So I got to know that Amazon app store doesn't let you delete apps that you have published !! And now I can't even update my old web apps there !!! I have 7 apps in Amazon app store and I want to remove them because of poor developer experience of Amazon, but get this?!! They will not let you even remove apps. To get it published you have to dance to their drums!! To get it removed you have to dance to their drums!!! I HATE AMAZON !!!
14 Programming App Languages for Mobile App Development - A mobile application whether it is android or iOS, helps with the brand awareness in the market.
Duolingo is one of the best language learning apps. It provides users with modest exercises and takes a gamified approach. These exercises focus on summarizing words, sentences, and phrases from the language users are learning into their aboriginal language, & vice versa.
Do you wish to build an app like Duolingo, and do you want to hire a top mobile app development company in Los Angeles, then read our latest blog about How To Develop A Language Learning App Like Duolingo!
It can safely be said that the object has been the driving force in the programming industry for a very long time and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
YouTube will use AI to monitor your viewing habits to determine if you're under 18 and require an ID for you to view certain content, yes even if you're in the US.
Now. I have some questions. Like if I watch kids shows from the 90s is that a mark for me being over 30 because it's an old TV show? Or under 30 because it's a kid's show?
Okay question aside.
There's legitimate reasons to have "odd" viewing habits. I for one have chronic fatigue. I've fallen asleep with Youtube's autoplay on and will wake up 3 hours later with the weirdest shit playing (sometimes it's kids stuff).
I'm learning 2 languages. I will watch kids shows in those languages to help me practice and pick up the language. (Muzzy in Gondoland is SO CUTE). But it's really helpful to watch shows that are like "Red orange yellow green! One two three!" To learn the basics like your colors, numbers, days of the week.
Also. Bronies... adults like kids shows. Sometimes they got a really good message like MLP. Sometimes for Nostalgia, I mean Pokémon is still going, and I watch that for nostalgia.
"No, but AI would be smarter than that!"
Is it? Is it really? Bitch if kids want to watch YouTube, that's what YouTube Kids is for. We don't need your 1984 bullshit monitoring our fucking watching habits.
"I don't understand why you're so upset. Just give them your ID." Because I'm a developer. I watch programmers increasingly use AI to fucking program their goddamn software every fucking day. And the thing is AI is really fucking bad at it. It leads to issues like the Tea app leak.
The Tea app was an app where women warned other women in the dating scene about red flag men in the area and they could ask other women if the guy that were dating was a red flag. That app had women upload their Drivers Licenses, and they recently had a leak due to shitty security protocols caused by AI coding causing a legacy database to literally be open to the public, with so security features to keep any old random person from accessing it. All of the data in that database what just... dumped to the open internet. Location data. IDs. All of it.
So, no... I'm not gonna me uploading my ID anywhere BECAUSE I'VE SEEN HOW POORLY SOME OF YOUR ASSHOLES CODE. And by "how poorly you code" I mean you don't fucking code. You just give it to AI and the fucking dumbass system wouldn't know a security feature if it punched it in the face.
Suck my dick. You're not "keeping the kids safe" you're exposing everyone to identity threats.
Language Apps Suck, Now What?: A Guide to Actually Becoming "Fluent"
The much requested sequel to my DL post that was promised almost a year ago.
I'm going to address all of the techniques that have helped me in my language learning journeys. Since 95% of these came from the fact that in a past language learning mistake, they are titled as my mistakes (and how I would/did things differently going forward). For those that read to the bottom there is a "best universal resources" list.
Disclaimers:
"Fluency" is hard to define and everyone has their own goals. So for the purpose of this post, "fluency" will be defined as "your personal mastery target of the language".
If you just want to pick up a bit of a language to not sound like a total foreigner on vacation or just exchange a few words in a friend's native language, feel free to ignore what doesn't apply, but maybe something here could help make it a little easier.
This is based on my own personal experience and (some) research.
Mistake 1: Asymmetrical Studying
Assuming you don't just want to do a single activity in a language, or are learning a language like ASL, a language requires 4 parts to be studied: Speaking, Listening, Writing, Reading. While these have overlap, you can't learn speaking from reading, or even learn speaking from just listening. One of my first Chinese teachers told me how he would listen to the textbook dialogues while he was biking to classes and it helped him. I took this information, thought "Yeah that's an idea, but sounds boring" and now regret not taking his advice nearly every day.
I think a lot of us find methods we enjoy to study (mine was reading) and assume that if we just do that method more ™ it will eventually help us in other areas (sometimes it does, but that's only sometimes). Find a method that works for you for each area of study, even better find more than one method since we use these skills in a variety of manners! I can understand a TV program pretty well since I have a lot of context clues and body language to fill in any gaps of understanding, but taking a phone call is much harder—the audio is rougher, there's no body language to read, and since most Chinese programs have hard coded subtitles, no subtitles to fall back on either. If I were to compare the number of hours I spent reading in Chinese to (actively) training my listening? Probably a ratio of 100 to 1. When I started to learn Korean, the first thing I did was find a variety of listening resources for my level.
Fix: Find a variety of study methods that challenge all aspects of the language in different ways.
A variety of methods will help you develop a more well-rounded level of mastery, and probably help you keep from getting bored. Which is important because...
Mistake 2: Inconsistent Studying
If there is one positive to a language app, it is the pressure it puts on keeping a streak. Making studying a part of your everyday routine is the best thing you can do. I benefited a lot from taking a college language course since I had a dedicated time to study and practice Chinese 5 days out of the week (and homework usually filled the other two). Memorization is a huge part of language learning, and stopping and starting is terrible for memorization. When I was in elementary school, we had Spanish maybe a couple times a month. Looking back, it seems like it was the first class to be cut if we needed to catch up on a more important course. Needless to say, I can't even speak Spanish at an elementary level.
