and it's in cinemas on September 18th – you should definitely go and see it), so I'm probably running on slightly heightened levels of anxiety and reduced levels of sleep. I'm not sure I'd say I've 'lost control' at any point, but there's been a few moments where I've raised my voice a bit, which is very rare for me. That's a very British answer isn't it? You ask when I lost control and I tell you the last time I raised my voice. Hardly a thundering maelstrom – I don't think it'll make the papers.

TEDx is all about sharing inspiring concepts and ideas. Who has been your biggest inspiration and why?

Probably my drama and English teacher at secondary school. He was always so supportive and encouraging. On reflection he was quite anti-establishment – he would give you a thousand merit points for a piece of writing, which both bolstered your self-confidence and made a complete mockery of the 'merit point' system. That was him all over. I was quite shruggy-shoulders about most of my school life, but I looked forward to his lessons so much. He encouraged me to write and act, and now I write and act – if that's not an inspiration, I don't know what is.

If you were asked to deliver a TED talk, what would you like to talk about and who would you most like to deliver your talk to?

I'd probably talk to young people about the celebration of celebrity. I worry that there's a generation who are, in many ways, being robbed of inspiration, and I don't think that's fair on them. People who, in a world of Geordie Shore and vlogs about making a nice breakfast, think that 'being a celebrity' is a goal to strive towards. Not trying to learn a skill or an art or hone a talent, but wanting to get 'rich and famous' by doing something that, in essence, pretty much anyone could do. You just want them to find that thing – whether it's bricklaying or mastering the violin – that enthuses and inspires them beyond the desire to one day have 2 million Twitter followers. Making sure that the world's best UN Secretary General doesn't end up never existing because they became the next Joey Essex instead.

As a born and bred resident of Brighton and Hove, what do you love most about this city?

I like its size. It's a walkable city. I lived in that London for a bit, and people travel for two hours just to meet up for a beer. That seems mad to me. And I like that Brighton is, on the whole, tolerant, liberal and diverse. I don't like that big spike they've put by the West Pier though. I just don't get it – we are a city of vibrant streets, not striking skylines. The view in one direction will just be roofs, and the other will just be just water. I never really got the thrill of looking at stuff from a bit higher up.

If you could take just one book, film and album on holiday this year, which would you take?

The film please.

What do you think events like TEDx offer to audiences?

Tickets I'd imagine. That would be the model I'd adopt. It's simplest in terms of seating etc. Plus the revenue would help to cover production costs. It's certainly worth looking into.

If you could pick a theme for next year's conference what theme would you most like to explore and why?

Special Effects Techniques in the Original Star Wars Trilogy. It's the only thing I can speak about with any authority.

#laurence rickard #larry rickard #ted x #brighton