How does this make any sense?
Shouldn't they be suing Apple to take it down if they don't like it? I know they just want to weaken press, but it feels like an especially weak excuse.
Pro is 120hz.
But they are expensive as heck. I only got the 16 Plus because its a carrier loss leader, heh.
And wouldn't fix some of my other quibbles with iOS's inflexibility. My ancient jailbroken iPhone 4 was more customizable than now, and Apple is still slowly, poorly implementing features I had a decade ago. It's mind boggling, and jailbreaking isn't a good option anymore.
Nah I meant the opposite. Journalistic integrity was learned through long, hard history.
Now that traditional journalism is dying, its like the streamer generation has to learn it from scratch, heh.
I got banned from a fandom subreddit for pointing out that a certain fan remaster was (partially, with tons of manual work) made with ML models. Specifically with oldschool GANs, and some smaller, older models as part of a deinterlacing pipeline, from before 'generative AI' was even a term.
My last Android phone was a Razer Phone 2, SD845 circa 2018. Basically stock Android 9.
And it was smooth as butter. It had a 120hz screen while my iPhone 16 is stuck at 60, and I can feel it. And it flew through some heavy web apps I use while the iPhone chugs and jumps around, even though the new SoC should objectively blow away even modern Android devices.
It wasn't always this way; iOS used to be (subjectively) so much faster that it's not even funny, at least back when I had an iPhone 6S(?). Maybe there was an inflection point? Or maybe it's only the case with "close to stock" Android stuff that isn't loaded with bloat.
This is why work/life balance is so important. I wouldn’t ever call myself “well-off” but I don’t have kids and my job allows me ample time off to play games and watch movies and shit.
Neither do they! They aren't workaholics, they're home bodies that work the least they can!
It's just that the workplaces are shit. One went back to mandated RTO for no reason even though much of the work is overseas at odd hours. The company's literally trying to make employees miserable so they quit without severence. The other is work-from-home, but with enough pointless meetings and complete workplace dysfunction to eat energy.
And these seem like well above average jobs.
Random aside, I switched from Android to iOS a year ago. I miss Android already.
The UI is more convoluted an clunky than iOS from years ago, just as uncustomizable, and performs shockly bad on heavy webpages on a brand new 16+. It's got no freaking RAM, no sd card slot. Some free FOSS apps are nonexistant or paid only.
Security and OOTB privacy is better and app support is generally better, but that's about it? I'd probably keep an iPhone around to bank on when I eventually switch...
And I shit you not, latinos will still vote MAGA in droves in 2026, and once again, analysts and Democrats will be left scratching their head wondering why while literally everyone they pass on the street is glued to their phone.
Maybe if they keep campaigning like it's 1950, it'll eventually work?
Its kinda like influencers (and their younger viewers) are relearning the history of journalism from scratch, heh.
Surpressing sponsors is a perverse incentive too; all the more reason to not disclose who's paying the creator.
And yeah, any 'moral' justification for web ads is dead like 100 times over. I hate how hard it makes life for 'old web' style sites with like one innocent banner ad, but still.
Single data point: my young, working, well off gaming part of my family is just out of energy. It's easier to watch a YouTube video instead of TV or gaming, before then falling asleep to wake up for work. Seems like much of their circle is similar.
As for myself, I'm going through a, uh, icky phase of life and am not really motivated to play unless it's coop.
...Maybe others are struggling similarly?
Also, the games we do look at tend to be from indie to mid-size studios, with BG3 and KCD2 being the only recent exceptions.
Chrome?
It's probably a security risk like Android, and the vast majority use it.
Also, apps are better at sending notifications (like ICE warnings). IMO this is a pretty decent justification for an 'iOS only' app.
even if it meant publishing on F-Droid instead of Google Play.
Sadly this means it’s not accessible to like 95% of people, even if driven to install it.
But is anyone who voted for Trump going to see this, and if they do, worry?
I don’t know a good alternative, but it feels like they’re preaching to the choir.
One thing about Anthropic/OpenAI models is they go off the rails with lots of conversation turns or long contexts. Like when they need to remember a lot of vending machine conversation I guess.