However, I'm sure many people reading this don't have the time to do ultra-immersion 4-hour study sessions every day either. Find what days during the week you have time to focus on learning new vocab and grammar, and use the rest of the week to review. This can be done on your commute to school/work, while you do the dishes, or as a part of your morning/evening routine. Making this as realistic as possible will help you actually succeed in making this a habit. (Check this out for how to set realistic study goals)
Fix: Study regularly (ideally daily) by setting realistic goals. Avoid "binge" studying since remembering requires consistent repetition to be most effective.
Mistake 3: Resource Choice
This is really composed of two mistakes, but I have a good example that will cover them both.
First, finding resources that are at or slightly above your level is the most important thing. Easy resources will not challenge you enough and difficult resources will overwhelm you. The ideal is n+1, with n as what you know plus 1 new thing.
Second, getting distracted by fancy, new technology. Newer isn't always better, and there are often advantages that are lost when we've made technological developments. I often found myself wanting to try out new browser extensions or organizational methods and honestly I would've benefitted from just using that time to study. (Also, you're probably reading this because of my DL post so I don't think it has to be said that AI resources suck.)
A good example of this was my time using Clozemaster. I had actually recommended it when I first started using it since I thought the foundation was really solid. However, after long term use, I found that it just wasn't a good fit. The sentences were often too simple or too long and strange for memorization at higher levels or were too difficult at lower levels. I think that taking my textbook's example sentences from dialogues into something like Anki would've been a far better use of my time (and money) as they were already designed to be at that n+1 level.
Fix: "Vet" your resources—make sure they will actually help you. If something is working for you, then keep using it! You don't always have to upgrade to the newest tool/method.
Mistake 3.5: Classrooms and Textbooks
A .5 since it's not my mistake, but an addendum of caution. I think there is a significant part of the language learning community that views textbooks and classroom learning as the worst possible resource. They are "boring", "outdated", and "ineffective" (ironically one of the most interesting modern language learning methods, ALG, is only done in a classroom setting). Classrooms and textbooks bring back memories of being surrounded by mostly uninterested classmates, minimal priority, and a focus on grades rather than personal achievement (imagine the difference between a class of middle schoolers who were forced to choose a foreign language vs. adult learners who self-selected!) People have used these exact methods, or even "cruder" methods, to successfully learn a language. It all comes down to what works best for you. I specifically recommend textbooks for learning grammar and the plentiful number of dialogues and written passages that can function great as graded readers and listening resources. (Also the distinction made between "a youtube lesson on a grammatical principle" which is totally cool, and "a passage in a grammar textbook" is more one of tone and audio/written than efficacy).
Classrooms can be really great for speaking practice since they can be a lot less intimidating speaking to someone who is also learning while receiving corrections. Speech can be awkward to train on your own (not impossible if you're good at just talking aloud to yourself!), and classrooms can work nicely for this. Homework and class schedules also have built in accountability!
Fix: Explore resources available to you and try to think holistically about your approach. CI+Traditional Methods is my go to "Learning Cocktail"
Mistake 4: Yes, Immersion, But...
I realized this relatively quickly while learning Chinese, but immersion at a level much higher than your current level will do very little for you. What is sometimes left out of those "Just watch anime to learn Japanese" discussions is that you first need to have a chance at understanding what is being said. Choosing materials that are much higher than your level will not teach you the language. It doesn't matter how many times someone at HSK 1 hears “他是甘露之惠,我并无此水可还”, they will not get very far. Actual deduction and learning comes from having enough familiar components to be able to make deductions—something different than guessing. An HSK 1 learner, never having heard the word 老虎 will be able to understand "tiger" if someone says “这是我的老虎” while standing next to a tiger. This is not to say you can never try something more difficult—things should be challenging—but if you can't make heads or tails of what's being said, then it's time to find something a bit easier. If mistake 2 is about the type of method, this is about the level. If you wouldn't give a kindergartener The Great Gatsby to learn how to read, why would you watch Full Metal Alchemist to start learning a language?
Side note: Interesting video here on the Comprehensible Input hypothesis and how it relates to neurodivergence.
Fix: Immerse yourself in appropriate content for your level. It's called comprehensible input for a reason.
Mistake 5: On Translation
I work as a translator, so do you really think I'm going to say translation is all bad? Of course not. It's a separate skill that can be added on to the basic skills, but is really only required if you are A. someone who is an intermediary between two languages (say you have to translate for a spouse or family member) or B. It is your job/hobby. In the context of sitting down and learning, it can be harmful. I think my brain often goes to translation too often because that's how I used to learn. Trying to unlearn that is difficult because, well, what do people even mean when they say "don't translate"? They mean when someone says "thank you", you should not go to your primary language and translate "you're welcome" from that. You should train yourself to go to your target language first when you hear the word for "thank you". A very literally translated "thank you" in Chinese "谢谢你" can come off as cold and sarcastic. I don't tell my friends that, I say "谢啦~". Direct translation can take away the difference in culture, grammar, and politeness in a language. If there is a reason you sound awkward while writing and speaking, it's probably because you're imposing your primary language on your target language.
Fix: Try as hard as you can to not work from your primary language into the target language, but to work from the structures, set phrases, and grammar within the target language that you know first.
Mistake 6: The Secret Language Learners Don't Want You To Know...
