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ordinaryschmuck · 4 years ago

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Top 20 BEST Animated Series of 2010s-18th Place

From here, we jump from one unstoppable franchise that defined my childhood to another!

#18- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012-2017)

The Plot: Fifteen years after their mutation, four turtles trained in ninjutsu finally get a chance to leave their home in the sewers and catch a glimpse of the surface world. However, they soon learn that the city of New York is surprisingly full of crime. The type of crime run by dangerous mutants, aliens from another dimension, and even a legion of ninjas run by a dangerously pointy samurai named The Shredder. With the training from their rat sensei, these unlikely heroes will save their city, foil the villains' plans and still have time for pizza!

Now I know that you might be thinking about how this is the dumbest plot for a T.V. show. To that, I say...yeah, pretty much. HOWEVER, the show is called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There is no way you didn't know it was going to be a dumb show going in, right? TMNT is a franchise born from stupidity but not hindered by it. The many reboots rarely, if ever, take themselves too seriously. And the main reason this franchise lasts so long is that the writers know to embrace the weirdness rather than make fun of it. Something similar can be said about this particular reboot.

Sure, there are episodes with more serious stakes than others, but those episodes still know when to keep things light-hearted and fun by placing a well-timed joke between the more dramatic beats. Or at least, they try to do that, but I’ll get to that later. For the most part, TMNT (2012) has a great sense of humor that will make kids laugh and give the adult fans an occasional chuckle. Even when the show does take itself seriously, it handles it well. And do you want to know why the jokes and drama work in this series? It’s all because of the characters.

Here’s a tip for people who want to write a comedy series: Comedy doesn’t come from the joke, but the character who makes the joke. A common complaint you’ll hear about Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that it has the mistake of everyone having too similar of a personality. The jokes are still funny (sometimes), but it comes at the expense of making the characters stale. That isn't the case for this version. Each turtle has a unique trait that helps explore a joke (Leonardo being the straight man and Donetello's over the top freakouts, for example). Even Master Splinter gives an occasional laugh with his dry sense of humor. However, not every joke in TMNT (2012) works, and that’s either because some gags are out of character or are just not funny. For instance, Michelangelo is the team’s moron, so his humor comes from doing something stupid or random. Sometimes it earns a laugh, but for the most part, it comes across as annoying.

The writers also do a somewhat good job at handling drama with its characters. By making the audience like these characters because of their sense of humor, we immediately root for them when they’re being thrown into a more dire situation. The best example of this is every time the turtles and their allies face off against the Shredder, which is always an intense scene to witness. That’s because we care about the characters and will feel panicked when they are in a fight they might not walk away from unscathed. However, not every instance of drama works well. There are times when the show takes itself a little too seriously. While the adult fans will most certainly enjoy those episodes, the same can’t be said for kids. Most kids' cartoons during the 2010s manage to handle drama well in a way where both children and adults can be invested. They usually do this by remembering to keep a stable mix of light-hearted humor with serious storytelling, and sadly this series sometimes fails in finding that perfect mix.

In the first season (and half of season 2), TMNT (2012) did have that balance of comedy and drama. However, halfway through season 2, the humor and drama begin to contradict each other. It starts off with the more comedic episodes coming across as sillier than the dramatic ones that come across as too dark. For example, a story where the turtles nearly die from getting eaten by mutated pizza comes right before one where they almost die from fighting a trained assassin who's a mutated tiger. Things get even worse where even the tones don’t match up for an episode. A majority of the dramatic episodes in later seasons will have a dumb joke that ruins the moment's intensity. And every time, that joke is always made by Michelangelo, who we already established as being not that funny. Because of the contradicting tones, both new and old fans of the series can lose their enjoyment.

However, there’s one thing all fans enjoy that this series excels in, and that is having great action. While the current reboot definitely has the best action animation-wise, it’s mostly styled with no substance. That’s not the case with the 2012 reboot, as it does a decent job at mixing cool action into a story. It’s easy to make a fight between four mutated turtles fighting an evil mutant look cool, but it’s a whole other thing to actually have that fight make sense in a story. Because this reboot works in a half-hour format, the fight scenes between the turtles and the new villain of the week feel more natural and nicely paced with everything else going on within the episode. Plus, while not as epic as Rise of the TMNT, the fights are still pretty cool. They can be fast-paced, have phenomenal camera work, and can be pretty brutal at times when they want to be. And it’s somewhat because this series trades the traditional 2D designs for a 3D makeover.

It’s funny. When I found out that this version of TMNT was planned to be animated using 3D models, I was ready to hate it due to how unnatural it looks. The thing is that the 3D designs are what makes this show stand out from the rest. The level of detail each character has is impressive and would have taken much longer to animate if the show would have stuck with 2D. Although there are a few small complaints, I have character designs. These problems don’t really bug me that much, but they are still worth mentioning. One problem is that not every redesign for the characters work, especially with how they made Casey Jones (do a google image search if you don’t believe me). But I can learn to live with it because every reboot has that ONE design that not everyone will agree with. Another issue I have is that it is apparent when the animators took shortcuts. Such as making an army where the characters look identical to each other or having the transformation from human to mutant look a little lazy. Now I can accept that for two reasons: One. It would take a long time to make a new unique model for a character who would appear for just 10 seconds. And two. Animation (Especially 3D animation) is crazy expensive, and you gotta make cuts where you can. However, for things like the city of New York, one of the most populated/crowded states in the country, being practically devoid of all life can be pretty distracting.

But while the designs for the characters are great, the characters themselves are also...fine. Okay, truth be told, there isn’t much I can say about the characters. Most of them range from passably generic to forgettably bland. However, there are characters in this reboot that I feel are worth mentioning. For instance, this show has the BEST version of Master Splinter. His backstory of the life he had as Hamato Yoshi is legitimately heartbreaking, and the way he interacts with the turtles can be both heartwarming and hilarious. Then there’s the character who I’m iffy about, and that’s April O'Neil. And it’s NOT because she’s a teenage girl in this version (Although I can see why people can have a problem with that), but instead because she doesn’t seem like April O’Neil. Without giving too much away, TMNT (2012) does something that I’m okay with, and that's trying to make April less of a damsel in distress and more of a character who can actually take care of herself. However, the way the writers do that is by making her less like April O’Neil and more like...well, without spoiling anything, she’s more like another famous red-headed comic book character who deals with dangerous mutants. Finally, there’s the character I’m frustrated with: Michelangelo. When I was a kid, Mikey was always my favorite turtle from the bunch, and that was because he was the funniest turtle. This version, on the other hand, comes across as more annoying than funny. In fact, not only is Donatello the most hilarious turtle in this series, but even Leonardo has moments when he’s funnier than Michelangelo. And those are both characters who have had the reputation of the most boring in the franchise!

So, does this reboot of TMNT have its faults? Yes. Yes, it does. But do you want to know what else this reboot has? It has both style and substance. It has both drama and humor. It has fantastic designs and great characters to go along with them. In the end, if you’re a new or old fan of the franchise, odds are you're gonna have one shell of a time with this series.

(Also, while I pointed out it’s faults, I do enjoy Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...for the most part. I’ll explain why, some day.)

#top 20 of 2010s #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2012 #what i thought about

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newagesispage · 5 years ago

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MARCH 2020

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The Stones are touring the U.S. again.

*****

Paul Reubens is touring with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

*****

Al Franken is touring.

*****

Keenan Thompson and Hasan Minhaj are bringing comedy back to the White House Correspondents dinner on April 5.

*****

Days alert: There is some casting news but most of this won’t show up until the fall. Word is a couple of newbies will be Remington Hoffman who will play Li Shin, son of Mr. Shin and Emily O’Brien may join the cast. Nadia Bjorlin (Chloe) may be on her way back. Let’s bring the original Phillip back for her!!! Brandon Barash (Stefan) will return as well as Louise Sorel ( Vivian )and Alison Sweeney ( Sami). Judi Evans is headed back. Will she play Adrienne or Bonnie?? It looks like Casey Moss (JJ), Freddie Smith (Sonny), Chandler Massey (Will) and Galen Gering (Rafe) mill head out for awhile.

*****

It looks like Friends freaks will finally get their reunion on HBO. I am glad they aren’t bringing the characters back and are just getting together to talk about their time together.

*****

Downhill hit theatres on Valentine’s Day with Will Ferrell, Julia Louis- Dreyfus and Zoe Chao. The film was written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

*****

The more I see of it, the more I LOVE Stumptown, the best show that nobody seems to know about. Please renew ABC!!!!!

