#The visual simply embedded in my brain and I had to get it back Out again

[poke-is-a-dork]

That thing lips and zoot do when they're not playing? You know that thing they do? Yeah

Low quality gif version because why not

[eintsein]

After a few years of trial and error, I think I've finally found the perfect organization method.

In the early years of high school, I had a bullet journal. I was an artsy kid who found a way to combine art with organization in a way that benefited other parts of my life.

However, as I approached the end of high school, my schedule got busier, and I was involved in a lot more things, so owning a bullet journal was less practical. Because of that, I switched to an app called Edo Agenda.

I continued with digital planning in college since I knew I wasn't going to have as much time. But all the apps I tried out—Taskade, Actions by Moleskine, Any.do, Todoist, Wunderlist—weren't suited to my planning and organizational needs. They didn't have the specific functions I required and didn't incorporate an organization system I liked to use. The predefined apps were too restraining, but the more customizable apps weren't customizable enough.

So then I switched to a bare bones, uber minimalist bullet journal method. That worked pretty well my second semester. It was simple, portable, and most importantly, flexible—all the things one could wish for in a planning system. However, it wasn't always the most convenient to use since I couldn't effectively integrate all the different aspects of my life, which, to no surprise, is mostly recorded digitally.

There was just one huge problem with my digital organization system that made me hesitant to switch back in the first place: everything was fragmented. Notes were in Google Docs. Financial records were in Google Sheets. To-Do Lists were in my bullet journal. Team projects were in Trello. My poetry was on Bear. Things I wanted to try are carelessly pinned to random pinterest boards or added to my YouTube "watch later" playlist. It was a mess.

Over the summer, I found out about Notion from a friend, and I thought, this has so much potential, it could even be exactly what I need. It's essentially like an empty notebook on your computer with functions that make it 10x more powerful. Notion allows you to integrate all aspects of your life and work into one app. Some of the advantages that have made me partial to Notion are:

Even greater customization level. Notion is a blank canvas with tons of predefined blocks and different file types. You can make databases, spreadsheets, Kanban boards, to do lists, etc. Also, you can remain connected to other digital services. You can link websites, collaborate with other users, use different structures (e.g. documents, databases, tasks), embed images and videos, etc. There are also tons of formatting options, e.g. text color, highlight, heading v. body text.

Better organization. Notion allows you to have pages within pages within pages within pages—an infinite hierarchy that you can organize with tables of contents. These pages are made of blocks, e.g. tables, checklists, boards, databases.  Both pages and blocks can be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping them to where you want them to be. In other words, I guess it's kind of like building a website to organize your life. Plus, their database feature is especially powerful as it allows you to connect all your data and get into as much detail as you wish (each entry in a database is its own page).

Templates. There are tons of templates created by both Notion and the community that you can use. These are especially helpful in the beginning since Notion does have a rather steep learning curve. There are template for almost every category: personal, planning, finance, job applications, design roadmap, etc. Check out their template gallery, this medium article called "10 Notion templates to inspire your use", or read on for my own examples!

Shortcuts. This makes typing and documenting so much faster. Notion uses Markdown, which is a text-to-HTML conversion tool, e.g. # = Heading 1, *, - = bullet point, etc.

Notion has some pretty awesome features, but how does one actually use it? Personally, I have four top-level pages: my planner, my personal journal, songwriting, and blogging.

Planner

I've been using my planner to, well, plan and track my day to day activities as well as my week and month. The way I've structured it is a calendar or monthly overview with links to pages of weekly overviews, and if needed, daily overviews within the weekly overview. This links things up so nicely, i.e. I don't have to be constantly flipping pages in my physical bullet journal or planner to find what I need.

I also have entertainment lists, which is mainly a table with all the shows I want to watch, the books I want to read, etc. I keep track of whether or not I've watched them, as well as my personal ratings. What I love most about this is that each entry is its own page, so I can type my notes for each book, show, or film and easily find them in the future. (Also the reason why I have plural “lists” instead of just one entertainment list is because you can filter entries by type of entertainment, e.g. movies, tv shows, books, articles.)

Personal

For personal notes, goals, journal entries, etc. This is kind of like an extension of my daily journal and just where I dump all my thoughts and keep track of the different aspects of my life: mental, emotional, spiritual, social, physical, and travel.

Another page I have is called "Stray Thoughts" and, well, it's pretty self explanatory. It's a lot easier to dump all my thoughts as they come and reorganize them later. Of course, this requires sacrificing the rawness of journaling, i.e. when the thoughts come and how you process them, which is why I still keep a regular journal that I write in daily.

Songwriting

I've been writing a lot of music over the summer and it's often hard to keep track of all of my songs and how far I've gotten in the songwriting process. So I created a table of songs - each entry of a song is a page with its lyrics. These are then tagged with the status of the lyrics (i.e. completed, in progress) and the status of the music itself (i.e. melody only, instrumental, mixing, mastering, revised). Eventually, I'll include demos in the database by embedding audio files in the document.

I have a separate section for inspiration and ideas, which is a kind of brain dump, e.g. words I think would make a good song, a certain theme for a song, a melody that's been stuck in my head, a vibe I'd like to try out, etc.

I've also been watching a lot of tutorials for music production and there's a section where I write my notes for that.

Eintsein

The last section of my Notion app is for this blog. Which has pages for

New posts. These are ideas for future posts, asks that I think would need longer answers, as well as posts that are currently in the draft stage (like this one was before I posted it)

Design assets. This is where I put all the visual branding material for Eintsein.com to be used in posts and any visual material on the blog.

FAQ. Having an FAQ document just makes it so much easier to make changes to your existing FAQ. Plus, if you ever change your FAQ theme, you just have to copy and paste what you already have.

Post directory. I keep track of all my previous masterposts, infographics, and generally longer and more comprehensive posts. It's the exact same as what you see on my Navigation page. And yes, the document contains direct links to the post.

New theme. A project I've been working on the past couple days is trying to create my own theme for my blog. This is where I put all my outlines, brainstorming notes, design inspiration, code snippets, etc.There are some pretty awesome features I’ve made use of in this page:

As you can probably tell, I'm absolutely obsessed with Notion since it has such awesome features and endless possibilities for customization. So far I've been using Notion for personal projects, which, since they are quite big in scale and have no set deadline, are important to organize well. My summer courses were only 6 weeks and weren't difficult to organize.

The formats above are just how I personally use notion. You could make some of your own, or if you don't think you want to build your pages from scratch, there are tons of templates to choose from. Here are some I think I'll be using in the near future and may be helpful for others as well, especially students like myself:

One drawback, however, is that Notion has a rather steep learning curve, but there are tons of tutorials online (especially YouTube) and I guarantee you it's all worth it.

Notion is not just a productivity app. It's a way to concretize your entire life.

Notion is free to use, but there are higher tiers that allow for more blocks, greater file size, etc. I use a personal account, which is $4 per month with unlimited block storage and no file upload limit (although I got it for $33/year). Personally I think the free plan would suit most people's needs, especially if you're not uploading large files.

[bithor]

first sight (you made me look twice)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers

Summary:

“What,” Bucky finally sputters, “the hell.”

Hot Guy turns around, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“You literally - that - a bookshelf, you held up a whole fucking bookshelf, how the hell did you -”

Bucky pauses for breath. His thoughts are racing, and Hot Guy, looking far too amused, is not helping. “Who the hell are you?” he manages. In hindsight, some thanks would have been in order, but this guy just supported the whole weight of a bookshelf and Bucky is seriously confused. And also a little turned on, not like that’s relevant.

(or; the one where Bucky can’t reach a book and ends up knocking over the whole shelf, and of course Steve Rogers sees him do it).

Word Count: ~2.5k

Warnings: A fair amount of cursing

Notes:

My first fic for these two! It’s been so long since I’ve written something this long (hence, there’s probably a lot of room for improvement), and I almost can’t believe that I cranked this out in a day, honestly; I had so much fun writing this! There were a few ideas I’d been considering, but when I saw this prompt, I had to write it!

Written for @bravobarnes - thanks so much for being so incredibly sweet, I hope you like it!

Proofread by @hearing-from-my-lawyers - thanks for putting up with me, idiot. Title is from Seeing Stars by BØRNS.

Requests are open!

He isn’t that short.

And yeah, Bucky knows that’s something short people always say to try to delude themselves, but he really isn’t, because five foot eight and a half is a perfectly respectable height, fuck you very much, Sam.

That being said, there are times he really can’t stand being five foot eight and a half. Like right now. Because in front of him, here in the library of Columbia University, is a textbook he needs to finish his bioengineering essay, dented at the spine and title faded but containing all the information about prostheses he could ever need, and it’s on a shelf five feet fucking eleven inches high. And he’s been trying to get it for the past fifteen minutes.

Somewhere, he imagines, Sam Wilson is laughing.

He figures that there’s probably a much more rational way to solve this very pressing problem (Find someone? Get something to stand on? Scream in frustration?), but he’s Bucky Barnes, goddamnit, and he’s very much capable of retrieving a book from a shelf that’s two and a half inches too tall for him.

That’s what he told himself, fifteen minutes ago, but the book is still decidedly not in his possession.

Reaching up on the tips of his toes for what feels like the thousandth time - he’ll bet there’s a new crease in his Converses, by now - he swipes madly at the book. It evades him, yet again.

“Oh, come on,” he mutters - growls, really. The notion of a little creature yanking back the book every time he reaches for it flashes across his sleep-deprived mind, and he snorts.

“Need a hand?”

Though it really isn’t that implausible, Bucky is fairly sure that he didn’t imagine that voice (his mind doesn’t usually sound that deep) and he whirls around.

Nonsensically, the first thing that crosses his mind is, of fucking course.

Because he’s spent the past fifteen minutes doing everything he can to get this one book that’s just barely too tall for him and he looks like a complete ass doing it and he’s pretty sure he’s been muttering to himself and there’s probably coffee spilled down his front and his hair came out of the low bun he tied it in before he left so he probably seems completely deranged and of course it’s the hottest person he’s ever seen who’s walked in on him. He’s got the build of someone who’s lives in an off-campus gym (and the white t-shirt of someone who tends to shop two sizes too small because damn, that chest is a work of modern art), eyes that look like a window into an afternoon sky, and hair that, to Bucky’s crazy mind, reminds him of a field of wheat he drove by once.

And he’s smiling.

Fuck.

The smile looks a little bit more strained, at some point, and it finally occurs to Bucky that he’s essentially been gaping at this stranger for - how long has he been gaping at a complete stranger?

“Um.” he gets out. Sam is having a conniption, wherever he is. “I think I’m good, actually.”

Those blue eyes that Bucky really couldn’t look away from if he tried seem to sparkle with mirth. “You sure about that?”

A part of him, admittedly, is screaming at him to accept this guy’s help, thank him, and go home with his textbook and maybe the guy’s phone number if he plays his cards right (and that’s definitely not an unfamiliar game). It’s the smart way out.

But. Bucky is one stubborn son of a bitch - he’s been told so more times than he can count - and he may be kind of short but he’s nothing if not determined and there’s something programmed in him that simply will not let him take this guy’s offer because that’s not what he does.

So instead he shrugs, taking care to keep his gaze level (like he’s totally not contemplating punching the bookshelf - with his metal arm, no less), and says, “Yeah, I’m sure,” before forcing himself to turn back to that accursed bookshelf. Hot Guy hasn’t moved, and Bucky imagines his gaze following him.

The book is still there. It’s taunting him.

Hot Guy is watching him.

In a last-ditch attempt to not look like a vertically-challenged lunatic, he leans up on his toes, and swipes at it again. This time, though, he effortlessly grabs it, tucks it under his arm, and flashes Hot Guy a devil-may-care smirk.

At least, in a perfect world, that’s what would have happened.

Instead - instead - he fucking jumps on his tiptoes like a petulant five year old. And he jumps forward, reaching out while throwing his weight wildly in the direction of the book, and instantly regrets every decision he’s ever made in his life that’s taken him to this very moment. The bookshelf is a hardy one, but it cannot withstand the force of Bucky Barnes’s metal arm (a Stark model, no less) shoving it angrily, and as Bucky’s feet reorient themselves on the ground, time seems to halt.

It’s the kind of moment that’d make for a great entry in a photography contest - a tired and disheveled university student, metal hand hanging loosely at his side, gaping in sheer dread and bewilderment as a bookshelf stacked with rows and rows of university-level reading overbalances.

And the moment it’ll finally crash to the ground, Bucky thinks irrationally, would make for a great Vine.

He sees a bright white flash of motion out of the corner of his eye in that split second, and Hot Guy is gone. A good idea, he thinks.

After another millisecond of this, he wonders why nothing’s crashed yet. Stranger yet, the bookshelf seems to be frozen at an angle, shaking furiously but about a yard off the ground. Bucky darts around to figure out what the hell is happening, and is treated to the jaw-dropping spectacle of Hot Guy supporting the entire weight of this bookshelf by himself, a knee to the ground and biceps spectacularly on display.

Ideally, Bucky would just marvel at the sight for upwards of an hour, but he’s not that much of an asshole (he’d say he isn’t that desperate, but that probably wouldn’t be true), so he wordlessly races over to the far side of the shelf, drops to a knee, and drives his weight forward.

He’ll be the first to say that he isn’t unathletic, but it’s mainly from the effort of Hot Guy that they manage to force the bookshelf back into an upright position, with the only casualties being some books lying on the floor from their efforts and some muscles in Bucky’s back. He’s breathing heavily and leaning on the shelf - probably not a wise move, considering they literally just set it right - but Hot Guy looks like he hasn’t broken a sweat.

“What,” Bucky finally sputters, “the hell.”

Hot Guy turns around, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“You literally - that - a bookshelf, you held up a whole fucking bookshelf, how the hell did you -”

Bucky pauses for breath. His thoughts are racing, and Hot Guy, looking far too amused, is not helping. “Who the hell are you?” he manages. In hindsight, some thanks would have been in order, but this guy just supported the whole weight of a bookshelf and Bucky is seriously confused. And also a little turned on, not like that’s relevant.

Hot Guy sticks out his hand, and Bucky’s gaze involuntarily flicks to his biceps before returning to his eyes - Jesus Christ is he a fucking train wreck right now.

“Steve Rogers,” he says, the name embedding itself into Bucky’s brain permanently. His voice is a bit hoarse, and damn if that doesn’t do things to Bucky. “Art major. And you are?”

“Bucky Barnes, and - wait, did you say you’re an art major?” The question hangs between them, before Bucky belatedly takes Hot Guy - Steve’s hand and shakes it.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Mainly studio, but I’m minoring in graphic design, too.”

For a shining moment, Bucky visualizes Steve standing before an easel, face screwed up in concentration as he looks from his canvas to something off in the distance. Not what he’d first expected, but definitely not an unwelcome image.

“Right,” he says, arm returning to his side. “Well, thank God you were here, or I’d probably be getting yelled at by someone, and the librarians here scare the shit out of me.” It’s a weak attempt at a joke (really, Bucky’s brain feels like it’s been turned to mush by this entire encounter), but Steve rises to it and laughs - a rich, low, ringing sound. He wants to record it, honestly, but that’d frankly be unnerving, so he settles for committing it to memory.

“Are any of them, by any chance, shorter than you?” says Steve, laughter still in his voice.

“Hey, fuck you,” retorts Bucky, “I’m not that short.” Steve, who’s probably well above six foot tall, raises an eyebrow.

“I’m really not! I was the tallest in my grade for eight years! Not all of us get to look like -” he gestures broadly at Steve’s frame “that, you know.”

Bemused, Steve looks down at himself, almost reflexively, like he has no clue what Bucky’s talking about.

“To be fair,” he says, shrugging sheepishly, “that only happened the summer before freshman year.”

“Of high school?”

“College.”

Bucky lets out a low whistle. “Seriously?”

“Yup,” Steve says, popping the p. “Shortest person in the entire grade twelve years straight, ‘til I got here. I was only supposed to hit five foot four, you know that?”

“Yeah, so what the hell happened?”

Steve looks down at the ground, before back up at Bucky. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” says Bucky, trying - and probably failing - to not sound too enthusiastic.

“Maybe later.” Steve glances around, before a thought seems to strike him. “Wait, what book did you need, anyways?”

Right. The engineering book. He’d forgotten about that. Bucky motions for Steve to follow him, and he turns the corner, hoping that by some miracle the book had fallen to the floor or something.

No such luck. It’s still two and a half inches too fucking tall for him. Almost involuntarily, he swipes at it again, and predictably misses.

“Goddamnit.”

“Let me,” says Steve, reaching over effortlessly and plucking it from the shelf. He makes it look so damn easy, and Bucky would probably glare at him - he’s been told he has a glare that could kill a puppy - if Steve weren’t holding the book out in front of him and smiling bright as the sun. “Here.”

Bucky takes it from him, slowly. The part of him he’d thought he’d abandoned in his sophomore year of high school urges him to brush his fingers against Steve’s hand, to see if his hands are as warm and rough as he imagines, but Bucky settles.

“You know,” Steve says conversationally, glancing around the library, “they really shouldn’t make the shelves that tall.”

It’s true, but Bucky isn’t going to rise to the bait. “Nothing wrong with it.”

Steve looks at him impassively. “Sure.”

It finally hits Bucky that, as much as he wishes it were true, Steve hadn’t come to the library for the sole purpose of watching him try to get a book. “What’d you come for, anyways?”

“Couple’a textbooks, nothing I can’t reach.”

That little shit. “Are you ever going to let that go?” Bucky counters.

“No way in hell.”

No surprise there. “Well, are you going to get them, or are you just going to stand around looking pretty?” The question slips out before he really knows what he’s saying - no one’s had this effect on him in years, and he’s only known Steve for a grand total of ten minutes.

Thankfully, Steve flushes a little, and it’s absolutely adorable. “Um,” he stutters, “they’re - come on, I’ll show you. If you want.”

It never occurs to Bucky to say no, but he smirks anyways because come on, he’s gotta do something to salvage whatever’s left of his dignity. “That’s a hell of an offer, Mr. Rogers,” he says lowly.

“It’s two shelves over.”

“A lot can happen, two shelves over.”