A more objective look: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06120v1
https://github.com/NVIDIA/RULER
Gemini is much better. TBH the only models I’ve seen that are half decent at this are:
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“Alternate attention” models like Gemini, Jamba Large or Falcon H1, depending on the iteration. Some recent versions of Gemini kinda lose this, then get it back.
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Models finetuned specifically for this, like roleplay models or the Samantha model trained on therapy-style chat.
But most models are overtuned for oneshots like fix this table or write me a function, and don’t invest much in long context performance because it’s not very flashy.
And 500 are about to get fired?
Most of the US believes in this, or is just unaware. That's how its been for most of history around the world.
...The remarkable issue here is the elites/rules we handed the reigns now drink their own kool-aid. The very top of most authoritarian regimes are at least cognisant of some hypocrisy, even if ideology eats them some.
The other is that people are more 'connected' than ever, but to disinformation streams. I feel like a lot of the world (especially the US fancies) themselves as super smart on shit they know nothing about because of something they saw on Facebook or YouTube.
Not at all. Not even close.
Image generation is usually batched and takes seconds, so 700W (a single H100 SXM) for a few seconds for a batch of a few images to multiple users. Maybe more for the absolute biggest (but SFW, no porn) models.
LLM generation takes more VRAM, but is MUCH more compute-light. Typically one has banks of 8 GPUs in multiple servers serving many, many users at once. Even my lowly RTX 3090 can serve 8+ users in parallel with TabbyAPI (and modestly sized model) before becoming more compute bound.
So in a nutshell, imagegen (on an 80GB H100) is probably more like 1/4-1/8 of a video game at once (not 8 at once), and only for a few seconds.
Text generation is similarly efficient, if not more. Responses take longer (many seconds, except on special hardware like Cerebras CS-2s), but it parallelized over dozens of users per GPU.
This is excluding more specialized hardware like Google's TPUs, Huawei NPUs, Cerebras CS-2s and so on. These are clocked far more efficiently than Nvidia/AMD GPUs.
...The worst are probably video generation models. These are extremely compute intense and take a long time (at the moment), so you are burning like a few minutes of gaming time per output.
ollama/sd-web-ui are terrible analogs for all this because they are single user, and relatively unoptimized.
TBH most people still use old SDXL finetunes for porn, even with the availability of newer ones.
Bingo.
Altman et al want to kill open source AI for a monopoly.
This is what the entire AI research space already knew even before deepseek hit, and why they (largely) think so little of Sam Altman.
The real battle in the space is not AI vs no AI, but exclusive use by AI Bros vs. open models that bankrupt them. Which is what I keep trying to tell /c/fuck_ai, as the "no AI" stance plays right into the AI Bro's hands.
As to why it (IMO) qualifies:
> "My children are 22, 25, and 27. I will literally fight ANYONE for their future," Greene wrote. "And their future and their entire generation's future MUST be free of America LAST foreign wars that provoke terrorists attacks on our homeland, military drafts, and NUCLEAR WAR."
Hence, she feels her support is threatening her kids.
"MTG getting her face eaten" was not on my 2025 bingo card, though she is in the early stage of face eating.
> "It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!
Video is linked. SFW, but keep your volume down.
In a nutshell, he’s allegedly frustrated by too few policies favorable to him.
> - The IDF is planning to displace close to 2 million Palestinians to the Rafah area, where compounds for the delivery of humanitarian aid are being built.
> - The compounds are to be managed by a new international foundation and private U.S. companies, though it's unclear how the plan will function after the UN and all aid organizations announced they won't take part
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
Qwen3 was apparently posted early, then quickly pulled from HuggingFace and Modelscope. The large ones are MoEs, per screenshots from Reddit:
Including a 235B/22B active and a 30B/3B active.
Context appears to 'only' be 32K unfortunately: https://huggingface.co/qingy2024/Qwen3-0.6B/blob/main/config_4b.json
But its possible they're still training them to 256K:
Take it all with a grain of salt, configs could change with the official release, but it appears it is happening today.
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
This is one of the "smartest" models you can fit on a 24GB GPU now, with no offloading and very little quantization loss. It feels big and insightful, like a better (albeit dry) Llama 3.3 70B with thinking, and with more STEM world knowledge than QwQ 32B, but comfortably fits thanks the new exl3 quantization!