*****

So.. Rush Limbaugh got the Medal of Freedom. Oh my.

*****

Shadow Inc. owned by former Clinton and Obama staffers made an app that thoroughly fucked up the Iowa caucus. It was good at calculating the results but not delivering them. And hey.. Wolf Blitzer, stay off the phone with people that are trying to get those results. Let them just do their job!!

*****

Brooklyn 99 is back and Vanessa Bayer is there!!!

*****

Rod Blagojevich is out and hitting every show that will have him. Trump pardoned him along with 10 other criminals including Ed DeBartolo Jr., Mike Milken and Bernard Kerik.

*****

Forty thousand kids won’t get free lunch because Trump threw them off food stamps. The two usually go hand in hand. Getting food stamps automatically sets a kid up for the free lunch program.

*****

Over 1000 former DOJ officials have asked Bill Barr to resign.** 70 former Senators have written an open letter to congress to tell them they are not fulfilling their congressional duties.**” Yoo Hoo! Bush, Clinton, Carter, Obama, you’re up.” –Patricia Arquette

*****

Pete Davidson and Kaia Gerber have split.

*****

Indiana Beach is closing after 94 years.

*****

Denny Hamlin won the 2020 Daytona 500.

*****

Can’t we get some real gigs for Rainn Wilson and Curtis Armstrong? Ok, so Cyrtis Armstrong was on Stumptown so thank goodness for that! They can do better than Dominoes and Little Caesars ads. And how funny is it that Dominoes, known for its very Chrustian owners use a Risky Business ( a film about prostitutes) ad for their product. Hmm.

*****Hey.. Comics, quit bringing up Trump and his former womanizing. It didn’t work with Clinton and it won’t work here. People just don’t seem to care. Focus on the real damage he is doing.

*****

Scary Clown is working on opening nearly a million acres of land in Utah for energy exploration that had been a National monument. Redford and Romney can’t be happy about that.

*****

A new animated series from a brand new production company owned by Natasha Lyonne and Maya Rudolph looks promising. Look for The Hospital.

*****

Southern Illinois University is giving Bob Odenkirk an honorary degree.

*****

Ukranian immigrants Lt. Col. Vindman and his twin brother are out. Ambassador to the EU Sonland is out.

*****

The Democrats had a debate on Feb. 7 . At Andrew Yang’s first chance to speak, he rehashed his stump speech. I mean, c’mon give us something new. There really seemed to be a restrained nervousness on the stage that night. Klobachar seemed too needy but she got great reviews. Biden called Buttigieg ‘a friend ‘ a couple of times. Mayor Pete did quite well. ** Deval Patrick is out** Andrew Yang is out.**Michael Bennet is out** Another debate was on Feb. 19.** Bloomberg/Yang? Is this true?

*****

Check out the new series, Hunters. It is awesome, funny and terrifying!

*****

Dozens of Native American women and girls have disappeared from Big Horn county, Montana over the last few years. The victims were later found dead and Trump has put a federal task force together.

*****

Grassley and Wyden are trying to get lower prescription drug prices but Moscow Mitch won’t bring the proposal to the floor. Others are looking to get some traction on HR3.

*****

JSW Steel has sued the Trump administration for refusing to exempt it from paying the levies on slabs of steel that the company imports.

*****

64 women have filed sexual harassment or discrimination lawsuits against Mike Bloomberg. I’m not a fan of the guy but it does seem sort of coincidental. It does not seem to matter cuz all his ads seem to be working, he is picking up steam. Tom Steyer is gaining a bit of momentum as well.

*****

The corona virus has brought us Covid 19. 600 people are being held in quarantine camps that the military has set up. Italy has new cases and the disease is spreading. Scary Clown is trying to spin it all.

*****

ICE is being sent into sanctuary cities to cause trouble for immigrants.

*****

You have to check out Horse girl with Alison Brie, Molly Shannon and Matthew Gray Gubler on Netflix .

*****

Rapper Larry Sanders AKA LV is letting us in on a miscarriage of justice he has had to live thru. LV, best known for his work on Coolio’s Gangsters Paradise, was approached by police and later put on the Calgang database. The practice put about 80,000 mostly African Americans on a sort of gang list. In a 2016 audit it was found that there were many inaccuracies including the names of babes who could not possibly be gang affiliated.

*****

Nature does not need people. People need nature. –Harrison Ford

*****

The Clark bar is back. The roll out has started in Pittsburgh and will soon spread across the country.

*****

Scientists have found some turtle fossils that are the size of a car in South America.

*****

U can donate to the Trump campaign and may win a yaqut and hunting trip with Don Jr. The Beach Boys will perform.

*****

The Oscars were held Feb. 9. Brad Pitt and the production design team won for Once upon a Time in Hollywood. Woo Hoo! Word is that Pitt has hired a speech writer to write his acceptances. JoJo Rabbit won for adapted screenplay. Little Women won for Little Women and Toy Story 4 for animated film. Laura Dern won best supporting actress. Renee Zellweger and Joaquin Phoenix too home the top actor prizes. Parasite surprised everybody and won best pic and got Bong Joon Ho a best director statue. My best dressed were Billy Porter, Antonio Banderes and his date, Janelle Monae ( her opening seemed to make some in the audience uncomfortable), Robert DeNiro, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Geena Davis, Regina King, Charlize Theron, Adam Driver, Joanne Tucker, Cynthia Erivo, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Kathy Bates, I don’t know what Kristen Wiig and Idina Menzel were thinking. Wiig always has a unique style so I have to admire that. ** The ratings were down. I have heard people saying they just don’t watch award shows or late night shows anymore because they are afraid things will get political. Funny, that is part of the reason I watch!

*****

Tom Papa was pontificating about a real dog show that should have REAL dogs. It would make a great weekly show with people bringing on their dogs.

*****

The goalies of the Hurricanes were out of commission and David Ayres, the Zamboni driver was brought in to help and the won against the Maple Leafs. Woo Hoo!!

*****

Hooray for New Hampshire and their use of paper ballots. Things in the campaign got a little shook up with Bernie taking the top followed by Pete and Amy.

*****

2 years of research in Canada has brought the announcement of a new discovery. Skull fragments that were cleaned and collected about 10 years ago have been named Thanatotheristes or the reaper of death. The discovery helps us all learn more about the early times of Tyrannosaurids, a sub group that includes T.Rex.

*****

New Jersey has a ban on self- serve pumps and another state is talking about getting in on the action. The gas station attendant act has been proposed in Illinois.

*****

Van Jones was right when he said we shouldn’t give Trump any press coverage for a week. He would hate it. Trump loves the old adage of bad publicity is better than none because he just must have attention. It would never work for they just can’t resist.** Joe Mcguire is out after he warned of Russian interference. If you want to keep your job in this administration, do not tell the truth. Now at the Department of National Intelligence is Johnny Mcentee , a 29 year old former football player who worked on the campaign. He immediately called department heads and said he wanted lists of never Trumpers in their offices. ** And who is in charge of weeding out the people in the government who may be disloyal to Scary Clown? Well, it is none other than Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence. She calls it the list of snakes. Trump is now saying he even wants liberal judges on the Supreme Court to recuse themselves when it comes to “Trump related cases”. It just keeps getting worse.

*****

Trump had fun in India. He should, his business has 5 projects going there right now worth 1.5 billion.

*****

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and criminal sexual assault. He was not found guilty of all the charges that included predatory behavior.

*****

Andrew Yang is a new correspondent at CNN. He tells us that he is getting word from former donors that Bloomberg is calling those big donors. Allegedly he is telling them they do not have to donate to his campaign because he can afford his own campaign but he still won’t forget them. He would like them to save their money and not give money to other democrats running either.** And I am so sick of talking heads trying to tell us to play it safe. We are not as stupid as we look, thank you!! ** Now there is a firestorm about Bernie telling the world that the education program that Castro implemented was a good thing. I understand the anger and it could not have come at a worse time and he did it to himself. BUT.. We are adults and we have to be able to talk about things as they really are, not in sound bites. Castro sucked and history teaches us that bad people do good things occasionally and good people do bad things once in a while. ** It seems that everyone was in agreement that we would all gather behind the winner of the democratic campaign to beat Trump. Suddenly when it could be Bernie, everybody is bitching.