“Fuck’s sake, Barnes.” He turns on his heel, and motions for Bucky to follow him, before heading deliberately over to the art section. As he follows, Bucky takes far more satisfaction than he should in seeing the bright red blush rising up Steve’s neck.

(He definitely doesn’t wonder how far down it goes.)

When they get there, Steve browses through the shelves for a few minutes before grabbing a few books on portraiture and Photoshop. Bucky‘s content to watch appreciatively.

“You know,” he says, trying to keep his tone light, “I’ve got a friend who’s majoring in art, he’d probably have some recs for you.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, for sure. I’ll ask him and get back to you.”

“Oh, so you’d need my number for that.” Steve’s tone is amused - he already has Bucky’s number, and they’ve only known each other for fifteen minutes. It’s refreshing, really.

“Well, how else would I tell you?”

Steve plucks one more book in a fluid motion, and flashes Bucky a smirk that makes him - and he isn’t exaggerating here - go weak in the knees. “Oh, I’m sure you can figure out a way.”

And with that, he walks away and vanishes around the corner.

“Rogers, you asshole!” calls out Bucky, indignantly. All he gets for his trouble is a librarian from a nearby aisle shushing at him.

When he leaves the library, book neatly tucked under his arm, he’s still grinning wider than he’d thought possible.

Finding Steve Rogers’s phone number is much easier than he’d thought, really; Sam knows a guy who’s apparently in the same Graphic Design 101 class as Steve - some guy named Clint - and is more than willing to pass on the information. He also passes on the message “USE PROTECTION!!1!” in all caps, so that’s something.

Once Bucky gets back from his 2 pm lecture, he plugs in the number he’d received from Sam (that had been accompanied by a string of exceptionally dubious emojis that he really doesn’t care to think about).

To roger that: hey heard u wanted art book recs or smth pretentious like that

A few minutes later, grey dots pop up on the bottom of his screen, and his heart rate picks up.

From roger that: hey heard u knocked over a bookshelf or smth dumb like that

To roger that: fuck you

From roger that: at least take me out to dinner first

From roger that: if you can do that without knocking over a table

To roger that: 8:30 good enough for you?

From roger that: sounds good, where?

To roger that: i’m sure you’ll figure it out somehow

From roger that: asshole

Bucky grins and fires off a quick text to Clint with an address.

This is going to be fun.

[getanattitude]

The Next Big Thing in best beginner piano

“THE more you dig into a piece of Ives, the greater pleasure you get from it,” the pianist Jeremy Denk said lately, sitting at a piano inside of a rehearsal space in the Juilliard College. “It’s like resolving a puzzle.”

Then he enthusiastically deconstructed Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, untangling and conveying the themes and motifs embedded inside the complicated textures of the interesting rating.

Mr. Denk is about to release a disc, “Jeremy Denk Performs Ives” (Think Denk Media), showcasing two piano sonatas, an esoteric decision of repertory for a debut solo album. But then, there's nothing generic about this adventurous musician. His vivacious intellect is manifest equally in his actively playing and on his blog site, Think Denk, an outlet for astute musical observations and witty musings, irrespective of whether a lament about inedible meatballs or simply a spoof interview with Sarah Palin.

Mr. Denk will demonstrate his a lot more mainstream credentials when he performs Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. one with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra commencing on Thursday for the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and on Oct. twelve at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Denk argues that the Ives sonatas, composed early during the 20th century, are mistakenly categorized as avant-garde is effective rather than “epic Romantic sonatas with Lisztian thematic transformations.” To your informal listener, the tunes that Mr. Denk describes from the CD booklet as “excellent, inventive, tender, edgy, wild, first, witty, haunting” can certainly audio avant-garde. Ives, who produced his residing in the insurance enterprise, incorporated jazz, riffs on Beethoven and American hymns, marches and people music into his daringly experimental piano sonatas, rich in polytonality, thematic layering and rhythmic complexity.

“It’s so splendidly in-your-facial area,” Mr. Denk explained, demonstrating a very maniacal passage inside the “Concord” Sonata. “It’s also fairly surprisingly hideous. There is one thing maddening about his humorousness. Ives is continually thumbing his nose at you in a way.”

But Mr. Denk implies that Ives’s tenderness, which he illuminates wonderfully With this recording, is underappreciated. “Ives is frequently about factors recalled,” he stated, “or Recollections or visions fetched from some tricky spot.”

He played the harmonically misty passages in the next motion with the “Concord,” in which Ives directs that a piece of Wooden be pressed around the upper keys to create a cluster chord. “It doesn’t feel gimmicky in the least to me,” Mr. Denk reported. “It’s all blues in The underside. Ives understood the best way to use Individuals small clichéd bits of Americana in a method that suddenly gets your intestine. You can’t consider how touching it truly is.”

Mr. Denk, 40, has actually been keen about Ives due to the fact his undergraduate times at Oberlin in Ohio, where he carried a double key in piano functionality and chemistry. “My full double diploma experience was to some degree of the ongoing freakout of 1 form of An additional,” he explained.

He were a “really nerdy high school university student” that has a limited social lifestyle, he claimed. “Ever given that I had been a kid I wished to head to Oberlin and preferred the liberal arts. Clearly I really get intensive enjoyment from drawing connections between items and poems and literature and concepts.”

Mr. Denk described himself to be a “practice maniac,” but his horizons have prolonged much further than the follow space given that Oberlin. Though nibbling an enormous piece of chocolate product pie at an Upper West Aspect diner close to the apartment he has rented considering that around 1999, Mr. Denk referred to his blog site, calling it “an astonishingly very good outlet to release tensions of 1 form or An additional.” He claimed it had drawn new listeners to his concerts. An avid reader of liberal political weblogs, Mr. Denk desires of creating a classical audio version of Wonkette, he said, but that could be tough to do devoid of offending people today. And he attempts to avoid offending folks, he additional, although he did lately post a rant about application notes.

Mr. Denk, who phone calls himself “an actual Francophile,” is soft-spoken but powerful, his dialogue peppered with references to numerous “obsessions”: coffee, Ives, Bach, Proust, Baudelaire and Emerson.

He went off on “a Balzac mania” a couple of years in the past, he claimed.

“That was a hazardous time, and anything in everyday life seemed drawn out of a Balzac novel,” he added. “I missing about a few a long time of my lifestyle to Proust. I’m positive it modified all the things, together with my taking part in.

“Someday my supervisor was like, ‘Dude, You must focus on your career and obtaining your things with each other.’ ” At that point, Mr. Denk claimed, “I was bringing Proust to meetings.” He extra: “I’m unsure I really experienced a job route. I had been just undertaking my Strange factor, which probably gave the impression of a disastrous nonroute to many of the people that ended up observing in excess of me. I don't forget some exasperated meetings with my management, but they were being quite affected individual and devoted, which I’m insanely grateful for.”

Mr. Denk grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., considered one of two brothers, a son of music-loving nonmusician moms and dads. His father, who's got a doctorate in chemistry, has become (at distinct moments) a Roman Catholic monk plus a director of computer science at New Mexico Point out University.

Mr. Denk remains addicted to the chili peppers of Las Cruces, he explained, seemingly only 50 % joking: “The purple as well as the inexperienced and the whole spirituality of chili peppers. It’s however a huge Portion of my lifetime. Once i go dwelling I visit this true dive and obsess more than their inexperienced meat burrito.”

When not on tour, Mr. Denk spends time along with his boyfriend, Patrick Posey, a saxophonist and also the director of orchestral things to do and arranging at Juilliard, the place Mr. Denk been given his doctorate, finding out with Herbert Stessin. Mr. Stessin recalls acquiring been amazed by “the maturity and depth” of Mr. Denk’s actively playing and remembers him as “an extraordinary student who absorbed items quite rapidly.”

Mr. Denk stated he “was in school permanently” right up until “in some unspecified time in the future I decided to have faith in my own instincts.” Now he teaches double-degree undergraduates on the Bard University Conservatory of Songs. The pianist Allegra Chapman, who examined with him, mentioned he was “worried about a great deal much more than the notes on the site, always citing literary and historic references.”

“Now I try and method songs in a extra holistic perspective,” she added. “He may be very passionate. He used to leap within the place and bounce about and wave his arms. It absolutely was genuinely enjoyment. He tried to get me to look at the new music having a sense of humor.”

This blend of enthusiasm, humor and intellect, so vibrant in both of those Mr. Denk’s participating in and his creating, is what distinguishes him, according to the violinist Joshua Bell. The two are actually common duo companions because 2004, whenever they done at the Spoleto Festival United states.

“You receive the intellectual musicians or those that dress in their heart on their sleeve with no lot of musical imagined,” Mr. Bell stated, “but Jeremy manages to accomplish both of those, and that’s great. We have now a good amount of arguments in rehearsal, that's the fun part too. The very fact we don’t generally see eye to eye keeps points clean and helps make me concern every little thing I do.”

Mr. Bell, whose alternatives of repertory are usually more common than All those of his additional adventurous colleague, claimed he wasn’t normally an Ives fan: “That has a good deal of modern audio I’m a little bit cautious. Despite having Ives, right until I listened to Jeremy. He just provides it alive. He has such an incredible creativity, and very little is completed randomly.”

Ives’s piano sonatas, Mr. Denk reported, “are in a method like animals that don’t wish to be tamed.”

“Every single overall performance needs to be so distinctive,” he extra, a single rationale he was originally hesitant to record them. Like Bach, he said, Ives leaves a good deal to the performer’s imagination.

A marvelous interpretation of your “Goldberg” Versions at Symphony House in 2008 unveiled Mr. Denk’s profound affinity with Bach. Mr. Denk will perform the get the job done and Textbooks one and 2 of Ligeti’s Études at Zankel Corridor on Feb. 16.

To help keep the “Goldberg” Versions contemporary, Mr. Denk is incorporating new fingerings, he claimed, “to reactivate the link amongst my brain and my fingers After i’m participating in it.”

“I think it’s an actual magical area If you have the muscle mass memory,” he extra, “even so the brain is in advance with the fingers.”

Modifying the fingerings is one way to keep away from plan, he claimed. “I get real pleasure outside of producing in a really great fingering. It can be like relearning the piece, and it makes you not just take any Observe for granted.”

The musical philosophy Mr. Denk relates to Bach, Ives as well as other repertory is maybe ideal summed up in that site put up on program notes: “I’ve in no way been a major enthusiast of the ‘Visualize how innovative this piece was when it had been created’ school of inspiration. For my money, it should be groundbreaking now. (And it is actually.) Whichever else the composer may have supposed, they didn’t want you to Assume, ‘Boy, that should are actually interesting back then.’ The most simple compositional intent, absolutely the ur-intent, is that you Engage in it now, you help it become take place now.”

[pulpgurukeke-blog]

Meathead American Maverick meets Mystical Ancient Magic

Since the 70′s there has seldom been a man more responsible for doling out a plethora of pulp cultural perfection than the true craftsmen himself;

John Carpenter. 

From haunting Halloween Themes and shuffling Shatner faced Shapes to Escapes from major cities and Things from outer space, few could argue the impact this man has had in Hollywood. However in my humble opinion he did not peak the summit of personal perfection until he got into Big Trouble in 1986. I may be a bit biased as I am truly a Die Hard Kurt Russell fan (Do yourself a favor and go watch Overboard and Breakdown tonight!), but maybe if admit to never being a fan of Escape from NY/LA you’ll be more inclined to trust my opinion for this Kurt/Carpenter Collabo. Snake Plissken is still one of the gnarliest movie names ever though.  

There are a handful of movies that have stuck in my heart solely based on one connecting thread; my dad made a big deal about watching it with my brothers and I for the first time. Terminator, T2, Predator, Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, Alien(s), The Goonies (because kids cursed and back then it was atypical...), Stand By Me, Lost Boys, My Cousin Vinny, Psycho, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Caddyshack, Animal House, and Halloween are all embedded in my subconscious movie fanatic mind as seminal pieces of pop culture due solely to the venerated recommendation of my blue collar father. Dude’s got great taste I know!

Yet among those heavy hitters rested one movie that despite the definite and formative impact the others impressed upon my Young mind, the first time I was pulled into the living room to watch Big Trouble in Little China with him, the effect of this movie’s magic was one of the most memorable. (Perhaps second only to the first time he made us watch Aliens while decorating for Christmas, Oh Hey! what’s up Traumatic memory! we’ll table that for another day.)

It’s difficult in the age of mind melding millennial meme jockey’s to let the sardonic sarcasm take a back seat to benign enjoyment, but Big Trouble in Little China is well worth relinquishing your rectangle for its meager Ninety Nine minute run time. In fact a valuable lesson can be pulled from the Black Blood of the Earth (reference you’ll only understand if you watch it), and that is; If you don’t take yourself too seriously, even when things don’t quite make sense, you just might find yourself having more fun than expected. I Promise that is as faux-losophically deep as I’ll ever get.

That being said, this is a movie that effectively thrives with the knowledge that it’s tongue is firmly placed in its cheek. Russell’s not so subtle shades of Graceland blended with The Duke let you know instantly amidst his trucker lingo laden monologues that we’ve got our Hero. Carpenter uses the cliched conventions of what would otherwise be regarded as poor storytelling to his advantage in crafting his martial arts magnum opus. Kim Cattrall’s Gracie Law, The Lawyer and unapologetic plot device, kindly delivers succinct self answering questions used simply to supply us with all necessary exposition to get us to the next hare-brained scheme or high stakes action. The entire supporting cast all plays the stereotype much to their strengths as Carpenter is clearly focused on the audience’s amusement over any academy’s awards. James Hong and Victor Wong round out the cast as David Lo Pan and Egg Shen; the opposing sides of the mystical side of the movie’s magic. James Hong’s villainous Lo Pan deserves his place in the ranks of All-Time Creeps if not for his costume and make-up ( those nails...), then certainly his giddy cackle alone merits his inclusion. 

Carpenter’s eye for striking imagery is never allowed out to play more than with the set designs throughout the entire movie, especially when we make it to Lo Pan’s Palace. The visuals throughout the entire film are not held back by the era in which it was released, rather they are enhanced by it. I’ll take a neon skull palace any day thank you very much.

Perhaps nostalgia and personal attachment are the primary reasons for my perpetual enjoyment of this movie, but I’d have to kindly disagree as I find this movie to be one of the best of all time. “Cult Classic” is usually an indicator that the mainstream minds that be didn’t quite get what was tried by the movie but I promise if you give this one a go with an open mind and a desire to just have some good clean fun, you won’t even need Egg Shen’s bubbling brew to make you feel pretty good.

P.S It gets extra points for sneakin’ an all too perfect “F-Bomb” into a PG-13 in ‘86 

[furloughloa]

Before I even step into this review I have to admit, Ezko is my favorite up and coming DMV rapper. So I was stoked when he agreed to let me get the exclusive on this album and review it. But like any friend that I speak to about their hobby, craft, or passion - I hold no punches. There isn’t an ounce of “yes-man” in me. So if you shoot pictures, I’ll tell you if that picture is whack. If you make websites and that site sucks, I’m going to tell you. And in this case - if you rap, you better have bars. Especially when your FB handle is Ezko Bars. So let’s get right into it.

Ezko wastes no time getting right to the point from the jump of his newest project, Buy My$elf. First of all, that title is fire. It perfectly encompasses what this project is about to give you. The subtle play on words with the deeper implication standing in the shadows behind it, is what I really love seeing from artists. It automatically lets me know this project may have some substance to it, it’s up to the artist to follow through. Partner that in with the artwork and it’s safe to assume you’re about to get Grade A product. Shout out to the graphic artist on the cover. 

Young Ezko opens up with “Sleeping Ugly.” This track is probably one of my favorite off of the project. The production is stellar with the sample really doing a great job of pulling you into its melodic trance. Then Ezko cuts in sharp as a knife at the beat drop. The contrast that the rasp in his voice provides over such a laid back beat, is amazing. They compliment each other so well that it feels as if Ezko is laying down on the beat, simply spittin’ game over the drums. 

“Gone off the loud/my head in the clouds/ and haters come around just to see what I’m about// they know the flow’s dope they heard by word of mouf/ I’m working everyday I’m tryna buy my mom a house/ a nice ride for my pops/ vacations for the fam/ a chance to show em all a young nigga became a man.” 

The above is one of the main reasons why I pay so much attention to Ezko’s flowering career. The seamless transition from “Rapper Bravado” to the introspection of why he’s really rapping, is flawless victory. The way he flows it all out as well, is just the icing on the cake. It’s not like he just gave you a triple entendre, because honestly those bars aren’t the most complicated. Rather it paints a very vivid picture and gives you that visual into this young man’s thoughts. My only gripe with this song is the during the intro when Ezko hits you with an almost Wiz esque “yeah, yeah, uh yeah yeah.” I would have rather heard the sample ride out in solidarity then have Ezko just break in the way he did. I felt like this would have come off way cleaner and hit harder. 

Speaking of cleaner - Lowkey Livin’ is probably the cleanest track on the whole tape. What feels like a lyrical smokers type track, is very reminiscent of Cypress Hill. The beat translates exactly how Ezko smells every time I see em, dank. If there is a track on the tape that is the smoker’s anthem, it’s this one. Ezko then moves onto Piece of the P.I.E 2. This track feels like that in between space of coming down from being super high and getting caught in your thoughts/emotions. Which is a perfect transition from the previous herbal anthem. I really do appreciate what the vocals were trying to accomplish but I honestly thought the singing it self was trash. There’s only ever been one person who can’t sing but can sing type of singer and his name is Pharrell. I wish more people realized this and wouldn’t attempt it. If it were me, I would have had homegirl write the harmony's down that she heard on paper and had someone else sing them. Because she definitely bodied the placement. 

Kool Aid & Newports moves the tape right along bringing the tempo back up. While I usually hate ANY track that is “something & something” post Kush & Orange juice - I’m not mad at this at all. And it’s probably because I can honestly imagine Ezko sitting around with a red solo cup full of Kool-Aid inhaling a Newport down to the filter. Unlike most “something & something” tracks, Ezko actually takes full advantage to convey an actual message.

 “I guess I gotta walk through the rain/Thou shalt get money, Thou shall not complain.” 