You need to use a backend that support exl3, like (at the moment) text-gen-web-ui or (soon) TabbyAPI.
> "It makes me think that maybe he [Putin] doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through 'Banking' or 'Secondary Sanctions?' Too many people are dying!!!", Trump wrote.
> The U.S. expects Ukraine's response Wednesday to a peace framework that includes U.S. recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and unofficial recognition of Russian control of nearly all areas occupied since the 2022 invasion, sources with direct knowledge of the proposal tell Axios.
> What Russia gets under Trump's proposal:
> - "De jure" U.S. recognition of Russian control in Crimea. > - "De-facto recognition" of the Russia's occupation of nearly all of Luhansk oblast and the occupied portions of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. > - A promise that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. The text notes that Ukraine could become part of the European Union. > - The lifting of sanctions imposed since 2014. > - Enhanced economic cooperation with the U.S., particularly in the energy and industrial sectors.
> What Ukraine gets under Trump's proposal:
> - "A robust security guarantee" involving an ad hoc group of European countries and potentially also like-minded non-European countries. The document is vague in terms of how this peacekeeping operation would function and does not mention any U.S. participation. > - The return of the small part of Kharkiv oblast Russia has occupied. > - Unimpeded passage of the Dnieper River, which runs along the front line in parts of southern Ukraine. > - Compensation and assistance for rebuilding, though the document does not say where the funding will come from.
Whole article is worth a read, as it’s quite short/dense as Axios usually is. For those outside the US, this is an outlet that’s been well sourced in Washington for years.
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
Seems there's not a lot of talk about relatively unknown finetunes these days, so I'll start posting more!
Openbuddy's been on my radar, but this one is very interesting: QwQ 32B, post-trained on openbuddy's dataset, apparently with QAT applied (though it's kinda unclear) and context-extended. Observations:
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Quantized with exllamav2, it seems to show lower distortion levels than nomal QwQ. Its works conspicuously well at 4.0bpw and 3.5bpw.
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Seems good at long context. Have not tested 200K, but it's quite excellent in the 64K range.
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Works fine in English.
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The chat template is funky. It seems to mix up the <think> and <|think|> tags in particular (why don't they just use ChatML?), and needs some wrangling with your own template.
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Seems smart, can't say if it's better or worse than QwQ yet, other than it doesn't seem to "suffer" below 3.75bpw like QwQ does.
Also, I reposted this from /r/locallama, as I feel the community generally should going forward. With its spirit, it seems like we should be on Lemmy instead?
So I had a clip I wanted to upload to a lemmy comment:
- Tried it as an (avc) mp4... Failed.
- OK, too big? I shrink it to 2MB, then 1MB. Failed.
- VP9 Webm maybe? 2MB, 1MB, failed. AV1? Failed.
- OK, fine, no video. Lets try an animated AVIF. Failed. It seems lemmy doesn't even take static AVIF images
- WebP animation then... Failed. Animated PNG, failed.
End result, I have to burden the server with a massive, crappy looking GIF after trying a dozen formats. With all due respect, this is worse than some aging service like Reddit that doesn't support new media formats.
For reference, I'm using the web interface. Is this just a format restriction of lemmy.world, or an underlying software support issue?
> 53% of Americans approve of Trump so far, according to a newly released CBS News/YouGov poll conducted Feb. 5 to 7, while 47% disapproved.
> A large majority, 70%, said he was doing what he promised in the campaign, per the poll that was released on Sunday.
> Yes, but: 66% said he was not focusing enough on lowering prices, a key campaign trail promise that propelled Trump to the White House.
> 44% of Republicans said Musk and DOGE should have "some" influence, while just 13% of Democrats agreed.