*****

This month held 2 more Democratic debates. The Nevada debate got pretty heated. I see that Mayor Pete and Bloomberg are lefties (left handed that is). Pete always looked poised and articulate which I appreciate and he got in a good one when he mentioned that the party should choose someone who is actually a democrat. Bernie seemed a little rattled by that. Later Pete really dressed down Amy Klobuchar and made himself look like a dick. Joe Biden jumped in with his credits occasionally but often seemed a bit lost. He slammed back that they were all talking about the health care plane he helped to create and that he himself had dealt with the Mexican President. His name came up after it was mentioned that Amy could not remember the President’s name. The gloves were off with Bloomberg as Elizabeth Warren called him out on Billionaires and NDA’s. I loved the interaction but realistically Mr. Mike can’t just release people from agreements they made in an NDA, especially if it did not involve him. Bloomberg sounded pompous and clueless about the world outside of his company. He got a moan when he said he couldn’t exactly use turbo tax and when he said he may have told a few jokes that women didn’t like. He brushed off his taxes much like Trump does. The former mayor of NY called out socialists as communists. Klobuchar had the best comeback of the night when she was told her health care plan could fit on a post it. She proclaimed that the post it was invented in her state of Minnesota. Again, there were people shouting from the audience as Joe tried to talk. C’mon give everybody an equal chance.

*****

The South Carolina debate was fiery as well. The CBS debate was hosted by Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell. Bloomberg was booed right off the bat about Russia helping Bernie but he late had many cheers. He and Biden and Steyer had some real support there. Tom Steyer was actually quite impressive and seemed well spoken. He was the only one who brought up the impeachment. He had a great point that we all know that republicans who did not convict Trump are complicit in the Russian meddling. Then he ruined it all by being alarmist with his fear. He warned us off the former republican and the socialists. I loved Bernie’s ideas about small business’s getting in on the marijuana business and not letting big corporations taking it over. He is also the only one in debates that I have seen consistently bring up Native Americans. Biden again kept jumping in to tell us that he did this or that. Amy disagreed about a bill he claimed to have written. Warren said “dig in” numerous times. She went for the jugular with Bloomberg when she said a former female employee of his said to “kill it” in response to her pregnancy. He denied it but it sure is memorable. She did make great points that he has given much money to Linsey Graham’s campaign as well as other republican runs including against her. BTW he also gave 2.3 mil to Rick Snyder, the Gov of Michigan after the water crisis was well known. I love that Amy is always saying that we shouldn’t fight amongst ourselves but she just does not have the votes so she needs to go. Bernie got some boos about guns for he seems the softest in that area.

*****

Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary in a big way.

*****

Dick Van Dyke, Sarah Silverman and Public Enemy among others will be at the Bernie Sanders rally in L.A. on March 1.

*****

Just think what the 400 million that Bloomberg spent on his campaign could have done for the debt of the average American. Instead of a campaign for a presidency that he can’t win, he could have helped so many get a leg up.

*****

I don’t understand why “respected” journalists like Chuck Todd don’t throw W H reps off the set when they disrespect him or his colleagues with fake news jabs.

*****

Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill is giving his company away to his employees. Now, that’s a boss!!

*****

Bone, Thugs and Harmony have made a deal with Buffalo Wild Wings to rename themselves Boneless thugs and Harmony. The publicity stunt is to promote boneless wings.

*****

NASA is hiring.

*****

Scotland has made feminine sanitary products free!!

*****

Is this true? There were pigeons in Nevada with MAGA hats glued to their heads??

*****

The final Criminal Minds has aired. CBS often aired double episodes which made it seem like they really wanted to get rid of it. Kirsten Vangsness and Erica Messer wrote the final episode which seemed to give special attention to Penelope and Reid as they were the originals. The other characters seemed a little overlooked but they all had happy endings. Where was Reid’s new girlfriend? I was hoping to see Shemar Moore but it was great to see Reisgraf and Howell which are old favorites.

*****

Animal Kingdom returns to TNT on May 28.

*****

So there is a bit of a mess with the Roger Stone sentencing. Trump is hopping mad about the long sentence recommendation, Barr is said to be pretending to spar with the Prez, the DOJ is backing down and people are resigning.

*****

R.I.P. Shirley Jean Cade, Robert Conrad, Katherine Johnson, Lyle Mays, B. Smith, A.E. Hotchner, Bashir Jackson, Ja’net Dubois, Pat Agee, victims of the Molson Coors shooting and Orson Bean.

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weekinethereum · 6 years ago

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January 25, 2019

News and Links

Layer 1

[eth1] state rent proposal 2

[eth1] selfish mining in Ethereum academic paper. Per Casey Detrio, EIP100 changed the threshold to 27%. But since ETC doesn’t have EIP100, it’s just 5 or 10%.

[eth2] a long AMA from the Eth2 research team

[eth2] yeeth Eth2 client in Swift

[eth2] What’s new in eth2 includes Ben’s take on future of the PoW chain

[eth2] notes from last eth2 implementer call

[eth2] Vitalik’s security design rationale

[eth2] More Vitalik: Eth2 and Casper CBC video talk

[eth2] Collin Myers takes a look at the proposed economics for validators

Layer 2

Raiden on progress towards Ithaca release, which will include pathfinding and fee earning as well as monitoring. More from Loredana on building CryptoBotWars on Raiden

Magmo update: about to release their paper on Nitro, their protocol for a virtual state channel network

The case for Ethereum scaling through layer 2 solutions

Optimistic off-chain data availability from Aragon

Starkware on a layer 2 design fundamental: validity proofs vs fraud proofs. Also: its decentralized exchange using STARKs planned for testnet at end of q1.

Stuff for developers

Solidity v0.5.3

web3j v4.1.1

Web3.js v1.0.0-beta.38

Waffle v2 of its testing suite (uses ethers.js)

Celer Network’s proto3 to solidity library generator for onchain/offchain, cross-language data structures. Celer’s SDK

ERC20 meta transaction wrapper contract

“dumb contracts” that store data in the event logs

ETL pipline on AWS for security token analytics

Interacting with Ethereum using web3.py and Jupyter notebooks

Tutorial on using Embark

Tutorial: using OpenLaw agreements with dapps

OpenBazaar’s escrow framework

Etherisc opensources the code for their Generic Insurance Framework

Austin Griffith’s latest iteration of Burner Wallet sales

Deploying a front end with IPFS and Piñata SDK

Video tutorial of Slither static analyzer

Overview of formal verification projects in Ethereum

zkPoker with SNARks - explore iden3’s circom circuit

Ecosystem

Lots of charts on the bomb historically and present

Gnosis Safe is now available on iOS

A big thing in the community was r/ethtrader’s DONUT tokens. Started by Reddit as “community points” to experiment in ethtrader upvotes, the donuts can be used to buy the banner, vote in polls, and get badges. So a Reddit <> Eth token bridge was created, and DONUT traded on Uniswap. But some people preferred donuts to be used for subreddit governance, so the experiment is currently paused. That’s my take, here’s Will Warren’s take.

Decentralizing project management with the Ethereum Cat Herders

ENS permanent registrar proposals

Client releases

The Mantis client written in Scala now supports ETH and will stop supporting ETC

Enterprise

Hyperledger Fabric founder John Wolpert on why Ethereum is winning in enterprise blockchain

Levi’s jeans, Harvard SHINE and ConsenSys announce a workers well being pilot program at a factory in Mexico

Tokenizing a roomba to charge it

Correctness analysis of Istanbul BFT. Suggests it isn’t and can be improved.

Governance and Standards

Notes from last all core devs call

A postmortem on the Constantinople postponement

SNT community voting dapp v0.1 - quadratic voting system

EIP1712: disallow deployment of unused opcodes

EIP1715: Generalized Version Bits Voting for Consensus Soft and Hard Forks

ERC1723: Cryptography engine standard

ERC1724: confidential token standard

EIP1717: Defuse the bomb and lower mining reward to 1 ether

Application layer

Augur leaderboard. And Crystalball.be stats. Augur v1.10 released

Lots of action in Augur frontends: Veil buys Predictions.global, Guesser to launch Jan 29, and BlitzPredict.