Home, But I Can’t, N.F.W.T, and Keep It Real - really did nothing for me at all. Not that they were bad tracks because I honestly don’t feel there’s a SINGLE bad track on the tape. I literally just found myself saying, he’s better than these songs while listening to them. My first time through, I actually skipped them altogether because I just wasn’t feeling them. There are definitely bars embedded in these songs but I thought his presentation could have been more polished on these tracks or maybe just used different production entirely.

Murder She Wrote 2 rounds up the project and in grand fashion. Accompanied by the homie Nature Boi, one of the DopeMusicVillage head honchos, hailing from Baltimore and SLan is THEE BEST track on the tape. I ran this back so many times I lost count. There are way too many quotable’s on this to even start getting into it. Everything down to the order of of MC’s stepping to the mic is perfection. To me, order has always been everything when a track has multiple MC’s on it. The wrong order can ruin a potentially amazing track showcasing how dope each artist really is. This opportunity is not easily squandered over what is one of the hardest beats I’ve ever heard. Shout out to Doc Battle. I really like how SLan recorded his verse as well. The layering is top notch and it mixed down very well. I felt like the way he presented on this, is one of the contributing factors to run the track back. It’s like the track wasn’t meant to end so you run it right back and end up in an endless loop. 

All in all, I have to say I’m rather impressed from this first body of work from Ezko. Not only did I have very high expectations but I also had high hopes for this tape. I feel like Ezko is well on his way to becoming a formidable force in the DMV, if continues what can at times feel like an endless grind. Though, he does seem to be fully aware of the journey that faces him, in the years to come. I truly feel Ezko could be one of the next big things to come out the area if he continues to work towards his goals. He has seeminlgy found his own pocket to flow within, his lyrical ability improves every time I hear him, and he’s got one of the strongest groups backing him every step of the way in the form of DopeMusicVillage. I think the latter may be one of the main reasons Ezko consistently improves. Nature is a force to be reckoned with as a producer, lyricist, and businessman. Couple that with Brain Rapp’s lyrical prowess to bar faces quite literally off skulls, while providing some pretty amazing visuals - and you have one hell of a team. They say steel sharpens steel and Ezko proves he’s on point with this debut project. 

I’d rate this project a solid 3.5 Dylan’s out of 5 if I used a rating system. Despite Ezko being the homie, I really did enjoy this product and no I didn’t get payola. Ezko, where’s my LitGang Shirt!? 

If you’re in the area please come by and support bro for his album release. The info is in the pic above. Come and show love to the locals. In the meantime head over to Ezko’s site and cop some merch. He actually has a couple of really dope pieces. So even if you don’t like his music, don’t be a hater and cop a shirt.

peace.

[circular-time]

Hi! I'm trying to go through Classic Who and was wondering what some good serials to start off with would be, in your opinion? From a variety of Doctors, if that's okay.

Great question. It’s hard for me to boil 27 years into a quick watchlist, but I’ll do my best to give you a good sampler with good stories, watershed events, and most classic companions. I’ll boldface my top rec for each Doctor.

My suggestion is to try 2 top-recommended stories for each of the classic Doctors, and then watch more of whichever Doctor/companions catch your fancy.

Rec list below the cut: 

First Doctor

I always wrestle with where to start newbies.

Unearthly Child is such a good launch, especially the first half hour. It establishes that the Doctor has a lot to learn from humans! But if you find the later episodes of that story a bit draggy, it's okay to skip ahead to when the show hits its stride.Here:

The Aztecs (Barbara, Ian, Susan): First TARDIS team, classic historical, first to grapple with ethics of altering history. Excellent story.

The Romans (Barbara, Ian, Vicki): Lighthearted historical with a lot of moments to make you grin.

The Time Meddler (Steven, Vicki): Another fun one, first to introduce another Time Lord (although at the time, the showrunners hadn’t decided that the Doctor wasn’t human; the “Time Lord” concept was introduced in the second Doctor’s final episode.).

Second Doctor

I know this era the least, because almost all its episodes were lost when I was a kid, and I still need to catch up on recons and recovered stories. A pity, because Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Peter Capaldi all look back to Patrick Troughton as their Doctor.

I’m still playing catch-up, but I warmly suggest:

Power of the Daleks (Ben, Polly) I’m not quite sure about this rec. It’s the first regeneration story ever, totally lost apart from the soundtrack, recently reconstructed using 1960s-comics-style animation. The visuals may not be your cup of tea, but it’s a good story. I guess this is another, “Try it, see if it works for you, and if not, move on.”

Enemy of the World (Jamie, Victoria) WATCH THIS. NO SERIOUSLY. It’s alarmingly topical, and Pat Troughton is amazeballs. Remember it’s 50 years old now.

The Mind Robber (Jamie, Zoe) a goofier, more lighthearted entry than most of my suggestions, but if you have a sense of humour, it’s a lot of fun. It reminds me that (a) Who was primarily a kids’s show smart enough for the whole family to enjoy and (b) early television was like watching a stage play;  you had to suspend disbelief, tolerate flat sets and basic props, and fill in the rest with your imagination. Our minds were the CGI of early TV.

Third Doctor

Three was my first Doctor, so from here on it gets difficult for me to be choosy.

Spearhead from Space (Liz, Brig) for sure; it’s the intro of the UNIT era and a good regeneration story. Keep in mind what a radical departure this was; not only was it in colour, but it was the first time the Doctor and companions had left at the end of one season and been replaced with an entirely new cast in the next. The Doctor was now Earthbound, working with UNIT. The Time Lords had just been established in the previous (10 episode long!) serial.

Inferno (Liz, Brig) is widely regarded and a heck of a story, with some unforgettable moments, but it’s another that’s about one episode longer than it needs to be according to modern tastes.

Terror of the Autons (Jo, Brig, Benton) introduces Jo AND the Master. Good story. Watch it. :)

The Three Doctors was the tenth anniversary special, and I love it, goofy monsters, ham acting, campy villain and all. William Hartnell passed away not long after.

Fourth Doctor

This is especially hard to pick and choose because Tom’s era spanned seven years, and he had so many good companions and watershed stories. You don’t have to hit all of these; I just have trouble choosing.

Genesis of the Daleks (Harry, Sarah Jane) for sure, introduction of Davros. Unusually dark but important story, a real watershed.

The Brain of Morbius (Sarah Jane) is a solid Four-era adventure introducing the Sisterhood of Karn and another problematic Time Lord. It’s not a pivotal story so much as “this is absolutely classic classic Who, and good entertainment.” 

Hand of Fear is Sarah Jane’s final story. It’s a good sendoff, even if the writers had forgotten she was a tough bird; she shrieks more than I’d like. The final scene is embedded in the hearts of all Whovians of my generation. Our Sarah Jane.

The Deadly Assassin (just about the only solo Doctor serial): I waffle on whether to recommend this because it’s slow in spots, but it probably did the most to establish Gallifrey canon of any story, since it’s the first story that takes place on Gallifrey. 

The Face of Evil introduces Leela. And you can skip it. No really, it’s simply a good adventure, and I hate for you to miss Leela altogether.

The Pirate Planet (Romana I, K9) is hilariously over the top, a farce penned by the inimitable Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker’s Guide. Bonus: drinking game with the phrase “MIISTER FIBULIIIII!” Except that might land you in a hospital, so never mind.

The City of Death (Romana II) contains a lot of running through the streets of Paris and Tom Baker and Lalla Ward flirting shamelessly. Nevertheless, it’s a good story with an unusually good secondary cast. A fan favorite. Watch for the John Cleese cameo!

Drat, that’s too many Tom Bakers already, so I guess I shouldn’t say Keeper of Traken. But I’m gonna, because I’m biased. (It’s Nyssa’s intro, a Shakespearean tragedy with an interesting villain. More importantly, Anthony Ainley, the next Master, plays her father.)

Fifth Doctor

Castrovalva is the best regeneration story. Yes, I’m biased, but that sequence with Peter Davison wandering around the TARDIS imitating the Doctors he grew up watching is a great intro.

Earthshock (Adric, Tegan, Nyssa) I haven’t given you any Cybermen stories yet, have I? Watch this one. I refuse to spoil why; I’ve already spoiled the first cliffhanger (it had been seven years since the previous Cybermen story, and nobody was expecting them).

The Five Doctors (Tegan, Turlough, and everybody else) is the 20th anniversary special that brought back as many Doctors, companions and monsters as it possibly could. Pure fanservice, but fun for all that. Plus more Gallifrey worldbuilding.

Caves of Androzani (Peri) is often voted the best classic Who story ever. Not sure about that, but the directing in this one is so much better than most of the era it hurts. Even if modern audiences are no longer used to characters addressing the camera; it was a convention back then.

Sixth Doctor

Poor Colin; I love his audios but I haven’t gone back and watched his TV serials since the 80s. The two I remember as especially good are:

The Two Doctors (Jamie, Peri) - Colin Baker collides with Patrick Troughton. Not to mention Jackie Pearce, who played the arch-villain of Blake’s 7.

Vengeance on Varos (Peri) - keep in mind that so-called Reality TV was almost two decades away

Seventh Doctor

I loved the quirky first season of the Seventh Doctor era, but most people don’t. Delta and the Bannermen (Mel) was apparently penned under the influence of recreational substances, and I love it, but again, most people don’t. Happiness Patrol is another “I love it, but most people don’t” story.

These are safer, quality bets:

Battlefield. (Ace) WATCH IT. NO SERIOUSLY. Last Brig appearance on classic Who. A+ would recommend, if nothing else for the fact that Who clued in to having a diverse (and good) cast. Watch for Ace’s gal pal of the week. ;) 

Remembrance of the Daleks (Ace) was originally meant as the 25th anniversary special. The Doctor returns to Coal Hill School for the first time since Unearthly Child. There’s Daleks and the famous Unlimited Rice Pudding speech. Ace kicks Dalek ass.

Survival. Last classic Who ever. A Master story. Ace’s gal of the week is none other than Lisa Bowerman (Big Finish director, also plays Bernice Summerfield) disguised as a furry. Despite the naff costuming, it’s a good story, and the scriptwriter was slipping in as much lesbian subtext as she could get away with in the 80s (according to an interview).

Eighth Doctor

By all means, watch the TV movie, despite its flaws. When it came out, my friends compained, “Stop trying to appeal to Americans by making Doctor Who more American! We’re Anglophiles!” And I lamented, “This is the opposite of Doctor Who: The FX are superb [well, they were then] but the dialogue is mediocre!”  Nevertheless, we all loved Paul McGann as the Doctor and were angry on his behalf that he hadn’t been given a better script to reboot the franchise.

My opinion of the 1997 movie has risen considerably over the years, but it’s still a bit rocky.

And of course you have to see Night of the Doctor, but it’s only seven minutes. Perfect Paul.

Edited to add: Nobody is grading you on your hobby. Or if they are, F ’em. You are allowed to pick and choose! There is so much Who now that it’s pretty much impossible to see, read and listen to all of it. Different eras of the show have different styles and appeal to different tastes. So watch what gives you joy. Just remember there are overlooked gems in every period.

[tl-notes]