> Here's the Meta formula:
> - Put a Trump friend on your board (Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White). > - Promote a prominent Republican as your chief global affairs officer (Joel Kaplan, succeeding liberal-friendly Nick Clegg, president of global affairs). > - Align your philosophy with Trump's on a big-ticket public issue (free speech over fact-checking). > - Announce your philosophical change on Fox News, hoping Trump is watching. In this case, he was. "Meta, Facebook, I think they've come a long way," Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference, adding of Kaplan's appearance on the "Fox and Friends" curvy couch: "The man was very impressive." > - Take a big public stand on a favorite issue for Trump and MAGA (rolling back DEI programs). > - Amplify that stand in an interview with Fox News Digital. (Kaplan again!) > - Go on Joe Rogan's podcast and blast President Biden for censorship.
> Taboola's data, shared exclusively with Axios, shows Musk has outpaced his closest peers — Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — for years, but the gap widened dramatically in 2024.
The spam is already exponential. :(
> Reality check: Trump pledged to end the program in 2016.
Called it. When push comes to shove, Trump is always going to side with the ultra-rich.
> Trump, who has remained silent thus far on the schism, faces a quickly deepening conflict between his richest and most powerful advisors on one hand, and the people who swept him to office on the other.
All this is stupid. But I know one thing:
Trump is a billionaire.
And I predict his followers are going to learn who he’ll side with when push comes to shove.
Also, Bannon’s take is interesting:
> Bannon tells Axios he helped kick off the debate with a now-viral Gettr post earlier this month calling out a lack of support for the Black and Hispanic communities in Big Tech.
I think the title explains it all… Even right wing influencers can have their faces eaten. And Twitter views are literally their livelihood.
> Trump's conspiracy-minded ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax and InfoWars host Owen Shroyer all said their verification badges disappeared after they criticized Musk's support for H1B visas, railed against Indian culture and attacked Ramaswamy, Musk's DOGE co-chair.
I have no idea if anyone on Lemmy is into Avatar lore/fanfiction, but in the spirit of posting content here instead of Reddit... here goes.
---
A new Avatar series featuring 'twin' Avatars has been leaked, in case you missed it:
https://knightedgemedia.com/2024/12/avatar-seven-havens-twin-earth-avatar-series-will-initially-be-26-episodes-long/
https://lemmy.world/post/23427458
In a nutshell, its allegedly set in a cataclysmic world overrun by spirit vines, and two twins are the 'Avatars' with diametric personalities. Not much is known beyond that, but I've been brainstorming some post-LoK ideas forever.
And now I kinda feel like writing them out. Here's my thought dump for a story:
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In the (largely undepicted) three years of canon Korra Alone, Korra (traveling anonymously) makes a stop on Kyoshi Island hoping to reconnect with her spirit. Instead, she meets a humble blacksmith with a bird spirit on his shoulder, and connects with him. They both wrestle with the demons haunting them, and they discover secrets on the island from Kyoshi's era.
Korra dies in 190 AG (at 37), already weakened from her metal poisoning, saving the world froma a cataclysm that leaves much of the world overgrown.
Intially, the story jumps between this period in Korra Alone (174AG) and 206 AG, where Asami Sato is struggles to steer Future Industries in a world dominated by megacorps in the safe 'havens' dotted through the world. While Kyoshi Island has barely changed at all, the 'future' thread has a more cyberpunk feel. Chi based cybernetics are commonplace, but the more augmented someone is, the more their bending is compromised, and bender vs nonbender tensions flare up once more. The world outside the safe havens is a dangerous wasteland. Tech derived from studying spirits has let to the proliferation of holograms, BCIs, and even primitive assistants and virtual environments, and advances in power storage/generation already seen in LoK mean everything is largely electric. Yet the world is still "analog," with tube radios and TVs, no digital electronics, and 'dumb' virtual assistants that are error-prone and incapable of math, giving it a retro feel. There are no guns, of course, but personal weapons like arc casters, flamethrowers, cryo blasters and such all mimic bending.
The Sei'naka clan has risen to power in the Fire Nation, taking advantage of the aftermath of the 100 Years War, the Red Lotus Insurrection, Future Industry's relative benevolence, and even the recently calamity. Now a ruthless corporation bigger than Future Industires, they dominate business and politics wherever they expand.
The White Lotus's search for the Avatar has failed. Asami rather infamously misidentified the Avatar... until one day, she find them.