...is that there is no one easy method. You are not going to learn French while you sleep, or master Korean by doing this one easy trick. Learning a language requires work and dedication, the people that succeed are those that push through the boredom of repetition and failure. The "I learned X in 1 year/month/week/day!" crowd is hiding large asterisks, be it their actual level, the assistance and free time available to them, "well actually I had already studied this for 4 years", or just straight-up lying. Our own journeys in our native tongue were not easy, they required years and years of constant immersion and instruction. While we are now older and wiser people that can make quick connections, we are also burdened with things like "jobs", "house work", "school work", and the digital black hole that is "social media" that take up our time and energy. Everything above is to help make this journey a little bit easier, quicker, and painless, but it will never be magic.
I find that language learning has a lot in common with the fitness community. People will talk about the workout that changed their life and how no other one will do the same—and it really can be the truth that it changed their life and that they feel it is the ultimate way. The real workout that will change your life is the one you're most consistent with, that you enjoy the most. Language learning is just trying to find the brain exercise that you can be the most consistent with.
Fix: Save your energy looking for shortcuts, and do the work, fail, and come back for more. If someone tells you that you can become fluent in a ridiculously short amount of time, they are selling you a fantasy (and likely a product). You get out what you put in.
For those that made it to the end, here are some of my "universal resources":
Refold Method: I don't agree with their actual method 100%, but they've collected a lot of great resources for learning languages. I've found their Chinese and Korean discords to also be really helpful and provided even more resources than what's given in their starter guides.
Language Reactor: Very useful, and have recently added podcasts as a material! The free version is honestly all you need.
Anki: If I do not mention it, the people with 4+ year streaks with a 5K word deck will not let me forget it. It can be used on desktop or on your phone as an app. If you need a replacement for a language learning app, this is one of them. Justin Sung has a lot of great info on how to best utilize Anki (as does Refold). It's not my favorite, but it could be yours!
LingQ: "But I thought you said language apps are bad!" In isolation, yes. Sorry for the clickbait. This one is pretty good, and more interested in immersing you in the language than selling a subscription to allow you to freeze your streak so the number goes up.
Grammar Textbooks: For self-taught learning, these are going to be the best resource since it's focused on the hardest part of the language, and only that. If you're tired of seeing group work activities, look for a textbook that is just on grammar (Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar is my rec for Chinese, and A Guide to Japanese Grammar by Tae Kim is the most common/enthusiastic rec I've heard for Japanese).
Shadowing: Simply repeat what you hear. Matt vs Japan talks about his setup here for optimized shadowing (which you can probably build for a lot cheaper now), but it can also just be you watching a video and pausing to repeat after each sentence or near simultaneously if you're able.
Youtube: Be it "Short Story for Beginners", "How to use X", "250 Essential Phrases", or a GRWM in your target language, Youtube is the best. Sometimes you have to dig to find what works for you, but I imagine there is something for everyone at every level. (Pro tip: People upload textbook audio dialogues often, you don't even have to buy the textbook to be able to learn from it!)
A Friend: Be it a fellow learner, or someone who has already mastered the language, it is easier when you have someone, not only to speak to, but to remind you why you're doing this. I write far more in Chinese because I have friends I can text in Chinese.
Pen and Paper: Study after study, writing on paper continues to be the best method for memorization. Typing or using a pen and tablet still can't compare to traditional methods.
The Replies (Probably): Lots of people were happy to give alternatives for specific languages in the replies of my DL post. The community here is pretty active, so if this post blows up at least 20% of what the last one did, you might be able to find some great stuff in the replies and reblogs.
I'm a big fan of extensive reading apps for language learning, and even collaborated on such an app some 10 years ago. It eventually had to be shut down, sadly enough.
Right now, the biggest one in the market is the paywalled LingQ, which is pretty good, but well, requires money.
There's also the OG programs, LWT (Learning With Texts) and FLTR (Foreign Language Text Reader), which are so cumbersome to set up and use that I'm not going to bother with them.
I presently use Vocab Tracker as my daily driver, but I took a spin around GitHub to see what fresh new stuff is being developed. Here's an overview of what I found, as well as VT itself.
(There were a few more, like Aprelendo and TextLingo, which did not have end-user-friendly installations, so I'm not counting them).
Vocab Tracker
++ Available on web
++ 1-5 word-marking hotkeys and instant meanings makes using it a breeze
++ Supports websites
-- Default meaning/translation is not always reliable
-- No custom languages
-- Ugliest interface by far
-- Does not always recognise user-selected phrases
-- Virtually unusable on mobile
-- Most likely no longer maintained/developed
Lute
++ Supports virtually all languages (custom language support), including Hindi and Sanskrit
++ Per-language, customisable dictionary settings
++ Excellent, customisable hotkey support
-- No instant meaning look-up makes it cumbersome to use, as you have to load an external dictionary for each word
-- Docker installation
LinguaCafe
++ Instant meanings thanks to pre-loaded dictionaries
++ Supports ebooks, YouTube, subtitles, and websites
++ Customisable fonts
++ Best interface of the bunch
== Has 7 word learning levels, which may be too many for some
-- Hotkeys are not customisable (yet) and existing ones are a bit cumbersome (0 for known, for eg.)
-- No online dictionary look-up other than DeepL, which requires an API key (not an intuitive process)
-- No custom languages
-- Supports a maximum of 15,000 characters per "chapter", making organising longer texts cumbersome
-- Docker installation
Dzelda
++ Supports pdf and epub
++ Available on web
-- Requires confirming meaning for each word to mark that word, making it less efficient to read through
-- No custom languages, supports only some Latin-script languages
-- No user-customisable dictionaries (has a Google Form to suggest more dictionaries)
By the time you’re born, the market already talks about them in pairs.
Ryoumen and Gojo. Red and blue. Heritage and innovation.
News anchors say it with the same easy cadence they use for old rivalries. People argue about which one is “better” over dinner tables that both empires helped fill.
On paper, there are dozens of players in Japan’s Anthromeat industry.
Small regional plants.
Specialized labs.
Foreign imports.