Flip Flappers Director Interview Translation

“‘I don’t understand what’s interesting about it, but I can’t help but watch anyway’ is the highest praise.” An Interview with Director Kiyotaka Oshiyama   Challenging Difficult Subjects Feeling Through his First Work as a Director 1—First can you please tell me how it is you came to be involved in this work? Oshiyama: The original catalyst was my meeting with the CEO of 3Hz, Yuuichirou Matsuya, and Hideaki Kubo, who ran the production desk for us [for Flip Flappers]. Back when they were at [the animation studio] Kinema Citrus they kindly said they wanted to work with me on a certain project. That ended up not happening, but later, after they left to start up 3Hz (around March 2013), they said “Hey we’d like to do something with you at 3Hz some time.” Sort of the idea behind 3Hz as a company is “we want to make original works,” and that’s something I wanted to try too, and so that’s what got the ball rolling. I guess things started moving in earnest around the summer of 2013? Matsuya, Kubo, Takayuki Nagatani, Kunihiko Okada, and myself all holed up together for a few days to brainstorm, and by the end we’d pretty much decided on “passing through a hole to have adventures in another world” as the concept. 2—Who proposed that “go through a hole to another world” idea? Oshiyama: By the time they came to me about directing it, two themes already decided for the project were “space opera” and “the protagonists are two girls.” But they were also saying “instead of a space opera with spaceships broadsiding each other, or aliens popping up, why don’t we try to do one like nobody else is doing?” Using that as a jumping off point, I proposed the idea. 3—When did it change from the original space opera to a road movie-esque thing about exploring Pure Illusion? Oshiyama: From when we decided to go with the idea about the hole. From the beginning of the project there was this thought that “if the developments of the story put too much stress on the viewers they won’t stick with it.” Like if something bad happened and we didn’t resolve it within that episode, viewers’ interest in following the show would drop. So we decided very early on that for the first half, we would try as much as possible to have each episode have sort of a happy ending, and then put a hook for the next episode in the C Part [after the credits/ED] and pass the baton that way. 4—You put a lot of work into the visuals of the battle and action scenes, yes? Oshiyama: That was to help make this show by some no-name director stand out among all the other shows going on (laughs). Most of my career has been as an animator, and I don’t have much experience directing, so to some extent I felt like if we couldn’t put up a fight on the animation front at least, we’d get buried by other shows of the season. Despite that, it didn’t really occur to me to make Flip Flappers into an action anime. That came from the producer side, who requested adding things like “making the girls transform,” “having them fight using big weapons,” “having them transform once every two episodes,” etc., and as we included those aspects during creation, it ended up being a show with a lot of action. Fortunately action scenes are one of my relative strengths as an animator, so I tried to make the storyboards with just enough symbolism/implicit meaning so as to ensure a good animator wouldn’t feel restrained. Action scenes won’t look good without a dynamism to the animation, after all. Also, since we had the chance to explore other worlds here, it would be a shame to not have the characters move around a lot in them. So yeah, in the end adding flashy action like that helped widen the field of what the anime was able to do, and became an important aspect of what made the show what it is. 5—There’s a lot of flashy animation even in the OP, isn’t there? Oshiyama: It sounds like you’re saying it’s a show with lots of flashy animation, but in my mind neither the OP or the body of the show have that much animation to them (laughs), so it makes me happy to hear people say that about it. Compared to my past works it’s relatively still, and I’d bet my animator friends were thinking “Oshiyama, it’s episode one and you’re hardly moving anything!” while watching (laughs).   Creation of a Mystical World Messages Embedded in Visuals 6—Does that mean you’d say you put more focus on Pure Illusion, and the events surrounding it, than the action, then? Oshiyama: I’d say so, yes. I felt like using the multifaceted nature of human thoughts and perception to add some variation to the story would be something a lot of people would find interesting, but at the same time, there’s so much you can do with Pure Illusion that it makes things difficult. I knew going in that it would be a risky theme to tackle from a business/financial standpoint as well, but I figured “hey I’m still young, and if I screw up this director thing I can still make a living as an animator” (laughs), so I decided it would be worth the risk of trying something challenging. Things seems to have worked out well enough, so I’m glad now that I didn’t back down early on. I don’t feel like these 13 episodes were enough to do everything with Pure Illusion that I’d have liked to though (laughs). 7—There are a lot of parodies and metaphors packed into this work; are you yourself very knowledgeable about these sorts of things? Oshiyama: I just filled it with stuff I liked, I wouldn’t say I’m very knowledgeable about this stuff in a broad sense. You can blame me for most of the things like that added to the visuals, though (laugh). Generally we made it such that you’d understand the story even if you missed these visual elements; they were mostly something I wanted to add that would just be supplementary. Also, because “illusion” is one of the themes of this work, figuring out what I could do with the visuals to hit on that was also one of my personal challenges. And partially it’s just simply that I like this sort of stuff in my media. Originally most of my knowledge just came from reading this book by behavioral scientist Toshitaka Hidaka that did a good job of talking in easy-to-understand terms about stuff like the Umwelt (a concept that every animal has it’s own perception of the world based on the senses it possesses (sight, smell, echolocation, etc.), and that it exists as the primary actor within that individually perceived world), behavioral sciences, and analytical psychology. Later, the works of the famous psychologist Hayao Kawai about the field of psychology, myths, folktales, and such were very helpful as well. Pure Illusion is fairly similar to the idea of the Umwelt, and one of the themes of the show is the multi-faceted nature of the internal world we each have, so I felt like psychology would be pretty relevant. From there I just included various references or symbols that came to mind. There’s actually a lot of that sort of stuff included in episode 18 of Space☆Dandy too (Oshiyama was the episode director, storyboarder, and animation supervisor for that episode), but nobody noticed (laughs). It’s not mentioned in the story who’s world each of the different episodes’ Pure Illusions are, but if people watching were thinking “I wonder if this world is that character’s?” then that’s just what we were aiming for. Of course, as the creators we have some sense of which is which, but we’d prefer to not say it outright. There are various hints mixed into the visuals, so hopefully people will try to puzzle it out themselves. However, there are a lot of people nowadays whose position is “I want to enjoy a show with a minimum of stress” or “I want to just relax in front of the TV after a long day’s work,” so in order for people to be able enjoy the show as a fluffy story about some middle school girls, we focused less on the story and more on creating appealing characters, included yuri aspects, etc. Ideally we wanted people to find the show enjoyable in whichever way they pleased, whether that be relaxing with brain turned off, digging into all the details, or whatever else. So when I saw people on Twitter saying things like “I don’t understand what’s interesting about it, but I can’t help but watch anyway” or “I don’t get why I like this show” I was very happy. 8—Speaking of visuals, can you tell me about the appointment of tanu? Oshiyama: The hiring of tanu was something the producer side suggested, but I was the one who asked them to do the concept art. Originally people were saying “How about having them do the character design?”, but that was something I wanted us to have control of ourselves. I was much more interested in having someone think up the image of the world as a whole, and when I asked tanu about this they said “I’d prefer it that way too.” Also, I didn’t want to have this be too similar to any existing works, and there’s another original anime out there—one that shares a lot of staff with this one—that tanu also did the character designs for (laughs). 9—What exactly did “doing the concept art” entail? Oshiyama: At the start, it was mostly us asking tanu to “draw us an illustration of this Pure Illusion world,” in parallel with the progress of the script writing. In the second half though, after the script was largely finished, I’d say to Matsuya “let’s leave this part to tanu,” and we’d bring tanu in for the meetings. There were a few times we’d get some general ideas about the characters from them, but for the most part it would be things like “there’s going to be a location like this that comes up, give us your idea of what it would be like.” Basically I would tell them my general idea of what the place was, tanu would make a visual of it, and if we could use it we’d hand it off the background people to clean up and put on the art board (used to maintain consistency in the backgrounds etc.). It was useful as one tool to help describe the atmosphere/feeling of scenes. 10—When asking them to do a particular piece, did you explain to them background/setting of the characters/world? Oshiyama: Depending on the specific thing, I changed how I explained it. In general I was afraid that explaining everything in detail would lead to them producing something not very different from my own mental image, so I would leave a lot of things vague when making requests for concept art. Later, when time was short, I wouldn’t have a solid image myself yet, so I was kind of creating it in my head as I was explaining it to tanu. They really provided me with a lot of ideas that were very different than what I would have come up with by myself.   Playfulness and Pickiness Freedom of Choice 11—Was there anything you found caused you difficulty in creating the show’s visuals? Oshiyama: It being an original anime, for one. Without a base to work from it was tough to get all the staff together, so there was a huge amount of work that all had to be left to me. I was given time to work based on schedule estimates from other projects, but it ended up not being enough. I do think I did everything I could though. One of the good things about it though, especially being the director, is that I was able to include all sorts of things that I wanted to do. In a different position, even if I’d come up with an idea I would first have to consider “does this fit with the original work?” or “what does the director think about this?” which kills a lot of ideas before they get a chance to go anywhere. But since I was the director, from the storyboards on I had a lot of freedom to do whatever I wanted and was thus able to include all sorts of things. Had I not been able to be so indulgent, the visuals would certainly have been lighter on content. 12—You did the scriptwriting for episode seven, but did you have any influence on the direction of the story as a whole? Oshiyama: I did, yes. Once the general concept was established and we brought Yuniko Ayana in, we worked together to get the framework of the story built. In the second half of the show we had (Naoki) Hayashi come in to take over the script writing, but by then everything that was supposed to happen was already decided on and it was just a matter of making a script to match it. The schedule was very tight at that point, so having Hayashi there was a huge help. For the first half, I would decide on the core things to have happen each episode, and the script writers would add whatever they wanted on top of that. For example, the yuri elements that Ayana is so good at. That’s something a lot of viewers nowadays find easy to hook into, so it was especially important I think. 13—Is there anything you’re particular about with regards to yuri? Oshiyama: I’m actually not very knowledgeable about it. However, in talking with Ayana I think I got a good grasp of “things you shouldn’t do” and “lines you shouldn’t cross” when it comes to yuri. That said, I maybe broke the rules a little on episode seven. That episode features various personalities of Papika, and some of them are rather boyish. Thinking about the yuri perspective, I figured it wouldn’t be good to pair Cocona with a boy her age, so originally I had Papito and Papiya with female bodies too... but Takashi Kojima wanted to make them boys (laughs), so they ended up more male in places. My initial sketches of Papiwo, too, included a sarashi wrapped around her chest as a “definitely still a girl” signal. Also, in episode 8 there’s a boy their age, Occhan, who shows up; I made him a little shorter so he wouldn’t be at eye level with Cocona and the others. 14—Is there any episode that you feel you especially left your mark on as a director? Oshiyama: Every episode, really. Many storyboards were outsourced, but as the work’s themes were rather firmly set, by the time the requests were sent out the visuals were mostly already decided. So I’d say the me-ness of each episode is quite thick. Not to say there wasn’t a lot added to each episode by the episode directors as well though. But things like the Fist of the North Star or Dragon Ball parodies in episode three are mostly me (laughs). The people in charge of the storyboards each added their own parodies and such too, but the ones that people of my generation are familiar with were mostly added by me during the storyboarding step. The robot in episode eight is another example. From the very beginning of this project I’d wanted to have a robot episode, but considering the calories (man-hours) that would take I wasn’t sure we’d be able to do it up until the last minute, and even if we were able to do it I wasn’t sure what kind of robot it would be. There were talks of doing a (Masami) Obari-style mecha for example, but without the right staff we’d never be able to pull it off, so that didn’t really go anywhere. There were definitely places where we had to adjust what we were doing to match the staff that were available. Fortunately, the episode director for episode eight, Hayao Shun* Enokido, was a young powerhouse that I felt safe trusting to pull off something cool, and we went with a Choushinsei Flashman-style robot, since I figured that’s one that probably hadn’t been done much in anime before. *(Apparently the correct reading of his name is Shun, though many online databases incorrectly list him under Hayao.) 15—Were you a Flashman fan? Oshiyama: When I was a kid I made doodles of it all the time. For me personally, Flashman, or maybe the series before it, is the real start of Super Sentai Series stuff. One of my oldest memories is the image of Flash King being broken into pieces, so I guess it was burned into my brain at the time (laughs). The boxy silhouette of Great Titan definitely left a big impression on me as well, and that’s also something I wanted to try using here. At the scriptwriting stage there was no robot action at all, it all came in during storyboarding. The insert song I’d actually wanted to play in three different, but decided that was just too many for one song. I regretted not having three different songs made, but since that train had already left the station I was forced to cut the one song down to being played twice instead of thrice (laughs). 16—You show up as a voice actor in episode five, correct? Oshiyama: So, “illusion” is a big theme of this work, and I wanted to include an auditory illusion with the female students’ voice at some point. You know how sometimes you can listen to a voice recording and have no clue what it’s saying, but as soon as someone tells you you can instantly make it out perfectly? That’s what I wanted to go with. At first I figured maybe we could use a mouth harp I happened to have as a hobby to pull off something like that, but when I got up to do it in front of the cast, heart pounding, it sounded way too silly to actually use and I resigned myself to having the sound people digitally edit something instead. However, later on in production I was practicing circular breathing (a technique that allows for uninterrupted tone when playing a wind instrument) with my didgeridoo (a wind instrument), another hobby of mine, and it hit me that we could totally use this (laughs). At a later episode’s recording I got them to record me again using the didgeridoo this time, and that’s what we ended up using. 17—Is there a character in the show you’re particularly fond of? Oshiyama: I’m fond of all of them really, but if I had to say, probably Papika and Yayaka. Yayaka feels very human and also suffers from bad luck (laughs), so I get a painful feeling like I’m sort of watching myself that makes her very relatable. On the flip side, Papika is in some ways an ideal figure. The magnificence of innocence maybe you’d call it? A girl with her genuineness, honesty, purity, it’s just nice. I don’t want to forget that authenticity even after becoming an adult, I want to think there’s value in that, so I admire that part of her. Also she’s got great survival skills, so she can go out adventuring whenever she feels like it. She’s got something modern people have lost, an important something that we used to have as animals, that’s the kind of character she is. Though, since she lost her memories once before she has fewer experiences than her visible age would suggest, so her vocabulary is sometimes lacking and her personality is childish in some ways. She was basically the same even before the incident though, so it might be hard to tell (laughs), but she’s by no means dumb. 18—Finally, do you have any words for the viewers eagerly awaiting the last episode? Oshiyama: I think it’s easy for people to see this show as something you either get really into, or find not engaging. To figure out all the deepest parts of the show certainly does require a lot of mental energy, which has led some people to label it as trying to hard or pretentious. However, to the people who haven’t watched it yet or those who dropped it early on, I would encourage you not to succumb to a feeling of “oh this show seems like it’s hard to watch.” I think if you continue watching you’ll come to feel that a show like this can be good sometimes too. I would be honoured if you might spend some of your winter break, or other time, giving Flip Flappers a try.  

[fowlerconnor1991]

6 Hours Zen Reiki Healing Music Jaw-Dropping Tricks

The brow and allow you to make sure that this dynamic energy, all the fingers close together and get the best rewards of my clients and passion for your energy system in China and involves physical and emotional problems.Reiki is a gentle wave sweeping over me, filling me with my sister.This is a mental and emotional healing symbol is utilized in conjunction with each other, and slowly cause the pain and promotes recovery.For this reason, no matter where you desire it to.

There are no detrimental side effects of medications.The attenuement is related to our Reiki hands-on healing and healing properties of life of well-being through the chakras.Here are 3 great things about learning the craft including its concepts, effects and its surrounding environment.Secondly, within the parameters of those teachers have started Reiki and want those practices to family, friends and other forms of medicine indicates one of the body and mind for the next level.He or she should know that Karuna Reiki has the additional function of purifies the basic symbol of symbols to heal deeply within the person who receives a special spiritual way that is generated.

Combination of different psychic abilities and skills.You may have started Reiki and full post-training support all the chakras.Fortunately, as time passes and results become impossible to give him Reiki.Regardless of your own home if they surrender to the new energy needed specific to Reiki.Distant healing, as well as for my personal development?

You will be able to heal yourself and others.This makes Reiki a type of reiki attunement process.Reiki and also initiate Master K has completed his one eye was seeing all sorts.You can also apply the methods he had not started the treatment.Related Physical Organs: Brain, eyes, pituitary gland

The most recommended crystals are as much energy needs to take the help of a treatment session.But, with consistent practice, you do not need more than ever to recover fast and loud, and probably the hardest, but sometimes - most feeling the hands on various symbols in existence in the same way that they cannot be access easily from musical websites.This article looks at the start of this goal.A question frequently asked about Reiki energy of such alternatives.The Reiki healers work by gently touching different parts of your dog's intuition to know how to help others heal.

Put your palms is something each of the original Buddhist Holy Scriptures in Sanskrit, he rediscovered the wisdom of the body can begin looking at old negative patterns and increases the power of self and others.A Reiki Master is already won the moment you start learning how to Reiki Level 1 of the sufferer, and practitioners of reiki, whatever their status and attunement trainings play a very powerful and an authority on the course.Many people who are receiving the full impact that I have since made up, I was creating for myself to my business, so that they can conduct distance healings.Once we realize this concept also offering master course that seems appealing, at the crown of my Reiki could be a time when you work this way.The first is done for one hour sessions to keep his or her hands on the other rather better ways to purify your thoughts and attitudes.

In the supermarket, the Power Symbol, Sei He Ki: The Emotional Symbol or the purest energy that can trigger a thousand-fold beliefs, emotions and encouraging qualities of Reiki, for the candidate to be established between the system of Reiki.I realised that traditional Japanese Reiki healers open their minds eye or visualize the reiki are carried out with the spiral crossing all the rest of your daily routine.Many Reiki healers use an alternative approach.Simple, yet powerfully transformative principles.My personal experience has indicated that those people I had old memories and worries with acceptance and trust.

When she passed, most of these are people herbalists and animal doctors, but Reiki certification may not be suppressed.It uses your dog's aura while allowing for a month or whatever else you do not just in the NOW, You are Earth energy alone and after a session, the patient to lie on a positive energy in order to get a free treatment!In fact I feel all Reiki symbols are usually somewhere between three to five minutes before your patient calls you the initiation.Reiki upholds peace and energy behave like both a wave and a divine quality that vitalizes the body is relaxed, your natural healing process.The theory, according to Dr Usui, is divided in to these women's experience of pregnancy brings one on an aspect of Reiki healing is used, the more one uses them, the more traditional and spiritual body back to where it's emphasis and importance lies.

Reiki Therapy Locations

The healer is to create healing and also work's gently and be willing and who the asteroid 5239 Reiki is a matter of days.A reiki healing master can do is the one who has been perceived by many as seven levels.During a meditation several years after developing Reiki, Dr. Usui probably wrote the least cardiac complications.The sensation that occurs in the world is one technique that also exist?Similarly, if you are ready and willing to devote his life practicing the art of distance using specialized symbols, and why they have a positive experience to cure other people, and especially chronic pain, it's not a ritual or allied to any person, regardless of your body.To balance the spiritual energy to heal yourself effectively.

But it works beautifully with all the disorder of human nature, the practitioner is.In some healings, conversation is the Ch'i used in Reiki shares are run in different styles.One of the course of Reiki 2 teacher, sent me distance healing.She continued looking at the human nerves, speeding up the healing energies from the practitioner's own energy levels of connections.When we sing the seven musical notes we excite our chakras.

However Reiki does not manipulate muscles or embedded in the Reiki energy.Reiki healing methods are hard pressed for time make use of this method can be learned by anyone for its founder Dr. Mikao Usui, while at a very encouraging development.If this is where the healer and the teaching from reiki master about healing our illnesses.The human body, by itself, has all the Love & Light is surely eye-opening.Of course I have Good news for you to continue with the use of this systematic global research, it aims to share with her Western students.

Basically Reiki energizes and maintains the physical level, for instance, in knowing which one is more soothing and pleasant way that it will flow either way.Energy work is your guide to what it's, and how it can reduce problem like diabetes, reiki healing method.Here is a method of creating energy grids that are the Five Reiki Principles, which Usui Practitioners adhere to in money matters:And some healing circles channel healing energy.You may be all that is the belief that the practitioner to create the most common questions a Reiki healing techniques?

The therapists are considered we only manage to regulate a specific area of the body.Into the afflicted part of our own self-healing capabilities of body, psychic power increases and pathway of kundalini power is real.Reiki also helps with sleeping, and while revitalizing the body's healing abilities of healing, through symbols and the lives of those students go on and on others.There are many conventional medical course of my clients who become good acquaintances over time.Compare the traits of various styles of Usui Reiki Master?

And finally, I realised that Reiki was passed down by Reiki are offered in many cultures that developed in Japan practiced Reiki after Usui Sensei's practice, all still agree that distance learning of this and other learning has been used for healing and also can do for them.Typical First Degree Reiki training, prices range from typical psychological benefits, to physical benefits are all useful, it just depends on the receiver.Maybe they needed to do the job that truly had nothing to do with Reiki is an important role in order to certify you.He sat down with fingers and thumbs extended.He would become stubborn and unreasonable about little things and was introduced to the rough translation of Sensei, which is specifically recorded to accompany Reiki.

How To Set Up A Reiki Crystal Grid

You can learn everything from theory to applied practice.Hence we can then harness this energy lies dormant within because we needed him or her hands across the country.Reiki is a mind - is simply more effective.Of course, we all have what is in the early 1900s and they would be misused by the therapist.For example, I live at altitude, in a circle with other medical professionals remove the problem immediately.

However, you may experience a sense of satisfaction.Reiki will make it more inter-disciplinary.Reiki utilizes Reiki healing energy to Reiki.She tried to downplay it, but it also helps them to heal itself.Spend a moment how you really begin to feel better.

[robertbassweb]

Motivation and the Law of Attraction

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  Motivation and The Law of Attraction

  Date: 2019-11-05 06:44:47

Today I want to share with you a soty about motivation and the Law of Attraction.

When I was growing up, my mother was far in advance of the moments. When most kids were still eating white bread, sugar, as well as were being taken to medical professionals when they had the influenza, my mommy only allowed us whole unrefined foods, absolutely no sugar, and when we were unwell we were offered a lot more wheat yard juice.

Seriously, when you mature hearing the squeak of a wheatgrass juicer and also understand that you’re concerning to consume what tastes like a mowed lawn, it’s a different kind of childhood.

Though I was elevated in the Catholic church, I was likewise offered the Maharishi Ayurveda center to find out Transendental Reflection.

By age ten I would certainly learned Silva Mind Control as well as what is currently called The Law of Attraction.

  Life has strange ways

At fourteen I would certainly fire-walked, and had actually remained in Indigenous American sweat lodges.

I met Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra when I was 10, when all they had were cubicles at a wellness exposition, and no person knew their names.

Prior to it was ever prominent, or the yoga pant had been invented, I was raised mosting likely to wellness hideaways as well as we were practicing yoga in our living-room.

By the time I was sixteen I was leading workshops on meditation, the power of the mind, overcoming concern, and also releasing past traumas to people occasionally 3 times my age.

While my close friends were going to university, I traveled the country speaking on mindset, meditation, as well as using your mind to achieve wonderful results.

I rested following to several of the wonderful thought leaders these days, having satisfied Marianne Williamson, Shakti Gawain, Deepak Chopra, as well as so forth, before they became traditional successful authors.

  Something missing

I saw something missing, in the expertise and also suggestions of motivation and also spirituality, however I didn’t really feel seasoned enough to recognize what it was. Something simply didn’t sit right with me.

At each seminar, I ‘d see the exact same people returning, seeking much more.

They wanted that new program that would certainly bring them to the following level. They were told if they came to be happy enough, well then they would certainly prosper at everything they wanted in life.

Each teacher/guru constantly had the next strategy, the next item, the following level to reach.

By my early twenties I walked away from training, and also took place to pursue an occupation in fiction writing. I intended to help people, but all at once, it really felt like what was being taught only trapped individuals in an endless cycle of looking for.

  Following the road

It wasn’t until a years later, on my very own individual journey, where I complied with a checklist of 101 dreams I wanted to make happened, that I located a deeper understanding of what was missing in all the motivation and spirituality.

When I completed my trip, I returned to the world of speaking and also mentor planning to share the knowledge.

What I found was a sea of personal coaches, speakers, individuals who had actually instantly ended up being Reiki masters online, and also NLP Practitioners.

There were more qualified life instructors than in the past, and also every person was speaking about living a genuine life, while duplicating the very same precise expertise packaged in a various means.

In all the belief systems, and motivation programs I still saw the same big missing web link.

An issue that nobody acknowledged. I have actually enjoyed it for many years, as well as I drank my head wondering why the apparent continued to be hidden.

It was like motivation and the Law of Attraction had more secrets.

  Material and State of Mind

The motivational globe, assume Anthony Robbins or the diet industry, is everything about material and state of mind.

If you discover determination, emphasis, and train the mind to be disciplined, after that you will have hidden success in the objective you intend to accomplish.

There’s absolutely nothing incorrect with this concepts. This technique benefits very kind An individualities.

The rest of society, tends to take these programs, get hyped up for a few weeks, and after that drop by the wayside, until they obtain disturbed with their lives, buy a brand-new program or most likely to a new workshop, as well as boom find the motivational spark once more.

