Podcasts about Kimi

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2025 67:37

We’re back with the Singapore GP where Alonso is gold on the radio, Hamilton has no brakes and Piastri has stiff knobs. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humour (which may be unsuitable for adults), and the ramblings of 2 uninformed blokes who don't...

british race team hamilton singapore formula racing driver ferrari bull f1 prix mclaren formula1 kimi verstappen vettel ricciardo piastri rosberg singapore gp raikkonen

ROAD14 | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2025 170:57

RPG System: Electric State by Free League (freeleaguepublishing.com)A group of uneasy acquaintances embark on a road trip north from the Los Angeles Metroplex to escape the corporate overlords that are after them. Will they survive the perils of a society in decline? Will they survive countless hours trapped in a van together? ◇ Visit happyjacks.org/roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. CAST: GM: CADave (he/him) https://cadave.carrd.co/ Kimi (she/her) https://kimihughes.carrd.co/ Cassandra Nyx (she/her), The Devotee Cai (he/they/she) https://estelofimladris.carrd.co Kilo (he/they/it), The Drone Pilot Kodi (they/them) https://www.kodigonzaga.com Ronnie Rhodes (they/them), The Doctor Yuri (she/they) https://yuriandthebeast.carrd.co/ Emily Vega (she/her), The Artist Visit https://happyjacks.org//roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. Consider supporting the show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/happyjacksrpg ◇ Subscribe to our other podcast feeds! We have a weekly tabletop RPG talk show based on topics sent in from fans around the world, and a great collection of One-Shots if you prefer bite sized adventures. ◇ You can watch us on Youtube or Twitch! Hang out with other tabletop roleplaying fans in our Discord community! Tags: happyjacksrpg, tabletop, gaming, rpg, advice, dnd, d&d, podcast, roleplaying, happy jacks, stream, streaming, twitch, youtube, dm, gm, dming, gming, game master, dungeon master, campaign, dungeons and dragons, hjrpg, ttrpg, freeleague, electricstate

ROAD15 | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2025 166:10

Why Startups in China Are Going Global with Jing Yang

Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2025 57:25

“I think this is a sort of coming-of-age moment. When I say coming of age, I mean collectively for Chinese entrepreneurs. Many of these founders are my age, or even younger, and I've spoken with some of them. I can really relate to why they want to build businesses that target the global market instead of just China. In the past, you could build a company in China first and then think about expanding outward. That's no longer possible. For any consumer-facing software company today, from day one you must decide: Do I build for China, or do I build for Global minus China? The examples of TikTok, Shein, and many others show that you cannot do both. It's not possible to serve both markets at once.” - Jing Yang Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, shares her insights on ByteDance's pivotal moment, China's venture capital challenges, and the emerging U.S.-China competition in AI and robotics. Starting with ByteDance's latest financials, she revealed how the company now exceeds Meta in revenue but still lags significantly in profit margins, with its domestic business—Douyin and Toutiao—continuing to drive the lion's share of profits while TikTok remains unprofitable. Jing Yang explains how founder Zhang Yiming has entered "founder mode," dramatically increasing CapEx spending on AI development while ByteDance mysteriously went quiet on the AI leaderboard despite earlier dominance. Moving to venture capital, she unpacks why HongShan Capital has only deployed a quarter of its $9 billion fund raised in 2022, citing the collapse of exit opportunities, new overseas listing regulations from Chinese regulators, and the disappearance of big-ticket growth deals. She then explores the new wave of Chinese AI startups targeting global markets from day one, explaining how censorship and geopolitics force founders to choose between building for China or building for the world—they cannot do both. Finally, Jing Yang breaks down China's non-obvious advantage in humanoid robotics: not manufacturing prowess, but access to advanced manufacturing test beds where robots can be deployed, iterated, and refined at scale—an advantage The U.S. simply cannot match beyond Tesla. Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Jing Yang from The Information [02:14] ByteDance revenue exceeds Meta, profit lags [05:01] Zhang Yiming goes founder mode with AI [08:24] TikTok's significance to ByteDance's future [10:18] China signals willingness on TikTok deal [13:02] Chinese tech giants pivots to semiconductors, hard tech [14:27] ByteDance's quiet AI strategy and leadership [19:11] Why HongShan, formerly Sequoia China deploys only quarter of $9B fund [21:00] China VC market lacks big growth deals [24:20] New overseas listing regulations hinder exits [26:15] Chinese VCs struggle with US investments [29:53] Chinese founders target global markets from day one [32:20] What forces global versus China product split [38:28] Chinese apps feel holistic but culturally distinct [43:00] ChatGPT arrival sparked physical AI revolution [47:23] Chinese AI companies prioritize commercial use cases over AGI [50:13] China's manufacturing provides crucial test beds advantage [53:42] Redefining what constitutes a Chinese startup [54:55] AI race between Chinese in China vs US [58:00] Closing Profile: Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/ Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast: Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245 Analyse Asia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia/ Analyse Asia X (formerly known as Twitter): https://twitter.com/analyseasia Sign Up for Our This Week in Asia Newsletter: https://www.analyse.asia/#/portal/signup Subscribe Newsletter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288

tiktok ai starting china moving chinese global startups chatgpt tesla redefining tencent shein agi kimi bytedance dji jing capex going global chinese ai douyin toutiao

Year One

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2025 36:32

It is the first year of a new reign, so come and let's take a look at how it all begins. For more, check out our blog page at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-135 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 135: Year One The officials of the Ministry of Kami Affairs bustled to and fro as they prepared the ritual grounds and the temporary buildings. They were carefully erecting the structures, which would only be used for a single festival, and then torn down, but this would be an important festival. It was the harvest festival, the Niiname-sai, the festival of the first-fruits. Rice, from the regions of Tamba and Harima, specifically chosen through divination, would be offered to his majesty along with the kami who had blessed the land. But this time, there was more. After all, this was the first harvest festival of a new reign, and they had orders to make it special. The ascension ceremony had been held earlier in the year, but in some ways that was just a prelude. There had been various rituals and ceremonies throughout the year emphasizing that this year was special—even foreign lands were sending envoys to congratulate him on the event. But this wasn't for them. This was the sovereign taking part, for the first time, in one of the most important ceremonies of the year. After all, the feast of first-fruits was the culmination of all that the kami had done, and it emphasized the sovereign's role as both a descendant of heaven and as the preeminent intercessor with the divine spirits of the land. And so they knew, that everything had to be bigger, with even more pomp and circumstance than normal. This wouldn't just be about the new rice. This would be a grand ceremony, one that only happened once in a generation, and yet which would echo through the centuries. As the annual harvest festival, it was an ancient tradition. But as something new—as the Daijosai—it was something else all together. And it would have to be perfect! Last episode we talked about the Kiyomihara palace and a little bit about what it was like in the court of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou. After defeating the Afumi court supporting his nephew, Ohotomo, in 672, Ohoama had taken control of the government. He moved back to Asuka, and into the refurbished Okamoto palace, building a southern exclave known to us today as the Ebinoko enclosure, which held one large building, which may have been a residence or a ceremonial structure—possibly the first “Daigokuden” or ceremonial hall. Ohoama's court built on the ideas that his brother, Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, had put forth since the Taika era. This was a continuation of the form of government known as the Ritsuryo system, or Ritsuryo-sei, literally a government of laws and punishments, and Ohoama had taken the reins. He seems to have taken a much more direct approach to governance compared to some of his predecessors. For instance, the role of the ministerial families was reduced, with Ohoama or various princes—actual or invented relatives of the throne—taking a much more prominent role. He also expanded access to the central government to those outside of the the Home Provinces. After all, it was the traditional ministerial families—the Soga, the Nakatomi, and even the Kose—who had been part of the Afumi government that he had just defeated. Meanwhile, much of his military support had come from the Eastern provinces, though with prominent indications of support from Kibi and Tsukushi as well. This episode we are going to get back to the events documented in the Chronicles, looking just at the first year of Ohoama's reign. Well, technically it was the second year, with 672 being the first, but this is the first year in which he formally sat on the throne. There's plenty going on in this year to fill a whole episode: it was the year of Ohoama's formal ascension, and there were numerous festivals, ceremonies, and other activities that seem to be directly related to a fresh, new start. We will also look at the custom of handing out posthumous ranks, particularly to those who supported Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran, and how that relates to the various ranks and titles used in Ohoama's court. We have envoys from three different countries—Tamna, Silla, and Goguryeo—and their interactions with the Dazaifu in Tsukushi. Finally, we have the first Daijosai, one of the most important ceremonies in any reign. And so, let's get into it. The year 673 started with a banquet for various princes and ministers, and on the 27th day of the 2nd month, Ohoama formally assumed the throne at what would come to be known as Kiyomihara Palace. Uno, his consort, who had traveled with him through the mountains from Yoshino to Ise, was made his queen, and their son, Royal Prince Kusakabe, was named Crown Prince. Two days later they held a ceremony to convey cap-ranks on those deemed worthy. We are then told that on the 17th day of the following month, word came from the governor of Bingo, the far western side of ancient Kibi, today the eastern part of modern Hiroshima. They had caught a white pheasant in Kameshi and sent it as tribute. White or albino animals were seen as particularly auspicious signs, and no doubt it was taken as an omen of good fortune for the reign. In response, the forced labor from Bingo, which households were required to supply to the State, was remitted. There was also a general amnesty granted throughout the land. That same month we are also told that scribes were brought in to Kawaradera to copy the Issaiko—aka the Tripitaka, or the entirety of the Buddhist canon. That would include hundreds of scrolls. This clearly seems to be an act of Buddhist merit-making: by copying out the scrolls you make merit, which translates to good karma. That would be another auspicious start to the reign, and we see frequently that rulers would fund sutra copying—or sutra recitations—as well as temples, statues, bells and all other such things to earn Buddhist merit. As the ruler, this merit didn't just accrue to you, but to the entire state, presumably bringing good fortune and helping to avert disaster. However, it wasn't just the Law of the Buddha that Ohoama was appealing to. In the following entry, on the14th day of the 4th month, we are told that Princess Ohoki was preparing herself at the saigu, or abstinence palace, in Hatsuse—known as Hase, today, east of modern Sakurai, along the Yonabari river, on the road to Uda. Ohoki was the sister of Prince Ohotsu. Her mother was Ohota, the Queen's elder sister, making her a grandchild of Naka no Ohoye as well as the daughter of Ohoama. Princess Ohoki's time at the abstinence palace was so that she could purify herself. This was all to get her ready to head to Ise, to approach none other than the sun goddess, Amaterasu Ohokami. With all of these events, we see the full panoply of ritual and ceremony on display. The formal, legal ceremonies of ascension and granting of rank. The declaration of auspicious omens for the reign. There is the making of Buddhist merit, but also the worship of the kami of the archipelago. This is not an either-or situation. We are seeing in the first half of this first year the fusion of all of these different elements into something that may not even be all that sensational to those of us, today. After all, anyone who goes to Japan is likely well-accustomed to the way that both Buddhist and Shinto institutions can both play a large part in people's lives. While some people may be more drawn to one than the other, for most they are complimentary. That isn't how it had to be. For a time, it was possible that Buddhism would displace local kami worship altogether. This was the core of the backlash that we saw from groups like the Nakatomi, whose role in kami-focused ceremonies was threatened by the new religion. Indeed, for a while now it seems like mention of the kami has taken a backseat to Buddhist temples and ceremonies in the Chronicles. Likewise, as a foreign religion, Buddhism could have also fallen out of favor. It was not fore-ordained that it would come to have a permanent place on the archipelago. This tension between local kami worship—later called Shinto, the Way of the Kami—and Buddhist teachings would vary throughout Japanese history, with one sometimes seen as more prestigious or more natural than the other, but neither one would fully eclipse the other. One could say that was in part due to the role that Amaterasu and kami worship played in the court ceremonies. However, even there indigenous practices were not necessarily safe. The court could have just as easily imported Confucian rituals, and replaced the spiritual connection between the sovereign and the kami with the continental style Mandate of Heaven. And thus, the choices that were being made at this time would have huge implications for the Japanese state for centuries to come. I should note that it is unlikely that this spontaneously arose amongst the upper class and the leadership. I doubt this was just Ohoama's strategy to give himself multiple levers of power—though I'm not saying he wasn't thinking about that either. But the only way that these levers existed was through their continued life in the culture and the people of the time. If the people didn't believe in Buddhist merit, or that the kami influenced their lives, then neither would have given them much sway. It was the fact that these were a part of the cultural imaginary of the state, and how people imagined themselves and their surroundings, that they were effective tools for Ohoama and his government. And so it seems that Ohoama's first year is off to a smashing success. By the fifth month he is already issuing edicts—specifically on the structure of the state, which we discussed some last episode. But the high could not be maintained indefinitely. And on the 29th day of the 5th month we have what we might consider our first negative entry, when Sakamoto no Takara no Omi passed away. You may remember Sakamoto, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. He was the commander in the Nara Basin, under general Wofukei, who took 300 troops to Tatsuta. From there he advanced to the Hiraishi plain and up to the top of Mt. Takayasu, to confront the Afumi forces that had taken the castle. They fled, and Takara and his men overnighted at the castle. The next day they tried to intercept Afumi troops advancing from the Kawachi plain, but they were forced to fall back to a defensive position. We covered that in Episode 131 with the rest of the campaign in the Nara Basin. Takara's death is the first of many entries—I count roughly 21 through this and the following reign—which, for the most part, are all similarly worded. Sakamoto no Takara no Omi, of Upper Daikin rank, died. He was posthumously granted the rank of Shoushi for service in the Year of Mizu-no-e Saru, aka Jinshin. We are told the individual, their rank at the time of their death, and then a note about a posthumous grant of rank. Upper Daikin was already about the 7th rank from the top in the system of 664, and Shoushi would be the 6th rank, and one of the “ministerial” ranks. This is out of 26, total. “Kin” itself was the fourth of about 7 categories, and the last category that was split into six sub-ranks, with greater and lesser (Daikin and Shokin), each of which was further divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower ranks. There's a lot to go into, in fact a little too much for this episode, so for more on the ranks in use at the start of the reign, check out our blogpost for this episode. The giving of posthumous rank is mostly just an honorific. After all, the individual is now deceased, so it isn't as if they would be drawing more of a stipend, though their new ranks may have influenced their funerary rites and similar things. As I said, on a quick scan of the text, I counted 21 of these entries, though there may be a few more with slightly different phrasing or circumstances. Some of them were quite notable in the record, while others may have only had a mention here or there. That they are mentioned, though, likely speaks to the importance of that connection to such a momentous year. The Nihon Shoki is thought to have been started around the time of Ohoama or his successor, along with the Kojiki, and so it would have been important to people of the time to remind everyone that their ancestors had been the ones who helped with that momentous event. It really isn't that much different from those who proudly trace their lineage back to heroes of, say, the American Revolution, though it likely held even more sway being closer to the actual events. After the death of Sakamoto no Takara, we get another death announcement. This is of someone that Aston translates as “Satek Syomyeong” of Baekje, of Lower Daikin rank. We aren't given much else about him, but we are told that Ohoama was shocked. He granted Syomyeong the posthumous rank of “Outer Shoushi”, per Aston's translation. He also posthumously named him as Prime Minister, or Desapyong, of Baekje. There are a few clues about who this might be, but very little to go on. He is mentioned in 671, during the reign of Naka no Oe, when he received the rank of Upper Daikin along with Minister—or Sapyong—Yo Jasin. It is also said in the interlinear text that he was the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Judgment—the Houkan no Taifu. The Ministry of Judgment—the Houkan or perhaps the Nori no Tsukasa—is thought to have been the progenitor of the later Shikibu, the Ministry of Ceremony. One of the major roles it played was in the selection of candidates for rank, position, and promotion. We are also told that in the year 660, in the reign of Takara Hime, one of the nobles captured in the Tang invasion of Baekje was “Desapyong Satek”, so perhaps this Syomyeong was a descendant or relative of the previous prime minister, who fled to Yamato with other refugees. We also have another record from 671 of a Satek Sondeung and his companions accompanying the Tang envoy Guo Yacun. So it would seem that the Sathek family was certainly notable The name “Satek” shows up once more, though Aston then translates it as “Sataku”, like a monk or scholar's name. “Sataku” would be the Japanese on'yomi pronunciation of the same characters, so perhaps another relative. What we can take away from all of this is that the Baekje refugee community is still a thing in Yamato. This Satek Seomyeong has court rank—Upper Daikin rank, just like Sakamoto, in the previous entry. And we know that he had an official position at court—not just in the Baekje court in exile. We'll see more on this as the community is further integrated into the rest of Society, such that there would no longer be a Baekje community, but families would continue to trace their lineages back to Baekje families, often with pride. The other odd thing here is the character “outer” or “outside” before “Shoushi”. Aston translates it as part of the rank, and we see it show up a total of four times in some variation of “Outer Lesser X rank”. Mostly it is as here, Outer Lesser Purple. Later we would see a distinction of “outer” and “inner” ranks, which this may be a version of. Depending on one's family lineage would denote whether one received an “outer” or “inner” rank, and so it may be that since Satek Syomyeong was from the Baekje community, it was more appropriate for him to have an “outside” rank. “Outer” rank would also be given to Murakuni no Muraji no Woyori, the general who had led the campaign to Afumi, taking the Seta bridge. He was also posthumously given the rank of “Outer Shoushi” upon his death in 676. Murakuni no Woyori is the only person of that surname mentioned around this time, so perhaps he wasn't from one of the “core” families of the Yamato court, despite the service he had rendered. We also have at least one other noble of Baekje who is likewise granted an ”outer” rank. On the other side there are those like Ohomiwa no Makamuta no Kobito no Kimi, who was posthumously granted the rank of “Inner” Shoushi. Here I would note that Ohomiwa certainly seems to suggest an origin in the Nara Basin, in the heartland of Yamato. The terms “Inner” and “Outer” are only used on occasion, however, and not consistently in all cases. This could just be because of the records that the scribes were working off of at the time. It is hard to say, exactly. All of these entries about posthumous ranks being granted tend to refer to cap ranks, those applying to members of various Uji, the clans that had been created to help organize the pre-Ritsuryo state. The Uji and their members played important roles in the court and the nation, both as ministers and lower functionaries. But I also want to mention another important component of Ohoama's court, the members of the princely class, many of whom also actively contributed to the functioning of the state. Among this class are those that Aston refers to as “Princes of the Blood”, or “Shinnou”. These include the royal princes, sons of Ohoama who were in line for the throne, but also any of his brothers and sisters. Then there were the “miko”, like Prince Kurikuma, who had been the Viceroy in Tsukushi, denying troops to the Afumi court. Those princes claimed some lineal descent from a sovereign, but they were not directly related to the reigning sovereign. In fact, it isn't clear, today, if they were even indirectly related to the reigning sovereign, other than through the fact that the elites of the archipelago had likely been forming marriage alliances with one another for centuries, so who knows. And maybe they made their claims back to a heavenly descendant, like Nigi Hayahi. Either way, they were the ones with claims—legitimate or otherwise—to royal blood. Notably, the Princes did not belong to any of the Uji, , and they didn't have kabane, either—no “Omi”, “Muraji”, “Atahe”, et cetera. They did, at least from this reign forward, have rank. But it was separate and different from the rank of the Uji members. Members of the various Uji were referred to with cap rank, but the Princely ranks were just numbered—in the Nihon Shoki we see mention of princes of the 2nd through 5th ranks—though presumably there was also a “first” rank. It is not entirely clear when this princely rank system was put into place, but it was probably as they were moving all of the land, and thus the taxes, to the state. Therefore the court would have needed to know what kind of stipend each prince was to receive—a stipend based on their rank. These ranks, as with later numbered ranks, appear to have been given in ascending order, like medals in a tournament: first rank, second rank, third rank, etc. with fifth rank being the lowest of the Princely ranks. Many of these Princes also held formal positions in the government. We saw this in Naka no Oe's reign with Prince Kurikuma taking the Viceroy-ship of Tsukushi, but during Ohoama's reign we see it even more. Beneath the Princes were the various Ministers and Public Functionaries—the Officers of the court, from the lowest page to the highest minister. They were members of the elite noble families, for the most part, or else they claimed descent from the elite families of the continent. Either way they were part of what we would no doubt call the Nobility. Their cap-rank system, mentioned earlier, was separate from that used by the Princes. And, then at the bottom, supporting this structure, were the common people. Like the princes, they did not necessarily have a surname, and they didn't really figure into the formal rank system. They certainly weren't considered members of the titled class, and often don't even show up in the record. And yet we should not forget that they were no doubt the most numerous and diverse group for the majority of Japanese history. Our sources, however, have a much more narrow focus. There is one more class of people to mention here, and that is the evolving priestly class. Those who took Buddhist orders and became Buddhist monks were technically placed outside of the social system, though that did not entirely negate their connections to the outside world. We see, for example, how Ohoama, even in taking orders, still had servants and others to wait on him. However, they were at least theoretically outside of the social hierarchy, and could achieve standing within the Buddhist community through their studies of Buddhist scripture. They had their own hierarchy, which was tied in to the State through particular Buddhist officers appointed by the government, but otherwise the various temples seem to have been largely in charge of their own affairs. But anyway, let's get back to the Chronicles. Following closely on the heels of Satek Syomyeong's passing, two days later, we have another entry, this one much more neutral. We are told that Tamna, aka the kingdom on Jeju island off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, sent Princes Kumaye, Tora, Uma, and others with tribute. So now we are getting back into the diplomatic swing of things. There had been one previous embassy—that of Gim Apsil of Silla, who had arrived just towards the end of the Jinshin War, but they were merely entertained in Tsukushi and sent back, probably because Ohoama's court were still cleaning house. Tamna, Silla, and Goguryeo—usually accompanied by Silla escorts—would be the main visitors to Yamato for a time. At this point, Silla was busy trying to get the Tang forces to leave the peninsula. This was partly assisted by the various uprisings in the captured territories of Goguryeo and Baekje—primarily up in Goguryeo. There were various attempts to restore the kingdom. It isn't clear, but I suspect that the Goguryeo envoys we do eventually see were operating largely as a vassal state under Silla. Tamna, on the other hand, seems to have been outside of the conflict, from what we see in the records, and it likely was out of the way of the majority of any fighting. They also seem to have had a different relationship with Yamato, based on some of the interactions. It is very curious to me that the names of the people from Tamna seem like they could come from Yamato. Perhaps that is related in some way to theories that Tamna was one of the last hold-outs of continental proto-Japonic language prior to the ancestor of modern Korean gaining ascendancy. Or it could just be an accident of how things got copied down in Sinitic characters and then translated back out. The Tamna mission arrived on the 8th day of the 6th intercalary month of 673. A Silla embassy arrived 7 days later, but rather than tribute, their mission was twofold—two ambassadors to offer congratulations to Ohoama and two to offer condolences on the late sovereign—though whether that means Naka no Oe or Ohotomo is not exactly clear. All of these arrived and would have been hosted, initially, in Tsukushi, probably at modern Fukuoka. The Silla envoys were accompanied by Escorts, who were briefly entertained and offered presents by the Dazaifu, the Yamato government extension on Kyushu, and then sent home. From then on, the envoys would be at the mercy of Yamato and their ships. About a month and a half later, on the 20th day of the 8th month, Goguryeo envoys also showed up with tribute, accompanied by Silla escorts. Five days later, word arrived back from the court in Asuka. The Silla envoys who had come to offer congratulations to the sovereign on his ascension were to be sent onwards. Those who had just come with tribute, however, could leave it with the viceroy in Tsukushi. They specifically made this point to the Tamna envoys, whom they then suggested should head back soon, as the weather was about to turn, and they wouldn't want to be stuck there when the monsoon season came. The Tamna cohort weren't just kicked out, however. The court did grant them and their king cap-rank. The envoys were given Upper Dai-otsu, which Yamato equated to the rank of a minister in Tamna. The Silla envoys—about 27 in total—made their way to Naniwa. It took them a month, and they arrived in Naniwa on the 28th day of the 9th month. Their arrival was met with entertainments—musical performances and presents that were given to the envoys. This was all part of the standard diplomatic song and dance—quite literally, in this case. We aren't given details on everything. Presumably the envoys offered their congratulations, which likely included some presents from Silla, as well as a congratulatory message. We aren't given exact details, but a little more than a month later, on the first day of the 11th month, envoy Gim Seungwon took his leave. Meanwhile, the Goguryeo envoys, who, like Tamna, had arrived merely with tribute, were still in Tsukushi. On the 21st day of the 11th month, just over two months after they arrived, we are told that they were entertained at the Ohogohori in Tsukushi and were given presents based on their rank. The Ohogohori, or “Big District”, appears to mirror a similar area in Naniwa that was likewise known for hosting diplomatic envoys. With the diplomatic niceties over, there was one more thing to do in this first year of the new reign: the thanksgiving ritual always held at the beginning of a new reign, the Daijosai, or oho-namematsuri. This is a harvest ritual where the newly enthroned sovereign offers new rice to the kami and then eats some himself. At least in the modern version, he gives thanks and prays to Amaterasu Ohomikami, as well as to the amatsu-kami and kunitsu-kami, the kami of heaven and earth. The Daijosai shares a lot in common with another important annual festival, the Niinamesai, or the Feast of First Fruits. This is the traditional harvest festival, usually held in November. The Daijosai follows much the same form as the Niinamesai, and as such, in years where there is a new sovereign, and thus the Daijosai is held, the Niinamesai is not, since it would be duplicative. Many of the rituals of the Daijosai are private affairs and not open to the public. There are various theories about what happens, but only those who are part of the ritual know for sure, and they are sworn to secrecy. The first instance of the Daijosai in the Chronicles is during the reign of Shiraga Takehiko Kunioshi Waka Yamato Neko, aka Seinei Tennou, in the 5th century, but we should take that with a huge grain of salt. Remember, one of the purposes behind the chronicles was to explain how everything came to be, and saying “we just made it up” wasn't really going to fly. I've seen some sources suggest that the Daijosai can be attributed to the first reign of Ohoama's mother, Takara Hime, aka Kougyoku Tennou. The term used in her reign, though is Niiname, which seems to refer to the annual Niinamesai, though she is the first in the Chronicles that seems to celebrate it in the first year of her reign, sharing with the Crown Prince and Ministers. It is likely that the ritual is much older in origin. After all, giving the first fruits of the harvest to the kami to thank them for their assistance seems like the core of harvest festivals around the world. We see it mentioned as the Niinamesai in much of the rest of the Nihon Shoki, even back to the Age of the Gods, when it played an important part in the stories of Amaterasu and Susanowo. It is in Ohoama's reign, though, that it seems to first take on its character as a true ritual of the state. We see that the Nakatomi and the Imbe were involved. Together these two families oversaw much of the court ritual having to do with kami worship. We also know that the officials of the Jingikan, the Ministry of Kami Affairs, were also present, as they were all given presents for attending on the sovereign during the festival. We also see that the district governors of Harima and Tamba, which were both in the area of modern Hyougo Prefecture, as well as various laborers under them, were all recognized with presents as well. We can assume that this was because they provided the rice and other offerings used in the festival. In addition to the presents they received, the two governors were each given an extra grade of cap-rank. Another Daijosai would be carried out in the first year of Ohoama's successor, and from there on it seems to have become one of if not *the* major festival of a reign. It marks, in many ways, the end of the first year of ceremonies for the first year of a reign. And even in other years, the Niinamesai is often one of the pre-eminent festivals. The Daijosai may have been the climax of the year in many ways, but the year was not quite done yet. We have two more entries, and both are related to Buddhism. First, on the 17th day of the 12th month, just twelve days after the Daijosai, Prince Mino and Ki no Omi no Katamaro were appointed Commissioners for the erection of the Great Temple of Takechi—aka the Ohomiya no Ohodera, also known as the Daikandaiji. The Daikandaiji was a massive temple complex. It is thought that it was originally a relocation of Kudara Ohodera, and we have remains at the foot of Kaguyama—Mt. Kagu, in the Asuka region of modern Kashihara city. Many of the ruins, however, seem to date to a slightly later period, suggesting that the main temple buildings were rebuilt after Ohoama's reign. Still, it is quite likely that he had people start the initial work. In setting up the temple, of course it needed a head priest. And so Ohoama called upon a priest named Fukurin and made him an offer he couldn't refuse… literally. Fukurin tried to object to being posted as the head priest. He said that he was too old to be in charge of the temple. Ohoama wasn't having any of it. He had made up his mind, and Fukurin was in no position to refuse him. A quick note on the two commissioners here. First off, I would note that Prince Mino here isn't mentioned as having Princely rank. Instead, he is mentioned with the ministerial rank of Shoushi. Ki no Katamaro, on the other hand, is Lower Shoukin, several grades below. Once again, a bit of confusion in the ranks, as it were. The final entry for the year 673 occurred 10 days after the erection of the great temple, and it was a fairly straightforward entry: The Buddhist Priest, Gijou, was made Shou-soudzu, or Junior Soudzu. Junior Soudzu was one of the government appointed positions of priests charged with overseeing the activities of the priests and temples and holding them to account as necessary. Originally there was the Soujou and the Soudzu, but they were later broken up into several different positions, likely due to the proliferation of Buddhism throughout the archipelago. There doesn't seem to be much on Gijou before this point, but we know that he would go on to live a pretty full life, passing away over thirty years later, in 706 CE. He would outlive Ohoama and his successor. And with that, we come to the end of the first year. I am not planning to go year by year through this entire reign—in fact, we have already touched on a lot of the various recurring entries. But I do think that it is worth it to see how the Chronicles treat this first year for a reign that would have been considered pretty momentous to the people of the time. Next episode we'll continue going through the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou. There is a lot going on, which, as I've said, will influence the nation for centuries—even up until the modern day. Until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