In practice, the landscape is split between two mountains.
On one side — Ryoumen Gastronomy Group. Slaughterhouses, Prime-Line stock, fine dining.
The empire you almost died in.
On the other — Gojo Nutritional Holdings. Vertical farms, biotech patents, retail chains.
The empire that wants to feed everyone else.
They did not start out as equals.
For a long time, the Ryoumens were the standard and everyone else, including the Gojos, was noise.
The Ryoumen family history is all knives and rails and blood rebranded as progress. They took animal slaughter expertise and rolled it forward into human systems. They built plants, wrote laws, trained generations of workers. Their logo carved itself into the country’s stomach before anyone else understood what was happening.
The Gojos came in from a different angle.
They were old money of another kind — land, shrines, old Kyoto connections.
When climate collapse hit and the first Anthro trials passed legal review, younger members of the clan looked at their fading influence and decided they would rather bet on the future than guard ashes.
Where the Ryoumens bought existing plants and refit them, the Gojos built up.
Literally.
Their first real foothold in the industry wasn’t a slaughterhouse, it was a tower.
A “nutritional complex” in Shinjuku, all white glass and blue light, full of stacked vertical farms and in-house labs. Geneticists in clean coats, wellness coaches, app developers. No smell of blood in the lobby. No hooks. Their early campaigns barely mentioned meat at all.
“Limitless Nutrition,” the first slogan said. “Your body, optimized.”
They sold fortified supplements and “Anthro-derived proteins” in smoothies before they sold steaks.
They courted the health-conscious middle class who didn’t want to think about hooks and rails but also didn’t trust synthetic soy bricks.
If the Ryoumen line was “Perfection from birth to plate,” the Gojo line was “Perfection without the mess.”
They leaned hard into tech.
Personalized meal plans pushed through an app. Home delivery subscriptions. Wearable monitors that would send your nutritional data to a Gojo cloud and adjust your monthly Anthro pack accordingly.
Everything wrapped in cool blues and whites, simple fonts, smiling models.
Innovative. Tech. Modern. Clean.
They took the same legal framework the Ryoumens had pushed through and wrapped it in the language of wellness and convenience.
Where Ryoumen built slaughterhouses on the outskirts and invited select guests on curated tours, the Gojos put their facilities in city centers behind glass.
You could stand on a skywalk in their tower and watch technicians move among tanks.
You could scan a QR code and see a diagram of protein’s journey from lab to plate.
Later, when full Prime-Line programs had proven too profitable to ignore, the Gojo side adjusted.
They did not brand their stock as Prime, not at first. That word belonged to the Ryoumens.
They called their girls “Source.”
The Geto family is the bridge that made that possible.
They were rural money once — landowners and temple patrons in prefectures the city forgot until it needed water and food again. When traditional agriculture started failing, the Getos moved into controlled-environment farming. They built sealed greenhouses and vertical grow stacks long before it was fashionable.
When the Anthro laws passed, they had space, infrastructure, and a certain willingness to shift from crops and animals to something more lucrative.
They became breeders.
Quietly at first.
Their early “Source Farms” were out beyond the commuter belt, clusters of low buildings ringed by fences and watcher drones. Not as polished as Ryoumen’s Prime-Line campuses, but controlled. They took contracts from everyone — Ryoumen, Gojo, smaller groups.
Suguru Geto grew up in those in-between spaces, walking catwalks over pens that held early Lines, talking to technicians who treated girls as genetic assets and to workers who changed sheets and led group exercises.
When the Gojos decided to push hard into Anthro proper, they did not build their own farms.
They contracted the Getos.
It was a simple calculus.
The Ryoumens already had their Prime-Line pipeline.
The Gojos needed volume fast without being seen to copy outright.
The Getos offered them exclusive access to new “Source Lines” bred for rapid growth and efficient yield.
Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo met in those negotiations.
Suguru brought charts and quiet conviction. Satoru brought the name and the grin and the vision of what a partnership could look like on camera.
From that point on, their fortunes were braided.
Ryoumen kept vertical integration for their Prime — from gene to plate.
Gojo-Geto built a different model.
Geto bred and raised in controlled facilities, Gojo processed and packaged in city towers and retail plants.
To the public, it looked like a philosophical divide.
Red versus blue.
Heritage versus innovation.
Ryoumen said — We respect the Ascendants. We raise them in comfort. We process them with care. We offer the world’s elite the finest possible experience.
Gojo said — We democratize excellence. We take the same genetic breakthroughs and make them available to everyone, safely, cleanly, with data to prove it.
The rivalry grew from there.
Sukuna watches it from inside the red side.
He knows the official talking points — Gojo is careless, crass, obsessed with scale over quality. Gojo undercuts Prime value by flooding the market with “good enough” cuts dressed up as health food. Gojo is a marketing company with meat strapped to the front, not a true gastronomy group.
He also knows the parts the family doesn’t say out loud — Gojo is fast, clever, and very good at reading fear.
When abolitionist groups start gaining more traction in parliament, it’s the Gojo clan who first pivot to “voluntary Source narratives” in their ads.
Commercials showing girls smiling into the camera and saying they chose this path, that it gave their families money and purpose.
The Ryoumen response is slower, tied to the inertia of their slaughterhouses and their ties to traditional power.
In those moments, Sukuna reads briefings with Satoru’s face on them — still shots from interviews, screenshots of his social feeds — and feels the irritation of someone watching a competent rival waste their skills on what he considers shallow tricks.
Satoru’s training takes him down a different path, but it starts in the same place.
Boardrooms, tutors, etiquette lessons. Mornings in English prep schools, afternoons in biotech labs, evenings in media coaching sessions. He learns how to stand in front of a camera and make people forget there’s a hook behind him.