---
Once this background is established, the story jumps back to our inseparable twin Avatars, Pavi and Nisha, born deep in the Foggy Swamp. Thanks to their predecessor, they live a harmonious, largely isolated life as members of the Foggy Swamp Tribe on the back of a water Lion Turtle. To her utter shock, they manage to manifest Korra at nine, withh Past Life Korra appearing as a nine-year-old. Dumbfounded, not even sure who the 'real' Avatar is, the girls assume she is just another spirit in the swamp. So Korra makes the decision to go along with this, and let them have a childhood she never had under the White Lotus as she figures out just what's going on with the twin Avatars.
Ultimately, the real world comes crashing into the new Avatars' isolated life, and they react poorly to Korra telling them the truth at 16. Through some more disasters and tragedies, they end up on the streets of Republic City, separated for a time, before meeting friends. The rest of the story revolves around corporate and personal greed (very much like the real wo9rld), conflict (and synergy) between the environment/spirits and technology, rivalries, family, friends across lifetimes, the nature of consciousness, reincarnation and the soul, and a conspiracy going all the way back to Kuruk threading through everything.
---
Some character profiles I'm working on:
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Priya: Independent, kind, and resourceful. Priya is a reluctant hero who avoids altercations or fighting, but still believes in helping people using her creativity and wits. She's a talented musician and loves to make up songs with her taanbur (guitar-like instrument). Priya lost most of her leg in an accident from a fallen tree that killed her parents in the Foggy Swamp, but bends roots and muddy water as if they were her own limb. Its eventually revealed that she carries Raava. Once she finds out, Priya in particular is reluctant to accept her role as the Avatar, until a tragedy forces her hand.
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Nikki is more snarky. She loves her powers and the attention it affords her, but her biggest fear is to be forgotten or not accepted by others. Nikki is awkward but puts on a face of superior confidence to hide the fact that she feels like a fish out of water. Despite her cocky attitude, Nikki is also an innovator, and her wild side is useful at times. Like her sister, she's highly attuned to the swamp, able to connect to and even manifest the collective memories of lost loved ones by touching spirit vines in the swamp. Both are apparently waterbenders with a proclivity for mud. Its eventually revealed that she carries Vaatu inside her. Nikki is missing part of her arm, but bends as a replacement, much line Ming-Hua.
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Korra: Largely as she is in LoK. Hot blooded, quick to fight, passionate, empathetic, and not very spiritual. In a reversal of roles, Priya and Nikki keep her manifested constantly, and Korra becomes their best friend, learing about thier life in the Foggy Swamp. Later in the story, Korra's almost like a Johnny Silverhand to the new Avatars: manifested at will, a voice constantly in thier heads offering commentary, occasionally butting heads with them in a complex but close and encouraging relationship.
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Asami Sato: Largely as she was in LoK, driven, collected, strong, smart, loyal. Now she's fifty, with a cybernetic leg from an accident. Asami still altruistic, and retained control of Future Industries through the years, but struggles with pushback from a corporate world driven by expansion and greed, and ultimately has to grapple with some of what her own company has done under her nose.
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Mako: Largely as he was, brooding, cool, a noir-like detective. Recently retired as police chief, and has been secretly piecing together the conspiracy running through the plot.
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Ren: The blacksmith Korra meets on Kyoshi Island. Softspoken, painfully shy, air headed and ADD, stocky and green-eyed, Ren nonetheless has a dry wit. He's self depreciating to a fault, but has a soft heart. To Korra's utter shock, Ren is a metalbender and a lavabender, using the combination to effortlessly sculpt armor and weapons, and tinker with delicate electronics. He's terrified of lightning, with a massive scar covering his back that flares up in storms or when anxious. Almost as broken as Korra is at the start, Ren reveals that his father's ancestors were lavabending miners and blacksmiths in the Hundred Years War. His past is initially shrouded in mystery, but its slowly revealed that his mother is the scientist who originally conceived of spirit vine technology, and that Varrick only replicated some of her work. Ren's mom has an 'Oppenheimer moment' and defects from Kuvira's proto Earth Empire. Ren ends up as the only survivor, deeply scarred from a spirit vine "detonation" similar to the LoK finale, that fused his soul to his body, and he's hiding from warlords hunting him for what he knows. Through the story, he grows particularly close to Asami and Korra, and grapples with some of the technology he pioneers.