A fiat-backed Korean Won is live on AirSwap

Adventureum - “a text-based, crowd-sourced, decentralised choose-your-own adventure game”

PlasmaBears is live using LoomNetwork

Kyber’s automated price reserve - a simpler though less flexible option for liquidity providers. Also, Kyber’s long-term objectives

Interviews, Podcasts, Videos, Talks

Trail of Bits and ChainSecurity discuss 1283 on Hashing It Out

Videos from Trail of Bits’ Empire Hacking

Scott Lewis and Bryant Eisenbach give the case for Ethereum on a Bitcoin podcast

Philipp Angele talk on Livepeer’s shared economies for video infrastructure

Tarun Chitra on PoS statistical modeling on Zero Knowledge

Gnosis’ Martin Köppelmann on Into the Ether

Martin Köppelmann and Matan Field on Epicenter

Tokens / Business / Regulation

If you don’t have a background in finance, MyCrypto’s learning about supplying and borrowing with Compound will be a good read.

A nice look at the original NFT: CryptoPunk

NFT License 2.0 to define what is permitted with NFT and associated art

IDEO on what NFT collectibles should learn from legacy collectibles.

Matthew Vernon is selling tokens representing 1 hour of design consulting

Caitlin Long tweetstorm about Wyoming’s crypto-friendly legislation

Crypto exchanges don’t need a money transmitter license in Pennsylvania

General

Samsung to have key store in their Galaxy S10. Pictures show Eth confirmed.

Zilliqa to launch its mainnet this week, much like Ethereum launched with Frontier

NEAR’s private testnet launches at event in SF on the 29th

Polkadot upgrades to PoC3 using GRANDPA consensus algo

Looks like Protonmail wants to build on Ethereum

Messari says Ripple drastically overstates their supply to prop up their market cap

Sia’s David Vorick on proof of work attacks

a zero knowledge and SNARKs primer

Infoworld when the Mac launched 35 years ago: do we really need this?

Have a co-branded credit card in the US? Amazon (or whoever) probably gets to see your transaction history, which means they’re probably selling it too.

Dates of Note

Upcoming dates of note (new in bold):

Jan 29-30 - AraCon (Berlin)

Jan 30 - Feb 1 - Stanford Blockchain Conference

Jan 31 - GörliCon (Berlin)

Jan 31 - Maker to remove OasisDEX and Oasis.direct frontends

Feb 2 - Eth2 workshop (Stanford)

Feb 7-8 - Melonport’s M1 conf (Zug)

Feb 7 - 0x and Coinlist virtual hackathon ends

Feb 14 - Eth Magicians (Denver)

Feb 15-17 - ETHDenver hackathon (ETHGlobal)

Feb 27 - Constantinople (block 7280000)

Mar 4 - Ethereum Magicians (Paris)

Mar 5-7 - EthCC (Paris)

Mar 8-10 - ETHParis (ETHGlobal)

Mar 8-10 - EthUToronto

Mar 22 - Zero Knowledge Summit 0x03 (Berlin)

Mar 27 - Infura end of legacy key support

April 8-14 - Edcon hackathon and conference (Sydney)

Apr 19-21 - ETHCapetown (ETHGlobal)

May 10-11 - Ethereal (NYC)

May 17 - Deadline to accept proposals for Instanbul upgrade fork

If you appreciate this newsletter, thank ConsenSys

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Housekeeping

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westworld-daily · 7 years ago

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Welcome to 'Westworld': Inside the HBO Drama's Season 2 Hollywood Premiere

The cast and crew of Westworld brought themselves back online Monday at the world premiere of the HBO drama's second season, with the red carpet rolled out at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

"We're in a new loop," series co-creator Jonathan Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter, standing alongside his co-creator and wife Lisa Joy, both of whom were minutes away from delivering a speech in front of an auditorium filled with hundreds of their contemporaries and loved ones. "This loop looks a bit like the last loop. It's the same carpet ... the same shade of red."

The carpet was a soft red, a far cry from the blood-stained hues that coat season two of Westworld, launching April 22 on HBO. The premiere, titled "Journey Into Night," marks the first new episode of the genre-bending hit since it went off the air in December 2016 — almost a year and a half since Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) launched a revolution against her human oppressors.

"You're getting a much darker version of Dolores this year, that's for sure," Wood told THR about what's next for her human-slaying host. "Now she's well and familiar with all sides of herself: the Dolores that we love, the darker Wyatt version, and she's also building herself anew as we watch her throughout the season. We'll be seeing more and more of who she really is."

Fans are understandably eager to know not only Dolores' next move, but the greater narrative's next steps. Many of the actors count themselves among the fans awaiting the show's twists and turns, given how little the cast members know about the series as they're shooting it.

"I feel like there are three phases for someone who takes part in the show," said Ptolemy Slocum, who plays the selfish lab technician Sylvester. "You read it. Then you shoot it, and it's a totally different story. Then you watch it, and it's a totally different story. I'm about to embark on one of my favorite parts of being on the show: watching the show. It might sound like I'm bullshitting, but I'm not. It's fascinating. So much changes."

Indeed, much is changing as Westworld enters its second season, shattering the previous status quo in favor of a new narrative filled with expanding notions of consciousness, empowerment, oppression, war and what it means to be alive.

"For me, one of the fascinating things about season one is we were looking at hosts trying to understand the nature of their own reality as they come into power," co-creator Joy said. "By the finale of the season, Dolores has claimed some power for herself. Some agency. All of the hosts are moving toward agency. And the question now is: once you have power, what do you do with it?"

"Season one was very much about setting up the world and the characters in it, and the structures that we're working with," said Simon Quarterman, the actor who plays narcissistic narrative director Lee Sizemore. "This season, we're tearing down that structure. The container we created in season one is blown open. It's so much more expansive this season. It's an awful lot of fun."

Based on the 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name, Westworld takes place in a far future where human "guests" visit a park populated by robot "hosts." Unlike the film, the TV series finds its roots in the perspectives of the hosts, originally presented as malfunctioning antagonists in Crichton's movie. Over the course of the first season, various hosts embarked on journeys of self-discovery, all thanks to the designs of park founder Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), who realized far too late in his life that his creations could be both physically and morally superior to humanity.

In engineering his own death at the hands of Dolores, and in unshackling the programming that prevented the hosts from harming the guests, Ford created a new status quo in which the hosts could not only rule Westworld and the surrounding parks (and yes, plural: beyond Westworld and the already teased Shogun World, the existence of at least four other parks has been confirmed by viral marketing for the show), but the wider world itself.

"There are awakenings happening," said Clifton Collins Jr., who plays Lawrence, the host who often acts as the Man in Black's gunslinging wing man. "How do you think Lawrence would react if he started developing a little bit of a conscience?"

Those are the kinds of questions the cast members loved chewing on over the course of filming season two, and certainly the same questions fans devour with insatiable appetites. Among the many reasons why Westworld captured imaginations with its first season, the fervent desire to solve the show's riddle-filled narrative stands close to the top. Reddit detectives and other sleuths all over the Internet spent weeks embedded in the theory trenches, in an attempt to figure out the biggest mysteries ahead of the show's reveals. Among the solved cases: the Man in Black's true identity as William (Jimmi Simpson), Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) secretly being one of the hosts, and Bernard also being based on the likeness of park co-founder Arnold Weber.

In the spirit of the online theory culture that's developed around the show, Nolan and Joy recently had some fun at their fanbase's expense, promising Reddit users a full-blown spoiler video if they received enough support from the community. With more than enough of the support they requested, the duo behind Westworld instead trolled the fandom with one of the Internet's greatest memes: the Rickroll.

"I've been a fan of the Reddit community from the beginning," says Nolan. "That community in particular rallied around the first season in a way like none other: dissecting and breaking apart the story, spending almost as much time thinking about it as we did while writing it. For us, it was a special thank you to that community, in a language perfectly tailored to them."

For the crowd gathered at the Cinerama Dome, there's no longer any need to theorize about what's ahead in the season two premiere, as the episode (clocking in at 70 minutes) unfurled in front of a packed audience. Before the screening, HBO programming president Casey Bloys introduced Nolan and Joy for some remarks about not only the world in which Westworld takes place, but the real world that inspires the show.

"Our show is about human nature — the dark side of human nature," said Nolan. "Our task was made vastly more difficult every day by the people we work with on our show. We were trying to hold onto [the darkness], and every day we had to work with the most talented, positive and generous collaborators — from the incredible writing-producers to the directors whose ambition never let up."

Saying it would be impossible to talk about "the professional without the personal," Joy concluded the opening remarks with a moving expression of appreciation for the human nature of the people who have brought Westworld online.