He grows tall and careless in the way only someone who has never been denied can.
White hair, bright eyes, smiles for every lens.
He wears the Gojo blue as naturally as Sukuna wears the Ryoumen red.
He is not stupid.
Beneath the jokes and the lazy posture is a precise mind. He sits in on meetings about vector design and gene drives. He asks hard questions about efficiency not because he cares about profits alone, but because he understands that in this industry, if you aren’t the one setting standards, someone else will do it for you.
The two heirs meet early.
Their families move in the same circles.
Charity galas, policy panels, “Future of Nutrition” summits.
At first they are just children in suits, tugged along by parents, introduced with the tight smiles adults use when they’re showing off assets.
Satoru remembers the first time he saw Sukuna because the other boy didn’t blink.
Everyone else played at politeness, looked down when adults spoke, laughed too hard at bad jokes.
Sukuna just watched.
Eyes dark and steady, taking everything in.
Even then, something coiled in him like a question.
“He watched the slides more than the people.” Suguru said. “He knew what he was looking at.”
Over the years, their paths cross on more equal terms.
A joint panel at a university, both of them seventeen, asked to talk about “ethical consumption” to a room full of students.
Satoru leans on the lectern, smiling.
“We’re doing what’s necessary,” he says. “Climate collapse, food scarcity, all of that forced us to get creative. My family believes in making those solutions accessible. That’s why we focus on transparency and choice.”
“And profit,” someone calls from the back.
“Of course,” he says easily. “If a good thing doesn’t make money, it doesn’t scale. We want it to scale.”
Sukuna’s turn.
He doesn’t smile.
“People like to talk about choice,” he says, voice calm. “What you eat. Where it comes from. They vote with their wallets. That’s fine. But the bodies in our systems are not here by accident. They’re here because the law says they can be. Because your governments approved it, your neighbors work in the plants, and you keep buying the products.”
The room shifts. Some students look uncomfortable. Some lean forward.
“What my family does,” he continues, “is ensure that if this system exists, it is at least done correctly. No corners cut. No shortcuts that degrade the product. We optimize. We don’t pretend it’s something else.”
Satoru watches him with a faint smirk.
Later, offstage, away from microphones, they stand near the same catering table, both pointedly ignoring the trays of Anthro bites.
“You really know how to work a crowd,” Satoru says. “I almost believed you’re doing this out of some sense of duty.”
Sukuna pours himself water.
“I don’t care what you believe,” he says. “You’re feeding them lies about choice.”
“I’m feeding them what they can swallow,” Satoru says. “You scare them for fun.”
“If they’re scared, they shouldn’t eat.” Sukuna says.
“Then we’d have no market,” Satoru replies. “Be realistic.”
That’s their dynamic for years. Panels, summits, chance meetings at parties. Satoru plays the charming public face, makes jokes about “blue side vs red side.”
Sukuna outstares journalists who try to bait him into soundbites, lets his chefs and PR teams polish his edges into something usable.
Behind that, the real rivalry plays out in policy and supply contracts.
When Ryoumen pushes a regulation that would favor Prime-Line heritage angles — tax breaks for “traditional stock campuses,” subsidies tied to live-raising metrics — Gojo counters with white papers from their labs arguing that controlled-environment Source Farms and vertical breeding stacks are more efficient, more humane, more sustainable.
Suguru’s name appears on those papers alongside Satoru’s.
Ryoumen lawyers pull apart the math, offer their own data, remind lawmakers that rural jobs depend on Prime-Line campuses. Gojo lobbyists host wellness conferences with panels on “Anthromeat and Mental Health.”
Activist groups learn quickly that if they want to hurt the industry, they need to take shots at both.
They call out Ryoumen for cruelty.
They call out Gojo for glossing-over.
Sometimes, protests focus on one brand.
A march outside a Ryoumen plant, banners about Prime girls.
A sit-in at a Gojo tower, signs about biotech overreach.
Most people still eat.
The average citizen doesn’t track the details of Gojo vs Ryoumen strategy.
They know a simple division — if you want a night of expensive indulgence, you book at a Ryoumen restaurant.
If you want a subscription that sends you pre-portioned Anthro meals, you download the Gojo app.
Easy.
The Circle sits on the Ryoumen side.
The mass market sits on Gojo’s.
The Getos play both, at least for a while.
Their farms supply Ryoumen Prime in some regions and Gojo Source in others.
Suguru keeps the contracts balanced, plays the gap, builds leverage.
Eventually, that becomes untenable.
Gojo wants exclusivity.
Ryoumen wants control.
Behind closed doors, there are offers.
Ryoumen offers to absorb the Geto facilities outright, fold them into their vertically integrated model.
Suguru refuses.
He doesn’t want his family name erased into a subsidiary label on a logistics chart.
Gojo offers a partnership package instead.
Joint patents.
Co-branded facilities.
Suguru takes that deal, not because he loves the blue side more, but because it lets him keep a seat at the table.
Ryoumen does not forgive the slight.
They don’t cut the Getos off completely — that would mean losing access to some valuable lines. But they route more of their breeding work in-house, pour money into their own labs, fast-track projects that will free them from outside breeders.
Sukuna reads those internal reports and notes the subtext.
Geto is now Gojo’s problem.
That means opportunities later.
At the same time, he watches Satoru’s empire expand.
Convenience stores with Gojo-branded chillers.
Vending machines in metro stations with “Anthro Boost” packs.
School lunch programs tied to Gojo contracts.
Every place he goes, the blue logo pops up somewhere.
In their twenties, both heirs step fully into their roles.
Satoru becomes the face of “Clean Anthro.”
He appears on variety shows, laughs with hosts, jokes about his own appetite. He posts videos from labs, talking in simple terms about gene edits, safety, traceability. He becomes a meme more than once. He leans into it.