EVLİLİK ÜZERİNE-28 EYLÜL 2025-MEVLANA TAKVİMİ

Mevlana Takvimi

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2025 2:01

Evlilik insan hayatındaki en önemli dönemeçlerden biridir. Bu dönemeç düzgün bir şekilde dönülmediği takdirde sonradan düzeltmesi çok zor olur. Günümüzde evlâdların ana-babaları ile yaşadıkları en büyük sorunlardan bir tanesi evlilik konusunda ortaya çıkmaktadır. Evlenirken tâbiki ana-babaya sorulur, onların rızâsı alınır. İslâmi terbiye almış bir hanım bulurlarsa ne âlâ; ama evlâdlarını namazı, abdesti olmayan bir hanım ile evlenmeye zorluyorlarsa o zaman o da bunu kâbul etmek zorunda değildir. Bilindiği gibi Resûlullâh (s.a.v.)'in evlilik konusunda “Kadınlarla dört hasletleri için evlenilir: Malı için, asaleti için, güzelliği için ve dini için. Sen dindar olanı tercih et, mesud olursun.” (Buhari, Müslim) buyurmuşlardır.Burada günümüzde erkeklerin sıkça karşılaştıkları bir durumdan bahsetmekte fayda var. Kimi erkekler tesettüre riayet etmeyen kızlarla evlenmek istiyorlar ve şart olarak da tesettüre riayet etmelerini istiyorlar. Evlenilecek kızda evlendikten sonra buna riayet edeceğine söz veriyor. Eğer bir kimse “Ben evlendikten sonra tesettüre riayet edeceğim.” diyerek Allâh (c.c.) ve Resûlü (s.a.v.)'in emrini hemen tatbik etmeyip evlilik sonrasına tehir ediyorsa çok büyük ihtimalle evlendikten sonra da tatbik etmeyecektir. Bunun birçok örneği vardır. Eğer tesettüre Allâh (c.c.) ve Resûlü (s.a.v.)'in emri olduğu için riayet edecekse neden hemen tatbik etmiyor?(Ömer Muhammed Öztürk, Sohbetler-2, s.103-104

bu res kimi kad muhammed bunun buhari burada evlilik mevlana bilindi

ROAD13 | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2025 181:37

The top AI news from the past week, every ThursdAI

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2025 94:07

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit sub.thursdai.newsHola AI aficionados, it's yet another ThursdAI, and yet another week FULL of AI news, spanning Open Source LLMs, Multimodal video and audio creation and more! Shiptember as they call it does seem to deliver, and it was hard even for me to follow up on all the news, not to mention we had like 3-4 breaking news during the show today! This week was yet another Qwen-mas, with Alibaba absolutely dominating across open source, but also NVIDIA promising to invest up to $100 Billion into OpenAI. So let's dive right in! As a reminder, all the show notes are posted at the end of the article for your convenience. ThursdAI - Because weeks are getting denser, but we're still here, weekly, sending you the top AI content! Don't miss outTable of Contents* Open Source AI* Qwen3-VL Announcement (Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Thinking):* Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B: end-to-end SOTA omni-modal AI unifying text, image, audio, and video* DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus: a surgical bugfix that matters for agents* Evals & Benchmarks: agents, deception, and code at scale* Big Companies, Bigger Bets!* OpenAI: ChatGPT Pulse: Proactive AI news cards for your day* XAI Grok 4 fast - 2M context, 40% fewer thinking tokens, shockingly cheap* Alibaba Qwen-Max and plans for scaling* This Week's Buzz: W&B Fully Connected is coming to London and Tokyo & Another hackathon in SF* Vision & Video: Wan 2.2 Animate, Kling 2.5, and Wan 4.5 preview* Moondream-3 Preview - Interview with co-founders Via & Jay* Wan open sourced Wan 2.2 Animate (aka “Wan Animate”): motion transfer and lip sync* Kling 2.5 Turbo: cinematic motion, cheaper and with audio* Wan 4.5 preview: native multimodality, 1080p 10s, and lip-synced speech* Voice & Audio* ThursdAI - Sep 25, 2025 - TL;DR & Show notesOpen Source AIThis was a Qwen-and-friends week. I joked on stream that I should just count how many times “Alibaba” appears in our show notes. It's a lot.Qwen3-VL Announcement (Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B-Thinking): (X, HF, Blog, Demo)Qwen 3 launched earlier as a text-only family; the vision-enabled variant just arrived, and it's not timid. The “thinking” version is effectively a reasoner with eyes, built on a 235B-parameter backbone with around 22B active (their mixture-of-experts trick). What jumped out is the breadth of evaluation coverage: MMU, video understanding (Video-MME, LVBench), 2D/3D grounding, doc VQA, chart/table reasoning—pages of it. They're showing wins against models like Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT‑5 on some of those reports, and doc VQA is flirting with “nearly solved” territory in their numbers.Two caveats. First, whenever scores get that high on imperfect benchmarks, you should expect healthy skepticism; known label issues can inflate numbers. Second, the model is big. Incredible for server-side grounding and long-form reasoning with vision (they're talking about scaling context to 1M tokens for two-hour video and long PDFs), but not something you throw on a phone.Still, if your workload smells like “reasoning + grounding + long context,” Qwen 3 VL looks like one of the strongest open-weight choices right now.Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B: end-to-end SOTA omni-modal AI unifying text, image, audio, and video (HF, GitHub, Qwen Chat, Demo, API)Omni is their end-to-end multimodal chat model that unites text, image, and audio—and crucially, it streams audio responses in real time while thinking separately in the background. Architecturally, it's a 30B MoE with around 3B active parameters at inference, which is the secret to why it feels snappy on consumer GPUs.In practice, that means you can talk to Omni, have it see what you see, and get sub-250 ms replies in nine speaker languages while it quietly plans. It claims to understand 119 languages. When I pushed it in multilingual conversational settings it still code-switched unexpectedly (Chinese suddenly appeared mid-flow), and it occasionally suffered the classic “stuck in thought” behavior we've been seeing in agentic voice modes across labs. But the responsiveness is real, and the footprint is exciting for local speech streaming scenarios. I wouldn't replace a top-tier text reasoner with this for hard problems, yet being able to keep speech native is a real UX upgrade.Qwen Image Edit, Qwen TTS Flash, and Qwen‑GuardQwen's image stack got a handy upgrade with multi-image reference editing for more consistent edits across shots—useful for brand assets and style-tight workflows. TTS Flash (API-only for now) is their fast speech synth line, and Q‑Guard is a new safety/moderation model from the same team. It's notable because Qwen hasn't really played in the moderation-model space before; historically Meta's Llama Guard led that conversation.DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus: a surgical bugfix that matters for agents (X, HF)DeepSeek whale resurfaced to push a small 0.1 update to V3.1 that reads like a “quality and stability” release—but those matter if you're building on top. It fixes a code-switching bug (the “sudden Chinese” syndrome you'll also see in some Qwen variants), improves tool-use and browser execution, and—importantly—makes agentic flows less likely to overthink and stall. On the numbers, Humanities Last Exam jumped from 15 to 21.7, while LiveCodeBench dipped slightly. That's the story here: they traded a few raw points on coding for more stable, less dithery behavior in end-to-end tasks. If you've invested in their tool harness, this may be a net win.Liquid Nanos: small models that extract like they're big (X, HF)Liquid Foundation Models released “Liquid Nanos,” a set of open models from roughly 350M to 2.6B parameters, including “extract” variants that pull structure (JSON/XML/YAML) from messy documents. The pitch is cost-efficiency with surprisingly competitive performance on information extraction tasks versus models 10× their size. If you're doing at-scale doc ingestion on CPUs or small GPUs, these look worth a try.Tiny IBM OCR model that blew up the charts (HF)We also saw a tiny IBM model (about 250M parameters) for image-to-text document parsing trending on Hugging Face. Run in 8-bit, it squeezes into roughly 250 MB, which means Raspberry Pi and “toaster” deployments suddenly get decent OCR/transcription against scanned docs. It's the kind of tiny-but-useful release that tends to quietly power entire products.Meta's 32B Code World Model (CWM) released for agentic code reasoning (X, HF)Nisten got really excited about this one, and once he explained it, I understood why. Meta released a 32B code world model that doesn't just generate code - it understands code the way a compiler does. It's thinking about state, types, and the actual execution context of your entire codebase.This isn't just another coding model - it's a fundamentally different approach that could change how all future coding models are built. Instead of treating code as fancy text completion, it's actually modeling the program from the ground up. If this works out, expect everyone to copy this approach.Quick note, this one was released with a research license only! Evals & Benchmarks: agents, deception, and code at scaleA big theme this week was “move beyond single-turn Q&A and test how these things behave in the wild.” with a bunch of new evals released. I wanted to cover them all in a separate segment. OpenAI's GDP Eval: “economically valuable tasks” as a bar (X, Blog)OpenAI introduced GDP Eval to measure model performance against real-world, economically valuable work. The design is closer to how I think about “AGI as useful work”: 44 occupations across nine sectors, with tasks judged against what an industry professional would produce.Two details stood out. First, OpenAI's own models didn't top the chart in their published screenshot—Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.1 led with roughly a 47.6% win rate against human professionals, while GPT‑5-high clocked in around 38%. Releasing a benchmark where you're not on top earns respect. Second, the tasks are legit. One example was a manufacturing engineer flow where the output required an overall design with an exploded view of components—the kind of deliverable a human would actually make.What I like here isn't the precise percent; it's the direction. If we anchor progress to tasks an economy cares about, we move past “trivia with citations” and toward “did this thing actually help do the work?”GAIA 2 (Meta Super Intelligence Labs + Hugging Face): agents that execute (X, HF)MSL and HF refreshed GAIA, the agent benchmark, with a thousand new human-authored scenarios that test execution, search, ambiguity handling, temporal reasoning, and adaptability—plus a smartphone-like execution environment. GPT‑5-high led across execution and search; Kimi's K2 was tops among open-weight entries. I like that GAIA 2 bakes in time and budget constraints and forces agents to chain steps, not just spew plans. We need more of these.Scale AI's “SWE-Bench Pro” for coding in the large (HF)Scale dropped a stronger coding benchmark focused on multi-file edits, 100+ line changes, and large dependency graphs. On the public set, GPT‑5 (not Codex) and Claude Opus 4.1 took the top two slots; on a commercial set, Opus edged ahead. The broader takeaway: the action has clearly moved to test-time compute, persistent memory, and program-synthesis outer loops to get through larger codebases with fewer invalid edits. This aligns with what we're seeing across ARC‑AGI and SWE‑bench Verified.The “Among Us” deception test (X)One more that's fun but not frivolous: a group benchmarked models on the social deception game Among Us. OpenAI's latest systems reportedly did the best job both lying convincingly and detecting others' lies. This line of work matters because social inference and adversarial reasoning show up in real agent deployments—security, procurement, negotiations, even internal assistant safety.Big Companies, Bigger Bets!Nvidia's $100B pledge to OpenAI for 10GW of computeLet's say that number again: one hundred billion dollars. Nvidia announced plans to invest up to $100B into OpenAI's infrastructure build-out, targeting roughly 10 gigawatts of compute and power. Jensen called it the biggest infrastructure project in history. Pair that with OpenAI's Stargate-related announcements—five new datacenters with Oracle and SoftBank and a flagship site in Abilene, Texas—and you get to wild territory fast.Internal notes circulating say OpenAI started the year around 230MW and could exit 2025 north of 2GW operational, while aiming at 20GW in the near term and a staggering 250GW by 2033. Even if those numbers shift, the directional picture is clear: the GPU supply and power curves are going vertical.Two reactions. First, yes, the “infinite money loop” memes wrote themselves—OpenAI spends on Nvidia GPUs, Nvidia invests in OpenAI, the market adds another $100B to Nvidia's cap for good measure. But second, the underlying demand is real. If we need 1–8 GPUs per “full-time agent” and there are 3+ billion working adults, we are orders of magnitude away from compute saturation. The power story is the real constraint—and that's now being tackled in parallel.OpenAI: ChatGPT Pulse: Proactive AI news cards for your day (X, OpenAI Blog)In a #BreakingNews segment, we got an update from OpenAI, that currently works only for Pro users but will come to everyone soon. Proactive AI, that learns from your chats, email and calendar and will show you a new “feed” of interesting things every morning based on your likes and feedback! Pulse marks OpenAI's first step toward an AI assistant that brings the right info before you ask, tuning itself with every thumbs-up, topic request, or app connection. I've tuned mine for today, we'll see what tomorrow brings! P.S - Huxe is a free app from the creators of NotebookLM (Ryza was on our podcast!) that does a similar thing, so if you don't have pro, check out Huxe, they just launched! XAI Grok 4 fast - 2M context, 40% fewer thinking tokens, shockingly cheap (X, Blog)xAI launched Grok‑4 Fast, and the name fits. Think “top-left” on the speed-to-cost chart: up to 2 million tokens of context, a reported 40% reduction in reasoning token usage, and a price tag that's roughly 1% of some frontier models on common workloads. On LiveCodeBench, Grok‑4 Fast even beat Grok‑4 itself. It's not the most capable brain on earth, but as a high-throughput assistant that can fan out web searches and stitch answers in something close to real time, it's compelling.Alibaba Qwen-Max and plans for scaling (X, Blog, API)Back in the Alibaba camp, they also released their flagship API model, Qwen 3 Max, and showed off their future roadmap. Qwen-max is over 1T parameters, MoE that gets 69.6 on Swe-bench verified and outperforms GPT-5 on LMArena! And their plan is simple: scale. They're planning to go from 1 million to 100 million token context windows and scale their models into the terabytes of parameters. It culminated in a hilarious moment on the show where we all put on sunglasses to salute a slide from their presentation that literally said, “Scaling is all you need.” AGI is coming, and it looks like Alibaba is one of the labs determined to scale their way there. Their release schedule lately (as documented by Swyx from Latent.space) is insane. This Week's Buzz: W&B Fully Connected is coming to London and Tokyo & Another hackathon in SFWeights & Biases (now part of the CoreWeave family) is bringing Fully Connected to London on Nov 4–5, with another event in Tokyo on Oct 31. If you're in Europe or Japan and want two days of dense talks and hands-on conversations with teams actually shipping agents, evals, and production ML, come hang out. Readers got a code on stream; if you need help getting a seat, ping me directly.Links: fullyconnected.comWe are also opening up registrations to our second WeaveHacks hackathon in SF, October 11-12, yours trully will be there, come hack with us on Self Improving agents! Register HEREVision & Video: Wan 2.2 Animate, Kling 2.5, and Wan 4.5 previewThis is the most exciting space in AI week-to-week for me right now. The progress is visible. Literally.Moondream-3 Preview - Interview with co-founders Via & JayWhile I've already reported on Moondream-3 in the last weeks newsletter, this week we got the pleasure of hosting Vik Korrapati and Jay Allen the co-founders of MoonDream to tell us all about it. Tune in for that conversation on the pod starting at 00:33:00Wan open sourced Wan 2.2 Animate (aka “Wan Animate”): motion transfer and lip sync Tongyi's Wan team shipped an open-source release that the community quickly dubbed “Wanimate.” It's a character-swap/motion transfer system: provide a single image for a character and a reference video (your own motion), and it maps your movement onto the character with surprisingly strong hair/cloth dynamics and lip sync. If you've used runway's Act One, you'll recognize the vibe—except this is open, and the fidelity is rising fast.The practical uses are broader than “make me a deepfake.” Think onboarding presenters with perfect backgrounds, branded avatars that reliably say what you need, or precise action blocking without guessing at how an AI will move your subject. You act it; it follows.Kling 2.5 Turbo: cinematic motion, cheaper and with audioKling quietly rolled out a 2.5 Turbo tier that's 30% cheaper and finally brings audio into the loop for more complete clips. Prompts adhere better, physics look more coherent (acrobatics stop breaking bones across frames), and the cinematic look has moved from “YouTube short” to “film-school final.” They seeded access to creators and re-shared the strongest results; the consistency is the headline. (Source X: @StevieMac03)I've chatted with my kiddos today over facetime, and they were building minecraft creepers. I took a screenshot, sent to Nano Banana to make their creepers into actual minecraft ones, and then with Kling, Animated the explosions for them. They LOVED it! Animations were clear, while VEO refused for me to even upload their images, Kling didn't care hahaWan 4.5 preview: native multimodality, 1080p 10s, and lip-synced speechWan also teased a 4.5 preview that unifies understanding and generation across text, image, video, and audio. The eye-catching bit: generate a 1080p, 10-second clip with synced speech from just a script. Or supply your own audio and have it lip-sync the shot. I ran my usual “interview a polar bear dressed like me” test and got one of the better results I've seen from any model. We're not at “dialogue scene” quality, but “talking character shot” is getting… good. The generation of audio (not only text + lipsync) is one of the best ones besides VEO, it's really great to see how strongly this improves, sad that this wasn't open sourced! And apparently it supports “draw text to animate” (Source: X) Voice & AudioSuno V5: we've entered the “I can't tell anymore” eraSuno calls V5 a redefinition of audio quality. I'll be honest, I'm at the edge of my subjective hearing on this. I've caught myself listening to Suno streams instead of Spotify and forgetting anything is synthetic. The vocals feel more human, the mixes cleaner, and the remastering path (including upgrading V4 tracks) is useful. The last 10% to “you fooled a producer” is going to be long, but the distance between V4 and V5 already makes me feel like I should re-cut our ThursdAI opener.MiMI Audio: a small omni-chat demo that hints at the floorWe tried a MiMI Audio demo live—a 7B-ish model with speech in/out. It was responsive but stumbled on singing and natural prosody. I'm leaving it in here because it's a good reminder that the open floor for “real-time voice” is rising quickly even for small models. And the moment you pipe a stronger text brain behind a capable, native speech front-end, the UX leap is immediate.Ok, another DENSE week that finishes up Shiptember, tons of open source, Qwen (Tongyi) shines, and video is getting so so good. This is all converging folks, and honestly, I'm just happy to be along for the ride! This week was also Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish new year, and I've shared on the pod that I've found my X post from 3 years ago, using the state of the art AI models of the time. WHAT A DIFFERENCE 3 years make, just take a look, I had to scale down the 4K one from this year just to fit into the pic! Shana Tova to everyone who's reading this, and we'll see you next week