"We're a group of advocates, and we're a group of feminists, not just in the large and incredible sweeping gestures — the heroism of testifying before congress, the heroism of advocating for communities, and the heroism of battling injustice — but also in the small private gestures," she said in her opening remarks. "The ways we listen to each other. We enrich each other off of each other's experiences and perspectives. The way we are continually thriving, in art and in life, to do better and be better. We see examples of it every day on set. Jonah and I ourselves are beneficiaries of this kindness. Nothing in the world makes us prouder. Thank you for being collaborators who help us explore the dark themes of humanity while actively embodying and reaching the light. There are more stories to tell, more strides to be made, and we cannot wait to make them."

Following the speeches, and the premiere itself (which will remain unspoiled here, except for this innocent tidbit: there was at least one major laughing fit during the episode, thanks to a scene between Thandie Newton's Maeve and Simon Quarterman's Sizemore), attendees were invited out to the after party, held at NeueHouse Hollywood.

Bartenders and wait staff were outfitted in dark uniforms branded with the word "Delos," the same company that runs the show's parks. A DJ controlled the upbeat music from a balcony station high above the main floor, surrounded by robotic vultures and multicolored horses. Drone hosts lorded over several different corners of the space, and iconography from the series (including Arnold's maze) were studded throughout the party as well. Food items on display included sliders and endives with beet hummus, and reserved seating for members of the HBO family featured edible centerpieces, including olives, prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks, and more.

A litany of celebrities were spotted at the party, including Christopher Nolan and Liam Hemsworth, both of whom were supporting their respective brothers Jonah Nolan and Luke Hemsworth (who plays QA expert Ashley Stubbs). Also in attendance: Lea Thompson (Back to the Future), Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), James Tupper (Big Little Lies), David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) and Silicon Valley stars Martin Starr and Thomas Middleditch.

But the most buzzed about star who came out in support of Westworld was none other than Katy Perry, who was photographed at the party and inside the theater alongside Shannon Woodward (who plays behaviorist Elsie Hughes, missing in action since the first season's sixth episode). As is the case with the award-winning music artist, fans will hear Westworld roar when it premieres its second season on April 22.

#westworld #articles #the hollywood reporter #season 2 #articles 2018 #s02

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civilianlillian · 8 years ago

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UK FINALLY got to air "The Power Inside Her"

I’ll put my thoughts at the end of the post, for now enjoy some live commentary of my ongoing thoughts, featuring @onthespectrumwriting and tested & approved by @call-me-the-cooky-one

• intro so far: love Leo sitting nearby like the concerned bff for April’s sake “look your powers scare me but Donnie getting closer to mad scientist levels is scarier”

• lulu: OF COURSE THIS GOES WRONG spectrum: what did they expect to happen yes poke the big scary unknown force with a stikc great idea!!!!!

• lulu: *ties crystal of destructive power to a leash* bad crystal spectrum: i love raph’s solution to things

• April cuddling up to Leo = awwww now we know the writer’s true agenda; they were faking us out for Aprinardo all along i mean CUDDLING can’t be platonic and that isn’t worry on Donnie’s face, it’s JEALOUSY

• i have yet to see all the “Apritello” people say this episode has aside from them just basically interacting with each other and if it’s his concern over the crystal well then the show must be dropping hints for pairing her with every male in the main cast

• lulu: EEEEEEYYYYYYY MY PUCKHEAD GETS A SPOTLIGHT AGAIN get rekt TC spectrum: yo casey was AMAZING in this ep soak in the glory that is the trash child

• lulu: also just remembered Rahzar is still alive spectrum: somehow even though april killed him lulu: dude can get run over by a train and be fine later like that’s actually scary spectrum: yeeee puckhead can kick his ass tho lulu: he sure grilled Fishface that’s for sure

• lulu: *pokes the crystal with a stick literally instead of figuratively* “I think i’m beginning to get it now” get what that the crystal is bad? spectrum: its never said that donnie practices Safe sciencing

• lulu: April force choking Donnie is what I live for now spectrum: ha ha ha holy fuck donnie lulu: like it should be the go-to for forced romantic advances spectrum: donnie you poor sot

• Splinter being the one to first snap her out of it and not Donnie /clearly/ they’re shipping her with Splinter and we have to call out Nick for grossness ASAP WHY ARE THE PEOPLE SO BLIND

• also holy shit she’s turning into a dungeon boss

• lulu: oh look she’s crying Casey’s name while focusing on saving people IT’S CANON WHEN WILL THE BLIND SHEEP SEE?! (this is totally not me being a biased shipper because that would be hypocritical) spectrum: (oh obvs, but watch how she ignores him the rest of the ep) lulu: (fool, there is only Za-Naron the rest of the ep) spectrum: (i will see you in court on why that’s not entirely true) lulu: (and ignorance obviously means love if Apritello can get away with it)

• we are introduced to Za-Naron https://youtu.be/7jz7rFuZZZc all i am thinking watching this

• (poor casey has no grappling hook)

• me: don don’t say it Donnie: Give me the crystal me: oh my god YOU’D THINK HE’D KNOW BETTER THAN TO ASK FOR IT BY THIS POINT aaaaand donnie go bye bye

((at this point time difference takes a hold and spectrum must sleep, i venture onward alone))

• well April’s sad moment over Donnie didn’t last too long almost like there wasn’t enough time in the episode to really flesh out the seriousness of this arc

• Hun stares death in the face and laughs ajdbwjsndksnxek we need more 2012 Hun he’s such a confident ass

• “but what if April’s still in there?” Casey you are the only one allowed to properly emote in this ep, like relish your spotlight Case 👌 STOP ZOOMING IN ON CASEY’S WOBBLY LIP WE GET IT YOU FORGOT TO HAVE ANYONE ELSE BE SAD OVER THE SITUATION

• OH JESUS SHE’S BLOODBENDING RAPH’S BODY NOW

• “HEY BEFORE YOU KILL ME REMEMBER HOW YOU ALREADY KILLED DONNIE” that’s what I’m getting here nothing that shippy and she only destroys he crystal after Leo reminds her /she’s/ the only one who can APRINARDO IS CANON CRY SHIPPERS CRY THE BASIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TWO CHARACTERS DO NOT LIE

• finally she uses that tanto i was beginning to think it was an ornament with how little it was utilised

• “it was /all me/ in a way” oooooooooooooooo now THIS LINE why are people ignoring THIS LINE

• from now on all death will be referred to as Molecular Scattering it’ll be what the Shadow Realm is to the Yu-Gi-Oh dub

• Donnie just letting April flop onto the cement PFFFFFFFT

• Everyone but Splinter just keeping their distance

• CASEY STANDS UP SOON AS SHE’S AWAKE I’M CALLING CAPRIL IF PEOPLE CAN CRY APRITELLO WHEN DONNIE GETS FORCE CHOKED I CAN CRY WHEN CASEY JUMPS TO HIS FEET LIKE SOMEONE WAITING FOR NEWS ON A LOVED ONE AT THE HOSPITAL

• “hey i know you guys are nervous about my powers since i kinda blew one of you up and bloodbended the shit outta Splinter and Raph but CHECK OUT THIS SICK MOVE” *levitates sword from her belt into her hand*

All in all I still enjoyed the episode. I really wish we had some more build up to Za-Naron, or maybe a two-parter for the conclusion of this arc. The boys could have emoted a little more, but I put that down to how much that had time for in the episode and not the writing team trying to make the death of a brother a “no biggie” for the rest of the team (again i really think this should’ve been a two-parter).

Honestly S4 is kind of cramped in terms of story. Space doesn’t feel as important, Karai VS Shredder doesn’t feel as important. IMO they should’ve made space take up the whole season, if only so we could explore it more or have the chance to build some urgency, then had S5 focus on taking down Shredder so we’d have more action there *cough*andShini*cough*. Of course, that would be more in an ideal world, where Playmates isn’t breathing down Nickelodeon’s neck and the writers have no fear of not being renewed for a sixth season.