Sukuna becomes something sharper.
He does fewer variety appearances, more long-form interviews. When he sits down with journalists, the tone is serious. They frame him as the uncompromising craftsman. The knife you don’t invite to every party, but whose work you respect.
Their rivalry keeps the market’s attention.
If Gojo launches a “Limitless Everyday” campaign, pushing cheap anthro packs to low-income families with a payment plan, Ryoumen responds with a documentary about Prime-Line history, aired at festivals and sponsored screenings, positioning themselves as guardians of tradition and quality.
If Ryoumen unveils a new Prime-Line campus with state-of-the-art welfare metrics, Gojo releases an app update that lets consumers track their Source lot from farm to fridge, complete with wellness scores and “consent certifications.”
They fight in parliament too.
Committee rooms fill with lawyers. Expert witnesses from Gojo labs talk about gene stability and low-risk edits. Veterinarians and welfare specialists from Ryoumen plants talk about environment, stress, and behavior.
Satoru and Sukuna both testify at times.
Satoru frames his answers in stories.
“I visited one of our Source Farms last month,” he says. “The girls there have access to sunlight, education, community. They know their role. Many of them are proud. We track their happiness, not just their weight.”
He uses words like “community” and “partnership.”
He looks the camera squarely in the eye.
Sukuna is blunt.
“Our units have food, shelter, health care,” he says. “They have stability most freeborn do not. We can show you their files, their metrics. We don’t pretend this is charity. It’s a system. But we run it without waste.”
He uses words like “units” and “system” that make some panel members shift in their seats.
He doesn’t apologize.
It works.
The law stays as it is mostly because lawmakers don’t want to choose between red and blue, and both sides make useful promises.
In the streets and on smaller screens, people pick teams.
Some wear Gojo-branded fitness bands, talk about “Limitless macros,” brag about their personalized meal plans.
Others post photos of Ryoumen restaurant reservations, talk about saving up for one night of “real meat.”
A few boycott both and eat illegal animal flesh or starve quietly.
Against that backdrop, your escape is small.
One girl out of thousands.
On a corporate map, you’d barely be a mark.
For Sukuna, you are a rupture.
A girl he had been told was compliant enough to process early, who instead knocked his world askew.
For Satoru, when he eventually hears about “an extremist attack on a rival executive,” you’re a data point.
A sign that Ryoumen has cracks.
Suguru brings him rumors of a Prime girl who ran, and he files it away under “potential PR leverage,” not yet knowing your face.
The rivalry between their families is a machine that grinds on regardless.
Contracts. Campaigns. Laws.
Two heirs stand at different ends of the same industry, each convinced that his way is the more honest, the more effective, the more necessary.
Ryoumen builds empires on hooks and heritage and red rooms where rich people eat each other in secret.
Gojo builds empires on screens and smiles and the promise that you can consume without thinking too hard about what, or who, you’re consuming.
You’ve escaped one side.
You don’t know yet that the other is just as hungry.
The report lands on his desk wrapped in polite, useless language.
Security incident at Ryoumen Facility 3A. Minor operational disruption.Executive-level injury, contained.
Satoru scrolls past the phrases everyone else will linger on.
“Minor.” “Contained.” “Stable.”
Corporate shit-speak you can paste on anything from a paper cut to a body count.
He taps two fingers against the glass and opens the file Suguru flagged for him instead.
Internal notes. Blacked-out sender lines.
A quiet stream from someone on the Ryoumen side who likes Gojo money more than Ryoumen loyalty.
He reads.
Prime-Line unit moved to pre-Ascension Suite. Unscheduled deviation in transfer. Asset attacked Executive Heir Ryoumen Sukuna during extraction to vehicle. Resulting damage: catastrophic trauma to right eye, extensive facial laceration. Asset escaped containment. Status: at large.
He leans back in his chair and laughs.
Not loud. Just a short, genuine burst that cuts through the hum of the office.
“Holy shit,” he says to himself. “He really lost the eye.”
He flicks to the attachments.
Grainy stills from internal cameras before they were scrubbed. No clear shot of your face, but enough — bare feet, hospital gown, hair loose, body coiled.
The moment before you lunge. The moment after, when you’re half out of the shattered car door and Sukuna’s hand is at his ruined face.
Satoru enlarges the frame and zooms in on the smear of red under your nails. Then on the smudged mark behind your ear, hair out of the way.
Prime-Line.
On him.
Something in his chest sparks. It’s not pity. It’s not outrage for the poor, mistreated cattle.
It’s interest.
“Good for you,” he says to the frozen image of a girl who can’t hear him. “You actually bit.”
The office around him is all glass and light and air, the Gojo tower view stretching over Shinjuku in neat grids. His desk is a slab of something expensive and unnecessary.
There’s a shelf behind him lined with awards and framed covers — magazines with his face on them, headlines about “Limitless Nutrition” and “The Future of Anthromeat.”
On another floor, someone is filming content for the brand’s social channels — a cooking demo, an interview, a wellness tip.
Upstairs, the Board is arguing about overseas expansion in a conference room with a too-long table.
Down here, Satoru kicks his feet up on the desk and reads the part the public will never see.
Prime-Line girl. Unaccounted for.
A Ryoumen, losing control like that? That’s not just a bruise.
That’s a fracture in the story they sell.
He thinks about the official narrative they pushed when the news channels caught wind of the eyepatch.
“Executive injured in extremist attack.” “Prime-Line facilities targeted by abolitionist terrorists.”
Sukuna standing stiff in front of cameras, answering soft questions about safety and resilience.
Satoru had watched that press conference on a split screen with the leaked footage paused on the other half. Public Sukuna talking about “stability” while blurred-out Sukuna was bleeding all over his own car like a piece of the meat.