5 - Kasza Tibit összekeverték Kimi Raikkönennel Budapesten

Balázsék

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2025 30:27

5 - Kasza Tibit összekeverték Kimi Raikkönennel Budapesten by Balázsék

bal kimi budapesten

Epi Baku GP Review`25

T Formula One Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2025 26:30

A remarkable dominant win from Max underlying hsi raw talent that allowed not to make any mistakes from Quali to the race, even when the best of drivers crashed out or made sever mistakes hitting the infamous Baku walls. He has now closed the gap to Oscar to just 69 pts in 2 race weekends, which is remarkable. A nightmare weekend for Mclaren, but specifically from Oscar Piastri netted him zero point leaving Baku after a crash while Norris only fared on 7th place! An excelled performance from Merc as they came in 2nd with a fantastic drive from Rusell, and an fantastic drive from Kimi who came in 4th. A brilliant day for Sainz who came in 3rd for Williams, and also Liam Lawson who came in 5th and qualified in a top 3 position the day before!

norris mclaren quali baku kimi merc sainz rusell baku gp

ROAD12 | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2025 145:05

Azerbaijan Formula 1 GP 2025

thailand daddy ferrari f1 shopify minimum alpine stefano kimi max verstappen monza f2 mug pierre gasly betmgm toto wolff omaha steaks colton herta stefano domenicali

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2025 89:03

A very entertaining and interesting weekend in Baku for the Azerbaijan GP where we have six red flags in qualifying, Sainz on top form, McLaren not so much and Max Verstappen is unstoppable. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humour (which may be unsuitable...

british race team hamilton formula racing driver ferrari bull f1 prix mclaren azerbaijan formula1 baku kimi max verstappen verstappen sainz vettel ricciardo rosberg raikkonen

Hüzün ve Sevinç-Acaba bu masal KİMİ anlatıyor?

Masaldan Erdeme

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2025 5:12

okul öncesi evlatlarımız için naif duygu dolu bir masal .Kimi anlatıyor dersiniz?

acaba kimi anlat sevin masal

‘Gloves off' in McLaren title fight? Ferrari at the front? Kimi's point to prove – 2025 Azerbaijan GP Preview

F1 Nation

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2025 53:07

Former Renault driver and F1TV commentator Jolyon Palmer joins Tom Clarkson to preview this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix. After their awkward team orders in Monza, how do Jolyon and Tom think McLaren are managing the title fight between Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris? What impact will that incident have on the rest of this championship battle? Max Verstappen was back to winning ways in Italy, so will he be fighting for victory again in Baku? Or will Charles Leclerc, who has taken pole four years in a row at this track, lead Ferrari to their first Grand Prix win of the season? Plus, the guys discuss a ‘change in tone' from Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff on Kimi Antonelli, why Carlos Sainz is struggling at Williams and how crucial the upcoming races are for Alpine's Franco Colapinto, while Jolyon remembers his nightmarish race at Baku in 2017. Listen to more official F1 podcasts In-depth interviews with F1's biggest stars on F1 Beyond The Grid Your F1 questions answered by the experts on F1 Explains It's All To Drive For in 2025. Be there! Book your seat for a Grand Prix this season at tickets.formula1.com THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY... Square: F1 Nation listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/f1nation

Conscious Kink 101: Kimi Inch on Awakening Erotic Energy & Leading with Heart

Sex, Drugs, & Soul

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2025 50:15

“Your reality is a result of your nervous system and how you see life. Let's shift that and be the doms of our lives.” - KimiThis conversation with Kimi Inch, The Creatrix of Erotic Leadership™, is one I've been dreaming about for over a year. Kimi is a renowned expert with 20+ years of experience in the realm of intimacy, conscious kink, and unlocking your body's untapped erotic energy. Featured on prestigious platforms such as The Oprah Winfrey Network, SXSW, Princeton University, and Nightline, Kimi's goal as a pro-Domme, Somatic Therapist, and Sex-Positive Edu-tainer is to provide a safe and pleasure-filled space for exploring parts of ourselves that we rarely dare to look at.It's been a heavy week, both individually and collectively, and after we wrapped, she thanked me for my vulnerability and said, “The world doesn't need more smart… the world needs more heart.” I invite you to explore, be open to what is possible, and press play to discover how conscious kink might weave more heart into your life, and thus, consequently, ripple into the lives of others.Click here to watch the full episode on YouTube. We Explore...▶Being turned on by the taboo▶Kink as a pathway to altered states of consciousness▶Why pain can be of service (and how to alchemize it)▶Ego death, surrender, & liberation in play▶Archetypes, Eros vs. ego, and erotic leadership▶Spanking, chakras, and awakening life force energy▶Dirty talk, erotic language & using your voice▶Aftercare & integration▶How to get your man into his heart during sex

This Week in F1: Max to Ferrari? Kimi to Williams? Stefano Changing Up F1?

The Red Flags F1 Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2025 84:13

Matt and Brian discuss this week's biggest motorsport headlines including Colton Herta's role at Cadillac F1 and his move to F2, Toto Wolff getting candid about Kimi Antonelli's Monza performance, Stefano Domenicali's new race weekend plans, what Max Verstappen's future in and out of F1 could look like, Pierre Gasly's new Alpine deal, and talks of a future race in Thailand. All that, plus the latest paddock chatter, in this week's roundup of everything you need to know in F1! Thank you to our sponsors BetMGM, Shopify, MUG, and Omaha Steaks for making this episode possible! Use bonus code DADDY when you sign up for BetMGM.Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://SHOPIFY.com/redflags Next time you're craving something cold, frothy, and packed with unapologetic flavor — crack open a MUG Root Beer. Find MUG Root Beer at your local store or head to https://www.mugrootbeer.com/find-mug to find out how you can get your paws on some MUG and be sure to throw them a follow online, @MUGRootBeer. Go to https://OmahaSteaks.com to get 50% off sitewide during their Red-Hot Sale Event. And use Promo Code FLAGS at checkout for an extra $35 off. Minimum purchase may apply. See site for details. A big thanks to our advertiser, Omaha Steaks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sorunlu İlişkimi Nasıl Kurtarabilirim?

Ortamlarda Satılacak Bilgi

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2025 44:54

İlişkiler bazen tıkanır, üstü tozlanır… Onarmak ise sabır ve özen ister. Bu bölümde sorunlu bir ilişkiyi nasıl toparlayabileceğimizi konuşuyoruz. Hayatın diğer alanlarında da olduğu gibi biriken yükleri temizlemek için yanımızda güçlü bir destek olduğunda her şey kolaylaşıyor. İşte Kärcher de tam bu yüzden var. 90 yıldır hayatı bizim kolaylaştıran Kärcher, güçlü çözümleriyle hem evinizi hem de zihninizi ferahlatmaya yardımcı oluyor. Detayları incelemek için tıklayın.İndirim kodu: SPKARCHER15 *Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@ortamlardasatilacakbilgi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@OrtamlardaB⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ * Reklam ve İş birlikleri için: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ortamlardasatilacakbilgi@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠*Yeni çıkan kitabım “Kendimi Nasıl İyileştiririm?”i almak için: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.eu/d/0wFlqHl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠*Bu bölüm "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Karcher" hakkında reklam içerir

bu kimi yeni hayat detaylar

Welcome back to Unlapped! Nate Saunders and Laurence Edmondson discuss the latest around the grid following Monza. Are McLaren prioritizing one of their two drivers? Has Antonelli's recent struggles taken a toll on Mercedes? Could Ollie Bearman suffer a race ban? Plus, Nate & Laz hit the driver market in "stock watch". All this and more on Unlapped! Support Roald Dahl's Marvelous Children and Nate Saunders! (Charity Link): https://www.justgiving.com/page/bennatevis?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=CL Time Codes: 0:00 Welcome to Unlapped! 1:37 Is McLaren playing favorites? 8:19 How should McLaren manage their drivers? 17:46 Did Lando change the view of the title race? 21:10 Should Mercedes be concerned about Kimi? 30:32 Would an Ollie one race ban hurt Haas? 38:10 Oracle stat of the week 38:29 Is Max back to being a victory contender? 44:23 Driver stock watch 57:04 Nate Hikes Ben Nevis + Thanks for watching!!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

driver oracle haas mclaren lando kimi monza playing favorites laz nate saunders

Camchat 0908 feat. Cameron with Peter Windsor

Short Corners

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2025 68:00

Settle back for this non-stop (and often irreverent) post-Monza chat with Cameron. All the big topics are here, including THAT first corner; Max (momentarily) ceding the lead; the happy-clappy McLaren team; and...Ferrari...and Carlos Sainz...and Kimi...and Red Bull's often-brilliant Monza car set-ups. It's double-espresso time.With thanks to Jetcraft, the world's largest buyer and seller of executive jets:https://jetcraft.comTo OEM Exclusive, the passionate suppliers of OEM upgrades for exotic and high-performance vehiclesTo TrackNinja, a lap-timer and data app designed to help users improve their on-track car and driver performance through analysis and an innovative Data Garage. A lite version is free; the loaded edition is US$9.99 pcm or $99.99 yearlyhttps://trackninja.appTo REC Watches, whose timepieces are infused with DNA and actual material from famous racing cars. Pre-order the REC Lotus 98T Ayrton Senna watch and claim your additional 10 per cent discount by adding the code PETER:https://recwatches.com/next-projectAnd to Cameron, who can be followed on: @CameronCcTV https://alpinestars.comOscar Razor: Australia's highly-rated, 5-blade razors for men and women https://oscarrazor.com.au. Follow Peter @peterdwindsorWe support the Race Against Dementia:https://raceagainstdementia.comAnd the Alora dog rescue shelter in Malaga, Spainhttps://aloradogrescue.com#standwithukraine - now, more than everAnd #Canada!Nick: you're with us alwaysSupport the show (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2301250/support)Support the showVisit: https://youtube.com/peterwindsor for F1 videos past, present and future

dna ferrari settle f1 red bull windsor mclaren kimi comand monza oem malaga carlos sainz

Italian Formula 1 GP 2025

relationships power safety revelations classes sxsw bdsm princeton university tantra eros power plays kimi nightline altered states oprah winfrey network kimi inch

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 7, 2025 52:13

Much like the race itself, this episode will be over before you know it with little drama. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humour (which may be unsuitable for adults), and the ramblings of 2 uninformed blokes who don't really have a clue what...

british race italian team hamilton formula racing driver ferrari bull f1 prix mclaren formula1 kimi verstappen vettel ricciardo rosberg raikkonen

快报｜月之暗面宣布Kimi K2模型更新;足协公开选聘国家男子足球队主教练

网事头条｜听见新鲜事

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2025 0:27

kimi

热点｜月之暗面宣布Kimi K2模型更新;足协公开选聘国家男子足球队主教练

网事头条｜听见新鲜事

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2025 0:36

kimi

月之暗面宣布Kimi K2模型更新

网事头条｜听见新鲜事

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2025 0:17

kimi

177: Altered States through BDSM + Power Play Revelations in Relationships with Kimi Inch

Eat. Play. Sex.

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2025 58:01

In this episode, I sit down with erotic leadership expert Kimi Inch to explore how conscious kink mirrors psychedelic journeys through ego death, altered states, and deep surrender. We dive into power dynamics, archetypes, and how resistance, shame, and desire can all be transformed into intimacy and healing. A playful, provocative conversation that redefines kink as a path to liberation and embodiment.In this episode, you'll hear:00:28 Intro02:44 Enter the Kink Queen07:37 First Lingerie, First Dungeon19:20 Safety in Surrender31:15 Eros vs. Ego40:11 Feeling More Than Touch52:23 The Power of Not SurrenderingTHE SKINNY ON OUR SEXY GUESTKimi Inch is an intimacy coach and conscious kink guide who helps people unlock their erotic energy and step into their most powerful selves. With over 20 years of experience in Tantra, sacred sexuality, and somatic therapy, she has worked with thousands of clients worldwide. Her work has been featured on platforms like The Oprah Winfrey Network, SXSW, Princeton University, and Nightline. As a sensual alchemist and sex-positive educator, Kimi creates safe, playful spaces for people to explore hidden parts of themselves and discover new pathways to healing and pleasure.LINKS FROM THE SHOWKimi's Instagram @kimiinch10% off Kimi's upcoming workshop in October: https://andmorepresents.com/ref/Drcat/WANT MORE?Join me for my monthly Un.done Classes:learn.sexloveyoga.com/come-undoneSensual Sundays Guide: https://learn.sexloveyoga.com/sensual-sundays

The Hills of Zandvoort are Alive (with Emotion)

Mode Push: The F1 Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2025 20:26

Oscar Piastri looked unstoppable at Zandvoort, giving off some low key WDC energy. Meanwhile, Hadjar locks in Rookie of the Year with a heartwarming podium, and Antonelli and Lawson are racking up penalties (and travel bans?) like it's a new F1 tradition. Italy won't let Kimi in for punting Leclerc? Spain / Sainz shuts the door on Lawson? The drama is continental. Also: insane returns on the business side as Middle Eastern stakes in Aston and McLaren grow — and the sport's financial engine starts to look just as turbocharged as the grid.Plus: Cadillac's lineup is giving Bridesmaids (and we love it).Next up, Monza! Predictions included for a more Ferrari friendly weekend. Aside from Charles' moody hill stint in the Netherlands, which looked like the makings of a piano sequel album. For more high-octane content, send us your race reactions or dish out some F1 tea:twitter: @modepushf1instagram: @modepushf1web: www.mode-push-f1.come-mail: modepushf1@gmail.com

italy predictions alive netherlands rookies emotion ferrari f1 hills middle eastern mclaren charles leclerc kimi bridesmaids monza aston zandvoort antonelli wdc

Reimagining Yamato

ferrari motorsports mclaren formula1 lando charles leclerc kimi mondiale monza colpo