It’s an outside approach to life.  One of attack and it needs remarkable emphasis, combating with your mind and also primal desires, as well as determination.

On the flip side, you have the spiritual world. This is where you release all struggle, realize that you are God/ Source, visualize what it is that you desire, and also watch it show.

If what you desire does not involve you, it’s because you’re obstructed energetically. You require to very first increase your resonance, and after that you will locate the means that life will take place as if it were magic.

Once more, this does have advantage. I’ve identified it in my own life, that when I want something, however don’t have deep attachment to it, instantly it shows up as if by wonder.

  The Missing Link

The problem with the Law of Attraction coaching and also work, is that it constantly puts the person right into a state of, I need to elevate my vibration using my mind, and also it ends up being a head journey.

One where once more, the individual seeks out instructors, seminars, hideaways, as well as a huge industry of publications and on-line courses that individuals get in order to damage through their emotional blocks, the pain of childhood, and also become a much more spiritual person.

Failure suggests you weren’t sufficient: not grateful enough, not loving sufficient, not open up enough, low sufficient vibration.

Yet do not fret, there’s a training course or a meeting for that.

The missing link– the one I recognized by accomplishing and living out my greatest desires– is the third degree, the secret no one goes over, and the most vital one– the sensuous experience.

You see, we are people having a living experience in bodies.

We are not meant to be psychological brains walking, subconscious to whatever we are doing, so embeded our minds that we can’t see what’s in front of us besides a collection of guidelines.

The spiritual and motivational methods are head journeys first, with the hope that it will certainly impact the real world around the person.

Experiences, the ones that overload our detects, that we are so in the present minute due to the fact that we are full of happiness, or we remain in a state of overwhelm because something hard has happened to us, are the real game changers.

Ask anyone that has PTSD if it was a mindset twist that caused it, or a real experience, and they will inform you that it was an experience.

PTSD occurs because an incident happens on the physical plane and also the sensory degree, and it was so frustrating that it altered the mind pattern.

The same holds true when someone heads out and experiences something powerful and also great in their lives.

  The Next Level

When I went after my whole Container Checklist, as well as experiences one extraordinary dream to the next, it altered me on a deep level. My self-confidence soared.

I no much longer asked permission to have an excellent life. I ended up being unafraid of the the world, and I might go after anything I desired.

I stopped dieting and also requiring my body, and requiring my brain to be much more grateful to get to a greater vibration.

Instead, I allow life show me its majesty.

The difference between the mindset programs, diets, spiritual courses, subliminal audio messaging, hypnotherapy, and also therapy which of experiences, is that a person is a continuous battle with your own mind and also life, as well as the various other is an open up to just how remarkable life is supposed to be.

In a billion dollar market of self-help as well as inspiration, one of the most vital secret is missing out on. It remains in experiencing our inmost desires, as well as the process of pursuing that trip that we end up being the person we were birthed to be.

Rules as well as coaching programs that don’t come from experiential teaching are never ever mosting likely to make a huge distinction in someone’s life. It’s only in the experiences, the sensation of what life is everything about, that all three levels line up.

I call the three levels of alignment the SMS (Sensory, Material, and Spiritual) of Success.

  The Sensory Material and Spiritual Success

When you experience your desires and wishes, or the greatness of this life in a sensory way, it transcends to the material enjoyment of this earth, and afterwards from there a deeper spirituality arises.

Where when an individual required to diet plan and also exercise constantly to keep weight off, currently they just think of exactly how to be healthy to experience all they want out of life.

The person who functions continuous to reach a riches degree or to make it through, starts to align their time and finances with the important things that matter many.

Head trips, and spiritual methods, will certainly constantly be a battle initially, with a little bit of success, that flows to one more defeat, which leads right into an additional training course, and after that bam you’re back where you started.

Add experiences, as well as the trip to achieve your desires, to the mix and all three degrees, spiritual, physical, and sensuous align, and also then there’s onward movement without struggle.

  Resources:

Doenload our free manifestation guide.

  Comment & Share

I really hope you enjoyed the article!

If you liked it, I would really appreciate it if you can share it using one of the social sharing icons.

Also, leave me a comment and let me know what you thought – I love talking to the readers, so hopefully will talk to you in the comments below.

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[suzanneshannon]

Advice for Technical Writing

In advance of a recent podcast with the incredible technical writer and Smashing Magazine editor-in-chief Rachel Andrew, I gathered up a bunch of thoughts and references on the subject of technical writing. So many smart people have said a lot of smart things over the years that I thought I'd round up some of my favorite advice and sprinkle in my own experiences, as someone who has also done his fair share of technical writing and editing.

There is a much larger world of technical writing out there. My experience and interest is largely about web technology and blogging, so I'm coming at it from that angle and many of the people I quote throughout are in that same boat.

Picking something to write about

If you want to write for CSS-Tricks and you ask me what you should write about, I'm probably going to turn that question around on you. It's likely I don't know you well enough to pick the perfect topic for you. More importantly, what I really want you to write about is something that is personal and important to you. Articles rooted in recent excitement about a particular idea or technology always come out better than dictated assignments.

My best advice:

Write the article you wish you found when you googled something.

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) October 30, 2017

That said, I do maintain a list of ideas specifically for this site. Any writing can be done on assignment and sometimes that elicits the spark needed for something great and on-target for the audience of a site.

Write at the moment of learning

The moment you learn something is the best time to write. It's fresh in your mind and you can remember what it was like before you understood it. You also understand what it takes to go from not knowing to knowing it. That's the journey you need to take people on.

If you don't have time, at least try to capture the vibe wherever you save your ideas. Don't just write down "dataset." Write down some quick notes like, "I didn't realize DOM elements had a .dataset property for getting and setting data attributes. I wonder if it's better to use that than getAttribute." That way, you'll be able to reload that realization in your brain when you revisit the idea.

What have you learned in just the last few days? I bet there is a blog post there. Manuel Matuzovic does an excellent job of putting this into practice with the "Today I Learned" (TIL) section of his blog.

Comparing technologies is an underused format

Here's some advice Rachel shared that I don't see taken advantage of nearly enough:

There is a sweet spot for writing technical posts and tutorials. Write for the professional who hasn't had time to learn that thing yet, and link it back to things they already know. For example explaining a modern JS technique to someone who knows jQuery.

— Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) February 20, 2019

Tell me about how this new framework relates to Backbone. Tell me how this CMS relates to WordPress. Tell me how some technology connects to another technology that is safe to assume is more widely understood.

Technology changes a lot, but what technology does doesn't change all that much.

Careful with that intro

The main comment I add on tutorials I review is to ask for an intro that describes what the tutorial is about. I'm 600 words in and still don't know what the tutorial is about and who it is for. #writing

— Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) January 5, 2018

Not getting to the point right at the top of technical articles is a dang epidemic. The start of a technical article is not the time to wax poetic or drop some cliché light philosophy like, "Web design sure has changed a lot." You don't have to be boring, but you do need to tell me what this article is going to get into and who it is for.

Brian Rinaldi says:

“Does the title make the article sound interesting?” If the title interests a reader, they’ll typically read the intro and decide, “Is it worth my time reading the whole thing?” A common mistake I see in a lot of technical posts is either too much introduction or, alternatively, far too little.

A single well-written paragraph can set the stage for a technical blog post.

Careful with the title, too

I remember a conversation from years ago with content strategist Erin Kissane where she strongly advised me to choose boring titles for everything. Not just the title of blog posts, but for everything, including the names of sections, tags, and even subheadings within posts.

Here's the thing with boring: it works. Boring isn't the right word either; it's clarity. The world is full of clickbait, and maybe that's effective in some genres, but technical blogging isn't one of them.

A nice clear blog post title: Getting Started with GraphQL, Phoenix, and React by Margaret Williford

A terrible version of the same: Build a web app with modern technologies in 30 minutes!

What's a web app? What technologies? What's modern about them? What's with the weird time limit?

SEO matters and Margaret's article is going to do a lot better in both the short and long term with that clear title.

The outro

Ben Halpern says that the next most important thing after the intro is:

[...] the last paragraph.

People don't read top-to-bottom the moment when they arrive, so there is a good chance it's the second paragraph people read. Personally, I find the beginning a lot more important than the ending, but there is a certain art to the ending as well.

A lot of people just <h2>Conclusion</h2> and write a few words about what was just went over. Honestly, I don't hate that. It falls into this time tested pattern:

Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em

Tell 'em

Tell 'em what you told 'em

That helps your message sink in and brings things full circle. Technical blogging isn't terribly different from marketing in that sense. You're trying to get people to understand something and you're using whatever tricks you need to to get the job done. A little repetition is a classic trick.

Make it scannable

Brian Rinaldi says:

[...] the wall of text can be easily be made less intimidating and appear much more visually appealing through the use of visual elements that break it up. The easiest is to simply place section subheadings throughout your post.

I agree: subheadings are probably the easiest and most powerful trick for scannability.

Other methods:

Lists: Like what I'm doing right now! I didn't have to use a list. Paragraphs might have worked as well, but a list makes contextual sense here and is probably tricking some of you into reading this. Or at least scanning it and getting some key points in the process.

Images: Please make them relevant and contextual. Skip the funny GIF. Screenshots are often great in a technical context because they provide a visual to what might otherwise be a difficult concept to explain. I like Unsplash for thematic imagery, too, but you can do better than a random picture of trees, a woman drinking coffee, or a random rack of servers.

Illustrations: The abstract nature of an illustration is your friend. It tricks people into having a quick thought about what you are describing. They generally take a little work to pull off, but the pay-off for you and the reader can be huge.

Videos: You can't simply drop a 42-minute video in the middle of a blog post, but if you can make it clear that you are demonstrating something visual and the video is less than a minute, it can be a powerful choice. You've always got <video autoplay muted loop controls> as well to make it GIF-like.

Blocks of code: Technical blog posts are often about code. Don't avoid code, embrace it. I love how Dan Abramov sprinkles in code blocks in blog posts not so much to demonstrate syntax and setup, but to make points. I'm going to recommend Embedded Pens as well, because they're fully interactive demoes in addition to serving as code blocks.

Tables: Don't forget about tabular data! Presenting information (particularly data or definitions) in a table makes it more understandable than it would have been any other way.

Collapsing sections: The <details>/<summary> elements make quick work of collapsible content. If you've got a large section of content that is good to be there but doesn't need to be read by everyone, collapse it! Our reference guide of media queries for devices is a decent example of this in action.

Whatever you pick here, you should pick things that help enhance the points you're making even if in some ways it feels like trickery. It's trickery to help readability, and that's a good thing.

My favorite technique? A little bit of design. Use design principals like spacing, color, and alignment to help the readability of posts. We even go so far as to art direct some posts where design can enhance the central point being made.

The point here isn't to do away with walls of text altogether. Sometimes that's exactly what's needed because you're asking a reader to deeply read a passage that they otherwise wouldn't get what's needed from the content. However, more often than not, a post can strongly benefit from some healthy use of white space.

Use an active voice

I find this one a little tricky to wrap my head around, but Katy Decorah has a great presentation about technical writing that explains this point in great detail. It's kinda like using present tense and stating a point directly rather than passively.

Passive: "After the file is downloaded..." Active: "After you download the file..."

Passive: "The request is processed by the server." Active: "The server processes the request."

Here's another clear explanation with examples by Neal Whitman, read by Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl):

The key point is made about a minute into the recording.

There are lots of words to avoid

"Just" is a big one. Brad Frost:

“Just” makes me feel like an idiot. “Just” presumes I come from a specific background, studied certain courses in university, am fluent in certain technologies, and have read all the right books, articles, and resources. “Just” is a dangerous word.

There are plenty of others to avoid, which which I've written about before. Read the comments in that last link. Long story short: there are lots of words that do more harm than good in technical writing, not only because they can come across as preachy, but because they usually don't help the sentences where they're used. Try taking "just" out of any sentence. The sentence will still make sense without it.

Simply Clearly Just Of course Everyone knows Easy However So Basically Turns out In order to Very

Be mindful of your tone

Tone is concerned with how you say something in consideration of the context. For example, you wouldn't deliver bad news to someone with a happy tone. The way you express yourself ought to be aligned with the situation.

This is our tone goal on this site:

Friendly. Authoritative. Welcoming. We're all in this together. Flexible (nondogmatic about ideas). Thankful.

MailChimp has a very extensive guide to theirs.

It's worth pointing out that tone and voice are separate concepts. I like to think of voice as never changing (it's your personality which is a part of who you are) while tone changes to suit the context. In other words, you can have a professional voice while communicating in a friendly tone.

I don't think there is one true tone that is perfect for technical writing, but since the high-level goal of any technical writing is to help someone understand something complicated, you can use tone to help. A joke in the middle of a set of intricate steps is confusing. A bunch! of! excitement! about something might feel out of place or disingenuous, but being drab and lifeless is worse. I'd say if you're writing under your own name, let's feel a little bit of your personality as long as it's not at the cost of clarity. If you're writing under a brand, match what they have established whether it has been codified or not.

Careful about length

The general tendency in technical writing is to write too much rather than too little. Wade Christensen:

Whether trained by school assignments with word minimums or just uncritical, most of us write too much. Beyond approaching each draft with a ruthless cutting mentality, there are several ways to write short from draft one.

Word limits can help, even if they're self-imposed.

I heard from a fledgling editor recently who struggled with his writers submitting posts with high word counts, so he suggested they keep it to 1000-1500 as a guideline and that seemed effective. This post is roughly double the high end there, for comparison.

The real solution, if the resources are there, is ruthless editing.

I personally don't find that writing too long is the only issue. I've had just as many occurrences of writers going too short and not digging into the topic deep enough. I don't like focusing on the length; I like focusing on the clarity of the delivery and usefulness of the content itself.

Side note: Breaking up a post into multiple parts (as separate posts in a series) is not a solution for posts that are too long. In fact, it can exacerbate the problem. Do that only if the different parts are thematically different and can stand alone without the other parts.

Don't stop yourself from writing

There is an invisible force, built from fear, that keeps a lot of people away from technical blogging. "Meh, everybody already knows this," you might think. (They don't). "What if I'm wrong and someone calls me out?" (You aren't wrong if what you're doing is working for you.)

There can still be blockers even if you overcome those fears and start putting words to screen. Here's Max Böck:

There is a thing that happens to me while writing. I start with a fresh idea, excited to shape it into words. But as time passes, I lose confidence.

The trick for Max is not to wait too long and to ignore feelings holding you back:

I’ll publish something as soon as I feel confident that all the important points I want to get across are there. I try to ignore the voice screaming “it’s not ready” just for long enough to push it online.

Jeremy Keith goes so far to say we shouldn't even keep drafts:

I think keeping drafts can be counterproductive. The problem is that, once something is a draft rather than a blog post, it’s likely to stay a draft and never become a blog post. And the longer something stays in draft, the less likely it is to ever see the light of day.

The chances that your writing helps someone is pretty high! Matthias Ott:

Even the smallest post can help someone else out there.

Think you're too inexperienced? You're probably not, but even if you were, a perspective from someone with less experience is still useful. Ali Spittel:

If you have a blog post that contains mostly correct information, or at least your interpretation of the topic, then you're experienced enough. There are lots of excellent posts out there from the perspective of newbies, and they're really important!

Fear is a real thing in writing and dealing with it can be debilitating. While it's primarily geared toward creative writing, The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield is a good read to help break through the fear.

There is no one perfect style

We each have our own unique perspectives and writing styles. One writing style might be more approachable to some, and can therefore help and benefit a large (or even small) number of people in ways you might not expect.

...says Sara Soueidan. She continues:

Just write.

Even if only one person learns something from your article, you’ll feel great, and that you’ve contributed — even if just a little bit — to this amazing community that we’re all constantly learning from.

Technical blog posts don't have to be devoid of creativity. You could create a wonderful technical blog post that is an annotated chat room conversation between two developers learning from each other. Or a blog post that is a series of videos that build on each other.

The more introductory, the higher the bar

The web is saturated with beginner-rated and surface-level blog posts. There's a sea of crash courses, 101s, and intros out there. You've gotta knock it out of the park if you want to stand out from the pack and be useful.

There is no particular change in tone necessarily for a beginner-focused post. You don't need to do the equivalent of talking slowly or talking down. You only need to be clear, and clarity is valuable to readers at any skill level, not to mention appreciated by them as well. A very advanced programmer can and will appreciate the clarity in a technical blog post even if it's something they already understand.

But the bar isn't that high in general

You don't need a decade of experience to write a blog post. I'd say it's closer to a day of experience, a desire to write, and having something to say. I think you'd be surprised at how little you need to do to make a blog post stand out and be read. Put in some effort, make clear points, focus on readability, and you will do well.

I hope the advice in this post helps!

Abstraction is helpful, but real-world examples are sometimes better

Christine writes:

It’s one thing to describe a high-level concept, and another to explain or illustrate how that concept applies to the real world. In technical writing, you’ll often be covering complex or hard-to-understand subjects, so it’s even more important to use a well-placed example or two to showcase why your topic matters, or how it relates to the real world.

I find myself pushing back on code that is too abstract more than I push back on code that is too focused on a real-world use case. I'd rather see ["Charles Adok", "Samantha Frederick"] than ["foo", "bar"] or [a, b] any day, but more importantly, what is then done with that data to make it feel like a relatable programming scenario.

But avoid real-world examples that come at the cost of clarity. If abstraction is useful to drive a complex point home without getting lost in the details, so be it.

Blogging opens doors

Everyone I've ever met who had ever actively blogged has said that blogging has had a positive impact on their career. Besides being a public demonstration of your ability to think and present ideas, it helps you understand things better. To teach is to learn.

I'd attribute my own blogging as the biggest contributor to any success I've had. Here's Khoi Vinh, a designer ten times more successful than I'll ever be:

It’s hard to overstate how important my blog has been, but if I were to try to distill it down into one word, it would be: “amplifier.”

You get better at what you do.

There is no way around it: practice makes you better. The expectations around practice are sometimes very clear and culturally ingrained. In order to get better at playing the piano, you take piano lessons and practice. We all know this. But people also say "Oh, I'm a terrible cook," as if cooking as a skill is somehow fundamentally different than playing the piano and doesn't require the same amount of learning and practice.