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Kaida: CTO of Future Industries, Kaida is the biological daughter of Korra and Ren, who both died when she was 11. Utterly tenacious, hot-blooded, fearless, and a fierce fighter like her mom, Kaida barges into the story literally melting the metal floor in front of reporters harassing her 'mom,' Asami. Fiercely intelligent, impulsive, but with some of her dad's air-headedness, introversion, and love of tinkering with technology, Kaida is almost constantly clad in meteor-metal alloy plate armor she wears as a second skin. She favors a jian, like Korra learned to use on Kyoshi Island. Kaida a talented engineer, but struggles with the tremendous legacy she's been thrust into.
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Yuri Sei'naka: One of many vying for supremacy in the Sei'naka family, Yuri resembles Azula; A charismatic leader with a ruthless streak, an obsession with perfection, and a fantastically talented firebender, she has Azula's the same sharp yellow eyes and features. Like her twin brother, Yoru, Yuri chose the 'hard' path of bending over advanced cybernetics the wealthy have access too. Nevertheless, she has a good moral compass, and is unconditionally loyal to her brother.. The siblings have an intense rivalry with Kaida, just as thier company rivals Future Industries.
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Yoru Sei'naka: A firebending and lightning bending prodigy and a cunning strategist, Yoru is mute, having lost his ability to speak in a sparring accident as a kid. Yoru and Yuri are practically inseperable, with Yuri serving as his voice. Tasked with tracking down the unkown Avatar by the matriarch of the clan, and always beholden to his intense sense of honor, Yoru suffers through a tragic 'Zuko' arc through the story.
spoiler
- Father Glowworm: The ancient spirit survived the death of Yun, and is an ever-present invisible hand through the story, albeit with a newfound distate for humans. The swamp, taboo spirit vine technology, and just how he tunnels between worlds will all tie into crises Priya and Nikki must navigate.
- I'm still working on other antagonists, but there will be a warlord who tries to capture Ren on Kyoshi Island, a ruthless corporate matriarch of the Sei'naka dynasty (Natsu?), a charismatic rebel like something between Amon and Zaheer, and more. I'm also thinking on a blind airbending thief who rejected his rich family, and a loud, warm Sun Warrior whos people have resettled in Republic City, and an introverted netrunner-like hacker as companions for the Avatar.
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Other thoughts:
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I don't like some 'leaked' aspects of the upcoming show, like the twin Avatars being nine and the White Lotus being so involved and 'problematic.' I'd much rather have the twin Avatars be lost, ignorant of thier own nature in the Foggy Swamp because they appear to be waterbenders with a proclivity for mud.
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On that note, stealing the idea from here, maybe Priya can only bend air and water, while Nikki can only bend earth and fire, reflecting the split of their spirits and personalities.
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Remnants of the Northern and Southern Water Tribes have drifted to political extremes.
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The 'wasteland' is populated by spirits, and human opportunists looking to brave it.
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The Avatars' monkey cat companion is a spirit they befriended in the forest.
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Spirit Vine technology is taboo and effectively 'lost' after the calamity.
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The Avatars' Tribe lives atop a Lion Turtle the swamp hid for millenia.
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The 'nature' of the Foggy Swamp is expanded. For instance, in one chapter, Priya and Nikki manifest and talk to respresentations of their parents, built from the collectively memory of everyone who ever knew them, all connected though vines. It brings up existential questions in Korra's head, and parallels with some of the spirit-based technology the rest of the world has developed.
---
...So, those are my scattered thoughts so far.
Does that sound like a sane, plausible base for a post-LoK story? Do you think any of it would fit into canon? I particularly like the idea of a 'metal lavabending' canon companion, and maybe some more futuristic elements in the havens that do exist.
Avatar Studios upcoming Earth Avatar TV Series will initially run for 26 episodes.
Most details are in the article ^
Reddit source of images: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1hi2tte/more_confirmation_on_the_leaks_this_was_using_the/
I find this interesting! Post apocalyptic is a good way to "reset" the world, and the idea of twin Avatars has been batted around the fandom for some time.