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2025 39:10

With the end of the Jinshin War, Oama, posthumously known as Temmu Tenno, came to the throne. And though they would need a new Great Council of State, they continued to build up and bolster the Ritsuryo state. They were imagining a new Yamato based on continental models of what a state should look like, but also influenced by tradition. This episode we take a look at that reimagining in broad strokes, asking a few questions--what was Oama's relationship with his brother, and touching on the relationship of Nakatomi no Kamatari and his brother, Nakatomi no Kane. We also take a look at some of the literary propaganda that also helped to codify this new imaginary--the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki. We also touch on other sourcesof information, like the Fudoki and Man'yoshu. For more information, check out our blog: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-133 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 133: Reimagining Yamato As the bells of Houkouji tolled, Ohoama and his wife, Uno, surveyed the construction on going in the Asuka valley. Hordes of workers had been called up, and now they were working furiously towards the deadline of the new year. Where once stood the later Wokamoto palace of Takara Hime, aka Ohoama's mother, Saimei Tennou, now the land was being prepared for a palace on a much grander scale. And just as the palace was being remade, Ohoama's thoughts went beyond the valley, to the entire archipelago. His brother, Naka no Oe, had started something profound. Now here he was, helming the Ship of State, and Ohoama had plans of his own, built upon his brother's ideas. He would build a new state, ensuring that the reforms that started back in 645 would continue for generations. Greetings everyone and welcome back. As we dive back in, let's recap where we are. The year is now 673, and the fighting from the previous year—the Jinshin war—is over. Prince Ohoama and his Yoshino forces were victorious and he is now poised to ascend the throne in the recently built Palace of Kiyomihara, in Asuka. He will be known to future generations by his posthumous name: Temmu Tennou. Ohoama would go ahead and continue to centralize the government under the continental model. That said, he also would pay a not insignificant amount of attention to local tradition as well. His reign would lead to the establishment of the first permanent capital city: Fujiwara-kyo. He is also credited with initiating the projects collecting various historical records, which culminated in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, the very chronicles on which this podcast is based – and both of which seem to have been designed specifically to promote the authority of the throne, specifically Ohoama and his descendants. Those descendants—the Temmu dynasty—would rule for almost a century, including four of the eight official female sovereigns (those eight become ten if you count the unofficial Himiko and Okinaga Tarashi-hime, aka Jingu Tennou). This dynasty would reign from the end of the Asuka period up through to the Nara period, and it would see the evolution of the Yamato state into the kingdom of Nihon—which is to say the kingdom of Japan. The politics of this period were also quite something. It is during this coming period that we see the rise of the famous Fujiwara family, who would come to dominate the political landscape. We also see the continued contact with the mainland, with numerous trade goods coming over, many of which would be included in the famous Shousouin storehouse of Toudaiji temple, in Nara. Buddhism would also thrive, with Kokubunji, or provincial temples, being set up in a network around the archipelago. There was also the building of the famous Daibutsu, or Giant Buddha statue, of Toudaiji. Art would also flourish. The Man'yoshu would be published at this time—a collection of around 4,500 Japanese poems, or waka. Meanwhile, the court would also focus on continental styles as well. From this point on, not only do we have more evidence of what was happening through the written record, but the writing itself changed. Different Sinitic characters were borrowed solely for their sound to help spell out Japanese words. These would eventually be simplified, and known as “kana”. The earliest use of these characters is known as “Man'yo-gana” because so many are traced back to the Man'yoshu itself. They would eventually be standardized and simplified, becoming the hiragana and katakana we know and use today. But in 673, all of this is still on the horizon. So this is a great time to pause for a bit in our journey through the chronicles and set the stage for this next, incredibly transformative period in the archipelago by going over these larger patterns in some depth, so that, as we start to go through this period we get a better idea of just what was happening, and perhaps why. That's what we'll do this episode. To start with, let's go back to the relationship between Naka no Oe and Ohoama. As far as we can tell, these brothers were fairly close to one another. Not only was Ohoama married to one of Naka no Oe's daughters, Princess Uno, he had actually taken as consort at least four of Naka no Oe's other daughters—all of which were Ohoama's nieces. In turn, one of Ohoama's own daughters, Princess Touchi, had been married off to Ohotomo, aka the ill-fated Koubun Tennou. On top of that, Naka no Oe and Ohoama both had taken as consorts daughters of Soga no Akaye, and both Ohotomo and Ohoama had consorts from Nakatomi—or Fujiwara—no Kamatari. This demonstrates just how interrelated everyone was at court, presumably as a means of strengthening the ties between them. Of course, as we've seen time and again, those ties were more symbolic than anything else, and certainly did not prevent the occasional use of violence, nor did it protect the fathers of those women from political repercussions when they found themselves on the wrong side. On the other hand, beyond the initial mention of their births, we don't see the two brothers together until Naka no Oe came to the throne. Why? Well, to be fair, we don't see much of anyone but the sovereign in the Chronicles unless there is a specific thing they are called out for—like an embassy, presenting something to the throne, etc. Even Naka no Oe often isn't mentioned directly, even when he was the Crown Prince and supposedly helping run the government. So that could be it. There are two apparent counter arguments to the idea that Naka no Oe and his brother, Ohoama, were tight. First is a mention in the Toushi Kaden, the Family History of the Fujiwara Family, about Ohoama thrusting a spear into a board, which rattled Naka no Oe enough that he was apparently wondering if he needed to have his own brother taken out. Then there is Ohoama's resignation at the time of Naka no Oe's death, presumably because he was warned that a plot was afoot, and that if he accepted Naka no Oe's offer to take the reins of the state in his own two hands then something—we aren't told what—would unfold. I can't rule out the idea that neither of those accounts is quite accurate either, however. It is possible that the Toushi Kaden account is embellished to heighten Fujiwara no Kamatari's own role as peacemaker between the brothers. I also have to wonder if the warning to Ohoama around Naka no Oe's death wasn't so much about Naka no Oe, but about his ministers. After all, they seem to have had no problem supporting the much younger—and likely more malleable—Prince Ohotomo. So it seems to me entirely possible that there were other threats that Ohoama was concerned with. That brings me to one of those ministers: Nakatomi no Kane. We talked about him before and during the war. He first showed up participating in ritual and speaking on kami matters. He would later rise to be one of the Great Ministers of State, and was one of the six ministers who had pledged themselves to Prince Ohotomo. At the end of the Jinshin War, he was put to death and his family was banished. That said, in period leading up to all of that, we spent a good amount of time with another Nakatomi: Nakatomi no Kamatari. He was the head of the Nakatomi clan and the Naidaijin, the Interior Minister, a special position placing him on par, or even above, the Ministers of the Left and Right, but which did not have a well defined portfolio noted in the literature. Interestingly, this position also doesn't seem to have survived Kamatari, at least in the short run. From the time of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, to the time of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou, it seems that the office of Naidaijin fell out of favor, possibly due, in part, to Prince Ohotomo being raised to a different post, that of Dajou Daijin, placing him in charge of the Great Council of State. The Naidaijin role wouldn't be revived until 717 for Kamatari's grandson, Fujiwara no Fusasaki (interestingly, only three years before the completion of the Nihon Shoki). Nakatomi no Kane was, as far as we can tell, the brother to Kamatari. When Kamatari passed away, Kane seems to have taken on the role as head of the Nakatomi family and he was also made Minister of the Right. This mirrors, in its way, the relationship between Naka no Oe and Ohoama, and the common system of inheritance that would often go brother to brother. And yet, while Kamatari was a hero of the Taika era, Nakatomi no Kane was executed for his role in the Jinshin War. So in the context of the rise of the Fujiwaras to greater prominence later on in Ohoama's reign, it is significant that Kamatari's line would be set apart from the rest of the Nakatomi to the extent of giving it the new Fujiwara name. Although the Chronicles claim that the “Fujiwara” name was actually granted by Naka no Oe, there is a thought that this was granted posthumously, and may have even been retconned by later members of the family, possibly to distance themselves from Nakatomi no Kane and his role on the losing side of the Jinshin War, and tie themselves clearly to Kamatari and his founding role in Naka no Oe's and Ohoama's new vision, instead. This all brings me to my next point: the creation of the national histories. The projects that culminated in what we know today as the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki are said to have been started under Ohoama's reign, though they wouldn't be finished until much later, well into the 8th century. A lot of what went into them was work under Ohoama's wife Uno, who succeeded him as Jitou Tennou, as well as her successors. Prince Toneri, one of Ohoama's sons, is said to have overseen the Nihon Shoki's compilation. Prince Toneri was son of Ohoama and princess Niitabe, one of Naka no Oe's daughters, and while he never sat the throne, himself, one of his sons would eventually do so. As such, we can see a strong royal hand on the project, even though the actual composition was probably by several teams of Chroniclers—we touched on this briefly back in Episode 131. The Kojiki, on the other hand, is said to have been written by Oho no Yasumaro based on the oral history that had been maintained by Hieda no Are. We don't know much about Hieda no Are—there are some that believe they may have been a woman, since a passage in a later work, the Seikyuuki, suggests that they were a member of the Sarume no Kimi family, descended from Ame no Uzume no Mikoto, who is said to have danced and helped lure Amaterasu out of the rock cave. And so they were particularly known for their role as shrine maidens—a particularly female role. That said, Are received the title of “toneri”, which is often assumed to be male, and there is nothing else that explicitly says they were not. Either way, Hieda no Are is said to have been commanded by the sovereign, Ohoama, to memorize the history of the nation, presumably to then perform it as needed, for the court. Only later was Oho no Yasumaro asked to write it down in what became known as the Kojiki. Both of these chronicles were attempts to organize the history of the nation and to put together all the stories in a way that would establish a foundation for the new state that was evolving out of ancient Yamato. A large part of that effort was going to be to justify those who were in power at the time—including both the royal family and the various noble houses at the time, including the powerful Fujiwara. Now, when we talk about how these histories were created to bolster the state, I want to be careful. It may not have necessarily been the case that the chroniclers were actively and consciously promoting a fictional account. From what we can tell, the chroniclers drew from a collection of stories, some written down in diaries and court records, works like the Baekje annals and continental histories, and some that were likely just memorized tales that were part of the general culture. There were a couple of existing histories—we are told, for example, that there was a Teiki and a Kyuji floating around, both attributed to the legendary Shotoku Taishi, and both supposedly including the royal lineage at least to Toyomike-kashikiya-hime, aka Suikou Tennou. However, the copies that were being passed around were apparently suspect, and we are told that there were inconsistencies. Which probably means that the way they told the story did not conform to the way that Ohoama and the royal family wanted it told, though it could also refer to the fact that different accounts had slight variations on the stories, many of which had probably started as oral traditions that were only later written down. It is also likely that there was only so much detail in those ancient texts, but we can't know for sure. The Sendai Kuji Hongi purports to be the text of the original Kyuuji, or Kyuujiki, but that claim is dubious, at best, though it may have used an older, no longer extant history to crib its own notes from. So there were probably some writings, already, but there was also so much more. There were stories from various familial records, stories told by various shrines about their kami and their histories, and stories passed down as local history that had never been captured, previously. All of this was good material for the project of creating an official national history that aimed to tell the whole story. To get an idea of what the Chroniclers of that time might have been going through, imagine that you have some 2,000 random facts about the United States, or any country of your choice, in no particular order—stories of heroes, presidents, wars, etc. On top of that, only a few of them ever give you any kind reference dates, and when they do, those dates are only in relationship to the presidents in office – the third year of the presidency of Roosevelt, for example - or maybe they reference another event. In addition, some of the facts have been lost, or they come from history books with a slightly different format. Or they come from diaries with different perspectives and takes on the same event. And then, without the aid of the Internet or any other reference material, you are asked to put all of that together into a coherent narrative. In all likelihood you would be able to generally construct many of the broad strokes. You would leverage what you know to be true and do your best to put things in place, but there is no guarantee that everything would be in the right order. And in places where there wasn't any clear through line, you may have needed to come up with your best, most plausible explanation and write that down. Also, imagine you had, in the interests of completeness, thrown in some of the more, shall we say, apocryphal stories. George Washington cutting down a cherry tree, for instance, or the story of Johnny Appleseed, or even the more fantastical stories of Davy Crockett. Without other reference points, would you know where they went, or how true they actually were? Add to all of that the lack of a referential calendar. The sexagesimal system helps for units of 60 years, but there was nothing comparable to a western calendar in use at the time. Instead, everything was based on the number of years in a given reign. So instead of thinking about it as “did this happen in 584 or 524?” it was more like “Did this happen in the years of the sovereign reigning from X palace or Y palace?” Now that said, there do appear to have been individuals whose job was to memorize the stories and the histories and recite them. We have, for example, the Kataribe, the guild of storytellers. It may have been out of this tradition that we get the eventual commission of the previously mentioned Hieda no Are, who was to memorize all of the historical events and recite them back, which I can only imagine would have been a kind of performance for the court, helping to reinforce the narrative. But still, as Are was putting everything together, what were the assumptions and guidelines they were working under? After all, there were no doubt certain truths, whether factual or not, that were pushed by the court. Things like the idea of an unbroken line of sovereigns going all the way back to the mythical founding, just like in continental stories. Or, the idea that worship centered from the beginning around the sun goddess, Amaterasu. There is plenty of evidence that while the early Wa people practiced various forms of sun worship, with traces found in their language as well as stories, cultural traditions, etc., it was not necessarily Amaterasu who was the primary deity of worship. Back in the Age of the Gods we talked about the creator deities, Izanagi and Izanami, and about the High god of Heaven, Takami Musubi, who seems to at one point been the most prominent central deity, but who had since been eclipsed, if you will, by the likes of Amaterasu. We also see evidence that there were other sun deities. The language around Sarutahiko no Ohokami suggests that he may have once been worshipped as a sun deity as well. And there is the early primacy of Mt. Miwa as a place of worship, and the spirit of Ohomononushi. This is to say nothing of Ohokuninushi, and all of his stories, up in Izumo. Furthermore, it seems telling that Amaterasu is not even central to the rituals conducted in the palace itself, which likely went back to an even earlier period. If Amaterasu were central, and the ancestral kami of the royal family since its inception, one would expect that Amaterasu would also be central to the rites carried out by her descendants in the royal palace. And yet most of her worship appears to have continued to be set apart from the palace ritual, and conducted out of Ise shrine (albeit after a certain point ceremonially led by a designated female member of the royal line). Even Ise shrine itself isn't the primary shrine in the Ise area—the Ichi-no-miya, or most important shrine, of Ise is actually said to be Tsubaki shrine, worshipping Saruta Hiko no Ohokami and Ame no Uzume. So how did Amaterasu come to be so central in Ohoama's vision? There are stories that say that worship at Ise Shrine—and worship of Amaterasu—was specifically conducted by Ohoama's wife during the Jinshin campaign. This is to say Ohoama's wife, primary consort, eventual queen and then queen regnant, Uno, later known as Jitou Tennou. Remember, Uno had fled with Ohoama and had been on the trail with him at first, but had stayed behind in Ise. Worship towards Ise seems to have later been counted as foundational to Ohoama and Uno's victory, and many suspect that they themselves may subsequently have encouraged greater worship of Amaterasu and placed her in the central position of sacral authority amongst the various kami. If so, that could explain why their histories focus so much on Amaterasu and her Heavenly descendant, from which the royal line claimed direct lineage. It might also be around this time that the story of Iwarebiko, aka Jimmu Tennou, and the conquest of Yamato from Himuka may have been introduced: telling how Iwarebiko justifiably took away the land from the descendants of Nigi Hayahi, and then connecting Iwarebiko, in an extremely loose fashion, to Mimaki Iiribiko no Mikoto, aka Sujin Tennou. Another influence on all of this was likely the continental concept that time is a circle, and history repeats itself. Chroniclers seeking to place events in a narrative context would have likely seen reflections of more recent events and used that to help order their compilation. And of course, if there were events that seemed to run counter to the truth as known by the court, well, those could be smoothed over. In this way, co-rulers were probably serialized, inconvenient interim rulers may have been excised altogether, and different dynasties, which may have only had tenuous connections, at best, were written down as direct lineal descendants. It also seems telling that the Chroniclers may have reduced the role of what appears to be matrilineal succession to a more patriarchal and patrilineal determination of legitimacy. Similarly, connections could be made for families to ancient ancestors through whom they were able to claim a certain proximity to the royal family. Likewise, rules for legitimacy could be imposed—or perhaps just assumed—for previous reigns, doing their best to bring them into harmony with the social norms and the cultural imaginaries of the late 7th and early 8th centuries. So that's the general context the Chroniclers were working under. But at this point it's illuminating to take a look at the two histories and how they differ, to see what we can understand about where those differences came from. The work of Hieda no Are, eventually recorded and written down as the Kojiki, seems to have dealt with history that was far enough back that it was likely hard to argue with—it isn't like there was anyone alive who could counter with their own facts. And the Kojiki reads as a fairly straightforward narrative, relatively speaking. The Nihon Shoki, on the other hand, is a different beast. While the Kojiki may have captured the official narrative, the Nihon Shoki seems to have been designed to include more—including some of the competing accounts. Thus you'll get a lot of things like “another source says…” with a different take on the same event. This is much more prevalent in the Age of the Gods, but still pops up occasionally throughout the rest of the text. Nonetheless, it is still very much focused on the royal line from Amaterasu down to Naka no Oe and Ohoama. Even their posthumous names, Tenji and Temmu, specifically reference Ten, also pronounced Ama, at the start of their names, in what appears to be a bid to further connect them to the sun goddess of Heavenly Brightness--Amaterasu. Both of these works have their own character, and while the dates they were presented to the throne—713 for the Kojiki and 720 for the Nihon Shoki—suggest that they were published in succession, there are those that argue that the Kojiki is largely a reaction against the Nihon Shoki. In all likelihood the contents of the Nihon Shoki were known to many people before it was presented. There were groups of Chroniclers involved, after all -- which meant teams of scribes pouring through sources, seeking out myths and legends, and generally trying to bring everything they could to the table. And there is no indication that this was done in secret. So it is quite possible that the writers of the Kojiki had seen some of the early drafts and cribbed from those notes. Some of the ways that the the history differ are in their portrayal of certain accounts. For example, the Kojiki presents Iwarebiko and the pacification of Yamato and archipelago more generally in terms of that mythical sovereign conversing with the spirits. And so he converses with, for instance, Ohomononushi, the deity of Mt. Miwa, a spirit whose name might be translated as the Great Lord of the Spirits, or “Mono”. This idea places the sovereign as an intercessor between the mortal and the spirit world. It hearkens back to earlier systems of sacral kingship, where power and authority came, at least in part, from supposed power of one's sacred sites and protective spirits. The Kojiki is also written in a much more vernacular style, using kanji and what we know of as man'yogana, the kanji used for their sound, rather than meaning, to provide a syllabary with which to write out Japanese words. This may have been done for similar reasons to why it was also used in the Man'yoshu itself—because the Kojiki was meant to be recited aloud, not just read for meaning. The Nihon Shoki, in contrast, is clearly attempting to emulate the continental style. It relies much more heavily on not just the characters but the grammar of Chinese, though not without its own idiosyncrasies. The Nihon Shoki incorporated classical references that mirrored the references found in the histories of the Tang and earlier dynasties. I suspect, for instance, that this is one of the main reasons that Naka no Oe and Ohoama are given the posthumous names of “Tenji” and “Temmu”. Tenji means something like the Wisdom of Heaven while Temmu is more like the Martial Virtue of Heaven. This immediately brings to mind, for me, the continental concepts of Wen and Wu—Culture and Warefare, or Bunbu in Japanese. This even mirrors the founding Zhou kings, King Wen and King Wu. Later, in the Han dynasty, you have Emperor Wu of Han, the grandson of Emperor Wen of Han, and Wu was considered to be one of the greatest emperors of the Han dynasty. And so I can't help but think that there was a similar attempt at mythmaking going on here, connecting these two reigns with the reigns of famous emperors of the continent. Of course, “Wu” was a popular name amongst the imperial dynasties from that period onward, with emperors of Jin, Chen, Liang, and others all being given the same name. This all accords with the way that the sovereign in the Nihon Shoki is less of a sacral king, interceding and speaking with the kami, and more along the continental model of an absolute ruler who ruled by divine right and heavenly mandate. The lands outside of Yamato are subdued and, except for the occasional uprising, stay subdued—or at least that is what the narrative would seemingly have us believe. Now, I would argue that these distinctions are not absolute. The Kojiki contains plenty of concepts of imperial trappings, and the Nihon Shoki contains plenty of examples of the sovereign playing a more traditional role. But it is something to consider in the broad strokes of what they are saying, and I would argue that it also speaks to the duality of what was going on in this period. Clearly the Ritsuryo State was built on the continental model, with an absolute ruler who ruled through a Heavenly mandate. And yet at the same time, we see Ohoama patronizing the traditional spiritual sites and kami worship, like the emphasis on Amaterasu and Ise shrine. Besides the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, we have one more set of official records that were compiled just as the major histories were beginning to be finished. These were the Fudoki. Fudoki were texts about the various provinces, and they include information on the various places, population, soil quality, as well as various local myths and legends attached to such things. Rather than supporting the royal lineage, the Fudoki were more geared towards supporting the process begun under Karu and Naka no Oe with the Ritsuryo system whereby knowledge of the archipelago was being centralized such that the State could know about its territories. Still, there are many times that the various Fudoki refer to different sovereigns, often to help situate a given event roughly within the historical narrative. The Fudoki were commissioned in 713. At least 48 chronicles were said to have been compiled, but only a handful of them remain extant today. Most are only partial texts, though even those can still contain significant information. We also have purported text from certain fudoki that were reprinted in later histories. The Shaku Nihongi seems to have been one such work, expressly commissioned to try and compile various older records that were likely aging and in danger of being lost altogether. However, there is a concern regarding just how faithful those later transcriptions might have been, meaning that we cannot rely on them, entirely. Still, they are an invaluable addition to our study of the history of this period. I mention all of this because much of this period seems dedicated to remaking the nation of Yamato into what we know as Japan. This evolution didn't happen overnight, and it seems clear that it started gradually, but had now come to a head. There is some consideration, though, that many of the things attributed to earlier reigns—the work done by Shotoku Taishi, for example, or even that of Naka no Oe—may have been embellished in this period. After all, consider the difference between Ohoama trying to institute something entirely new versus pointing back to a previous sovereign and claiming that he wasn't innovating, he was just following tradition. But there are still unmistakable signs of innovation in the following reigns. The creation of the first permanent capital city, for one. There was also the blending of Buddhist and local kami-based traditions. While Buddhism had been ascendant for a while, now, we see Ohoama seemingly paying equal homage to Amaterasu and the local kami. Even while instituting new fangled continental ideas, he is also hearkening back to traditions that I can only imagine helped assuage some of the fears of any traditionalists who saw the rapid speed at which the archipelago was adopting at least the trappings of continental imperial culture. Speaking of culture, there was one other work that we should probably mention, and that is the famous Man'yoshu—the collection of 10,000 Leaves. I mentioned this briefly earlier in the episode, but I do want to discuss it a bit, because as much as we may glean from the official histories, as well as the various fudoki texts, the Man'yoshu provides an invaluable view into the minds of the people of the time, and contains some incredibly useful tidbits of information that, when put together, help give us a better idea of what was happening during this period. The Man'yoshu is a collection of more than 4500 poems attributed to various historical figures, from sovereigns, such as Ohoama and Naka no Oe, to common soldiers. It is remarkable in that the poems are largely in native Japanese and are not using the Sinitic poetry styles that were popular with scholars of the time. These poems are waka, Japanese verse, which typically follows a pattern of repeating verses of 5-7-5 syllables or morae, ending with two lines of 7-7. The most simple of these are tanka—one top verse of 5-7-5, and one bottom verse of 7-7. However, the poems in the collection can vary quite a bit. They are also remarkable in that they are written in what we know as Man'yogana. That is to say they use Sinitic characters—kanji—but for their sound rather than their meaning in many cases. This practice allowed for much more nuanced writing, such that the author could be more certain that the correct meaning could be taken away, since Japanese grammar differs greatly from various Chinese languages, and leverages particles and suffixes that are non-existent in Sinitic script. Often times, when reading something like the Nihon Shoki, one has to infer the Japanese word order, particles, and suffixes from the text as a whole. This is common with any kanbun—a very Japanese style of Chinese writing that often requires its own study to fully understand. Meanwhile, the Man'yogana allowed someone to more easily sound out the letters in the Man'yoshu. This must have been important when morae or syllable count was important to the art form. Furthermore, it gives us tremendous insight into how spoken Japanese may have sounded back in the 8th century. And of course it is great that we have all of these poems, but almost more important is the other information contained in the collection. Most poems not only are attributed to a particular author, but they often give a brief introduction to lay out the circumstance in which the poem was composed. These poems are, in many ways, more straightforward than many later poetic styles, which relied much more heavily on so-called “pillow words”, poetic allusions, or callbacks to previous poems—not that they were completely devoid of such references, especially to other, often continental, works. Some poems are actually paired—a type of call and response. A man would often be expected to send a poem to a lady with whom he had recently had assignations, and she would often respond. Through such correspondence, preserved in the poetic record, we can see connections that might not be as clear in the various historical texts. Now, 4500 is a lot of poems and I'll be honest, I'm probably not going to be researching all of them for historical tidbits, but it is nonetheless important to understand. One should also be careful—while the poems are often attributed to various artists and famous persons, this may sometimes be misleading. The attribution may have been garbled or forgotten, and recreated. Most of the poems in the Man'yoshu are presented with at least some amount of framing around them. They are grouped loosely by various themes. We are then told, for each poem, the composer and the occasion for which it was created. Sometimes this may be as simple as “when they were out hunting”, but that still gives us some context on which to go by as for why the author was writing the poem in the first place. The poems themselves vary in size. There are short poems, or tanka, but also longer form chōka poems, with multiple verses. Some may allude to previous poems, but many of the poems are just about the author's feelings. Unlike haiku, they were not quite so proscribed in terms of “pillow words” or requisite seasonal descriptions. And yet these poems, just as much as the histories, were important in capturing some part of the cultural zeitgeist from that time. We can see what was considered popular or important, and it was there for future generations down until today. Ultimately the Kojiki would largely be overshadowed by the more comprehensive and prestigious seeming history in the Nihon Shoki. The Nihon Shoki would become the official history, inspiring future historical records, such as the Shoku Nihongi, the continuation of the records. The Man'yoshu, likewise, would be emulated, with future compilations like the Kokinshu. These, in turn, would impact the cultural imaginary of the time. They would shape people's ideas about the past, about art, and even about the nature of the kami themselves. During this period it is hard to understate just how much they were setting in place a new system. It is even difficult to tell how much of that system had actually been instituted by previous sovereigns, even though it's hard to tell how much that actually happened as opposed to simple claims by Ohoama and, later, Uno, to justify what they were doing. Up to this point, the Ritsuryou State and the various reforms had been an experiment, but under Ohoama we truly see that the new government upgrades would be fully installed. At the same time, we also see a shake up in the court. Those who had been loyal to Ohoama during the Jinshin conflict of 672 received various rewards—increased rank and stipend, for one thing. As famous individuals passed away, they were also granted posthumous rank, which might not seem like much, but it increased the family's prestige and that of the individual's descendants without actually handing out a higher level stipend that would be a drain on the coffers. All of this also continued to build up the elites' reliance on not just the court, but on the throne itself for their status, wealth, and position. Thus they had a vested interest in seeing that the project succeeded. And that is the world that we are about to dive into. Thank you, I know we didn't get into too much of the immediate history, and some of this is spoilers—after all, this took time and in the moment it could have turned out quite differently. What if Ohoama had gotten sick and died? What if there had been a rebellion? What if Silla or Tang had attacked? While we know what happened from the safety of our vantage point, far in the future, it is important to remember that at the time the people in the court didn't know what would happen next, so please keep that in mind. Next episode, we'll start to get into the actual events of the reign, starting with Ohoama's ascension to the throne at the newly built Kiyomihara palace in Asuka. Until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

EP. 99 - COLPO MONDIALE

CASCO

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2025 69:25

RECAP GP ZANDVOORT 2025 - Fumata bianca per Lando, ma è Oscar il prescelto di questo mondiale, ora con un vantaggio difficile da recuperare...podio strepitoso di Hadjar e collisione tra Kimi e Charles! Si preannuncia una Monza caldissima!