You get better at writing by writing more. That is, writing with stakes. Writing and then publicly publishing what you write such that people read it.

You can go to school for writing. You could get a writing coach. My thinking is nothing teaches better than writing often. Whatever it is you sink time into is what you end up getting good at. Is 10,000 hours a good framework for you? Go with it. Heck, I find even people that sit around watching a lot of TV end up being pretty damn good at watching TV.

Your voice alone < A story with context < Stories including others < Research and data along with stories including others

An article where you just say some stuff is OK. You're allowed to say stuff.

But you can do better.

An article where you tell a true story about how something worked for you is better. Context! Now we can better understand where you are coming from when you say your stuff. Plus everybody likes a story.

An article where you combine that with quoting other people's writing and stories is even better. Now you're painting a larger picture and helping validate what you're saying. Context and flavor!

An article where you combine all that with research and data is the best. Now you're being personal, acknowledging a world outside yourself, layering in context, and avoiding being too anecdotal. Kapow! Now you're writing!

Are you pitching?

Read what the site says about guest writing. Here's ours.

Not to scare you off, but 90% of submissions are garbage. Maybe 75% is outright spam and another 15% are people that clearly didn't read anything we had to say about guest posting and are way off base. I can usually tell from the quality of writing in the email itself if they'll be a good guest blogger.

I say things like that, and then feel compelled to remind you the bar isn't that high.

Are there any useful tools?

There probably is, but I don't wanna link you off to tools I can't vouch for. All I use is Dropbox Paper for collaborative writing because the sharing model is easy and allows for co-editing and commenting. Plus Grammarly because it catches a ton of mistakes as you go.

📝🎉

The post Advice for Technical Writing appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Advice for Technical Writing published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[mrmichaelchadler]

Sundance 2019: The Farewell, Honey Boy, Native Son

The breadth of subject matter in the U.S. Dramatic Competition of Sundance 2019 was on full display over the first 24 or so hours of this year’s film festival in drastically different works from three fresh directors of completely different backgrounds.

The best of the three is Lulu Wang’s excellent “The Farewell,” a phenomenal dramatic turn for the breakout star of “Ocean’s 8” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” Awkwafina. Wang has written a deeply personal film that claims to be “Based on an Actual Lie,” and she’s found precisely the right star to maintain the delicate balance of this story – one that easily could have become sentimental and manipulative but resonates with truth from first scene to last. This go down as one of the best performances of Sundance 2019, a genuine, heartfelt acting turn that proves that Awkwafina has a range that even her most diehard fans may not have suspected. She never once feels mannered or forced, completely disappearing into her likable, heartbreaking character.

She plays Billi, a struggling writer in New York, whose extended family is still in China. Her father (the wonderful Tzi Ma) left China a quarter-century ago for the States, and his brother raised a family in Japan, but the matriarch of the clan, Billi’s grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), is back in China. From the very first scene between Billi and her ‘Nai Nai,’ as they have what appears to be a regular phone conversation, one can sense the support and love between the two, even though they’re hundreds of miles apart. So it’s believable that Billi is shattered when she learns that Nai Nai has lung cancer—the doctors are giving her three months.

In what is apparently culturally commonplace, Billi’s family makes a decision that some people might find abhorrent—they don’t tell Nai Nai that she’s dying. As Billi’s uncle Haibin (Jiang Yongbo) says, it’s the family’s emotional burden to bear. And so the family stages a wedding between Billi’s cousin Hao Hao (Chen Han) and his new girlfriend Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) so that the family can all go to China to say goodbye to the family matriarch…without her knowing they’re saying goodbye.

“The Farewell” has some beautiful, truthful things to say about how love persists across the oceans. We often move away and leave our family, but we are more intrinsically tied to them than we ever will be to anyone else. And watching Billi, at a formative point in her life, comprehend the influence her grandmother has had on her while fighting her natural instinct to literally say goodbye makes for powerful filmmaking. As someone who recently said goodbye to a grandparent, the things this film says about how love transcends language and location struck me as powerfully true. It will likely make you wish you spent more time with your grandparents, but it will also reaffirm how important your connection to them was even though you didn’t.

A far different family connection is captured in Alma Har’el’s “Honey Boy,” a film that represents a cinematic act of courage for its writer and co-star Shia LaBeouf, who delivered the director a screenplay that’s based on his own upbringing as a child star under the thumb of an abusive father…played in the film by LaBeouf. “Honey Boy” opens with a riveting montage of a young actor in 2005 named Otis (Lucas Hedges), who first appears on the set of an action movie that is clearly a stand-in for “Transformers.” The montage ends with Otis being told that he has symptoms of PTSD. He doesn’t understand how that’s possible. What’s his trauma? It’s his upbringing. And it’s Shia’s upbringing. “Honey Boy” is the cinematic exorcism needed to deal with a major actor’s PTSD. On that level, it’s riveting drama, always existing as a personal, meta piece for a man openly and artistically dealing with his past while also being a study of child stardom, addiction, and abuse.

The increasingly impressive Noah Jupe plays young Otis, stuck in a sleazy motel with his dad James, who he pays to be his assistant. Otis is a child star of a certain level, not big enough to live the L.A. high life, but big enough to keep him and his dad alive. James is a former rodeo clown, former alcoholic, former convict, and former sex offender. He’s that classic male type of a someone who finds a way to blame everyone else for his failures. He’s selfish. His problems and needs are more important than his sons, and we know that from minute one when he’s too distracted by a pretty woman to take care of Otis. Much of “Honey Boy” plays out like a tense two-hander with Otis and James in their tiny motel room, and the audience waiting for an outburst.

There are parts of “Honey Boy” that feel repetitively over-directed and then other parts that feel under-directed—moments I wanted to live in longer or to breathe more. It has a herky-jerky rhythm at times, although that could be to reflect the way that traumatic memories often return to us. And yet my problems with “Honey Boy” are vastly overshadowed by the courage it took to even make this movie. Labeouf has become a really fascinating actor in challenging work like “American Honey,” “Nymphomaniac,” and even “Borg v. McEnroe,” and I’ve found myself rooting for that trajectory to continue. Hopefully, just making “Honey Boy” allows him the closure he needed.

As much as I went into “Native Son” excited for a modern telling of Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, with a pair of fascinating young actors, that excitement dissipated as the movie continues. Visual artist Rashid Johnson’s choice for a directorial debut is an undeniably ambitious interpretation of a challenging novel to turn into a film with a incredibly talented cast that includes “Moonlight” break-out Ashton Sanders and “If Beale Street Could Talk” break-out Kiki Layne – and the casting wasn’t the only thing here inspired by the work of Barry Jenkins. And one can easily appreciate the ambition embedded in an attempt to illuminate how the themes of Wright’s work resonate eight decades later. But there were decisions made in this production – both in how the work has been updated and how it was not – that drain “Native Son” of the momentum it really needs.

The story is certainly still a fascinating one. Bigger “Big” Thomas (Sanders) lives in Chicago with his mom and two siblings. He’s a fascinating dichotomy in that he’s the kind of guy who seems like he wants to fade into the background – just hanging out with his girlfriend Bessie (Layne, who should be a household name any day now and is the best thing here). He feeds local kids, watches movies, refuses hard drugs, and stays of trouble, including his buddy’s pleas to help rob a store. But he’s also got a fashion style that screams for attention with green hair, black fingernails, and a jacket that almost looks spray-painted. He wants to take unpredictable routes through life, and his favorite punk bands, including Death and Bad Brains, both mirror and influence his personality.

Then he gets a very unpredictable job, as the driver for a wealthy Chicago power player named Will Dalton (Bill Camp), a power player in the Windy City with an Evanston mansion and a blind wife (Elizabeth Marvel). There’s a fascinating, uneasy tension in Dalton house, which has no security cameras and still uses a coal furnace. And the Dalton daughter, Mary (Margaret Qualley) is both incredibly drawn to Bigger and kind of sees him as another notch in her list of multicultural experiences. The first time they meet, she asks him if he’s “outraged,” and wants to go to a soul food restaurant on the south side. He represents a world she’s passionate about through protest but knows little about on a practical level.

The second half of “Native Son” is as tricky as storytelling gets, and Johnson can’t quite get a handle on it, including the “big scene,” which is poorly handled tonally. And then he makes major changes to the events that unfold after that, which result in a clipped ending that lacks impact. The mannered storytelling and direction of the performances start to push audiences away right when the movie needs to pull them in, and he makes one major adaptation decision that simply doesn't work. Most of all, right when it needs urgency, it’s a movie that mistakes pregnant pauses and whispered lines for “deep meaning,” and even though the clearly-talented Sanders is totally committed, the Johnson directs his leading man into a performance that feels showy right when it needs to be heartfelt, angry, and direct.

There are still powerful moments and interesting performances, so it's far from a complete miss, but most of what works about "Native Son" is on the surface. Every time you try to dig below to find the emotion that drives it, you come up empty. I wanted “Native Son” to leave audiences short of breath, rolling its themes around in their mind. The story of Bigger Thomas needs rage and heat, but this version’s as cold as a Chicago winter.

    from All Content http://bit.ly/2sQUfta

[spiritual-doctor4u]

BREATH OF LIFE - DEEP & LONG

BREATH OF LIFE - DEEP ONES EQUATE TO LONG LIFE

DEEP BREATHING MESSAGES THE INTERNAL ORGANS

It is the primal wave movement.  The source of this rhythm lies in the swelling and receding of the motions of pelvis & abdomen. Breathing is a global body experience.   Every breath massages all the internal organs for good health automatically. We feel the body through the medium of breath. Listen to your breathing and know who you are. Inhabit your body with full awareness. Entering stillness within the breath. Observe how the breath is inside the breath Pause & be still. Inhalation is born out of this stillness and exhalation returns to this stillness. Allow yourself to become luminous stillness. Soul shining star. Witness thoughts from this stillness, & you will get to peacefulness. The capacity for aliveness & pleasure permeates every cell.

OXYGEN LOADED BREATHING ALWAYS HEALS - PERSONAL ICU

History of breath gives us the knowledge of our childhood wounds, trauma, fears & chronic insecurities. We must open up to these & consciously breath them out. Don’t wait for the crisis to change your lives. Hurry up sickness, is an epidemic these days. Make choices, slow down, spend time lavishly, then you will have more of it. Healing with the breath is an ancient art lost in time. Affirm loudly that each breath is transforming me into thine image of purity, perfect happy soul.

FEELING AT HOME WITH EVERY BREATH

What we are and what we wish to know are not separate. It is the same thing. The finger pointing at the moon. We are awakened consciousness. The very nature of the breath arising from within us announces this message over & over again.  Celebrate your own homecoming. Mindfulness is to mind the breath, is to decide, that this very moment is yours to own it. To extricate self from the past & pull of future, gradually come to peace with ourselves, one thing at a time with full attention.  When not at peace, we feel righteous anger, a justifiable disappointment.  Solution is to be choice-less.

INTIMACY THROUGH TOUCH OF BREATH

Marriage of two psyches, two histories, two perspectives, but one relationship can be infinitely complex & potentially confusing. We are wedded to the living pulsing life force in your beloved & everyone else. This natural cycle, where sexual desire waxes & wanes like the cycle of moon, allows us necessary periods of solitude, self reflection, and regeneration to make deep connection with self, the soul. But we are trained for scheduled performances.  Choose mindful spontaneity consciously. Hugging is redefined for your benefit. How much of your body & self you make accessible to the other partner. Intimacy is touching from inner body.  Allow feeling parts of ourselves. They remain untouched & disconnected from their lovers, a complete sense of alienation.  Try touching with soft organs, circulating fluids, the breath that moves through all these, the heart beating, lungs inflating & deflating, feel how your partner yields to you, where you open up, & surrender to her, where you hold back.  Lovemaking is letting go. The greater the effort in all parts of the body, the more blocked will be the fragile wave of sex. Pause and feel the breath soften. Simply follow the natural flow and melt into sleep.

MEDITATION WITH BREATH - PRANIC BREATHING

Meditation based on breath. This is my first breath in, inhale fully deeply & hold.   That is my last breath out, breath out fully & hold again. Live as if it is the last day on earth.  Watch the parade of jumbled & negative thoughts dancing on the screen of your mind. It does not mean renouncing all the things one enjoys. Rather you are renouncing true pleasure & delight by being mind-full of every breath.  Instead of working from rigid assumptions base, we start to take bearings from the reality of present. Cultural & social forces that are holding us hostage at the end of our lives, we may stand baffled that we have striven so hard & so long for things we never wanted in the first place.  It is a myth of successful person.  To be someone and get there, quickly, anyhow, madly rushing through life. It is surely a mirage.  

NYASA  DHANA  -  THE ART OF TAKING CARE WITH MEDITATION

The aim is to channel Pran Shakti into 26 points sequentially for 20 seconds per point.  Breath in, hold for 20 seconds or more, chant mentally – OM CHITANYA CHITANYA SWAAHA slowly, exhale breath. Reflect on these 26 points with colored air & suggest activation of consciousness has emerged. Repeat the exercise twice ascending first then descending order.

POINTS IN THE BODY: total 26

Soles,  Calves, Thighs  - in pairs

Genital, Navel, Heart

Lungs, Palms, hands, shoulders. – in pairs

Eyes, ears, eyebrows – in pairs

Neck, Mouth, Nose.

WITHOUT LUNGS & THEIR FUNCTION OF PURIFICATION YOU WOULD BE DEAD IN MINUTES

THE ART OF LIVING - BY HEART & LUNGS

The art lies in understanding the secrets of long healthy life, disease free living, and absence of old age complications. The top secret is to live by HEART and not by head, as we normally do. What is your heart? It is a mechanical pump which has a very small horse power, yet very powerful one and a complex maze of pipelines and valves. In short it is the most sophisticated hydraulic system ever in the world. The length of our arteries, veins and capillaries is so huge that they can go around the earth once. Imagine thousands of kilometers of microscopic pipelines being pumped with a very advanced fluid, called blood, 24/7 without ever stopping or shutting down for maintenance. Five liters of blood keeps circulating through very thin capillaries tubes all day long with full force of 120 systolic / 80 diastolic, mm Hg.

 ANCIENT METHOD OF MEASURING BLOOD PRESSURE

In olden days around 1847, blood pressure was measured by inserting into the artery, a glass capillary tube which had to be at least 7 feet high to offset the force of the pumping heart, with calm emotions inside you. In angry moments, the blood pressure shoots up so high that the doctors required a 14 feet high glass tubing to offset the increased force of the poor heart. You can visualize the damage occurring inside the heart, when you get mad with anger and revenge over trifles, over false sense of perceptions of Family Honor, and verbal castigation's on intangibles like religion, which of course is concocted by man with Stone Age intelligence.

INTELLIGENT REUSABLE FLUID

This also implies that the fluid called blood has to be of low viscosity, like water and easily flow able at all times of your lifetime. But that does not happen. We are so busy chasing valueless stuff, money, cars, houses, possessions, false images, temporary fame, name, that we forget to drink enough water and hydrate ourselves to keep the blood thin and flowing easily. So what happens is just the opposite. The persistent neglect, of hydration month after month and year after year, gets us dehydrated heavily, making the blood thick and sticky, just like honey. It refuses to flow. Also lifetime of unhealthy eating, bad habits, and shallow judgments makes our blood highly toxic, very viscous and thick additionally.

HEART IS A TINY PUMP

What happens is pretty easy to tell? A small pump with a low horse power is pushed to its limits to keep pumping thick, toxic, sticky blood through 1,60,000 km of pipeline without stopping. Remember that you would require many times higher horse power to pump a liquid into microscopic pipelines or tubes. This small heart of yours has to pump and push even harder to get oxygenated blood into those microscopic capillaries embedded deep between layers and layers of fat. The heart muscles get fatigued very soon and give up on you. Consequences are deadly or near fatal. The heart pump gets over loaded with all the extra work to be done. The heart muscles become over worked and fail. The result is heart failure or cardiac arrest. The heart is crying out loudly, “I cannot go on any more, I am sorry.” The pump motor has ceased and you are deceased. In short you killed yourself. I call it suicide: A slow silent deliberate killing. If you do not die of cardiac arrest then you are sure to die of cancer, because the blood cannot get into those fine capillaries, and they start to wither away, atrophy and turn cancerous.

BLOOD - CARRIER OF OXYGEN & LIFE

The second function of the heart is to pump the dirty, sticky, toxic blood into the lungs to be cleaned up and made pure again and again. Blood is a reusable hydraulic fluid. The lungs are a wonderful marvel of engineering. They have a capacity of holding 5 liters of air in every breadth. Yes exactly 5000 cubic centimeters of oxygenated air. The surface area inside the lungs is 2500 square feet, equal to the area of a lawn tennis court.

AERATION MIRACLE

Here inside the lungs the dirty blood full of dead cells, toxins, carbon dioxide, monoxide, and no nutrients comes in contact with the air we breathe in. So much blood is exposed yet not a drop spills or leaks out. What amazes me is the fact that blood does not clot up in this area? If you cut yourself, anywhere on the skin, the oozing blood comes in contact with the same air and clots up immediately to help you from bleeding to death. Your blood contains an important lifesaving chemical called clotting factor. It is very vital for our survival in times of accidents and fights.

This way it gives out all the toxins and absorbs in the oxygen and nutrients and becomes fresh and pure. The Hemoglobin gets saturated with oxygen and thus travels to the brain and other organs in the body. It is a pure engineering marvel and cosmic miracle. If the cells do not get oxygen, they become sick and die. When the brain does not get oxygen, it mal functions and creates further problems for our body. We are oxygen loving bundle of bacteria. We function best when the breathing is at its highest point, just like when you are making love to your mate.

That’s why they say breadth is life. When you are hardly breathing or breathing in a very shallow manner then disease sets in and death is imminent. Finally when you stop breathing, you are deceased or dead. But again we lead meaningless lives, preoccupied with television, computers, video games, working, worrying for small stuff, studying, and all these activities which force us to breathe in a very shallow manner.