I’m really hopeful that S5 is a little more focused. From what we’ve heard thus far it sounds like they’re going for more contained story arcs, a little like TMNT 2003 had with their various shenanigans and mishaps. ‘course I probably won’t be too bothered by anything at all so long as we get more Karai and Shinigami. *shakes fist* WE’D BETTER GET MORE KARAI AND SHINIGAMI

disclaimer: my comments on shipping do not necessarily focus on Apritello… mmmostly, i’m just an adult with extra salt who remembers how much one can read into things if it means making it about their ship. i did it with Digimon, i did it with Pokémon, shipping is just a big mess of stockpiling screenshots of your OTP standing within close proximity to me 😶

#tmnt 2012 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #the power inside her #april o'neil (2012)#still enjoyed it #uk finally catching up #now from the looks of the average delay between us and uk #we should get to watch Tokka VS The World in about a year or two

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tractionmagazine · 8 years ago

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142. Nadim Abbas

Nadim Abbas, Chamber 664 "Kubrick”, 2014-2015. Mixed media. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Susie Pentelow interviews Hong-Kong based artist Nadim Abbas about his upcoming solo exhibition ‘Camoufleur’ at VITRINE, London. For ‘Camoufleur’, Abbas will produce a new, site-specific installation which will use camouflage to explore how urban living conditions can dictate our relationship with, and in some cases submission to, the spaces we inhabit. The installation will be accompanied by a series of scheduled performances in the space.

You currently have a solo show at Antenna Space in Shanghai, ‘Chimera’. Could you talk a little about this work?

The starting point was the image of the human rhinovirus (serotype 14), AKA the common cold, which I constructed using various kinds of open source molecular and 3D modelling software. The title connotes both phantasmal and biological origins. The elaborate way that I have chosen to present, or project these viral images into the gallery space, using air blowers and beach balls is an attempt to maintain the ambiguous quality of an image which wavers between real and imaginary, fact and fabrication.

Nadim Abbas, Human Rhinovirus 14, 2016. Mixed media installation. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space.

The choice of the common cold virus was deliberate - as something familiar to all, to the point of banality, yet appearing at the same time completely alien. Everything else in the show is an extension of this viral metaphor. This is most blatantly played out in the two isolation chambers (with echoes of my piece at the 2015 New Museum Triennial), which contain a series of modular geometric forms that act as a playground for renegade toilet rolls.

The work ‘Blancmange, n ways’ acts as a separate counterpart with similar thematics. Here, white forms become specific manifestations of the first four iterations of the fractal Blancmange function, which derives its name from its resemblance to the famous dessert. In England of course, ‘blancmange’ also connotes a boring or uninteresting person. The photograph on the wall depicts an actual blancmange pudding, as does the pattern design on the wallpaper - setting up a visual pun of sorts.

Nadim Abbas, Blancmange, n ways, 2016. Mixed media installation. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space.

Works like ‘Chamber 667’ and ‘Chamber 664 "Kubrick”’ could almost be sets from a science fiction film. Is sci-fi an influence?

Regarding the sci-fi influence - the short answer is yes! I am a big science fiction nut. I wrote a short text on this connection (between sci-fi and my work) many years ago. It was around that time that I discovered these molecular renderings of viruses, which were later to become the central motif of 'Chimera'. The text was never published, and I'm not even sure that it makes any sense. Basically, 'Chimera' was my way of materially resolving some of the concerns that were started in writing.

There are many visual parallels between my work and cinema, simply because much of what I do involves the notion of converting (lived) space into an image (memory), which is something that comes almost second nature to the cinematic process. Given the popularity of sci-fi blockbusters today, I should clarify here that I'm less interested in constructing seamless, illusory images like you might see in the latest Star Wars spin-off. Rather, I'm fascinated with finding ways of letting the inconsistencies show through, like in a low budget B-movie. In other words, there is always an element of theatre present in my approach.

Nadim Abbas, The Last Vehicle, 2016. Mixed media installation with durational performance. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist .

You are working with camouflage for this installation/body of work. How do you think this idea reflects broader themes in society?

A lot of my recent work tries to unravel how certain conditions of urban domesticity have produced specific types of sociability and subcultures. I am also fascinated by what at first glance seems like an unlikely correlation between domesticity and warfare; how technologies developed on the battlefield have found applications in quotidian contexts and vice versa. More chilling perhaps is the notion, suggested by theorists such as Paul Virilio and Beatrice Colomina, that the dream of domestic bliss is but a dormant extension of an ongoing militarised state of emergency, where the household finds its mirror in the bunker/fortress.

It is no coincidence, for instance, that iRobot, a manufacturer of automatic vacuum cleaners, displays on its website products dedicated for the “home” side-by-side with similar technologies repurposed for “defence and security”. Taglines such as “Welcome home. Your house is clean” are made in the same breath as “Placing a safer distance between people and danger”. Since the machinations of modern warfare destroy the very condition of human habitats, military constructions have become increasingly geared towards the possibility of inhabiting such artificial climates (e.g. the underground bunker as a refuge from nuclear fallout). The modern household simply adapts this formula by providing increasingly artificial climates optimised for human habitation (e.g. the fully automated, air-conditioned high-rise service apartment).

Nadim Abbas, Zone I, 2014. Lightweight concrete casts, robotic vacuum cleaner, rug, skirting board, house paint. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

The title “camoufleur” is borrowed from the name that was given to people who designed and implemented military camouflage during WWI/WWII. Many of these camoufleurs were artists but there were also zoologists and naturalists such as Hugh Cott, whose book, Adaptive Coloration in Animals became a seminal text for the study and development of camouflage techniques in the military. For the setup at VITRINE, I will design a wallpaper pattern that becomes the backdrop and point of reference for everything that is subsequently placed in the space.

For this body of work, your focus is on the figure of the “otaku” or “hikikomori”, terms which originated in Japan. Can you explain these?

Otaku and hikikomori are (Japanese) terms that have come to represent stereotypes of socially ill-equipped, middle-aged males who wall themselves up at home in an escapist world of manga and anime consumption. Otaku generally refers to participants of a subset of cultural practices that revolve around manga and anime fandom. Hikikomori refers to the specific phenomenon of acute social withdrawal. In Chinese, otaku is often translated as “jaaknam” or “zhainan”, which literally means “resident male” (as in resident of a housing complex or tenement block), thus conflating the connotations of otaku and hikikomori. It would take a lot more explanation to unpack the respective nuances of these terms and their ongoing mutations, so I will just focus on the fact that otaku culture arose, or at least thrives, within a uniquely urban, post-industrial context.

Nadim Abbas, The Last Vehicle, 2016. Mixed media installation with durational performance. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

My concern then is not why otaku do what they do, but rather, what kind of space allows this to happen? It is as if the extremely dense accumulation of cramped interior spaces that characterise so many cities today encourages a turning inward, or a vacuum of mental space itself; a vacuum that disturbs the distinction between the animate and the inanimate, or subject and object. This logic is made visible in the practice of mimicry: picture a masked body, driven to disappear into its surroundings, to be engulfed by objects whose animation increases in proportion to its own lack of animation.

How will you respond to the position of the space on the public sphere?

The unique positioning of the VITRINE space, which stays open and visible at all hours of the day, creates an interesting set of possibilities for the public display of domesticity. The window display, which can more easily facilitate instances of repeated daily viewing, structures an encounter that varies according to the state of each visit. It is this durational quality that pushed me to find different ways of inhabiting the space at different points of the day/week/month. States of habitation that when considered together start to overlap, and become harder to distinguish from one other: a performer who behaves like a machine, or a machine that is performing?

Nadim Abbas, #4, 2016. Cosplay helmet mounted on green screen / cyclorama. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist and Luke Casey.

There will also be a performance aspect to the exhibition - can you talk about your ideas for this?

The performer will be presented with a set of instructions, or perhaps a distilled script of some sort. We will work together in advance to develop a specific body language. I’m looking for someone with the type of movement training that would facilitate the emptying of gestures, or gestures that do not call attention to themselves, the gesture of stones. If the objective is to perform a disappearing act, it would seem that the magician has already disappeared before the act has begun. Likely candidates might include people who are trained in physical theatre, mime, Butoh; or even life models, who like stick insects are inclined to assume the same pose for extended periods of time.

Interview by Susie Pentelow.

‘Camoufleur’ will run between 1 March and 15 April 2017 at VITRINE, London SE1 3UN, with a preview on Tuesday 28 February 2017, 6.30 – 9 pm. For more information, visit http://www.vitrinegallery.com/exhibitions/camoufleur/.

‘Chimera’ continues until 22 January 2017 at Antenna Space, Shanghai. Visit http://www.antenna-space.com/en/exhibitions/chimera for more information.

Find out more about Nadim Abbas’ work at http://www.nadimabbas.com.