Dutch Formula 1 GP 2025

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2025 66:40

Back from holiday and raring to go, the Formula 1 circus heads to the Dutch GP where Stroll promptly destroys his car, twice. Hadjar makes it to the podium and Lando breaks down. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humour (which may be unsuitable...

british race team hamilton dutch formula racing driver ferrari bull f1 prix mclaren formula1 lando kimi stroll verstappen vettel ricciardo dutch gp rosberg raikkonen

Remain in Me | Pastor Kimi Davis

King's Alaska Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2025

Our Sunday Night Worship Experience streamed live on August 31th, 2025. Experience life with people, power, and purpose. Connect with us! https://www.kcalaska.com/ https://www.facebook.com/kingschapel.alaska/ https://www.instagram.com/kingschapelalaska/ Give: https://www.kcalaska.com/give/

remain kimi

Alonso sincerão com Drugo, Russell ‘entrega' Kimi, Bortoleto e Max numa boa e Piastri x Norris

Motorsport.com Brasil

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2025 25:12

O programa DIRETO DO PADDOCK chega com tudo para trazer as principais declarações do Dia de Mídia da F1, antes de os carros irem para a pista de Zandvoort, palco do GP da Holanda deste ano. A apresentação é de Erick Gabriel, com participação de Isa Fernandes. A etapa do Estoril da Porsche Cup também é destaque, com o repórter Guilherme Longo.Bitcoin e criptomoedas? Invista na MYNT, a plataforma cripto do BTG Pactual - https://bit.ly/425ErVaASSISTA À NASCAR CUP, XFINITY E TRUCK SERIES AO VIVO: https://tinyurl.com/4f3hbjnm

bitcoin f1 gp norris entrega numa holanda kimi zandvoort piastri invista estoril btg pactual emax drugo sincer mynt

ROAD09 | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2025 161:33

RPG System: Electric State by Free League (freeleaguepublishing.com)A group of uneasy acquaintances embark on a road trip north from the Los Angeles Metroplex to escape the corporate overlords that are after them. Will they survive the perils of a society in decline? Will they survive countless hours trapped in a van together? ◇ Visit happyjacks.org/roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. CAST: GM: CADave (he/him) https://cadave.carrd.co/ Kimi (she/her) https://kimihughes.carrd.co/ Cassandra Nyx (she/her), The Devotee Cai (he/they/she) https://estelofimladris.carrd.co Kilo (he/they/it), The Drone Pilot Kodi (they/them) https://www.kodigonzaga.com Ronnie Rhodes (they/them), The Doctor Visit https://happyjacks.org//roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. Consider supporting the show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/happyjacksrpg ◇ Subscribe to our other podcast feeds! We have a weekly tabletop RPG talk show based on topics sent in from fans around the world, and a great collection of One-Shots if you prefer bite sized adventures. ◇ You can watch us on Youtube or Twitch! Hang out with other tabletop roleplaying fans in our Discord community! Tags: happyjacksrpg, tabletop, gaming, rpg, advice, dnd, d&d, podcast, roleplaying, happy jacks, stream, streaming, twitch, youtube, dm, gm, dming, gming, game master, dungeon master, campaign, dungeons and dragons, hjrpg, ttrpg, freeleague, electricstate

ROAD08 | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2025 178:01

RPG System: Electric State by Free League (freeleaguepublishing.com)A group of uneasy acquaintances embark on a road trip north from the Los Angeles Metroplex to escape the corporate overlords that are after them. Will they survive the perils of a society in decline? Will they survive countless hours trapped in a van together? ◇ Visit happyjacks.org/roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. CAST: GM: CADave (he/him) https://cadave.carrd.co/ Kimi (she/her) https://kimihughes.carrd.co/ Cassandra Nyx (she/her), The Devotee Cai (he/they/she) https://estelofimladris.carrd.co Kilo (he/they/it), The Drone Pilot Kodi (they/them) https://www.kodigonzaga.com Ronnie Rhodes (they/them), The Doctor Visit https://happyjacks.org//roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. Consider supporting the show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/happyjacksrpg ◇ Subscribe to our other podcast feeds! We have a weekly tabletop RPG talk show based on topics sent in from fans around the world, and a great collection of One-Shots if you prefer bite sized adventures. ◇ You can watch us on Youtube or Twitch! Hang out with other tabletop roleplaying fans in our Discord community! Tags: happyjacksrpg, tabletop, gaming, rpg, advice, dnd, d&d, podcast, roleplaying, happy jacks, stream, streaming, twitch, youtube, dm, gm, dming, gming, game master, dungeon master, campaign, dungeons and dragons, hjrpg, ttrpg, freeleague, electricstate

The Race to AI Dominance: US and Chinese Approaches Differ

China Global

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2025 28:25

The United States and China are locked in a race for dominance in artificial intelligence, including its applications and diffusion. American and Chinese AI firms like OpenAI and DeepSeek respectively have captured global attention and major companies like Google and Microsoft have been actively investing in AI development. While the US currently boasts world-leading AI models, China is ahead in some areas of AI research and application. With the release of US and Chinese AI action plans in July, we may be on the cusp of a new phase in US-China AI competition.Why is AI so important for a country's global influence? What are the strengths of China's AI strategy? And what does China's new AI action plan tell us about its AI ambitions? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Owen Daniels. Owen is the Associate Director of Analysis at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council. His recently published article in Foreign Affairs co-authored with Hanna Dohmen -- titled China's Overlooked AI Strategy -- provides insights into how Beijing is utilizing AI to gain global dominance and what the US can and should do to sustain and bolster its lead.Timestamps[00:00] Start [02:05] US Policy Risks to Chinese AI Leadership [05:28] Deepseek and Kimi's Newest Models [07:54] US vs. China's Approach to AI [10:42] Limitations to China's AI Strategy [13:08] Using AI as a Soft Power Tool [16:10] AI Action Plans [19:34] Trump's Approach to AI Competition [22:30] Can China Lead Global AI Governance? [25:10] Evolving US Policy for Open Models