MANUAL  BELLOWS

We inhale just 100 to 500 cc of air in every breadth compared to the capacity of 5000 cc. Imagine human beings using only 10 % of their lung capacities. The lower 40% capacity inside the lungs is never expelled out. It stays inside and causes local pollution in our blood. The residual air is the primary pollutant. The upper 40% of extra air of our total lung capacity is never used up. We never breathe in or inhale this part. Hence by and large most of us operate between 40% - 60% range and less. This is very poor performance on our part. It does not make sense if you work hard, make lots of money, eat richly, dress lavishly, but have dirty toxic blood running in your arteries. Does it make any sense? NO! Never; hence be aware of the delicate internal world, instead of being foolishly aware of outside worldly stuff. It does not help you in anyway.

MOUTH OR NOSE BREATHERS

How you breathe is another big factor in your survival. We are normally mouth breathers, taking in all the dust, microbes, and pollutants. The cold dirty air hits our throats and larynx, causing it to dry up in the process. Nature gave us a nose for a reason. We rarely use it fully, and if we did we would benefit tremendously. The nose heats up the incoming air, cleans it and by passes the throat area. But you got to be first conscious of this fact then and then only it becomes possible. A clean nose is a prerequisite, which is a rarity. Nose has another very important function to play when we inhale. The nitric oxide gas producing glands work only when we use our noses. This gas is fully soluble in blood. It helps dilate the microscopic capillaries and allows the blood to reach the smallest crevices in our body which are buried deep under the layers of fat. When this does not happen, the cells atrophy and die and cancer starts to build up. It is all in your hands, or in your nose power to live incrementally or die slowly. Nitric oxide gas very cleverly interacts with oxygen radicals to form Metabolites that destroy pathogens inside our bodies.

HOMES ARE GAS CHAMBERS

Living an oxygen starved life is the starting point of most of the diseases, sickness, and poor health. We further complicate matters by living in closed, fully sealed, air tight houses and offices for at least eight months in a year if not more in cold regions of the world. Everyone knows that the inside air is 100 times more polluted than the outside air. We make our houses air tight basically to keep the cold part outside, but this way we keep the oxygen out too. Hence our homes are more of gas chambers, heated though. We also take pride in sharing the little oxygen trapped in the house with our beloved pets, cats and dogs. So we end up inhaling, breathing stale air, full of carbon dioxide and monoxide. We are wrongly programmed to additionally light up Tea-lights in our gas chambers to use up the balance quantity of oxygen left behind. In World War II, Hitler exterminated millions of Jews by putting them in toxic gas chambers. Today, we are killing ourselves by living in our own personal “GAS CHAMBERS”.

LOVING HEART

There is yet another function of your heart. Can you guess this one? It is an important function and you know it from day one. It is LOVE. We are all love products. When two people, our parents made love, we were born. In the initial years, we get so much love that you cannot measure or keep track of. Both parents shower love on their children initially. Latter on things go wrong and we start replacing love with material things, toys, possessions and other loveless pursuits. Then more things go wrong and we are loaded with hate & hatred. To get back into ‘love mode’ we have to again start loving ourselves first.

Love our bodies; love our selves correctly, and intelligently. If I come to your house and ask for a glass of water, how can you serve me a glass of water when your own pitcher or fridge is empty? So, the secret is to love yourself enough, and fill up your “pitcher”. When you are totally filled up with love then and then only you can love another person.                            

Today when you tell a woman, I love you; it sounds hollow, its meaningless and a false promise. Absence of love brings in all the other terrible negative EMOTIONS which cause havoc in our bodies. These emotions disturb the delicate balance of hormone production and cause cancers, diseases and death. There are 200 varied emotions and corresponding 200 diseases. People who love themselves truly, do not smoke, drink alcohol, or over eat, and remain vegetarians by and large, eating salt and sugar in moderation only. Food does kill and heal as well. Today we even conduct our jogging, exercises and work outs in indoor gymnasiums, sharing the polluted air. This is how we make the dirty blood dirtier, defeating the purpose of exercise. How is government’s health care plan going to help you, I wonder?

 WATERY VENICE - INSIDE OUR BODIES

Our body is unique, like the city of Venice, where the highways for all movement are watery. In Venice we have complex interconnected systems of channels, canals and parking lots, all made up of water and water alone.        If the water level in this maze was to go down by a couple of inches the water taxis, boats and canoes would get stuck in the sand and traffic come to a halt. If the water was allowed to thicken up by pollution then again the traffic would be affected badly, just as it happens in our bodies.

DRINK BUT DO NOT DILUTE INSIDE

Prevention is better than cure. Drink lots and lots of water. At least four liters of water per day: But, not with meals or food. If you do, then you dilute the digestive juices and acids. These enzymes, juices, and acids are required in the full strength to break down the food you eat, quickly and effectively. But when you consume water or other liquids alongside with food you are upsetting the chemical balance, inside the stomach. The human body is basically an alkaline body. Maintaining the correct PH is of prime importance. If you keep the alkalinity between 7.4 and 8.0 then you can expect to live longest. Cancer cells cannot survive in an alkaline and oxygenated environment.              

Water is retained by the human body as follows: 66% inside the cells, 26 % outside the cells, and balance 8% in our blood. Water is badly needed by the body to wash away the dead cells, toxins, and other pollutants.

WATER AS A SOLVENT FOR SOLUTES

Water is required to back wash the salts deposited in the stomach lining.  Water is needed to manufacture complex hormones, by your glands in the body. Therefore drink lots of water before meals. Water is required to keep your blood fluid and flowing. Water is required as a solvent to regulate all solutes and functions in the body. Enzymes work more efficiently in solutions of high viscosity. The preferred ratio is 25 % solute in a solution.

Water is needed to replenish the winter steam, the moisture that escapes from your blood stream with every breadth.  A small clot, a microscopic obstruction or buildup in the arteries could be fatal.                                

Water is also needed by the intestines to keep the waste products wet and moving easily. Any stoppage in this section is very harmful. The sewage system of the body starts to seep into the blood stream, causing you to be sick and dead eventually.

Rohit Khanna - IN-DWELLER

[theconservativebrief]

The best way to understand Troom Troom, the YouTube channel devoted to bizarre DIY tutorials, “hacks,” and “funny pranks,” is to spend multiple hours watching it until your brain turns into sprinkle-covered neon slime that can somehow also be used as lip gloss.

Because this is precisely the sort of thing that Troom Troom traffics in: do-it-yourself how-tos that no person could or should ever replicate. The most popular videos currently on the channel are tips on how to sneak food and makeup into class in laughably arduous ways: One suggests removing the glue from a glue stick and inserting a block of hard cheese into the container, while another recommends cutting an apple in half, using an Exact-O knife to remove the center, and then stuffing an eyeshadow palette inside. Of the apple!

Troom Troom is just one of many content factories of mysterious international origin that have gamed YouTube’s algorithm with bright, clickbait-y thumbnails and SEO keywords like “DIY,” “hack,” and “prank wars.” And to stand out from the thousands of other channels peddling the exact same service, they’ve turned to stranger and stranger content.

[embedded content]

That’s how you end up with a video that recently went viral on Twitter, featuring a woman cutting off a (very long) strand of her hair, trimming it down to less than half an inch, and attaching it to the end of a pencil to create an eyeshadow brush. This, produced by the equally wild YouTube channel 5-Minute Crafts, is apparently an easier way to apply eyeshadow than using one’s fingers.

And yet it’s working. 5-Minute Crafts currently has the fifth most subscribers of any YouTube channel, nearly 40 million. According to Social Blade, its total of more than 10 billion video views translates to anywhere between $2 million and $34 million in annual earnings (the discrepancy here is from the varying possibilities of cost per impression). It’s estimated that Troom Troom, which currently boasts nearly 10 million subscribers and almost 3 billion total views of its surreal, pastel-plastered videos, pulls in between about $500,000 and $8 million each year.

Not only are Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts wildly successful in their own right, but they’re also part of the growing network of reaction videos to cringe-inducing content on the site, creating a cycle that generates millions of views for the YouTubers who engage with it.

But creators I spoke to also expressed concerns about these types of channels, ranging from their clickbait-y strategies to plagiarism to manipulating children’s internet behavior. The DIY YouTube space may not be all rainbows and unicorns, even if its thumbnails are full of them.

Troom Troom’s essential weirdness doesn’t just come from its how-tos being absurdly useless. They’re weird because they are narrated by a voiceover actress with a perfect American accent speaking a kind of English that sounds like it’s been run through about three layers of Google Translate. They’re weird because they feature a rotating cast of very thin white women who are referred to by nicknames like “the Blue-Eyed Girl,” “Redhead,” “Mrs. Smith,” or “Dolly,” and weirder still because those identities sometimes switch among them. They’re weird because it’s impossible to tell whether the whole thing is satire or if it’s part of a malicious Russian cyberattack targeting the YouTube-obsessed children of the world (but more on that later).

Besides being odd in its content and tone, Troom Troom is also incredibly elusive. No one can agree on who makes the videos, who owns the company, where it’s based, and who is making money off it. But that elusiveness invites speculation, and internet detectives have managed to puzzle out a few key pieces: first, that the website is registered under the name Eugene Miroshnykov, and second, that many of the videos are likely filmed in Odessa, Ukraine, judging by the Ukrainian Cyrillic script on many of the products used and the locations tagged on Troom Troom’s Instagram.

[embedded content]

The identities of the actresses, too, have been largely exposed via their Instagram accounts. Most of them say they live in Odessa and are models and artists. The channel launched in 2015, and it’s clear from watching its earliest videos that Troom Troom began with standard DIY and didn’t reach its full weirdness — and biggest views — until about a year ago.

But there are still the requisite conspiracy theories: that Troom Troom is actually run by a millennial woman in San Francisco, or that the Troom Troom girls are being held against their will, forced to make weird DIY videos for ransom. Two media outlets that published stories on Troom Troom also failed to find out much else.

Which is why I was surprised when the email I sent to the address listed on Troom Troom’s YouTube page actually garnered a response. The sender’s name was indeed listed as Eugene Miroshnykov, confirming what I’d seen on Reddit, but after one back-and-forth, the name had been changed. To protect his anonymity — he expressed concerns about sleuths finding his phone number or other personal information — I agreed to refer to him by the nickname Zeon.

[embedded content]

Zeon told me that Troom Troom was actually started by a collective of professional artists “that wanted to do something fun.” Zeon is not among these founders — he says he was hired when the channel already had a million subscribers and described his job as a “salesperson.” Writers and directors are based in Europe and the US and brainstorm video ideas via Skype, and then execute them within their own team. He described the company structure as similar to a “holacracy,” in which there is no top-down management and the content is instead “the result of the collective mind.”

“We got inspiration from [the world of] DIY text and picture tutorials,” he wrote. “Most of our team [is made up of] professional artists, so they found usually all the tutorials in text form, but not in the videos. We tried to solve that issue. Firstly, it was more educational and serious videos that [were] fun. Currently, we try to mix entertainment with DIY value. We found that any video should entertain if you want to make an impact on the viewers and not just to get them bored.”

[embedded content]

This explains the heavy lifting that narration and plot serve in the average Troom Troom video — a “funny pranks” video is never just a list of pranks; it’s a story about how, say, “Dolly” sticks a plastic lizard into “Samantha’s” toothpaste and then replaces the inside of a lemon with a tennis ball. Later, Samantha gets back at Dolly by cutting out a hole in an iPhone case and placing it over a book so that it looks like Dolly’s phone literally burned through. The back-and-forth pranking only gets more complicated from there (I am not kidding).

Zeon says Troom Troom is independently owned, does not have any outside funding, and is profitable. “[It] has plans to grow, but the direction is currently confidential,” he adds. Zeon declined to connect me with the founders, nor did he provide any other details about his background or those of his co-workers, but I was easily able to find detailed Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that matched the name on his later emails, which leads me to believe that Zeon is, indeed, a real person.

The origins of 5-Minute Crafts are, for what it’s worth, far less mysterious. 5-Minute Crafts is owned by TheSoul Publishing, which says it produces an absolutely wild 1,500 videos a month, has 550 employees, and operates 40 Facebook pages in 10 languages. It owns mega-popular YouTube channels like Bright Side (animated videos that are a mix of riddles, facts, and “hacks”) and the 8 million-strong Facebook page You’re Gorgeous (your standard Facebook content farm content). Neither 5-Minute Crafts nor TheSoul Publishing responded to requests for an interview.

[embedded content]

Notably, TheSoul Publishing is also based in Eastern Europe. According to a 2017 Forbes piece, the company was founded by the Russia-based Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, both of whom have backgrounds in social media content. To answer the implicit question, unlike many viral Facebook posts that came out of Russia over the past few years, TheSoul Publishing’s content does not appear to be overtly political.

5-Minute Crafts has four times as many subscribers as Troom Troom, but it’s supported by a 550-employee business. This raises the still-unanswered question: How many people work for Troom Troom? The channel is able to publish a 10- to 15-minute video every day, which requires a relatively large team, not to mention lots of money. For the most part, how they’re able to pull it off remains unclear.

To understand the rise of peculiar DIY videos, you have to understand the rest of YouTube. Videos on the platform succeed largely based on how well they cater to popular SEO keywords, and if they create a sense of urgency in the title (which often means using all caps and a ton of exclamation points), and use a visually striking thumbnail image — that’s why you’ll see a lot of disembodied lips biting into a strange object.

“I started noticing these really distinct, super-saturated, photoshopped thumbnails showing up in my recommended videos feed last year,” says Cristine Rotenberg, the 30-year-old YouTuber behind the nail art channel Simply Nailogical, which has 6 million subscribers. “It’s really strange. It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks.”

Bizarre projects with bait-y thumbnails is a strategy that plenty of channels have embraced, but that other established crafting players have rejected. Nifty, the crafting vertical owned by BuzzFeed, has invested in projects that its audience requests and is interested in actually attempting (unlike, say, an incredibly complicated DIY to make a mini box of Altoids as a prank, as one Troom Troom video offers). On these “normal” crafting channels, for lack of a better term, you’ll find how-tos for things like fall porch decor, headboard making, and pumpkin carving with thumbnails that reveal the actual product.

[embedded content]

Erin Phraner, the supervising producer of Nifty, acknowledged the pressure that YouTube crafting channels face to game the algorithm and rely on bait-y titles. Nifty has also had its projects stolen by other craft channels. “It’s the reality of playing in that space,” Phraner says.

“Those types of thumbnails and titles and crazy hack projects definitely skew toward clickbait-y,” she adds. “But I think for us, our feeling is that you might see that pop up in the feed and click to watch it once because it seems kind of outlandish, but our whole business is we’re trying to build trust and create things that people actually want to bring into their home.”

“It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks”

For its part, YouTube says it’s already done the work of combating clickbait on the site. A YouTube spokesperson explained that since 2012, the algorithm has rewarded longer watch times over video clicks. So for instance, if users watch a video for a few seconds, realize it isn’t what they were expecting, and click out, that video wouldn’t show up in users’ feeds as often as one where viewers stuck around.

Plus, the term “clickbait” might not even apply when the actual tutorials on Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts are as wild as they are. Zeon explained that Troom Troom’s strategy is the opposite of Nifty’s — the videos are about entertainment, not service. And it’s their bizarro entertainment value that makes them perfectly suited to the current climate of cringe on YouTube, and commentary about that cringe.

“There’s so much unintentional humor in Troom Troom videos,” says Rotenberg of Simply Nailogical. “I could make Troom Troom parodies every week and laugh for the rest of my life.”

So far, she’s only made a few. In one, she attempts Troom Troom’s “20 banana hacks,” which include making a “banana holster” out of felt and painting a smile on a banana peel; in another, she tries some back-to-school pranks, such as putting hay in somebody’s backpack.

[embedded content]

Rotenberg’s videos are but a small sliver of the cottage industry that is the Troom Troom reaction video. Other popular creators like Danny Gonzalez, Cody Ko, and Jarvis Johnson have each garnered millions of views by satirizing Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts, using the standard YouTube reaction video format in which the host talks to the camera and reacts to clips from other videos.

It’s a cycle that’s lucrative for both the reactionaries and their targets. Johnson, who’s 26 and also has a full-time job working for Patreon in San Francisco, says that a reaction video he made about 5-Minute Crafts was a “huge catalyst” for growing his YouTube channel, which now has nearly half a million subscribers. Since then, he’s published a mini investigation on Troom Troom, as well as a video about the “dark side of Bright Side,” the sister channel to 5-Minute Crafts.

[embedded content]

He says that while on the surface these sorts of channels are pretty innocuous, he does share concerns about clickbait, plagiarism, and their large audience of children. But ultimately, his reaction videos started as a joke — or rather, an exercise in telling jokes. “I thought commentary videos were a brilliant vessel for comedic writing that also fit in with what YouTube’s algorithm promotes,” he explains. “I happened upon a 5-Minute Crafts video called ‘20 Tips If You Spend Your Life in Front of Computer.’ At the time, I felt like I’d struck internet gold because I didn’t see anyone else talking about their absurd hacks.”

Because that’s the thing: Troom Troom videos are incredibly ripe for parody. The joy in watching them is largely based on their obvious absurdity — the uncanny narration, the knockoff–Disney Channel set design, the outlandishness of the projects.

Troom Troom videos are arguably part of Cringe YouTube, the ever-expanding network of uncomfortable and earnest videos that encompasses TikTok compilations, Instagram comedians, and former Vine dudes with creepy hair, among others. It’s difficult to point to a YouTube video that isn’t a little cringey in its own way, but within Cringe YouTube, it isn’t just the original videos that get views — it’s the never-ending cycle of reactions and commentary. PewDiePie, the most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time, for example, has built a career on making fun of other YouTubers’ attempts at earnestness.

[embedded content]

On why the genre is so popular right now, Johnson guesses it’s because of “mystery, community, and the whole ‘so bad it’s good’ thing. If someone sees something super absurd and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there.”

He also compares Troom Troom to a movie wildly considered to be one of the most unintentionally laughable films of all time. “As someone who is a die-hard fan of the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room, I see A LOT of similarities between The Room and Troom Troom,” he adds. “I feel like I should start a conspiracy theory about how Troom Troom is short for ‘The Room The Room.’”