It was the most alive he’d seen the man look.
Someone clears their throat in the doorway.
“You’re enjoying something you shouldn’t,” Suguru says.
Satoru doesn’t look away from the screen immediately. He lets the tension sit a second, then swivels his chair.
Suguru Geto stands there in his usual way — no tie, sleeves rolled, hair tied back. Calm. Tired around the eyes. He always looks like he’s carrying three different crises in his head and has sorted them all into labeled boxes.
“Come in, partner.” Satoru says. “Close the door. You’re going to like this.”
Suguru steps inside, triggers the privacy glass. The view tints.
Outside, the city becomes a muted watercolor.
“You said that the last time you showed me a scandal,” Suguru says. “It was a mislabeled batch, Satoru. We spent a week fixing the mess.”
“This is better,” Satoru says. He flicks the file over to the wall display.
The stills fill the glass. The chair, the girl, the car.
The moment of impact.
Suguru’s brows twitch up, just a little.
“She hit him?” he asks, a little disbelief hinted.
“Oh, she did more than that,” Satoru says. “Prime-Line. They tried to bump her up the schedule. She went feral in the Suite, bolted during transfer, took his eye with a bottle, and ran.”
Suguru watches the footage in silence, eyes moving, mind putting together angles and distances.
He reads the text log in the side panel, skimming.
“They lost her.” he says.
“Mmhm,” Satoru says, pleased. “Chip’s dark, mark’s probably still on her, but she’s off their grid. Somewhere out there. Breathing. Not on a hook.”
Suguru exhales through his nose.
“The Ryoumens sat on this hard,” he says. “There’s nothing in official channels beyond the press release we saw. No recall notices. No public safety bulletins.”
“Of course not,” Satoru says. “Imagine admitting you let one of your signature cuts climb off the table and stab your heir in the face.”
He spins his chair slightly, energy rising.
“We could leak it,” he says. “Just enough. ‘Unstable conditions in Prime-Line facilities.’ ‘Ryoumen hides violence, loses control of livestock.’ A few well-placed whispers, a blurred video clip 'from inside a kill plant'—”
Suguru shakes his head.
“Be careful,” he says. “If this looks like an Anthro problem in general, it hits us too. People don’t distinguish between red and blue on the street. They see blood and they see all of us.”
Satoru makes a face.
“Always with the buckets of cold water,” he grouses. “I’m not talking about a mass panic. I’m talking about a bruise on their perfection branding. A little doubt. ‘Are Ryoumen facilities really as controlled as they claim?’ Meanwhile, look at our nice clean tanks, our traceable Source, our happy little app.”
Suguru doesn’t argue the marketing angle. His gaze stays on the frozen girl.
“You’re more interested in her than in their PR.” he says.
“Obviously,” Satoru says. “Do you know how hard it is to surprise me these days? This one did it. She broke their script. That’s... valuable.”
“In what way?” Suguru asks.
Satoru grins.
“Imagine it,” he says. “One fine evening, I stroll into their flagship restaurant. Cameras flash, because they always do when I show up somewhere Sukuna doesn’t want me. He’s in the back, playing butcher-king. I walk through the dining room with a Prime-Line girl on my arm. His Prime-Line girl. The one the reports call PL-22-07. The little runaway responsible for this—” he taps the patch image on the screen “—wearing a nice dress and eating from my plate.”
Suguru just looks at him.
“You’re picturing his face,” Satoru says. “You can admit it.”
“I’m picturing the fallout,” Suguru says. “A Gojo heir walking into a Ryoumen property with stolen Prime stock? That’s not a PR jab. That’s close to casus belli.”
Satoru waves a hand.
“Oh, come on,” he says. “They’re not going to start a war in front of influencers and critics. They’d smile, seat us, grind their teeth down to dust in the kitchen, and then I’d go home with a nice aftertaste of their frustration.”
Suguru’s mouth tightens in that way that means he’s counting to ten in his head.
“You’re forgetting something fundamental,” he says. “Cultivated Class aren’t normal. Not biologically. Prime-Line girls are lab-bred, edited, optimized from conception. Their flesh, their blood, their scent—”
“I know what they’re like,” Satoru cuts in. “We sell meat too, remember?”
“You don’t breed Prime,” Suguru says. “Not like they do. We do Source, we keep it clean, we avoid the deeper edits. Prime-Line are something else. They’re built to be consumed in every sense. There’s a reason the Circle pays what they do. Their meat is unmatched. Their blood is sweeter. There’s enough pheromone weirdness in their design that just standing close to one can make a baseline heart race if you’re not prepared for it.”
He levels a look at Satoru.
“And you are talking about not just standing near one, but... what? Making her your date? Bringing her into our offices? Letting her breathe in your face?”
Satoru thinks about it.
About the stories he’s heard from regulators who toured Prime campuses, about the way they always describe the smell in vague terms.
“Clean,” “strange,” “addictive.”
About the whispers in the Circle circles that Prime girls in close quarters are “intoxicating” in ways that have nothing to do with cooked flesh.
It doesn’t deter him.
It makes the idea more vivid.
“Sounds fun,” he says.
Suguru’s expression doesn’t change, but his sigh is louder this time.
“You’d be risking more than just a media stunt,” he says. “She’s not a stray dog you can toss scraps to. She’s property, yes, but property designed to be irresistible to the kind of men you have to smile at every day. You bring her within ten meters of a Circle member and they will try to buy a piece of her. Or take it.”
“They’ll try,” Satoru says. “I’ll say no.”
“They’re not used to that,” Suguru says.
“And I am not used to being told what to do with my guests,” Satoru says. “It’ll be a learning experience for everyone.”