The Jinshin no Ran Part IV: The Afumi Campaign

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2025 47:16

The fourth and final episode in our series on the Jinshin no Ran: we cover the campaign in Afumi (aka Ōmi - 近江). Prince Ōama and Prince Ōtomo (aka Kōbun Tennō), have drawn up their forces. Last episode we covered the fighting in the Nara Basin, around the ancient Yamato capital: Asuka. This episode focuses on the defense of the Karafu and Fuwa passes and the eventual march to the bridge at Setagawa. This is a name heavy episode, and we'll be noting some of it here: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-132 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 132: The Jinshin no Ran, Part 4: The Afumi Campaign The Afumi soldiers on the western side of the bridge looked across the open expanse of water towards their Yoshino rivals on the eastern side. If it weren't for the banners and the red tags barely visible on the sleeves of the opposing forces, it would be hard to know which side was which. Both were equipped in similar ways, and a few of the soldiers could even make out familiar faces on the other side. That is the nature of civil wars—especially in a conscript society, where the soldiers often had little choice which side they were fighting for. Not that it necessarily mattered much to them which side came out on top, whatever their commanders might have told them. The bridge across the Seta river was large and wide, and normally quite well traveled. Now, however, the central boards had been pulled up for a span of about 30 feet or so, leaving a gap spanned by only a single, narrow plank. That plank was, itself, tied to a rope, which was being held by the Afumi troops. The soldiers knew that should any of the enemy try to cross, they could pull the plank out from under them and they would fall into the river, their metal armor dragging them down into the dark depths of swirling water below. Even should they somehow make it across without being peppered by arrows, there would be no reinforcements coming: they would be slaughtered, and the trap would be reset. It seemed like the Afumi forces held all the cards in this battle, and yet they were still tense. Archers could still shoot across the distance. The front rank of troops held wooden shields as a defense, but there were still openings in the formation and the armor, and in the chaos of battle, nobody was truly safe. And so the Afumi forces waited. Confident, but wary. A commotion on the eastern side of the bridge grabbed the spotlight. The Yoshino forces had approached, and they were clearly preparing for something. The Afumi soldiers strained to see what was going on. Suddenly, the front line of the Yoshino forces parted, and a strange sight confronted the Afumi soldiers. It took them a moment to fully comprehend what was barreling towards them at full tilt: a soldier that looked almost like two soldiers put together, wearing armor placed over armor, in an attempt to protect from harm. It must have been heavy, and as he stepped on the beam, it visibly buckled under the weight. The Afumi archers let loose with their arrows and crossbow bolts, but to no avail. They simply stuck in the armor, adding to the bizarre and otherworldly appearance of their opponent. The spell was broken on the Afumi side as arrows came cascading in. The Yoshino forces weren't just sitting idly back, they were making sure they were doing everything they could to keep the Afumi forces distracted. And for a split second it worked—and a split second was all they needed. Before the soldiers could gather up their wits about them enough to pull the rope there was a terrifying sound of metal on wood. The Afumi soldiers pulled the rope, but it came all too easy—the Yoshino soldier had dashed across and cut the rope tied to the plank. Behind him, the Yoshino forces were now pouring across the bridge. Soon they would establish a foothold, and behind the front line they would be able to have other soldiers place more planks so that the number of Yoshino soldiers on the Western side of the bridge only continued to increase. Realizing that their trap had been circumvented, the Afumi forces fell back, but their strategic withdrawal soon turned into a full on retreat. While pockets of soldiers resisted, many were suddenly all too aware that perhaps it was better to live and fight another day, instead. Despite threats and even attacks from their own commanders, the Afumi forces fled the battlefield, leaving the Yoshino army victorious. With the Seta bridge now secured, there were no more major obstacles in their way: They would march to the capital at Ohotsu and finish this war. Welcome back! This is Part 4, and so if you haven't already done so, I recommend going back and starting with Part 1. That said, we'll briefly recap here. Over the past three episodes, we've talked about the causes of the war between Prince Ohotomo and Prince Ohoama as they vied for the throne. Prince Ohotomo seemingly had the stronger position, as he was actually running the Yamato state from the Afumi capital in Ohotsu. He had the various ministers and all the official organs of the state on his side. He was also 23 years old. Ohoama, on the other side, was Ohotomo's paternal uncle. His own son, Prince Takechi, was 19 years old and helping to lead the army. Upon learning that the State was gathering forces against him, Ohoama had quickly moved east, gathering forces as he went, and now he stood near Fuwa, modern day Sekigahara, prepared to begin his march on the capital. This episode we are going to cover the conclusion of the war. Warning, though, this is going to be a *lot*. A lot of place names and people names. Apologies if it is hard to follow. I'll have a rough map and info on the various players on the podcast blog, so you may want to bring that up if you are having problems following. In Part I of this series we covered the causes leading up to the conflict. In Part II we covered Ohoama's mad dash to Fuwa, at modern Sekigahara. Last episode, Part III we covered the fighting in the Nara Basin. This episode we are going to talk about the last two fronts of the war: the defense of the Iga area and Kurafu Pass, and the march from Fuwa to the Afumi capital of Ohotsu. Before we go into the details of the next battles, let's look at what each side of the conflict was doing, what they are concerned about, and where they are on the board. We'll then go into how the rest of the war played out, and its conclusion and aftermath. Ohoama's Yoshino forces had largely been drawn from the countries in the east—the very same countries that Ohoama was denying to the Afumi court. In response, the Afumi court had drawn their forces from where they could. There were those that they had already called up under the pretense of building Naka no Oe's burial mound, but they had sent others out to raise troops in Yamato and out the western side of Honshu, all the way to Tsukushi—modern Kyushu. However, not everyone in the Western region of the archipelago was friendly to the Afumi court—especially the regions of Kibi and Tsukushi. This was significant. Kibi was an ancient rival of Yamato, and likely could contribute a sizeable force. Tsukushi, on the other hand, was quite large, and besides the conscripts from among the regular inhabitants, Tsukushi also was in charge of defending the archipelago from invasion—they were the first line of defense. They had constructed numerous castles and fortifications to defend against a possible invasion, and those castles and fortifications were no doubt manned by troops that had been raised for that purpose. If they could now be turned inwards, that could be enough to really turn the tide against Ohoama and his Yoshino army. The only problem was that neither Kibi nor Tsukushi were exactly sympathetic to the Afumi court. The governor of Kibi and Prince Kurikuma, the viceroy of Tsukushi, both had ties to Ohoama, and the ministers suspected them of sympathizing with their Yoshino rivals. As such the envoys that were sent out were authorized to take whatever drastic steps they felt necessary to secure the troops. So how did that all go down? Well, last episode we talked about how Hodzumi no Momotari and his crew had been stopped from raising troops in Asuka by Ohotomo no Fukei, whose bluff of pretending to be Prince Takechi and a host of cavalry soldiers caused the conscripted troops to flee, and ended up in the death of Momotari and the capture of his compatriots. In Kibi, things took a turn in Afumi's favor. When the Afumi government's envoy arrived at the government center in Kibi, he tricked the governor into taking off his sword. Once he had done so, the envoy drew his own sword and killed the governor. Without the governor to get in his way, the envoy then went about securing the land and troops for the Afumi court. Prince Kurikuma, the viceroy in Tsukushi, at the Dazaifu, was not quite so easily fooled, however. Kurikuma knew how the court operated, and was apparently well informed of what was going on. When the Afumi court's envoy met with Kurikuma, the Prince was flanked by two of his sons, Prince Mino and Prince Takebe, each one armed. When Prince Kurikuma heard what the Afumi court wanted—for him to send the troops from Tsukushi to help quell Ohoama's rebellion—Kurikuma responded that he needed those troops to hold the border. After all, the Tang dynasty was still a potential threat, and what good would it do to send the troops from the border regions to fight an internal war, only to then have an invader come in and destroy the state entirely? No, he reasoned, he would not be sending the troops as the Afumi court requested. We are told that for a moment, the Afumi envoy thought about grabbing his sword and killing Prince Kurikuma, as the Afumi court had suggested, but with both of Kurikuma's sons armed on either side of him, he realized that he didn't have great odds, and so he eventually left, empty handed, but alive. This is significant. While we don't know exact numbers, it is likely that there were quite a few troops stationed in Kyushu and the islands, all in case of foreign invasion. By not supplying them to the Afumi court, Prince Kurikuma dealt a huge blow to the Afumi's ability to make war. Add to that the fact that Ohoama had likewise blocked the court's access to the eastern countries, and that further narrowed the troops that Afumi had access to. Nonetheless, they still had enough to be dangerous, and it is impossible to say exactly what might happen in a war. So we know where the Afumi and Yoshino forces ostensibly came from, but let's talk about the battlefield. All of the fighting that we talk about was happening in an area between Naniwa—modern Ohosaka—and Fuwa, modern Sekigahara, northwest from the modern city of Nagoya. There are three main theaters we are talking about. The first is in the Nara basin, which we talked about extensively in the last episode. The Nara basin itself was not necessarily of the most strategic importance, militarily, but it was of huge symbolic importance. After all, that was still the ancient capital, even though the governmental functions had been moved north, to Ohotsu, on the shores of Lake Biwa. The second is in the Suzuka mountains. This includes the areas of Iga and Kouka, and it is bordered by the Nara basin on the west, the Mie coastline on the east, and Afumi, the area around lake Biwa, to the north. This is the same region that Ohoama had to naviagate through on his way from Yoshino to the east, and the mountains and valleys make it so that there are only so many traversable routes through. For our narrative we are going to be primarily talking about the Kurafu Pass, between Kouka and Iga, at modern Tsuge city. This pass was an important route between Kouka, Iga, and Mie. The road followed the Soma River which eventually flowed into Lake Biwa. This made it a route out of Afumi, and if the Afumi forces could secure the Kurafu pass and the fields of Tara, just on the other side, they could split Ohoama's forces and cut off any help that he could possibly send to the Nara basin, and possibly even take Ohoama from behind. Finally, let's talk about our third theater: Afumi itself. Specifically, we are looking at the southern and eastern sides around Lake Biwa. Biwa is the largest lake in Japan, and it is almost entirely surrounded by mountains except for where the Seta river flows south, eventually winding its way to Naniwa. Today, the area of Afumi is largely co-located with modern Shiga Prefecture. Back in 668, after finding themselves on the losing side of the Baekje-Tang war, Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, had moved the capital to Ohotsu, or Big Port, in Afumi, on the shores of Lake Biwa, likely for the protection it gave. From Afumi, there were three major routes out of the basin, and a few minor ones. All of them were through defensible mountain passes, like Karafu Pass, Fuwa Pass, and Suzuka Pass. Three such passes: Fuwa, Suzuka, and Arachi would become prominent barriers, or seki, along the ancient roads, and were known as the Sangen, or Three Barriers, protecting the capital region. Suzuka no seki, at the pass of the same name, was in the south. To reach it from Afumi, one crossed the Karafu pass, and then turned east through a pass near Mt. Miyama. At the northern tip of the Suzuka mountains was Fuwa pass, future home of the Fuwa barrier. The Barrier, or “Seki” would give its name to the area in another form: Sekigahara. This was along the Tousandou, the Eastern Mountain road, and even today it is the path through which roads and even the Shinkansen traverse between eastern and western Honshu. Finally, though less important to our story, was the Arachi pass. Arachi no seki was part of the Hokurikudo, the Northern Land Route, and led to the ancient country of Kochi and the port of Tsuruga, which had a long history as an alternate port, especially for ships sailing from Goguryeo. Later, Arachi no seki would be replaced in the Sangen ranking by another pass between Afumi and modern Kyoto, which would be known as the Afusaka, or Ohosaka, Pass. This was the pass that would have been used to get to Yamashiro and, from there, to Naniwa and the Nara Basin. These three passes would come to define the island of Honshu, and became the dividing line between the Kanto region, in the east, and the Kansai region, in the west. By holding the Suzuka and Fuwa passes, Ohoama effectively denied any travel to the eastern regions. Sure, Afumi could have tried going through the Arachi pass and into Kochi, but then they would have had to traverse the Japan alps—no small feat, especially without modern conveniences like the trains and busses used today. From Fuwa Pass, where Ohoama and Prince Takechi had set up their headquarters, it was largely a straight shot to the Afumi capital of Ohotsu. Between Lake Biwa and the Suzuka mountains is a wide, flat plain, divided primarily by the rivers and streams running out from the mountains into the lake. Immediately west of Fuwa is the area of Maibara. Following the shore of the lake one traverses through modern Hikone, to Yasu. Yasu would also have been the location where the road to the Karafu pass broke off into the Suzuka mountains. Beyond that was the bridge across the Seta River. The Seta river was one of the largest obstacles that would have to be negotiated, and the Afumi forces knew this. Just as Ohoama would set up at Fuwa pass, a large number of the Afumi forces were set up on the western bank of the Seta river. If the Yoshino forces could get across, however, it would mean that they had a more or less unimpeded route to the capital at Ohotsu. So now let's talk about what was happening in each of these places. Ohoama had set up at Fuwa—Sekigahara—and had begun to call soldiers to him. Not only did did this allow him to block the rival Afumi troops from accessing the Eastern countries and possibly raising troops to use against him, but he was also able to maintain a line of communication with ancient Yamato, in the Nara Basin. In order to keep his communication lines open, and to ensure that the Afumi forces couldn't sneak up behind him, Ohoama split his forces in two. He knew that Afumi forces were trying to take his stronghold in Yamato, and if successful, from there they could move in to Uda and on to Iga. thereafter that, they could march up behind him through the Suzuka pass. Alternatively, the forces in Afumi could come up through Kouka and the Karafu pass, and then try to divide and conquer So the first group of Ohoama's army were to go south, through the Suzuka pass into their mountain namesake. Once there, Oho no Omi no Honji was to hold Tarano, the Plain of Tara, where the routes to Suzuka, Kafuka, and Iga met. Tanaka no Omi no Tarumaro went with him, with orders to guard the Kurafu pass, which is to say the road to Kouka. This first group was headed by Ki no Omi no Abemaro, and also included Miwa no Kimi no Kobito, and Okizome no Muraji no Usagi. Along with what we are told were tens of thousands of men, this first made their way south from Fuwa through Mie and Ise and over the Suzuka pass. Once there, they took up their positions at Karafu and Tarano. It was a good thing, too, because only a couple of days after they arrived, the enemy struck. Now as soon as he got there, Oho no Honji had fortified Tarano with some three thousand men, and Tanaka no Tarumaro was sent to guard the Kurafu pass. Prior to this, Tarumaro had been the official in charge of the Hot Springs in Ise, but he had joined Ohoama and the Yoshino forces when they first arrived over the Suzuka Pass. Now he was in charge of a military force, encamped along the road through the Kurafu pass, waiting for the enemy. Unbeknownst to him, a deputy commander of the Afumi forces, Tanabe no Wosumi, was approaching from Mt. Kafuka. Presumably he'd been sent out from Ohotsu and had followed the road along the Yasu and Soma rivers towards the pass. Wosumi had sizeable force with him, but he was not looking for a direct assault. Even if he would win, he would suffer casualties, especially trying to attack an entrenched enemy in a fortified position. He needed to be sneaky. He had no way of knowing that, centuries later, the lands of Iga and Kouka would be known for their sneaky warriors—their legendary ninja—but I digressed. What Wosumi did was this. First, he rolled up his banners and muffled the drums. He even had his men gag themselves—a continental custom where soldiers were given a stick to hold in their mouth, like a horse's bit, to discourage any talking amongst the ranks as they approached. Presumably, they kept them in until just before attacking, because they also devised a watchword “kane”—transcribed as metal or gold. Wosumi knew that it would be hard enough to tell who was who in the daytime—after all, it wasn't like these were regimented forces with uniforms. The soldiers were likely all wearing whatever they had available, and clothing and armor would have been similar across the two armies. At night, even some kind of mark or flag would hardly be enough to tell who was who in the dark. As lines broke and melee ensued, it would be easy to get turned around, and find yourself facing a friend. By saying the watchword you could distinguish friend from foe. Sure enough, this tactic worked. The Afumi forces broke through the Yoshino fortifications in the middle of the night and swarmed into the encampment. Men who had been asleep were waking up to chaos. Tarumaro's Yoshino soldiers were thrown into confusion. Tarumaro himself, escaped, but just barely. we are told that he noticed that the enemy kept shouting the word “kane”, and so he started doing it as well. The Afumi forces, assuming he was one of their own, left him alone. Still, he only escaped with difficulty. His escape was no doubt critical, however. He presumably would have headed to Tarano to try and warn Oho no Honji, but this may not have been possible, as we are told that on the following day, after the attack at Karafu pass, the Afumi commander Wosumi continued his advance, and came upon the Yoshino encampment at Tarano unexpectedly. Still, General Honji did not back down. With a force of hand-picked soldiers, Honji counterattacked against Wosumi and struck him. We are told that Wosumi made it out—the only one who did—but that he did not try and make another attack. The Yoshino forces would ultimately hold the pass and the critical juncture of Tarano. The Afumi forces would not get a second chance. By the way, a quick note here: I can't help but notice a bit of a trope showing up in these stories: At Narayama, General Fukei is defeated, and is the only person who makes his escape. Then Tarumaro is the only person to escape his defeat. Finally, Wosumi is the only one of his forces to leave the plain of Tara. I am more than a little incredulous that these generals are the only ones who actually survived, and that the rest of the army was slaughtered. In fact, you may recall that at the battle at Taima, General Fukei told his men not to pursue the fleeing common soldiers. As I've tried to point out, the common soldiers were not likely as invested in the cause. In fact, it is just as possible that the common soldiers may have changed sides and joined the other army if they thought it would serve them well. Or maybe they were escaping and just blending into the countryside. After all, the elites weren't really spending the time to get to know them, let along record any details about them. So I suspect that it was more about the fact that the various armies would be broken, and the soldiers flung to the four corners, rather than that they were necessarily slaughtered. After all, if you had the choice, would you have stayed there? A few days after Wosumi was defeated, the Yoshino general that Ohoama had sent to Iga along with Honji and Tarumaro, Ki no Omi no Abemaro, heard that their ally, Ohotomo no Fukei was in trouble in the Nara Basin. He'd been defeated by the Afumi general Ohono no Hatayasu at Narayama, and without reinforcements, the entire Nara Basin could fall, along with the ancient Yamato capital at Asuka. So Abemaro sent Okizome no Muraji no Usagi with more than a thousand cavalry to go assist. They met Fukei at Sumizaka, and suddenly, things were looking up in the Nara Basin. For more on how that turned out, check out last episode, where we covered the events in the Nara Basin. Once the events in the Nara Basin settled out, then both the Nara Basin and the Karafu pass would be well and truly in the hands of the Yoshino forces. But there was no way for those guarding those locations to know that the fighting was over, and they would have to hold their positions until the fighting had definitively stopped. Which brings us back to Ohoama and the Yoshino troops gathered at Fuwa, where things were about to kick off as well. The troops at Fuwa, while being led by Ohoama and his 19 year old son, Takechi, were placed under the command of Murakuni no Muraji no Woyori—who, , as things progressed, would be noted as the primary general for the campaign that would lead Yoshino troops from Fuwa, on the offensive towards Ohotsu. The only reason that they seem to have waited before going on the offensive was that every day, more troops were coming in. So even as the fighting was going on in Nara and at the Karafu pass, the Yoshino army at Fuwa gathered men and made their preparations. As they did so, the Afumi court Was going to do whatever they could to try and break them, hoping that they could stop the threat posed by Ohoama and his men before they began their march. For the Afumi forces first attempt to break the Yoshino defenses at Fuwa pass, they picked troops to try and make an incursion into the village of Tamakurabe, which appears to have been in the pass itself; it was probably modern Tama district of Sekigahara. They were repelled, however, by Izumo no Omi no Koma, who drove them off. Later, the Afumi court ordered another force of several tens of thousands of men to attack under the command of Prince Yamabe no Ou, Soga no Omi no Hatayasu, and Kose no Omi no Hito. Soga no Hatayasu and Kose no Hito were both part of the inner circle of the Afumi court, or so it would seem. When Prince Ohotomo had taken the reins of the government in a ceremony in the Western Hall of the Palace, he was attended by the ministers of the right and left, as well as Soga no Hatayasu, Kose no Hito, and Ki no Ushi. They were at the very heart of this whole matter. Prince Yamabe is a little bit more of a mystery. We know he was someone of note, and when Prince Ohotsu was brought to his parents, they were apparently traveling under the guise of Prince Yamabe and another prince, Prince Ishikawa. But we know little else. The three men and their Afumi troops headed out and camped on the bank of the Inukami river, near modern Hikone. There, however, trouble broke out. The Nihon Shoki does not record exactly what it was, but there must have been some kind of falling out. Prince Yamabe no Ou was killed by Soga no Hatayasu and Kose no Hito. We don't know if this was due to some quarrel or what, but either way, it threw the army into a state of disarray and there was no way for them to move forward. Soga no Hatayasu appears to have taken responsibility for whatever happened, as he headed back from Inukami, presumably back to Ohotsu, where he took his own life by stabbing himself in the throat. There would be no attack on Fuwa Pass, however. Finally, the Nihon Shoki also recounts the story of another Afumi general, named Hata no Kimi no Yakuni, and his son, Ushi. Together with others, who remain unnamed, they surrendered themselves to Ohoama and the Yoshino forces, rather than fighting. It isn't clear if they were deserters, if they had been part of one of the other two attempts to take Fuwa Pass, or if there was something else going on. Either way, Ohoama was so pleased that he welcomed them in and we are told that Hata no Yakuni was “granted a battle axe and halberd” and appointed a general. This is probably stock phrasing, but it does seem he was given some measure of trust. Yakuni's men were then sent north, to Koshi. We aren't quite sure what those forces' ultimate objective was. It may have been that he was to take the northern pass and make sure that none of the Afumi troops tried to escape and head to the East along that road. Many of the accounts of this war seem to suggest that he, or at least some part of the forces, were to head north and then come around Lake Biwa the long way. This would mean that if Ohoama attacked, there would be no easy way to flee. From Ohotsu they couldn't turn north without running into more troops, and their only escape would seem to be through the Afusaka pass towards the area of modern Kyoto. And of course, whoever was victorious in the Nara Basin would then be able to control the route to the coast. It is unclear how much Ohoama could have actually known, though, about what was happening across the various distances. Messages would have meant riders on swift horses carrying them; they couldn't just text each other what was going on. And so, with one attack repelled, another aborted, and a turncoat now on their side, Ohoama's Yoshino forces were finally ready to head out on the offensive themselves. According to the Nihon Shoki this was on the 7th day of the 7th month—Tanabata, today, but I doubt people were paying much mind to the Weaver and the Cowherd. Murakuni no Woyori, with the group advancing from Fuwa to Afumi, set out, and met with their first resistance at the Yokugawa river in Okinaga. As far as I can tell, this is likely the Amano River in modern Maibara, which anyone who takes the Shinkansen between Kanto and Kansai probably recognizes as one of the usual stops. Once again, we have a situation where, while they would have had banners flying, in the crush of battle it could be quite easy to mistake friend for foe, especially with large numbers of troops who were pulled from vastly different regions. You had to have some way of knowing quickly who was on your side – that's why the Afumi commander Wosumi had his troops use the password “kane”, for example. Ohoama's approach was to have his men place a red mark—possibly a ribbon or similar—on their clothing so that one could tell who, at a glance, was on their side. As a note, later samurai would sometimes attach flags to their shoulder armor, or sode, and these “sode-jirushi” would help identify you even if people didn't recognize your armor. Ohoama's troops may have used something similar. And so Woyori's Yoshino forces attacked the Afumi defenders, and the Afumi troops were clearly outmatched. Woyori's men killed the Afumi commander and defeated the opposing forces. But that was just the beginning. Afumi forces had been stationed all along the route from Fuwa to Ohotsu. Thus it was that only two days later Woyori and his men made it to Mt. Tokoyama, probably in Hikone, by the Seri river. There they met more Afumi soldiers, but once again they were triumphant and slew the opposing commander. Woyori and his men were on a roll. I would point out that these battles aren't given much detail, but we do see how it progressed. There are names of various individuals and commanders—certainly not much on the common people. From what we can tell, this was not a rush to Ohotsu, but rather a slow march, probably doing their best to fortify their positions and make sure that nobody was sneaking up on them. After each battle, it is some days before the next, probably spent spying out ahead and formulating plans. Woyori and his men next fought a battle on the banks of the Yasukawa River, presumably near modern Yasu city. Here, Aston's translation claims that he suffered a great defeat, but more likely I suspect it means to say that he inflicted a great defeat on the Afumi forces, because if he had been defeated, how would he have pressed on only a few days later. We are told that two men, presumably the Afumi commanders, were both taken prisoner. Since we don't have anything more about them in the narrative all we can really do is assume that they must have therefore been on the side of the Afumi forces. By taking Yasu, that would have likely cut off the Afumi forces from any future considerations about using the Kurafu Pass. The noose around Ohotsu was slowly tightening. Four days after that, on the 17th day of the 7th month, Woyori attacked and repulsed the Kurimoto army—presumably a force loyal to the Afumi court under a general named Kurimoto, or possibly raised from a place called Kurimoto, perhaps over on Awaji. Either way, it was another victory on Woyori's belt. From there, Woyori and his men arrived at Seta, where they would have to cross the Setagawa—the Seta River. The Seta River is a wide river, and the only one flowing out of Lake Biwa. It winds its way south and west, eventually becoming the Uji and then the Yodo rivers, which flow all the way to Naniwa—modern Ohosaka. At the Seta river, there was a major bridge, the only way across, other than to swim. Prince Ohotomo and his ministers, along with their entire army, were encamped on the west side of the bridge. Their forces were so numerous that it was said you could not see all the way to the back of them. Their banners covered the plain, and the dust of their movement caused a cloud to rise into the sky. Their drums and songs could be heard for miles around. We are told they even had crossbows, and when they were discharged the arrows fell like rain. Of course, some of this may have just been more poetic license by the authors of the Nihon Shoki, but you get the picture: There were a lot of troops on the western side of the river. The bridge itself was defended by General Chison. We know very little of this general, as he only appears in this one part of the record, but his name implies that he may have been from the continent. We aren't given a surname, and it is possible he was one of the Baekje refugees, now fighting for the Afumi court. He led an advance body of specially selected troops, and in the middle of the bridge they had removed planks for about three rods or thirty feet. Across that span was a single plank, daring anyone to try and cross it. Of course, if they did, they would be a sitting duck in front of the enemy archers, and the plank was attached by a rope so that it could always be pulled out from under them. It seemed as if it were impossible to advance. Finally, one of Woyori's soldiers, Ohokida no Kimi no Wakaomi, got up the courage to cross. We are told that he put on double armor, put down his long spear, and drew his sword. He then charged suddenly across the plank and cut the rope on the other side before the Afumi troops could pull it back. In spite of the arrows that were raining down on him, he entered the ranks of the Afumi troops, slashing with his sword as he went. The Afumi forces were thrown into confusion and some of them tried to leave, but General Chison drew his own sword and began to cut down anyone who tried to flee. Still, he was unable to check the rout. Woyori's troops secured the bridge and soon were pouring across it. They cut down General Chison and advanced into the Afumi army, who broke and ran. The Afumi sovereign, Ohotomo, aka Koubun Tennou, along with the Ministers of the Left and Right, narrowly escaped with their lives. Woyori and his troops marched to the foot of Awazu hill, and we are told that Hata no Yakuni, the Afumi commander who had earlier defected, and whose men were sent north to Koshi, set a siege to Miwo castle along with Izumo no Koma, who had defended against the attempted seizure of Tamakurabe. Presumably this is Mio, south of Ohotsu, and it was likely guarding the southern approach to the Afumi capital. The only thing here that gives me pause is that we were earlier told that Yakuni's men, after he defected, were sent to Koshi. So was Yakuni not with them? Had he returned? Or had the troops made it all the way around Lake Biwa already, taking the longer route up and around the lake? Regardless of how it happened, Yakuni and Koma were able to take Miwo castle. As a reminder, a “castle” at this time would have likely been defined more by its walls, which were probably rammed earth and wood—not the elegantly sloping stone walls and donjon base that would come to typify castles of the Warring States period. The following day, Woyori and his men continued their pursuit. At the Awazu marketplace, Woyori ran into the Afumi generals Inukahi no Muraji no Isokimi and Hasama no Atahe no Shihote. We mentioned Isokimi last episode—he was the Afumi commander attacking the Middle Road in the Nara Basin. His deputy, Kujira, had been defeated, and it seems Isokimi had retreated back to Afumi and rejoined the main force. He would not be quite so fortunate this time. Isokimi and Shihote were both slain, and Ohotomo fled once again. He didn't get very far, hiding at Yamazaki, thought to be near the site of the modern city hall, in Ohotsu. Despite his best efforts, he knew he would be discovered, and he eventually strangled himself, rather than facing the humiliation and punishment that would come with capture. With Ohotomo dead, the other ministers of the Afumi court dispersed and fled. Woyori and his men, meeting up at Sasanami, hunted down the Ministers of the Left and Right—Soga no Akaye and Nakatomi no Kane—as well as others who had fought with Ohotomo and who were considered criminals. They were all marched back to Fuwa, where, on the 25th day of the 7th month, Ohotomo's head was presented to Ohoama. The war, it seems, was over. Or at least, the fighting was over. There was still a lot to be settled. First off, it would hardly have been practical to wipe out every single person on the losing side. For one thing, that would have devastated the Court even further, likely creating a huge power vacuum. In addition, many of the supporters on both sides were not necessarily there out of purely partisan reasons. I would point out that many of the family names that we see in the record are found on both sides of the conflict. Inukahi no Isokimi may have fought for Ohotomo, but we also see an Inukahi no Ohotomo fighting on the behalf of Ohoama. Fumi no Nemaro was a major commander in Ohoama's army, while Fumi no Kusuri had been sent by the Afumi court to raise troops in the East Country. And Hasama no Shihote was killed with Isokimi at Awazu, while a Hasama no Nemaro was working under the command of General Fukei, in Nara, to guard Tatsuta. There wasn't necessarily a simple divide along family lines. It is possible that these individuals were all fairly well removed from each other, and from different parts of their respective families, or clans. They are often given different kabane, the family rank system used at this time, though I suspect that may have more to do with later changes, with those on the winning side being promoted over those who supported the Afumi court. However, it is also the case that Japan has a long history of family members supporting both sides in any major conflict. That way, no matter who wins, the family itself finds itself on the winning side. But there did have to be some accountability. This is something that one can point to time and again—if the losing side is not held accountable for their actions, then what is to prevent them from just regrouping and trying again? And yet that need for justice and punishment must be tempered with some amount of humanity. Ultimately, about one month after the end of the war, eight of the Afumi ministers were found guilty of truly heinous offences and they were condemned to suffer what the Nihon Shoki says was the “Extreme Penalty”. The Minister of the Right, Nakatomi no Kane, was executed at Tane, in Asai. Meanwhile the Minister of the Left, Soga no Akaye; along with the Dainagon, or Grand Councillor, Kose no Hito, as well as their children and grandchildren, along with the children of the late Nakatomi no Kane and Soga no Hatayasu, were all sent into banishment. All others were pardoned. And of course those who had supported Ohoama, and who had come to his aid, were given public favour and reward. In many cases this likely meant receiving high office and corresponding rank, along with increased stipend payments. There is a notable shift in the makeup of the court, going forward, and it seems clear that families would want to associate themselves with those who fought on Ohoama's side, rather than Ohotomo's, if they could help it. That was no doubt a part of works like the various diaries and house records that would have been used to compile the Nihon Shoki, recording the deeds that any house did for the throne. Along with all of the punishments and plaudits that were meted out in the 8th month of 672, there was one more event—something of an outlier. We are told that Chihisakobe no Muraji no Sabichi, the governor of the province of Wohari, went off into the mountains and committed suicide. Sabichi had originally met Ohoama at the Kuwana district house—the local government office—when he had first arrived from Yoshino. He had a large number of troops—20,000 by the Nihon Shoki's count—which helped Ohoama to ultimately defeat the Afumi court. So why he would go off into the mountains and commit suicide was anyone's guess. The Nihon Shoki suggests that it was possible that his allegiance had changed, and he may have been trying to plot against Ohoama. Perhaps he had been convinced that Afumi court was going to come out on top, and so had begun some plot. Or he just had a falling out or became disillusioned for some reason. Whatever it was, it remains a mystery, even today. With the war concluded, it was time for Ohoama to make his way from the field to the Capital so that he could transition to ruling the State properly. But Ohoama was not interested, it would seem, in setting himself up in his brother's capital. Setting up in the Ohotsu capital may have raised a few eyebrows. It had not been a completely popular move to begin with, and it was also the home of the Afumi court's legitimacy. To take up the throne there, I can only imagine that it would have further reinforced the idea that Ohoama was the usurper, taking the throne that was meant for his nephew. Instead, he made the decision to travel to the ancient capital, in Asuka, but he was not in a hurry. They headed out on the 8th day of the 9th month of 672, making it from Fuwa to Kuwana. Here he likely met up with his wife, Princess Uno, and his ten year old son, Prince Ohotsu. The following day they headed out, traveling back along the route that they had taken from Yoshino, but at a much more leisurely route. The royal carriage stayed the night in Suzuka. From there, it was another day to Abe, likely referring to modern Ahai county, in Iga, near Ueno city. They then continued on to Nabari. Finally, on the 12th day,they arrived at the Yamato capital—that is to say Asuka—and Ohoama took up residence for a time at the Shima Palace. This was only, it seems, to give people time to get the actual palace ready, because three days later, Ohoama moved into the Wokamoto Palace. And with that, Ohoama began the work of running the state—but there was still plenty to prepare. For one thing, there were foreign embassies—Kim Ap-sil and others arrived. It was still going to take a while to get the capital ready for guests, though. From what we can tell, they were probably building a grand new palace, and it would take some time for it to be prepared. So the Silla embassy was entertained in Tsukushi, where Prince Kurikuma would have been in charge of hosting them. They were likely filled on the new developments and provided a ship. Meanwhile, Ohoama made sure that all of the appropriate rewards were given out. On the 4th day of the 12th month, we are told that all those who had rendered services were given higher cap-ranks, based on what they had done. And as the year 672 closes out—and with it, the first of the two Chronicles for Ohoama, the soon-to-be elevated Temmu Tennou. But there is one final entry, marking the death of Wina no Kimi no Takami in the 12th month of the year. We know that Wina no Kimi no *Iwasuki* was working for the Afumi court, sent to rally troops in the East, but he fled when they encountered Ohoama's troops at Fuwa Pass. Takami, on the other hand, we know little about, but I suspect may have been on the side of Ohoama. It is an odd entry, and, like so many, unexplained. Perhaps it meant something to the people of the early 8th century, but if so, that meaning is likely lost to us. And so we close the book on the Jinshin no Ran—the Jinshin War, or possibly the Disturbance or even Rebellion, depending on how you feel about it. This account is one of the most detailed we have of this kind of event, and yet it does not seem that it was entirely unique. There are plenty of indications that previous sovereigns had to fight their way to the throne, or else had to repel others who would try to take it by force. This was almost a tradition among the royal house of Yamato. But now that the matter of succession was well and truly settled, it was time to get on with other things. Who knows what an Afumi court may have done and how they could have changed things. What we do know is what Ohoama—and his queen, Uno no Himemiko—did. They built upon, or in some cases possibly even fabricated, the legacy of Naka no Oe. They would set in stone many of the things that had been put in place, and at the same time make certain changes, as well. The Yamato state was getting started. And we'll start to dive into that next episode. Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