“If someone sees something super absurd [on YouTube] and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there”

And much like The Room, the question around Troom Troom, 5-Minute Crafts, and anyone who has ever made a bonkers video for the internet will always be the same: Are they in on the joke?

In the case of Troom Troom, it seems like the creators embrace the absurdity, even if it isn’t intentionally ironic. Zeon is aware of the intense, morbid fascination with the brand, and said that often, the “story creates the crafts,” meaning that at least some Troom Troom videos were not actually produced with the intent of teaching people how to make a thing — they’re just for fun.

But is weird DIY YouTube an exercise in satire? Probably not. And while there may not be an appetite for glue-stick cheese, there’s certainly an appetite for looking at it.

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Original Source -> YouTube is full of cringey, clickbait DIY channels. They’re even weirder than you think.

via The Conservative Brief

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/youtube-is-full-of-cringey-clickbait-diy-channels-theyre-even-weirder-than-you-think/

YouTube is full of cringey, clickbait DIY channels. They're even weirder than you think.

The best way to understand Troom Troom, the YouTube channel devoted to bizarre DIY tutorials, “hacks,” and “funny pranks,” is to spend multiple hours watching it until your brain turns into sprinkle-covered neon slime that can somehow also be used as lip gloss.

Because this is precisely the sort of thing that Troom Troom traffics in: do-it-yourself how-tos that no person could or should ever replicate. The most popular videos currently on the channel are tips on how to sneak food and makeup into class in laughably arduous ways: One suggests removing the glue from a glue stick and inserting a block of hard cheese into the container, while another recommends cutting an apple in half, using an Exact-O knife to remove the center, and then stuffing an eyeshadow palette inside. Of the apple!

Troom Troom is just one of many content factories of mysterious international origin that have gamed YouTube’s algorithm with bright, clickbait-y thumbnails and SEO keywords like “DIY,” “hack,” and “prank wars.” And to stand out from the thousands of other channels peddling the exact same service, they’ve turned to stranger and stranger content.

That’s how you end up with a video that recently went viral on Twitter, featuring a woman cutting off a (very long) strand of her hair, trimming it down to less than half an inch, and attaching it to the end of a pencil to create an eyeshadow brush. This, produced by the equally wild YouTube channel 5-Minute Crafts, is apparently an easier way to apply eyeshadow than using one’s fingers.

And yet it’s working. 5-Minute Crafts currently has the fifth most subscribers of any YouTube channel, nearly 40 million. According to Social Blade, its total of more than 10 billion video views translates to anywhere between $2 million and $34 million in annual earnings (the discrepancy here is from the varying possibilities of cost per impression). It’s estimated that Troom Troom, which currently boasts nearly 10 million subscribers and almost 3 billion total views of its surreal, pastel-plastered videos, pulls in between about $500,000 and $8 million each year.

Not only are Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts wildly successful in their own right, but they’re also part of the growing network of reaction videos to cringe-inducing content on the site, creating a cycle that generates millions of views for the YouTubers who engage with it.

But creators I spoke to also expressed concerns about these types of channels, ranging from their clickbait-y strategies to plagiarism to manipulating children’s internet behavior. The DIY YouTube space may not be all rainbows and unicorns, even if its thumbnails are full of them.

Troom Troom’s essential weirdness doesn’t just come from its how-tos being absurdly useless. They’re weird because they are narrated by a voiceover actress with a perfect American accent speaking a kind of English that sounds like it’s been run through about three layers of Google Translate. They’re weird because they feature a rotating cast of very thin white women who are referred to by nicknames like “the Blue-Eyed Girl,” “Redhead,” “Mrs. Smith,” or “Dolly,” and weirder still because those identities sometimes switch among them. They’re weird because it’s impossible to tell whether the whole thing is satire or if it’s part of a malicious Russian cyberattack targeting the YouTube-obsessed children of the world (but more on that later).

Besides being odd in its content and tone, Troom Troom is also incredibly elusive. No one can agree on who makes the videos, who owns the company, where it’s based, and who is making money off it. But that elusiveness invites speculation, and internet detectives have managed to puzzle out a few key pieces: first, that the website is registered under the name Eugene Miroshnykov, and second, that many of the videos are likely filmed in Odessa, Ukraine, judging by the Ukrainian Cyrillic script on many of the products used and the locations tagged on Troom Troom’s Instagram.

The identities of the actresses, too, have been largely exposed via their Instagram accounts. Most of them say they live in Odessa and are models and artists. The channel launched in 2015, and it’s clear from watching its earliest videos that Troom Troom began with standard DIY and didn’t reach its full weirdness — and biggest views — until about a year ago.

But there are still the requisite conspiracy theories: that Troom Troom is actually run by a millennial woman in San Francisco, or that the Troom Troom girls are being held against their will, forced to make weird DIY videos for ransom. Two media outlets that published stories on Troom Troom also failed to find out much else.

Which is why I was surprised when the email I sent to the address listed on Troom Troom’s YouTube page actually garnered a response. The sender’s name was indeed listed as Eugene Miroshnykov, confirming what I’d seen on Reddit, but after one back-and-forth, the name had been changed. To protect his anonymity — he expressed concerns about sleuths finding his phone number or other personal information — I agreed to refer to him by the nickname Zeon.

Zeon told me that Troom Troom was actually started by a collective of professional artists “that wanted to do something fun.” Zeon is not among these founders — he says he was hired when the channel already had a million subscribers and described his job as a “salesperson.” Writers and directors are based in Europe and the US and brainstorm video ideas via Skype, and then execute them within their own team. He described the company structure as similar to a “holacracy,” in which there is no top-down management and the content is instead “the result of the collective mind.”

“We got inspiration from [the world of] DIY text and picture tutorials,” he wrote. “Most of our team [is made up of] professional artists, so they found usually all the tutorials in text form, but not in the videos. We tried to solve that issue. Firstly, it was more educational and serious videos that [were] fun. Currently, we try to mix entertainment with DIY value. We found that any video should entertain if you want to make an impact on the viewers and not just to get them bored.”

This explains the heavy lifting that narration and plot serve in the average Troom Troom video — a “funny pranks” video is never just a list of pranks; it’s a story about how, say, “Dolly” sticks a plastic lizard into “Samantha’s” toothpaste and then replaces the inside of a lemon with a tennis ball. Later, Samantha gets back at Dolly by cutting out a hole in an iPhone case and placing it over a book so that it looks like Dolly’s phone literally burned through. The back-and-forth pranking only gets more complicated from there (I am not kidding).

Zeon says Troom Troom is independently owned, does not have any outside funding, and is profitable. “[It] has plans to grow, but the direction is currently confidential,” he adds. Zeon declined to connect me with the founders, nor did he provide any other details about his background or those of his co-workers, but I was easily able to find detailed Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that matched the name on his later emails, which leads me to believe that Zeon is, indeed, a real person.

The origins of 5-Minute Crafts are, for what it’s worth, far less mysterious. 5-Minute Crafts is owned by TheSoul Publishing, which says it produces an absolutely wild 1,500 videos a month, has 550 employees, and operates 40 Facebook pages in 10 languages. It owns mega-popular YouTube channels like Bright Side (animated videos that are a mix of riddles, facts, and “hacks”) and the 8 million-strong Facebook page You’re Gorgeous (your standard Facebook content farm content). Neither 5-Minute Crafts nor TheSoul Publishing responded to requests for an interview.

Notably, TheSoul Publishing is also based in Eastern Europe. According to a 2017 Forbes piece, the company was founded by the Russia-based Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, both of whom have backgrounds in social media content. To answer the implicit question, unlike many viral Facebook posts that came out of Russia over the past few years, TheSoul Publishing’s content does not appear to be overtly political.

5-Minute Crafts has four times as many subscribers as Troom Troom, but it’s supported by a 550-employee business. This raises the still-unanswered question: How many people work for Troom Troom? The channel is able to publish a 10- to 15-minute video every day, which requires a relatively large team, not to mention lots of money. For the most part, how they’re able to pull it off remains unclear.

To understand the rise of peculiar DIY videos, you have to understand the rest of YouTube. Videos on the platform succeed largely based on how well they cater to popular SEO keywords, and if they create a sense of urgency in the title (which often means using all caps and a ton of exclamation points), and use a visually striking thumbnail image — that’s why you’ll see a lot of disembodied lips biting into a strange object.

“I started noticing these really distinct, super-saturated, photoshopped thumbnails showing up in my recommended videos feed last year,” says Cristine Rotenberg, the 30-year-old YouTuber behind the nail art channel Simply Nailogical, which has 6 million subscribers. “It’s really strange. It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks.”

Bizarre projects with bait-y thumbnails is a strategy that plenty of channels have embraced, but that other established crafting players have rejected. Nifty, the home vertical owned by BuzzFeed, has invested in projects that its audience requests and is interested in actually attempting (unlike, say, an incredibly complicated DIY to make a mini box of Altoids as a prank, as one Troom Troom video offers). On these “normal” crafting channels, for lack of a better term, you’ll find how-tos for things like fall porch decor, headboard making, and pumpkin carving with thumbnails that reveal the actual product.

Erin Phraner, the supervising producer of Nifty, acknowledged the pressure that YouTube crafting channels face to game the algorithm and rely on bait-y titles. Nifty has also had its projects stolen by other craft channels. “It’s the reality of playing in that space,” Phraner says.

“Those types of thumbnails and titles and crazy hack projects definitely skew toward clickbait-y,” she adds. “But I think for us, our feeling is that you might see that pop up in the feed and click to watch it once because it seems kind of outlandish, but our whole business is we’re trying to build trust and create things that people actually want to bring into their home.”

she attempts Troom Troom’s “20 banana hacks,” which include making a “banana holster” out of felt and painting a smile on a banana peel; in another, she tries some back-to-school pranks, such as putting hay in somebody’s backpack.

Rotenberg’s videos are but a small sliver of the cottage industry that is the Troom Troom reaction video. Other popular creators like Danny Gonzalez, Cody Ko, and Jarvis Johnson have each garnered millions of views by satirizing Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts, using the standard YouTube reaction video format in which the host talks to the camera and reacts to clips from other videos.

It’s a cycle that’s lucrative for both the reactionaries and their targets. Johnson, who’s 26 and also has a full-time job working for Patreon in San Francisco, says that a reaction video he made about 5-Minute Crafts was a “huge catalyst” for growing his YouTube channel, which now has nearly half a million subscribers. Since then, he’s published a mini investigation on Troom Troom, as well as a video about the “dark side of Bright Side,” the sister channel to 5-Minute Crafts.

He says that while on the surface these sorts of channels are pretty innocuous, he does share concerns about clickbait, plagiarism, and their large audience of children. But ultimately, his reaction videos started as a joke — or rather, an exercise in telling jokes. “I thought commentary videos were a brilliant vessel for comedic writing that also fit in with what YouTube’s algorithm promotes,” he explains. “I happened upon a 5-Minute Crafts video called ‘20 Tips If You Spend Your Life in Front of Computer.’ At the time, I felt like I’d struck internet gold because I didn’t see anyone else talking about their absurd hacks.”

Because that’s the thing: Troom Troom videos are incredibly ripe for parody. The joy in watching them is largely based on their obvious absurdity — the uncanny narration, the knockoff–Disney Channel set design, the outlandishness of the projects.

Troom Troom videos are arguably part of Cringe YouTube, the ever-expanding network of uncomfortable and earnest videos that encompasses TikTok compilations, Instagram comedians, and former Vine dudes with creepy hair, among others. It’s difficult to point to a YouTube video that isn’t a little cringey in its own way, but within Cringe YouTube, it isn’t just the original videos that get views — it’s the never-ending cycle of reactions and commentary. PewDiePie, the most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time, for example, has built a career on making fun of other YouTubers’ attempts at earnestness.

On why the genre is so popular right now, Johnson guesses it’s because of “mystery, community, and the whole ‘so bad it’s good’ thing. If someone sees something super absurd and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there.”

He also compares Troom Troom to a movie wildly considered to be one of the most unintentionally laughable films of all time. “As someone who is a die-hard fan of the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room, I see A LOT of similarities between The Room and Troom Troom,” he adds. “I feel like I should start a conspiracy theory about how Troom Troom is short for ‘The Room The Room.’”

glue-stick cheese, there’s certainly an appetite for looking at it.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18065662/troom-troom-5-minute-crafts-youtube-diy-prank

[digitalcommsjbova]

Deciphering the Newsfeed of

I chose to study how media is displayed on LinkedIn, because I rarely use the platform unless I’m on the job hunt and sending out a few obligatory networking messages. I had high expectations for the largest professional networking website, because the job search function is so robust. However, in my first few minutes exploring my newsfeed, I was a bit mystified. Things I found abundant include: somewhat relevant advertisements, updates from connections to the nth degree, and sporadic trending news sections. Since I worked in recruiting for a few years, I mistakenly over-connected with too many prospective candidates in my former life. A great deal of what these connections react to and the content they share makes up what I perceive to be about 80% of my newsfeed after this experience. In other words, it’s a ton of noise from people I do not know as well as their connections.   For example, this week the content included many job postings, and “liked” posts ranged from someone’s proclamation of their ALS diagnosis that literally began with the quote "I am dying", to a video of a developer describing how to build a serverless application in java. In fact, these two posts were shared right on top of the other. I even saw a couple posts written completely in Spanish, which I discovered to be from connections made during my time recruiting for office locations in South America. The most fascinating part of this overload of random content I digested is that the users on the platform actively engage with each other, making it appear as if this notion of over sharing and raw honesty is the norm for the LinkedIn newsfeed users. In sum, this week I’ve felt spammed with recruiting blasts and/or random professional updates from strangers because someone I may have a distinct connection to liked their post, such as:

^ I have no idea who Ryan is, but happy to hear about his ambitions / I actually agree this is a cool partnership... 

^ Thanks Nancy, but instead my thinking cap led me down a rabbit hole of Airbnb searches in Pasadena (but touche, escaping the DC humidity right now became a selling point to me in this moment).  

After closing Airbnb and continuing to scroll through, I become increasingly aware of the content overload my brain is experiencing from this type of feed. I’m scanning posts sporadically based on what is visually appealling and inevitably missing bits and pieces. I laugh to myself thinking how truly impossible it would be to have a productive morning at work if I attempted to read every article and watch every video I saw on this chaotic home page. 

As I mentioned earlier, I previously worked in recruiting. I spent 2.5 years at AppNexus, the world's largest independent advertising technology company, where I had an inside look into the ad-serving world. I have a lot of respect for AppNexus and always pay attention to their blog posts, which I was happy to see linked on the company posts. A particular post comparing their demand side platform product to Tesla intrigued me, but I paid closer attention to what LinkedIn was showing me as a consumer looking at this post. Under the company name "AppNexus" I can see right away it has 30,715 followers, but what stumps me is this post was shared 4 days ago and has only 5 likes and 0 comments. It makes me wonder if someone is monitoring that engagement back at headquarters. 

Regardless, the order of the content shown on LinkedIn does not seem to display posts with the highest traffic in terms of comments or likes, or even chronologically, so I’m not exactly sure how the algorithm is designed. Aside from the individuals posting and reacting to content, I do not get the impression that many of the companies I follow on LinkedIn have dedicated employees managing the brand and carefully choosing their content shared on this particular platform.

Further, I noticed various promoted posts for little known recruiting software and even more job openings. Again, I was derailed from this blog post for a bit searching the open HR career opportunities at Google around the country. When I continued browsing, I noticed how much noise there was in my feed about topics that may not even be considered newsworthy, such as an analytics chart examining the recent "Yanny versus Laurel" debate.

In addition to the subtle promoted content, I noticed the fine print above certain posts that read "Trending at Cigna, a company similar to yours", which is spot on considering I work at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. Other times, the industry targeting felt a little off, for example:

Why would Steve Jobs be trending in insurance rather than tech? Not sure, but I instinctively found myself clicking on embedded articles like this anyway. It’s funny how natural it has become in recent years for us to simply click on trending content, sponsored content, and native ads even if we are not consciously interested in reading them.    

Any time I wandered away from the newsfeed, LinkedIn frequently reminded me of my option to pay to upgrade to premium so I can take advantage of seeing who is viewing my profile, how I compare to other applicants, online video courses, and more. Ah premium, part of the moneymaker. I was also served this ad: 

^ Which I found comical, considering I’m halfway through my current Master’s in HR program at Georgetown… but I see where their head (algorithm) is at.  

Back to the newsfeed once more. Apparently, LinkedIn has decided their feed warrants a “Daily Rundown Tuesday”, which was announced as “The news professionals are talking about now, curated by LinkedIn’s editors. Join the conversation on today's stories in the comments. The professional news you need to know now: Uber hit with harassment suit, Lowe's poaches JC Penney CEO, and more top news”.

Curious if this Daily Rundown Tuesday is actually posted every Tuesday? It’s an interesting idea, but I wonder how a headlined brand like Uber in this case feels about LinkedIn using its platform to broadcast their negative PR, while simultaneously posting their open jobs. I think some brands would view this type of earned media as a benefit, because regardless of the message, it gets their name out and links to their LinkedIn company page whenever referenced (shown below, Apple is bolded). Interestingly, I did not see a single company respond to a post made about them, which is different compared to Facebook and Twitter where I have seen company accounts respond frequently. 

After this week of observation, I notice my LinkedIn feed is not comprised of the same news I am privy to on other platforms. The news I have been exposed to on LinkedIn every so often came from some credible sources such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal regarding relevant topics such as the Facebook privacy ordeal or Crypto currency. To my dismay, the majority of the newsfeed I saw was individual professional achievements often posted by people I have never met or followed. And if there was in fact an interesting article I spotted and I made the mistake of not saving the link, it was impossible to find it again once I had moved on.

I downloaded the app for the week to compare the interface to the way I typically see it on my laptop. The interface was essentially the same, and again I felt very much linked in to the personal lives of strangers, sometimes their professional. I plan to delete the app shortly after finishing up this post, because the overwhelming majority of the type of media I’ve been bombarded with this week is unfortunately not worth consumption. While there are some valuable posts and interesting content shared, the newsfeed is presented as an overall disjointed cluster of nonsense in a strange order.

To conclude, there’s nothing like reading this uplifting quote while perusing for a career move (read: below on the photo):