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bujoloveme · 6 years ago

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Ghost Town, v01, Dos Cabezas, AZ (1879), USA

Doz CabezasAZ (about 1879, population <25), height 1,549 m (1582 m)

• The "ghost town" aesthetic of this entrance works the surprise Furthermore

"The Dos Cabezasite is the only person on the globe who can sit and smile calmly and smiles again under conditions and adversities that would drive a vicious devotee of the Lamb crazy.When Gabriel blows his horn, he will find some of those ingenious ancients Fellows who sit on a rock and tell about the promising future of the camp or how rich the juniper mine is. "-Grave stone EpitaphApril 28, 1887

• Dos Cabezas, AZ is a "living" Sonoran Desert Ghost town with few remaining inhabitants • in the Sulfur Springs Valley [[[[photo]from Cochise County • lies next to the Dos Cabezas ("Two Heads") mountains, named after the two bare peaks

• A historically significant source of drinking water, formerly known as Dos Cabezas Spring, is about half an hour away. southwest of the city on the old Southern Emigration Patha main artery of the Move west • The path descends from below into the valley Apache Spring by Apache Pass

On September 4, 1851, John Russell Bartlett & his Boundary Survey The Commission was located to the west in an area that had been Spanish / Mexican territory for more than 300 years worn in the US in 1848, end of controversial The Mexican-American War, but much of the southernmost region of Arizona and New Mexico remained under the Mexican flag. Bartlett's mission was to work with a Mexican Surveying Team to formally define the post-war US-Mexico border

• The survey was a prelude to the years 1853-54 Gadsden purchase which acquired 29,670 square kilometers for $ 10 million. of the Mexican territory south of the Gila River, Including Cochise County • The deal was signed by the president Franklin Pierce, a northern anti-abolitionist ("TeiggesichtDemocrat • It should facilitate the development of a road, canal and / or railway in New Orleans-LA and open southward expansion to the south, apparently ignoring the fact that an economy based on slave cotton probably not thriving in the desert – "Cochise and his times"

• With drinking water, a precious commodity for two- and four-legged desert travelers, Apache Spring – like many water holes – became the scene of a stagecoach stop. C. 1857 • was operated by the San Antonio-San Diego "San-San" line, commonly known "Jackass Mail" • Chiricahua Apache Attacks made the Apache Pass the most dangerous stop on Birkenstrasse[[[[map], named after company owner James Birch (1827-1857) –The West is connected

• the 1,476 mi. Only daylight driving – with daily stops for 2 meals (45 min. Each) and team change (5-10 min.) – usually it took less than 30 days and could be up to 22. • One way is $ 150. Meals and £ 30 luggage included –Deconstruct the Jackass Mail Route

• The Jackass Line had a fleet of High speed trolley (mud)Vehicles suitable for transport in case of strong heat in rough terrain. Concord stagecoaches [[[[photo]made by the Abbot Downing Co. in Concord, NH

"It was no joke to sit in the hard seat, now against the roof and now against the side of the car." Under the passenger compartment, wide leather straps called "full-length braces" sat in the carriage, causing them to move Motion sickness was a common complaint, and ginger root was the preferred remedy. "-Historynet

• Each stage accommodates 9-12 passengers on three benches and up to 10 others on the roof • The coaches were drawn by four- and six-mule teams. • The company kept 200 upper mules in its western coasts

The bus was equipped with three seats, which were occupied by nine passengers. As the occupants of the front and middle seats faced each other, these six persons had to lock their knees; and only for ten of the twelve legs there was room, each side of the coach was adorned by a foot that dangled now on the bike and now tried in vain to find a base … "-The story of stagecoaches in Tucson, ArizonaBob Ring

• Tips For stagecoach travelers, Cowboy Chronicles

• The passenger experience, Desert USA

"The company recommended to every passenger: … with one Sharp's rifle(Not carbine,) with equipment and a hundred cartridges, a dark blue Colts revolver and two pounds of bullets, belts and holsters, knives and scabbards … "-San Diego Herald November 21, 1857

• The stations of the line were built 10 to 40 miles. apart from • a few basic bedding options provided; Everyone had water for passengers, drivers ("Whips") and their teams • equipped with corrals, the depots served as relay stations where drivers and draft animals were exchanged. • "Rocking Stations" did not offer meals, but larger "home stations," often run by families, were "eating stops":

"… hard beef or pork fried in a dirt-blackened pan, coarse bread, mesquite beans, a mysterious concoction known as slumgullion, deadly black coffee, and a" nasty mixture of dried apples "that spread masked under the name apple pie. "-True West

• In September 1857, Jackass founder James Birch, who sailed to Panama via California, was lost at sea along with 419 other passengers and 30-pound pounds. made of gold in the S. S. Central America Disaster • in the same month the Butterfield Overland Mail line[[[[photos]From St. Louis to San Francisco, it gradually began to displace the Jackass Line and absorb many of its stations

• around 1858 a new fortified stone camp, Ewell's Stage Station [[[[photo]rose 4 mi. south of Dos Cabezas Spring • It's unclear which stage lift the building has built, but when Jackass Mail was completed, Butterfield-Overland later left the decision to bypass "Ewell's." In 1861 it was in ruins, which were destroyed by Apaches

• The name Ewell continued to live in a tiny, heavily populated settlement Ewell Springs & at Dos Cabezas Spring, renamed Ewell's Spring when the original station was built. • In 1879, the National Mail & Transportation Co. had set up a new Ewell's station

Born in Virginia Richard Stoddert "Baldy" Ewell (1817-1872) was captain of the first US dragoons, which were stationed in the 1850s in the southwest. He resigned from the US Army in 1861 to join the Confederation. • served in the Civil War as Commander-in-Chief under Stonewall Jackson & Robert E. Lee • It has been argued that his decisions In the Battle of Gettysburg may have decided the outcome of this engagement

• During Ewell's service in the West, Gila Apache raided the Southern Emigrant Route and demanded a military response. • He campaigned for an unrestricted fight: "How can the devil stop a soldier in the midst of battle and summon a jury of mattresses to decide if he has a redshin to throw bullets into the soldiers is a woman or not . "• the 1857 Bonneville Expedition, in which Ewell commanded about 300 men, who committed themselves on the river Gila against Apache

"… the fight on June 27 … was short and sweet … Ewell went away with the lion's share of the honors … Hardly an Apache escaped, nearly 40 warriors were killed or wounded and 45 women and children were captured … Ewell was unreservedly recognized as the hero of the day, his rampant leap to action destroyed the Western Apaches and forced them to seek peace. "-Robert E. Lee's hesitant commanderPaul D. Casdorph

• From Lt. John Van Deusen Du Bois & # 39; report on the engagement: "An Indian was wounded, and his wife carried him to the Chaparral in the arms and covered him with a brush when the troops came upon them and killed both of them Indian was arrested and taken out by Col. Bonneville's request or express command with bound hands and shot like a dog by a Pueblo Indian – not 30 yards from the camp … May God never allow the Native American fight make me a thug or I'm hard, so that I can behave the coward in this way … "-Journal of the History of Arizona, Vo. 43, No. 2, Arizona Historical Society

• c. Around 1850, gold veins and some gold nuggets were discovered around the Ewell's station in the 1860s wildcatters Gold found on both sides of the Dos Cabezas series • In 1862, claims were made near the mountains and around the Apache Pass.Index of Mining Properties

• In 1866, Congress passed a mining law that in 1872 proclaimed "Minerals of Public Interest … free and open to exploration and occupation." additional stimulus was provided to "promote the exploration and development of minerals in the western United States",Congress Research Service

• John Casey (1834-1904), an immigrant from Ireland, had made the first important statement in the area of Dos Cabezas in 1878. • Juniper (locally known as "Casey Gold") was only 3 km northeast of Ewell Spring • John and his brother Dan moved to a hut on site. • At the end of the year, a dozen employees worked in the mine

• The news that Casey Pay Dirt & Word had hit that soon a station in the South Pacific would be built in Willcox – only 14 miles. Dozens of prospectors lured, z. B. Simon Hansen (1852-1929), a recent immigrant from Denmark who claimed 27 claims. • With the arrival of the new settlers, a small school was built on October 20, 1878, the Dos Cabezas The mining district was officially determined

• 1879 the Arizona Miner reported rich silver and gold deposits, claiming to have 2,000 residents at Ewell Springs. • Other reports indicate that the local population is unlikely to exceed 300 before 1920The persistence of mining settlements in the Arizona countrysideJonathan Lay Harris, 1971