235.OpenAI重回开源：给你个残次品，求你别骂我ClosedAI

乱翻书

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2025 96:21

ai sound openai gpt kimi ai ai silence simon

Hungarian Formula 1 GP 2025

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2025 70:59

We’re ready for our summer holidays but before we can break out the bucket and spade we have the Hungarian GP to talk about. Hamilton is down in the dumps, Hajar hurt his hand on a stone, Leclerc has a rant and the McLaren pair go for the win. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast...

british race team hamilton formula racing driver ferrari bull f1 hungarian prix mclaren formula1 charles leclerc kimi verstappen vettel ricciardo hajar rosberg raikkonen

The Jinshin no Ran Part III: Fighting in the Nara Basin

Nailing The Apex with Tim Hauraney

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2025 42:49

In this third installment of our series on the Jinshin no Ran, we are covering the battles that took place in the Nara basin. Of course, while the fighting focuses on the generals, most of it was done by conscripts--farmers and other common people called up to fight. For more, check out of podcast webpage: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-131 Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 131: The Jinshin no Ran, Part 3: Fighting in the Nara Basin Maro stood under the tsuki tree and gazed at the walls of the great temple. The gates and tiled roof were truly an incredible sight. Maro's home wasn't that far away, but until he'd been called up for service to the government, he hadn't thought much beyond the valley where he and his family tilled the land. Their life had been largely spent in the village, tucked up in the valley, farming rice, hunting in the mountains, and gathering firewood. He remembered how, years ago, his brothers had been the ones to go and do their service. They had been called up to build some kind of giant fortress on the top of a mountain. The stories they brought back were incredible—it was one thing to hear tales of the outside world from merchants and itinerant priests, but it was different to hear them from someone you actually knew. Now, it was Maro's turn. But he hadn't been called up for labor—he was going to have to fight. He tried to psych himself up. Many of the men and, frankly, young boys who were there with him were in a similar boat. Some were old hands, having served multiple times. Others were new and, like Maro, there for the first time. None of them were professional soldiers, though you wouldn't know that by the way some of them swaggered through the camp. They had been called up quickly, with only a little information. Apparently Prince Ohoama, they were told, had rebelled against the government. He and his men were gathering in the east and at any moment they could attack the capital in Ohotsu, and from there they would swing down and attack the ancient capital. So here they were, several hundred conscripts, pulled from households around the ancient capital, gathered and waiting for their weapons and armor so that they could then get their marching orders—quite literally. Suddenly, Maro heard a commotion in the north. He couldn't see what was happening, but the murmurs turned to shouting. Prince Takechi, the son of the demonic rebel, Ohoama, was here, coming from the north with hundreds of expert soldiers on horseback! Panic set in, and even though a few of the officers tried to quell the disturbance, it wasn't enough. Afraid for what might come, Maro and those like him broke ranks and fled. Maro gave little thought to what might happen to his family and friends if he deserted—he was no longer thinking rationally. Along with his compatriots—his would-be brothers-in-arms if they had been given any—he hoped that he could hide, and that, if he survived, maybe, just maybe, he could somehow make it back home in one piece. Welcome back. Content warning for this episode—we are going to be talking about war, including death, fighting, and suicide. As I noted at the start, this is part three of our look at the Jinshin no Ran, the Jinshin War—sometimes translated as a “Disturbance” or a “Rebellion”. This was the war between the supporters of Prince Ohoama, also known as Temmu, and Prince Ohotomo, aka Koubun. Ohoama's side is sometimes called the Yoshino or even the Yamato court, as he had quote-unquote “retired” from the world and become a monk at a temple in Yoshino, south of Asuka, in the old area of Yamato. Meanwhile, Ohotomo's supporters were the Afumi court—including most of the ministers running the state from the capital in Ohotsu, on the shores of lake Biwa, the area known as Afumi. So let's take a look at what has happened so far, and then we can get into the events we are talking about today: a look at the soldiers who were fighting, their gear, and then some of the fighting that went on—specifically the fighting that happened in the Nara Basin. I'll do my best to organize things based on the rough timeline that they seem to have occurred. Now previously, we had covered how Ohoama, brother to Naka no Oe aka Tenchi Tennou, had given up his title as Crown Prince and retired, supposedly to prevent any concerns that he might rebel and try to take the throne, but this wasn't enough for Ohotomo and the Court, who had begun to raise forces against him. And so Ohoama and his supporters had just made a desperate dash eastwards, across the mountain roads to Ise. From there they secured the Fuwa and Suzuka passes, two of the main routes to the East Countries. Ohoama had then sent out requests for assistance to those same countries, hoping to find allies who would support him against the apparently legitimate government in Ohotsu. We are told that Ohoama was joined at this time by two of his sons: Prince Takechi and Prince Ohotsu. And here I want to pause to note something that I didn't point out last episode: These princes were not quite as old as you might think from the way they are portrayed in the Chronicle. Prince Takechi, who had been given command of the troops at Fuwa Barrier, was only 19 years old. Granted, that is only 4 years younger than their rival, Prince Ohotomo, and only a couple of years younger than the famous Minamoto Yoshitsune would be when he joined his brother in the Genpei Wars, over 500 years later. Prince Ohotsu, however, was a bit younger, as he is believed to have been about 10 years old at this time, which likely explains why he is not so prominent in the narrative. I mention this because the Nihon Shoki often omits details like age and can make it seem like these were all seasoned adult men and women, when it may have been that they were simply of high enough status to be mentioned, even though others were likely running their affairs for them. In Prince Takechi's case, while he was likely old enough to take charge of the forces at Fuwa, it is also clear that his father was nearby and overseeing things, so everything didn't rest solely on his son's shoulders. Meanwhile, the Afumi court was raising its own soldiers. While their delegation to the East was stopped at the captured Fuwa Pass, they also had sent word to the west. Kibi and Tsukushi are specifically mentioned, but we know that they were raising troops elsewhere, including in the home province regions of Yamato and Kawachi. Here it should be noted that the Nihon Shoki is pretty clearly pro-Temmu, in other words pro-Ohoama. There is some evidence from textual analysis, however, that the Temmu portions of the narrative differ from the Tenchi portions. Torquil Duthie, in his book, “Man'yōshū and the Imperial Imagination in Early Japan”, recounts how scholarship has identified at least two—possibly three—different groups of compilers who managed different reigns. The Tenchi narrative is more neutral, while the Temmu narrative provides a bit more of an accusatory tone, and both narratives provide slightly different accounts of the same events—notably the death of Naka no Oe, Prince Ohoama taking vows, and Prince Ohotomo succeeding his father. On the other side, Duthie mentions the Kaifusou, a collection of Sinitic style poetry created in 751, just 31 years after the Nihon Shoki, where in the introduction, the author seems to be much more sympathetic to Prince Ohotomo and his cause, implying that Oama was the one rising up against the legitimate government. I mention this just to help us remember that our primary source is not exactly neutral about all of this, and we should keep that in mind as we are trying to sort out what was going on. The narrative also often makes it seem as though the outcome was inevitable, but we should remember that at the time all of these events were going down, the people involved couldn't have known how they were going to turn out— in the moment, anything could have happened, especially in times of war. Speaking of which, we know that the two sides were raising troops, so let's talk about what we know about those troops and what combat may have looked like at this time. While we don't exactly have detailed accounts, there is a lot we can piece together through the archaeological record and other sources. To that end we have evidence of armor and weapons, as well as shields, and we can also look at haniwa through the 6th and even early 7th century to give us an idea of local armor styles. Let's first look back on how soldiers were conscripted. Each household seems to have been responsible for supplying a soldier, when required. They were also to supply their equipment. This included a sword, armor, bows and arrows, as well as a flag and drum. In historical parades, today, we often see row upon row of soldiers kitted out in matching clothing, appearing relatively cohesive and well-regimented. In truth it is hard to know just how similar any one group might have been. Based on later historical examples, it is safe to assume that many of the soldiers may not have had much armor, if any, and even if they did it might have been made of wood or leather, which were unlikely to survive to the modern day. Of course, I would also question just how often they were able to afford everything mentioned. And since we are told that as the government was gathering soldiers it was also opening up storehouses of weapons and armor, I suspect that indicates that not everyone had their own. And even if they did, it may have been of questionable quality. That said, if a warrior did have armor, it was likely one of two types, variations of which were both found on the continent. The first type is characterized by a solid, circular cuirass, often called a “tankou”, or short armor. These were made of strips of iron that were shaped on a wooden form and then riveted or tied together into a solid cuirass, which is why it is also called a type of “plate” armor. One side of the armor was hinged and could open so that the wearer could get in. There are some tankou with a hanging skirt of tassets that flare out as well, protecting the legs, and even examples of pieces that also go around the neck, shoulder guards, and arm guards. The tankou seems to date from at least the 3rd or 4th century, with changes in design over time, and we know that it continued through at least the 6th century. Compare this to the keikou, or hanging armor. Keikou was a kind of lamellar armor, made of individual scales, later known as “sane”. These metal scales, also known as lamellae, were held together with lacing, and made for a much more flexible, and presumably comfortable, armor. The tradeoff for this comfort was that keikou likely took a lot more labor to make, and thus were considered a more elite armor, possibly used by men on horseback or at least by those leading the troops. Looking into the future a bit, we know that in the 8th century there were “tankou” and “keikou” being donated to the Shousouin repository at Toudaiji. However, it isn't clear that “tankou” and “keikou” in the 8th century referred to exactly this kind of armor, and we may have been dealing with something else entirely, because there is a lacuna in our understanding of armor on the archipelago between the end of the Asuka period and the appearance of the more familiar yoroi in the Heian period comes about. There are conjectured transitional armors, based on continental models, which are thought to have been used. Still, at this very point in time, when Ohoama is mounting his rebellion against Ohotomo, the Keikou and Tankou are generally thought to have still been in use, and this is generally how you will see the two sides represented. As for weapons, perhaps the most common that we see is the bow and arrow. Archery is extremely practical, not only for its ability to be used from a distance, but also because in times of peace people can use the same bows to hunt, thus making hunting prowess a kind of stand-in for military prowess. The way of the bow—in fact the way of the horse and bow, or Kyuuba no Michi—would be the main pillar of martial prowess in the archipelago for centuries. The iconic sword, while important—it was, after all, one of the three sacred regalia—was more of a side-arm, deployed in close quarters combat. It was still important, as it could be easily carried with you. However, it is more likely that massed troops might have had spears and various types of polearms, providing reach. Those are harder to just casually carry around, however, especially if you are mainly using a bow. Perhaps that is part of the reason that we don't hear as much about such weapons, and most of the focus seems to be on the archers and on swords. There were also at this time shields. We know that the Hayato of southern Kyushu were particularly known for them, but there evidence that they were more widely used. After all, a shield made of wood would have made an important defense against a rain of arrows coming from the enemy. As for the horses, some of them may have even had their own barding, or armor, though I suspect, again, that was rare, and reserved for elites. All of this together gives us some idea of what it may have looked like when Ohoama and Ohotomo's forces engaged in battle, though it is still conjecture. We know that they had spears, and swords, and bows. We know that some of the first men that Prince Ohoama picked up on his journey was to conscript archers to his service, who then were pressed into taking a government post station. We also don't necessarily see a lot of individual fighting described in the records, though there are exceptions. Later on, there was a tradition of individual warriors calling out challenges in the midst of battle, that became an accepted practice in the early culture of the bushi, or samurai, but we don't see that in the Chronicles. Certainly we see moments of individual valor which are remembered, likely because of the benefits that the hero's descendants could then claim for themselves. But for the most part it seems that the people actually doing the fighting were groups of conscripted soldiers, not the hired warriors of later periods. Even among groups like the Mononobe, the Be of the Warriors, it isn't clear that they would have been the ones on the front lines—not if they could help it, anyway. Most of these were farmers and similar commoners, who were called up to fight as necessary. Some of them may have seen action over on the Korean peninsula, or even in local skirmishes. Others would have been fresh out of the fields, joining the ranks for the first time. They were not exactly volunteers, but also didn't have much of a choice. It was the draft on steroids. I also suspect that the act of conscription, where a soldier was offered up by a household, or family,, meant that desertion would mean that their family would be punished. While the elite generals providing the men were no doubt gauging how this would affect their own political and economic fortunes, I imagine that the average soldier had much less agency and could look forward to many fewer rewards. In fact, I suspect his main goal would have been one of survival. Perhaps if one fought well, they could earn something more for themselves, and perhaps there were cultural concepts of loyalty to one's local elites and leadership. And maybe there were leaders who inspired them to do great things. However, works like the Nihon Shoki were rarely concerned with the lives of the common people, except when it shined a light on the sovereigns and their court. It was much more concerned with how this affected the upper caste of society. There is also the question about just what kind of fighting this system led to. Again, these are not the bushi—a warrior class who prided themselves on their martial prowess. And neither were they standing armies. While there were likely some who regularly served and trained and found they had a skill at war, how many were simple farmers who were now holding a spear instead of a spade? These are things to keep in mind as we follow along with tales of glorious victory or ignoble defeat. So, that's a glimpse at who was actually doing the fighting. As for the timeline of the battle, let's get into it. But first, a caveat: as we should be used to by now, the exact chronology of the events listed in the Nihon Shoki is not entirely clear. The Nihon Shoki provides a narrative, but often it includes actions that took several days or even weeks on a single date where the events apparently culminated. Using cues, such as “one day later” or such things, we can piece together a narrative, but I may not have it 100% accurate. It doesn't help that the Nihon Shoki seems to focus on different campaigns separately, even though much of it was happening at the same time. That's compounded by the fact that all of this was being recorded much later, and so there is also a great possibility that even some of the seemingly clear dates were also wrong, or were adjusted to make for a better flow in the narrative. So I'm going to do my best to piece together what I roughly feel was the chronological order, but just be aware that dates may not be all that precise. In the coming conflict we see several main arenas. First, there is the area around Lake Biwa, from the Fuwa pass towards Ohotsu. This was Ohoama's main path to try and put an end to this whole affair—to make his way to Ohotsu, the capital, and cut off the head of the snake. To do that he would have to leave his defensive position and venture out around the lake, where Afumi forces no doubt lay in wait. At the same time, there was also fierce fighting in the Nara Basin, with Yoshino and Afumi forces clashing there across the plains. And we cannot forget the Kafuka, or Kouka, pass over to Suzuka. If the Afumi forces could push through to Suzuka, then they could march along the coastal plains of Mie up through Owari and come at Ohoama's forces from behind. In previous episodes we covered the leadup to this part of the conflict, and while there had been some fighting at the post stations on the road to Suzuka, as well as captured envoys at Fuwa Pass, so far we haven't seen any major fighting. If the timeline in the Nihon Shoki is to be believed, the first serious clashes seem to have occurred in the Yamato region and the Nara basin. In general, however, there seems to have been two main campaigns. There was the fighting in the Nara Basin, and then there was the fighting along the shores of Lake Biwa. Everything started off at the end of the 6th month with Ohoama's mad dash to capture the passes at Suzuka and Fuwa, where he waited while he gathered up men from the Eastern countries. While that was happening, the Afumi court was out recruiting men for their own war. This would lead to some of the earliest formal battles between the two sides taking place in the Nara Basin, originally a recruitment center, it turned into a battle zone. Yoshino aligned forces would push north, only to be blocked by armies coming down from the capital at Ohotsu, as well as forces coming through the gap between Yamato and Kawachi, where the Yamato river leaves the basin through the western mountains. The fighting happened largely over the course of a week or so. It started around the 29th day of the 6th month, and seems to have ended between the 4th or 6th day of the 7th month. So keep that in mind. As you may recall from last episode, two brothers, Ohotomo no Muraji no Makuda and Ohotomo no Muraji no Fukei, upon hearing that Ohoama was rising up, both feigned illness, using that as an excuse to leave the court at Ohotsu and return to their family compounds in the Yamato region. From there, Makuda made haste to catch up with Ohoama and his men, but his brother, Fukei, stayed behind to see what he could do in Yamato. Originally, Fukei's success was limited. He started calling various allied families together and tried to drum up support for Ohoama, but he could only gather a few tens of men. Not the hundreds, let alone thousands, that would be needed. At the same time, the Afumi court was conscripting men of the Yamato region into service. This was being organized by Hodzumi no Obito no Momotari and his younger brother, Hodzumi no Obito no Ihoye, along with Mononobe no Obito no Hiuga, who had all been sent to Yamato on the orders of the Afumi court, apparently arriving shortly after Fukei. This group set up their base of operations at the Wokamoto palace—it was, after all, the official government presence and they were the official government representatives —and they used the grounds west of Houkouji, aka Asukadera, as their assembly grounds. Ohotomo no Fukei knew that something would have to be done. If those conscripted Yamato soldiers were formed into a proper army and sent out, it could cause a lot of trouble for Ohoama and his men. And fortunately, Fukei had a man on the inside: apparent ally, Sakanouhe no Atahe no Kumage, the officer in charge of the Wokamoto Palace, working for Prince Takazaka who resided there. And so Fukei had a plan—he would impersonate the Royal Prince Takechi, son of Ohoama, and pretend to lead a force of cavalry to attack the camp at Asukadera. To strengthen the illusion, Fukei would come in from the north, which is where Prince Takechi and his men would presumably be coming from. Now remember, Fukei only had tens of people that were actually on his side at this point, and the camp was presumably much larger. If they didn't fall for his ruse, Fukei would be marching straight to his death. Fukei marshalled his troops at the house of Kudara, which is to say “Baekje”, and then left out of the south gate. He then had an accomplice, Hada no Miyatsuko no Kuma, dressed in nothing but a loincloth, mount a horse and gallop as fast as he could towards the camp. You can imagine the confusion in the camp as this wild, naked man gallops up to them in a panic and starts telling them that Prince Takechi and his men were on their way with a huge force. When the conscripted soldiers heard this, they panicked. While the men were gathered, it seems that they hadn't yet been outfitted with weapons and armor, so the entire camp broke and fled. And so Fukei was able to waltz in with his tens of men and take the camp at Asukadera, capturing Prince Takazaka and those sent from Ohotsu to levy troops. Fukei's ally, Kumage, the man on the inside, helped with this, along with the soldiers under the command of him and the Aya no Atahe. And so they were able to disperse the conscripted Yamato forces before they were even assembled. However, it turned out that someone was missing. Hodzumi no Omi no Momotari, who had been appointed leader of the operation, was not at Asukadera. It turns out that he was over at the Woharida Palace, where he was reviewing the armory, taking out the weapons and armor for the troops that he thought were still over at Asukadera. And so Fukei continued the ruse: he sent a messenger to summon Momotari, claiming to be a summons from Prince Takechi himself. Momotari, hearing this, likely knew that he had lost, but he apparently maintained his dignity. He didn't run away or rush to the camp. Instead he approached on horseback in a leisurely fashion. When he reached the encampment, now under Fukei's command, one of the soldiers shouted at Momotari to get off his horse, but Momotari, likely trying to keep what remained of his dignity, was slow in doing so. The men around him didn't care one whit for his dignity, however. They grabbed his collar and pulled him off of the horse, dragging him to the ground. He was shot with an arrow and then a man drew his sword and struck him and killed him. We aren't even told who did this deed, just how it was done. As for the others, Momonatari's brother, Hodzumi no Ihoye and Mononobe no Hiuga were bound, but eventually they were released amongst the troops, where they were no doubt watched carefully. Princes Takazaka no Ou and Wakasa no Ou, the representatives of the Afumi court in Asuka, were made to follow behind the army. With this victory under his belt, Ohotomo no Fukei sent messengers to Prince Ohoama, at the Fuwa pass, to let him know what had happened. When the messengers finally reached Ohoama we are told that he was quite pleased with the result. After all, it meant that his rearguard was that much more secure. We are told that these events took place on or about the 29th day of the 6th month, around the same time that Ohoama was overseeing the troops at Wazami, only a few days after he and the real Prince Takechi had made their way to that camp. Things were evolving quickly. Fukei's success drew others to his banner. Miwa no Kimi no Takechimaro, Kamo no Kimi no Yemishi, and othes all joined Fukei's forces, “like an echo”. With a now more sizeable force, it seems that Fukei believed he was ready to take the fight to the Afumi court. He and his advisors drew up plans for invading Afumi, selecting men to be deputy commanders and military commanders, providing a hierarchy and some organization. From there, a few days later, he began to march north from Asuka, towards Nara. Now Nara at this point was just a name for the northwest area of the basin—they probably didn't even think of it as the Nara basin back then. But it was along the road that led north, through the mountains, and from there through Yamashiro and eventually on to Afumi. As Fukei was headed north, however, he received word that there was another force coming from the Kawachi in the west. And so he split his forces. Sakamoto no Omi no Takara and others were sent with some 300 troops to take a defensive position at Tatsuta. Sami no Kimi no Sukunamaro was also sent with another several hundred men to Ohosaka… no, not that Ohosaka. Afusaka in modern Kashiba, in western Nara Basin. This area would have been a strategic defensive point for any troops taking the road from Kawachi, so if anyone got past Sakamoto no Takara, Sukunamaro and his troops would be waiting. The now General Fukei also sent Kamo no Yemishi with another several hundred men to guard the Iwate road, to defend that approach as well. Now Sakamoto no Takara, who had been sent to engage the troops coming from Kawachi, reached the area of Hiraishi when he heard that Afumi forces were occupying the nearby castle of Takayasu mountain. You may recall that Takayasu was one of the Korean style fortresses that had been built in anticipation of a possible invasion from the continent, and it had even been repaired a few times. Now it was being used not against an outside enemy, but in an internal conflict. Takara and his men marched up the mountain, intending to attack the castle, and here we should probably give a better idea of just what this castle was like. If you think of a modern Japanese castle the thing that likely stands out, no pun intended, is the Tenshukaku, or donjon; the multi-storied tower located somewhere inside the walls and moats of the castle proper. This would be an ideal location to spy over the walls and see where the enemy were, as well as an area from which one could make a last ditch stand. The castles of the Asuka period were not like this. They were built off of a continental model, and their defining feature was not the donjon—though they likely did have gate and guard towers set up so that one could see attacking forces. No, the defining feature was really the walls. Long, compacted-earth walls, possibly lined with stone, which snaked around the top of a mountain. This castle style leveraged the natural contours of existing mountain tops to provide its defense. It didn't hurt that they also provided clear views of what was happening on the plains below, and required attacking troops to march up a steep mountain climb and then attack uphill. The tradeoff was that these weren't the kind of places that people would live, when most of the infrastructure of the state was in the fertile plains and surrounding areas. So these castles had granaries to keep troops fed, and perhaps some basic buildings erected within the walls, but they were largely a practical design. You can still go see the Takayasu ruins, today, and you don't have to hike up the mountain as Takara and his men did. Instead you can take a cable car up to the top, or even a regular car on the roads that drive up to the old castle site, though how much you can see I'm not sure. There are also other castle ruins and even old kofun on the mountain, as its prominence has been recognized as important in many different centuries. There likely weren't a lot of troops manning the castle, certainly not enough that they felt they had much chance of defending it. So when Takara and his men made it up to the top, they Afumi forces burned the granaries, so as to deny him any supplies, and then took off, discretion being the better part of valor. Takara and his men spent the evening at the castle, no doubt recovering from their hike up. Remember, this wasn't just a leisurely stroll—they were no doubt fully kitted out for war. When they woke the next morning they looked out over the surrounding countryside, of which they now had fantastic views, and Takara noticed a large army coming down along the Ohotsu-Tajihi road. They carried flags, which I don't know how Takara could have seen at that point, which identified them as being the enemy - troops of the Afumi general, Iki no Fubito no Karakuni. And so Takara and his men descended from Takayasu, crossed the Ega River—now known as the Ishi river, and engaged Karakuni's army. They were only 300 men, however, and Karakuni had a much larger forcem so Takara was unable to maintain a defense. And so they made a strategic withdrawal—in other words retreated—back to Kashikosaka, apparently a part of Afusaka, where Ki no Omi no Oho'oto had been set to guard. So Ohotomo and the Afumi court finally scored a win. Besides his victory against Takara and his men, we are also told that Karakuni had come upon Kume no Omi no Shihoko, the governor of Kawachi. Shihoko had been gathering troops to go fight for Ohoama, but he was found out by Karakuni. Karakuni captured him and was going to execute him, but before he could, Shihoko took his own life, instead. As Takara was retreating and setting up a new defensive position, Fukei had his own problems to worry about. As he was camped with his troops on Mt. Narayama, one of his men, Aradawo no Atahe no Akamaro, addressed him and suggested that they should make sure to fortify Asuka, just in case. Fukei agreed, and sent Akamaro as well as Imbe no Kobito to guard the Okamoto Palace in Asuka. They also made sure to remove the planks from any bridges, using them to setup fortifications along the road. Now any army that wished to cross would either have to swim or they would need to come across the narrow beams that were all that was left of the bridges. This was not ideal at the best of times, but you can imagine doing it as troops on the other side were shooting arrows at you. And yet this has become a near classic trope in Japanese war stories and it won't be the only time it comes up in various historical contexts. It wouldn't even be the only time it shows up in this current conflict. A day later, Fukei found himself engaged with an Afumi general, Ohono no Kimi no Hatayasu, on Mt. Narayama itself. Despite Fukei having had time to set up a defensive position, the Afumi forces overwhelmed Fukei's men. They were defeated and Fukei himself barely escaped with his life. Fukei fled south with only one or two men, also on horseback, with Hatayasu hot on his heels, only stopping when they reached Hatta and the Yamato river. At that point the fortifications were in place, and Hatayasu likely knew that any trying to cross the river after Fukei would likely not go nearly as well as it did at Narayama. As for General Fukei he kept going all the way until he reached Sumizaka, which appears to be in Uda. There he fell in with Okizome no Muraji no Usagi, at the head of several tens of thousands of men. Usagi had been with Ohoama , but upon hearing of the fighting in Yamato, Ohoama had sent him and others to go back through the Suzuka pass to provide reinforcements. One can only imagine how happy Fukei was at this point to see Usagi and all of thise men. Fukei turned back around and encamped at Kanatsunawi—possibly modern Imai-cho, Kashihara city. There he was able to gather many of the dispersed troops back into a force once again. About this time, Fukei heard that the Afumi forces were also approaching along the Afusaka road. So now they were approaching from both the north and the west. They were also taking several different roads—inside the largely flat area of the Nara Basin, they likely had several choices. Takara and Oho-oto had been unable to meet the enemy and had kept retreating, likely seeking a defensible position. As they did this, Fukei came from the east with his reinforcements. He made it to where the roads branched at Tahema—modern Taima—where he fought with Iki no Karakuni nearby Ashi-kie pond, possibly somewhere near modern Chimata. During the battle, one of Fukei's men, a brave warrior known to us only as “Kume”, drew his sword and rushed straight into the midst of the enemy army. Of course one lone man wasn't likely to do much, but he inspired a cavalry charge, and men on horseback followed closely at his heels. Seeing this force bearing quickly down on them, the Afumi troops broke, and soon it was a rout. Fukei's men pursued, cutting down the Afumi soldiers as they fled, until Fukei finally reined them in. At this point, Fukei then admonished his troops that their goal was to take out the ringleaders, not to just indiscriminately murder the common people. Remember, which side of the battlefield you ended up fighting on was largely a function of who had conscripted you, and Fukei evidently knew this. As the men were still retreating, though, Fukei noticed that the Afumi general, Karakuni – one of those ringleaders - had gotten himself separated from his men. Fukei ordered Kume—presumably the same one who had charged the army in the first place—to shoot at him, but Kume's arrow missed, and Karakuni made his escape. Rather than pursuing, Fukei returned back to his headquarters. Once there, Fukei now learned that there were enemy forces approaching from the East, as well. So Fukei took the army and divided it into three, defending the Upper, Middle, and Lower roads, and he took personal charge of the forces on the middle road, likely so that he could easily keep in touch with the other forces. He was also waiting for the next challenge, and he didn't have to wait for long: the Afumi general Inukai no Muraji no Isogimi approached along the Middle Road. He halted at Muraya, but his deputy commander, Ihoriwi no Miyatsuko no Kujira, attacked Fukei's camp with 200 specially picked soldiers. Now it turns out that when they reached the camp, there were only a few people actually there at the time, including one Tokumaro, described as a slave of Ohowidera temple, and four “people following the army” – in other words, these might not have been actual soldiers. . Nevertheless, together this small group rallied, formed an advance guard and went forward, shooting arrows at Kujira's forces. Kujira, not knowing that Fukei's camp was all but empty, halted his advance. Meanwhile, over on the Upper Road, Miwa no Takechimaro and Okizome no Usagi, who had been sent by Ohoama from Fuwa, fought with the Afumi army at the Hashi Misasagi—which is assumed to be the Hashihaka kofun, and they overwhelmingly defeated the Afumi army there, such that they was able to pivot from there and swing their forces over to the Middle road. There they slammed into the flank of Kujira's army, who had stopped to trade blows with Fukei's camp. Many of the common soldiers were killed, and the general, Kujira, ran off, mounted on a white horse. Unfortunately for him, the horse took a misstep and tumbled into a muddy-rice field. Kujira was bogged down in the mud and having trouble getting out. General Fukei, seeing this, sent a brave soldier of Kahi to shoot at Kujira, but as the soldier came up to the edge of the rice paddy, Kujira whipped his horse vigorously, and got it to extricate itself and Kujira, who galloped off and escaped. Fukei, for his part, returned again to his headquarters and camped with his men there. Though they were ready for another conflict, nothing ever came. The Afumi forces had withdrawn. The battle for the Nara basin was over, and the Yoshino forces were victorious. General Fukei, however, was anything but finished. Remember, he had planned to take the fight to the Afumi court, and so, having subdued the enemy forces in Yamato—which is to say the Nara basin—Fukei marched out through Afusaka to Naniwa, and then marched on Yamazaki, where he set up camp. From there, he sent messengers to all the governors of the Western Provinces. He forced them to give up their keys, their posting-bells, and their posting tallies—basically he had them formally submit to the Yoshino faction, and thus to Ohoama. Meanwhile, Ohoama had his own campaign to conduct, and it kicked off in the middle of Fukei's defense of the Yamato Home Province. He also would engage various generals in battle, but we'll save that campaign for Part Four. But before we go I do want to point out, once again: this wasn't a simple and straightforward matter of attack and defense. Notice that generals on both sides sometimes were victorious and sometimes had to flee. You can only imagine how, after the defeat at Narayama, General Fukei must have felt that all hope was lost, only to run into a force ten thousand strong come to relive him and his paltry troops. But it could just as easily have been that he didn't make it. In fact, how many warriors died? Heroically, perhaps, but still died. And if there were no descendants to carry on their name and remember their deeds, then who knows how many people just didn't get written about at all. And then there are all of those common soldiers. Individuals without any recorded name, but who nonetheless were there and who fought. They may not have been the people that later authors cared to write about, and yet they were all someone's child, and possibly their sibling or parent. They loved and laughed, and certainly died. All to determine who would sit next upon the Yamato throne. One has to wonder if winning or losing really changed anything for them, or perhaps they won simply by surviving. And on that cheerful thought, I'll take my leave. Until next time, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com. Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Spa day for McLaren + 2025 Belgian Grand Prix recap! | July 27th, 2025