“Satoru,” Suguru says, patience thinning, “if you want to hurt the Ryoumens, there are safer ways. We can leak parts of this internally. We can court their regulators. We can outbid them on overseas contracts. Hunting one runaway Prime girl through the undercity because you want to see Sukuna’s expression is not sound corporate strategy.”
Satoru leans forward, elbows on his desk, grin sharp.
“When have I ever been just corporate?” he asks. “We’re bored, Suguru. Admit it. You spend your days measuring marbling indexes and cortisol levels. I spend mine smiling at cameras and signing things other people write. We are very good at what we do, and it is very predictable.”
He taps the screen where the girl is frozen mid-motion.
“This,” he says. “Is not predictable. One of their ‘perfect, compliant units’ decided she’d rather try her luck with broken glass than follow the nice Ascension schedule. She hurt him. She ran. She vanished. That’s not just a Ryoumen problem. That’s something... new.”
Suguru regards him for a long moment.
“You think she’s an anomaly,” he says. “Not a glitch.”
“I think she’s proof the system isn’t as tight as they say,” Satoru says. “And I think if we get to her before they do, we have options.”
“Options like?” Suguru asks.
He’s listening now. Interested, despite himself.
Satoru counts off on his fingers.
“One, we keep her alive and quiet. We study her. Find out what she knows, what she remembers, what they taught her. That’s valuable intel on Prime-Line conditioning.”
“Dangerous intel.” Suguru says.
“Two,” Satoru continues, ignoring the interruption, “we offer her something resembling protection. A Gojo-branded sanctuary. We spin it as ‘ethical reclamation’ if we ever go public. Look how nice we are, saving poor runaway stock from the big bad slaughterhouse.”
“You’d make her a mascot.” Suguru pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Only if she agreed,” Satoru says. “I’m not talking about putting her in a cage on a stage. I’m talking about options. Three, if we decide she’s too hot to hold, we can let the right parts of her story leak in the right places at the right time. A little oxygen under Ryoumen’s feet.”
“And four?” Suguru asks.
Satoru shrugs.
“Four, I walk into Sukuna’s restaurant with her and enjoy the meal,” he says. “That one’s just for me.”
Suguru closes his eyes for a second, then opens them again.
“You’re serious.” he says.
“As a heart attack,” Satoru says. “Which, by the way, our products help prevent. Did you see last quarter’s cardiology data?”
“Satoru.”
“Fine, fine,” he says, waving a hand. “Consider it... phase four. We don’t start there. We start with finding her.”
He straightens, dropping his feet from the desk, demeanor shifting a little from joking heir to actual executive.
“I’m not asking you to throw nets in the street,” he says. “I’m asking you to keep your ears open. Your farms, your clinics, your contacts. The undercity trusts Geto faces more than Gojo logos. If there’s a story going around about a girl with a mark behind her ear who’s too polite to be street but too scared to go near a scanner, it will cross your network before it crosses mine.”
Suguru acknowledges that with a small nod. That much is true.
“And if we find her?” he says. “What exactly do you want my people to do?”
Satoru thinks for a moment, then answers carefully.
“Do not scare her,” he says. “No uniforms. No lab coats. No Gojo blue. No ‘come with us, it’s for your own good’ bullshit. You send someone gentle. Someone who looks like safety. They offer a conversation. A hot meal. A place to sleep that isn’t concrete.”
“You want to be the good guys.” Suguru says.
“I want to be the ones she talks to,” Satoru says. “We can decide what we are later.”
Suguru’s gaze drops back to the screen.
The girl, mid-strike. The bottle. The blood.
“You know what she smells like?” he asks quietly. “Prime-Line. She’s going to pull at every predator instinct in anyone born with money and appetite. Including you.”
Satoru meets his eyes.
“I am not Sukuna,” he says. “I don’t get hard at the thought of hanging girls by their ankles. I don’t need to taste her to be interested.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Suguru says. “I meant be careful with yourself. You like to indulge whatever makes you feel alive. Don’t underestimate what she is made to do to people like us.”
For a second — one long, still second — Satoru actually considers that.
He imagines sitting across from her, the subtle shift in air, the way her skin might carry the same engineered allure that makes Circle members pay extra to sit closer to the rails during a special slaughter.
He imagines his own heart rate ticking up, breath getting shallow, thoughts skewing.
Then he grins again.
“Now you’re just making me more curious,” he says. “Stop killing my vibe, Suguru. Go be my responsible half out there. I’ll be here thinking up how to piss off Ryoumen in the most entertaining way possible once you deliver me a miracle cow.”
“Don’t call her that,” Suguru says, but there’s a faint, reluctant hint of humor at the edge of his mouth.
Satoru flicks the wall display off.
The girl disappears, replaced by his own reflection in the dark glass — white hair, bright eyes, city lights behind him like data points.
“Find her,” he says, softer. “And don’t break her getting her here. If anyone lays a hand on her that isn’t because she wants it, I will be very, very displeased.”
Suguru recognizes the shift in tone. Somewhere under the jokes, there’s steel.
“I’ll put feelers out,” he says. “Quietly. No promises. She survived a Prime facility and three days on the street, maybe more. She might be luckier than both of us.”
“Then let’s see if our luck is better.” Satoru says.
Suguru leaves, the privacy glass clearing behind him.
The office returns to blue and white and sky.
Satoru sits there a moment longer, fingers drumming on the desk, thinking about the game board.
Red on one side, blue on the other, lines of supply and law and blood.
In the middle, somewhere in the mess of alleys and cheap apartments and forgotten corners, a girl with a mark behind her ear and his rival’s scar etched into her wake.
He smiles to himself.
“Come on, little Prime,” he murmurs. “Let’s see who finds you first.”