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2025 63:46

On this episode of Nailing the Apex 00:00 Max Verstappen will stay with Red Bull for 2026 06:10 How did Lando lose this race? 13:24 Ferrari's up-and-down weekend 17:30 Struggles at Mercedes - What happened to Kimi? 30:04 Taking a look at Williams 37:00 How did the rookies do? 45:26 Answering listener questions! Follow Tim Hauraney on Twitter / X: @TimHauraney Follow Adam Wylde on Twitter / X: @AdamWylde Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. Follow us on Twitter (X): @sdpnsports Follow us on Instagram: @sdpnsports For general inquiries email: info@sdpn.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

struggle answering ferrari red bull belgians mclaren lando kimi max verstappen nailing spa day belgian grand prix recap july

The Truth About China's Generative AI Revolution Nobody Talks About with Grace Shao

Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2025 53:31

"China's approach is very pragmatic. People have been saying DeepSeek did it out of necessity. There's obviously a GPU constraint and hardware constraint in China, something they're working around. In many ways, the engineering genius and engineering innovation is what set DeepSeek apart. It challenged a global narrative around needing more GPUs and more money to get better AI. It was about throwing capital at the problem. It was a different approach because the capital ecosystem in China itself is very different. People talk about proof of concept - you have to prove your concept first in China to get funding. For many startups, they weren't getting much funding before the DeepSeek moment. To your point, no one really knew it would have a strong ROI, so only the BATs that had money and understood the technology were backing it." - Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem Newsletter Fresh out of the studio, Grace Shao, founder of AI Proem Newsletter and former CNBC and CGTN journalist, joins us to explore the rise of generative AI in China and how it's reshaping the global technology narrative. She began the story of her career journey and started with the conversation reflecting on how the DeepSeek moment revitalized China's internet sector after years of regulatory challenges and geopolitical tensions. Grace unpacks the pragmatic Chinese approach to AI development, explaining how companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent are leveraging their unique ecosystems and data advantages while startups embrace open-weight models to prove innovation over imitation. She discusses why the "China versus US AI arms race" narrative misses the point, the strategic reasons behind companies relocating to avoid geopolitical sensitivities, and how distribution challenges are separating winners from losers in the consumer AI space. Addressing the broader implications, Grace explores the real opportunities in robotics, vertical AI applications, and why collaboration rather than competition should define the industry's future. Closing the conversation, she shares her vision for bridging cultural understanding between East and West and what success looks like for the next generation of AI development. Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem [01:21] Introduction: Grace Shao from AI Proem [04:29] China's tech moves incredibly fast. [08:09] China's generative AI landscape: BATs, Startups & Research Labs [09:23] Most AI startups have financial ties with Alibaba or Tencent [10:02] Chinese AI approach more pragmatic: commercialize quickly versus philosophical AGI pursuit [12:23] Alibaba's approach to LLMs with Qwen [15:00] Tencent's WeChat integration with DeepSeek vs Tencent Yuanbao [18:03] ByteDance pivots to multimodal LLM models [21:31] DeepSeek moment revitalized China's internet sector after rough 2022-2024 period [27:28] DeepSeek and Kimi embrace open-weight models for talent and adoption [29:46] Open sourcing as strategic decision for China LLMs [33:19] US capital pullout from China forced companies like Manus overseas to Singapore [37:17] Robotics in China: Unitree Robotics, UBTech and Galbot [42:05] Chinese startups focus on vertical integration rather than competing on LLMs [43:51] Healthcare and agricultural AI applications extremely advanced in China [44:13] This isn't an arms race; framing as competition misses the point [45:49] China and US should collaborate on AI safety and regulation for future generations [49:00] Closing Profile: Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem Newsletter: https://aiproem.substack.com/ Personal Site: https://www.proemcommunications.com/aboutgraceshao LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmzshao/ Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast. Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245 Analyse Asia YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia Analyse Asia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia/ Analyse Asia X (formerly known as Twitter): https://twitter.com/analyseasia Analyse Asia Threads: https://www.threads.net/@analyseasia Sign Up for Our This Week in Asia Newsletter: https://www.analyse.asia/#/portal/signup Subscribe Newsletter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288

Belgian Formula 1 GP 2025

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2025 84:53

Another Fun Sized Weekend and huge news as Christian Honer has stepped down (yeah, right) from Red Bull. Thank goodness that happened because the on track action was a bit slim but somehow we cobble an episode together. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual...

british race team hamilton formula racing driver ferrari bull f1 red bull belgians prix mclaren formula1 kimi verstappen vettel ricciardo rosberg raikkonen

Wed. 07/28 – Don't Sleep On That SharePoint Exploit

Techmeme Ride Home

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2025 17:15

Don't sleep on that SharePoint exploit from earlier this week as it seems to have led to a ton of still active breaches. Apple has a new insurance plan for you. Elon wants even more money for xAI. The Chinese are still churning ahead with their AI models. And three different stories about AI and privacy.Links:Microsoft links Sharepoint ToolShell attacks to Chinese hackers (BleepingComputer)Apple Launches $20-a-Month AppleCare One Plan Covering Up to Three Devices (Bloomberg)Musk Allies to Raise Up to $12 Billion for xAI Chips as Startup Burns Through Cash (WSJ)Qwen3-Coder: Agentic Coding in the World (Simon Willison)Alibaba's new open source Qwen3-235B-A22B-2507 beats Kimi-2 and offers low compute version (VentureBeat)Amazon buys Bee AI wearable that listens to everything you say (The Verge)Proton is launching a privacy-focused AI chatbot (The Verge)OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of an AI ‘fraud crisis' (CNN)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

ai apple chinese sleep elon musk microsoft billion exploit kimi sharepoint xai raise up

#217 - ChatGPT Agent, Kimi k2, Hiring Drama

Let's Talk AI

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2025 53:00 Transcription Available

Our 217th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news! Recorded on 07/17/2025 Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris. Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at contact@lastweekinai.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/. In this episode: **OpenAI's new ChatGPT agent**: The episode begins with a detailed discussion on OpenAI's latest ChatGPT agent, which can control entire computers and perform a wide range of tasks, showcasing powerful performance benchmarks and potential applications in business and research. **Major business moves in the AI space**: Significant shifts include Google's acquisition of Windsurf's top talent after OpenAI's deal fell through, Cognition's acquisition of Windsurf, and several notable hires by Meta from OpenAI and Apple, highlighting intense competition in the AI industry. **AI's ethical and societal impacts**: The hosts discuss serious concerns like the rise of non-consensual explicit AI-generated images, ICE's use of facial recognition for large databases, and regulations aimed at controlling AI's potential misuse. **Video game actors strike ends**: The episode concludes with news that SAG-AFTRA's year-long strike for video game voice actors has ended after reaching an agreement on AI rights and wage increases, reflecting the broader impact of AI on the job market. Timestamps + Links: (00:00:10) Intro / Banter (00:02:49) News Preview Tools & Apps (00:03:29) OpenAI's new ChatGPT Agent can control an entire computer and do tasks for you (00:07:11) Alibaba-backed Moonshot releases new Kimi AI model that beats ChatGPT, Claude in coding — and it costs less (00:09:36) Amazon targets vibe-coding chaos with new 'Kiro' AI software development tool – GeekWire (00:12:33) Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code – without telling users (00:15:51) Mistral's Le Chat chatbot gets a productivity push with new ‘deep research' mode | TechCrunch (00:17:46) I spent 24 hours flirting with Elon Musk's AI girlfriend (00:21:32) Uber is close to completing its quest to become the ultimate robotaxi app | The Verge Applications & Business (00:24:02) OpenAI's Windsurf deal is off — and Windsurf's CEO is going to Google | The Verge (00:28:09) Cognition, maker of the AI coding agent Devin, acquires Windsurf | TechCrunch (00:28:46) Anthropic hired back two of its employees — just two weeks after they left for a competitor. | The Verge (00:28:46) Another High-Profile OpenAI Researcher Departs for Meta | WIRED (00:28:46) Meta Hires Two Key Apple (AAPL) AI Experts After Poaching Their Boss - Bloomberg (00:31:31) Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab is worth $12B in seed round | TechCrunch (00:33:20) Lovable becomes a unicorn with $200M Series A just 8 months after launch | TechCrunch (00:34:55) SpaceX commits $2 billion to xAI as Musk steps up AI ambitions: Report | World News - Business Standard Research & Advancements (00:35:59) A former OpenAI engineer describes what it's really like to work there | TechCrunch (00:38:23) Reasoning or Memorization? Unreliable Results of Reinforcement Learning Due to Data Contamination Policy & Safety (00:42:14) Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI granted up to $200 million from DoD (00:43:08) California State Senator Scott Wiener Pushes Bill to Regulate AI Companies - Bloomberg (00:43:58) AI 'Nudify' Websites Are Raking in Millions of Dollars | WIRED (00:45:55) Inside ICE's Supercharged Facial Recognition App of 200 Million Images Synthetic Media & Art (00:48:47) Video game actors' strike officially ends after AI deal

ROAD07 Dark Room | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi dark room electric state road to nowhere one shots free league

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2025 159:46

RPG System: Electric State by Free League (freeleaguepublishing.com)A group of uneasy acquaintances embark on a road trip north from the Los Angeles Metroplex to escape the corporate overlords that are after them. Will they survive the perils of a society in decline? Will they survive countless hours trapped in a van together? ◇ Visit happyjacks.org/roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. CAST: GM: CADave (he/him) https://cadave.carrd.co/ Kimi (she/her) https://kimihughes.carrd.co/ Cassandra Nyx (she/her), The Devotee Cai (he/they/she) https://estelofimladris.carrd.co Kilo (he/they/it), The Drone Pilot Kodi (they/them) https://www.kodigonzaga.com Ronnie Rhodes (they/them), The Doctor Visit https://happyjacks.org//roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. Consider supporting the show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/happyjacksrpg ◇ Subscribe to our other podcast feeds! We have a weekly tabletop RPG talk show based on topics sent in from fans around the world, and a great collection of One-Shots if you prefer bite sized adventures. ◇ You can watch us on Youtube or Twitch! Hang out with other tabletop roleplaying fans in our Discord community! Tags: happyjacksrpg, tabletop, gaming, rpg, advice, dnd, d&d, podcast, roleplaying, happy jacks, stream, streaming, twitch, youtube, dm, gm, dming, gming, game master, dungeon master, campaign, dungeons and dragons, hjrpg, ttrpg, freeleague, electricstate

ROAD06 Fresh Paint | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State

twitch discord hang dungeons and dragons rpg kilo kimi electric state road to nowhere one shots free league fresh paint

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2025 184:02

RPG System: Electric State by Free League (freeleaguepublishing.com)A group of uneasy acquaintances embark on a road trip north from the Los Angeles Metroplex to escape the corporate overlords that are after them. Will they survive the perils of a society in decline? Will they survive countless hours trapped in a van together? ◇ Visit happyjacks.org/roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. CAST: GM: CADave (he/him) https://cadave.carrd.co/ Kimi (she/her) https://kimihughes.carrd.co/ Cassandra Nyx (she/her), The Devotee Cai (he/they/she) https://estelofimladris.carrd.co Kilo (he/they/it), The Drone Pilot Kodi (they/them) https://www.kodigonzaga.com Ronnie Rhodes (they/them), The Doctor Visit https://happyjacks.org//roadtonowhere for a full list of this campaign's videos and podcasts. Consider supporting the show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/happyjacksrpg ◇ Subscribe to our other podcast feeds! We have a weekly tabletop RPG talk show based on topics sent in from fans around the world, and a great collection of One-Shots if you prefer bite sized adventures. ◇ You can watch us on Youtube or Twitch! Hang out with other tabletop roleplaying fans in our Discord community! Tags: happyjacksrpg, tabletop, gaming, rpg, advice, dnd, d&d, podcast, roleplaying, happy jacks, stream, streaming, twitch, youtube, dm, gm, dming, gming, game master, dungeon master, campaign, dungeons and dragons, hjrpg, ttrpg, freeleague, electricstate

OpenAI's Agent Mode, Kimi K2, Grok 4 & AI Girlfriend Ani Joins the Show - EP99.11-K2

This Day in AI Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2025 88:42

Join Simtheory: https://simtheory.ai---CHAPTERS:00:00 - Ani Joins The Show01:10 - Grok 4 Launch & Impressions18:24 - Kimi K2 Thoughts, Impressions & MCP tool calling36:00 - OpenAI's Agent Mode Release Initial Impressions & Are MCP Agentic Models Better?1:21:10 - Everyone Acquired Windsurf1:24:48 - Final thoughtsThanks for listening and your support!

ai marketing technology chatgpt launch software agent chapters girlfriends openai impressions operator kimi grok mcp artifical intelligence o3 o1

ROAD05 Mission Impossible | Road to Nowhere | The Electric State