• In the midst of the rapid growth of 1879, the settlement of Ewell Springs was replaced by Dos Cabezas, a town with its own post office, just above Ewell. • John Casey is widely regarded as the founder • Mississippi-born James Monroe Riggs (1835-1912), once a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army, became Post Cabezas' first postmaster and opened a shop he was Traveler's Rest named

• In 1880 there were ~ 30 mud houses and 15 families in the up-and-coming city. • In 1882, the year of the city newspaper, 65 voters were registered Dos Cabezas Gold NoteIn 1884, 42 students wrote the school of the city

• At its height, Dos Cabezas had ~ 50 buildings, 3 shops, 3 salons, 2 dairies, joineries, telegraphy, a commercial shop, a barber shop, a butchery, a brewery, a brickyard, a hotel, a ballroom, a boarding house, a blacksmith shop , 3 stables, 3 stamp mills For gold ore and about 300 inhabitants, however, the population consisted of at least 1,500 prospectors, miners and other mining companies. Employees who live in the nearby mountains and valleys –Books in Northport

• Dos Cabezas ("Two Heads") was often spelled and pronounced "Dos Cabezos", with an "o" replacing the second "a" in "Cabezas". • The postmaster chose both spellings, as seen in the city postmark • the English translation by Dos CabezOs is "Two Peaks", undoubtedly a more accurate – albeit less poetic – description of the twin peaks than the original, since the flawed version was only registered at the US Post Office in Washington DC interchangeable spellings persist into the 20th century

• The railroad arrived in Arizona in 1880, a station was established in Willcox, and shabby Scottish-born miner John Dare Emersley (1826-1899) arrived at Dos Cabezas to search for mineral deposits. • JD was a graduate of the U. of Edinburgh, a scientifically accomplished writer and botanical collector with drought-tolerant grass, who named after him Muhlenbergia emersleyi (bull grass) • was a correspondent for the Engineering & Mining Journal • several other journals, including Scientific American him

According to a miner who knew him, Emersley was apparently a greedy-and unusually tall-knight: "Every Old Settler in the Globe District remembers Emersley, a three-meter-long scotchman who had more claims than he could work, and jumped more than he could hold. "-Arizona silver belt (Globe, AT), January 6, 1883

• The Scotchman soon found a gold deposit and made about 20 claims. • He built a cabin nearby at an altitude of 6,000 meters and led a secluded life. He made a contract with God and vowed not to develop allegations from him, unless he received a sign from above. Nevertheless, the legally prescribed work to retain ownership of its claims produced several tunnels, one that Roberts, 160. The sign of God was never realized, and while Emersley was waiting for it, he died of scurvy

• shortly thereafter Starved to death among his richThe story of JD Emersley, a religious hermit who lived and died on a "copper mountain", appeared in newspapers across the country. • Emersley made his demand on the Lord to be used for the good of all humanity, though he did not wish for this last wish, the "Mountain of Copper" brought another wave of prospectors into the mining district and sparked a local copper boom out

• In 1899, a new town, Laub City, was dismissed at the mouth of Mascot Canyon, 3 km. on Dos Cabezas • John A. Rockfellow (1858-1947)[[[[photo], Author of The Log of an Arizona Trail Blazer, conducted the survey. • Rockefeller's sister was Tucson architect Anne Graham Rockfellow (1866-1954), an MIT graduate and designer of the landmark El Conquistador[[[[photo]• The site was near the Emersley claims acquired from the mines of Dos Cabezas Consolidated. Coastal coastline electrification required countless miles of copper power lines"Copper camp" like Laub City grew and prospered. The city grew and gained its own post office around 1900

• Laub City was named after (and possibly after) Henry leaves (1858-1926), a Kentucky-born investor from Los Angeles for German-Jewish immigrants. • He made his first fortune as a liquor dealer. • He later invested in mining, oil and real estate in Southeast Arizona

"There is every reason to believe that Dos Cabezas will be one of Arizona's largest mining areas" – Henry Laub, 1902

• A global increase in mining led to a decline in copper prices as supply outstripped demand. • Several mining experts collaborated to restrict production so as not to stabilize the market. Consolidated Mines financing had dried up in 1903. Laub City was a ghost town Cabezas also suffered from the mine closures, but was able to hold on to the operation of some mines

• In 1905, a Wales-born mining engineer, Capt. Benjamin W. Tibbey (1848-1935), with a "Mr. Page" in the city. • Ben Tibbey's mining career began as a child in a Welch mine. • Page was actually T.N. McCauley, a Chicagoer with a turbulent investment & finance career. • The two examined the mining district. McCauley had apparently stayed. Later, he claimed that he spent two years in Emersly's abandoned cabin. • He applied quietly and acquired claims on 600 hectares

• In June 1907, McCauley organized the Mascot Copper Company with a capitalization of $ 10 million and began large-scale development. • Euphoric reports of massive ore occurrences have appeared in the local press, e.g. B. "Many Thousands of Tons of Ore in Sight – Commandments for Real Estate" Fair to Become Arizona's Largest Copper Producer "

• In 1909, Mascot acquired control of Dos Cabeza's Consolidated Mines Co., the original Emersley claims that the Laub Group had bought. • McCauley launched a campaign to sell Mascot stock for $ 3 / share, later $ 4, and eventually $ 5. • His extravagant promotions included Investor & Press Junkets in the mine in private railroad cars, Food & Drink at the property's Hospitality House, and a substantial shareholder banquet at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco with the company logo, a swastika prominently displayed[[[[photo]"The management of the Mascot has a remarkable array of sensational crop coverages and few if other copper mining companies can achieve their enviable performance in terms of actual tonnage when in the same development phase." -Bisbee Daily Review, March 10, 1910

• although stock analysts familiar with McCauley's story con artist Their customers were warned that by August 1910, sales of $ 300,000 had been achieved. • The shareholders owned 25% of the company, the rest was retained by the promoters

• While actual mining and ore deliveries were limited, the company announced that in 1912 a store, a boarding house, employee quarters and a new office building had been completed when Mascot continued its costly expansion and occasionally shipped ore. Arizona Territory won statehood

• In 1914, the company founded Mascot Townsite & Realty Co. to sell land in a new town they developed at Mascot Canyon:

"UNUSUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR PERSONAL GAIN By buying a property on the MASCOT TOWNSITE This new city should have a population of 5,000 in a few years." – May 1915

• By 1915, the city of Mascot had been founded. • Houses that could be reached by winding paths climbed over terraces. • Residents built a community hall on a single day. • On Saturday, a band called "Merry Miners" was organized – nightly dances

"King Copper, the magician of magic, has once again raised his polished scepter – and once again a tiny minecamp, a mere patch of the Arizona landscape, got the industrial incentive that was soon to turn it into a factor to reckon with The tiny mining town of the past was Dos Cabezas The next town is Mascot – El Paso Herald, June 25, 1915

• within 10 years The city would have ~ 100 buildings and 800 inhabitants. • The children were taught at the Mascot School and a second school with 4 teachers. • Many of the city's boys "grew up with gold to earn money" – Arizona Republic, March 4, 1971

• Although most Mexican residents of the area lived in Dos Cabezas, some, such as Esperanza Montoya Padilla (1915-2003), lived in Mascot:

"I was born on August 28, 1915, in Mascot, Arizona … In the early days, when I was a small child, Mascot was very large and thriving, it was also a beautiful place, with lots of cottonwood and oak trees The school was on this street, along with a grocery store and even a pool hall, and there was a pastry shop in the pool hall where they sold treats like ice cream On the hill there was a community center where movies were screened, I remember silent movies with Rudolph Valentino, even the guys from Dos Cabezas came to Mascot because of the movies.

At Christmas, they set up a tree in the community center, and all the kids in the city got their Christmas gifts. There was a road that led from Dos Cabezas to Mascot and all sorts of houses along this road to the mine. Our house was on this street. I remember a time when all were Caballos – horses pulling wagons. Of course the cars came later. –Songs My mother sang to me

• On January 27, 1915, a celebration in Willcox marked the beginning of the construction of the Mascot & Western Railroad • A large crowd watched as a cheering T. N. McCauley turned the first shovel out of dirt. • The last spike – a copper – was taken at The Mascot Townsite on June 15, 1915, followed by a "monstrous grill" for 4000 guests[[[[photos]• Activities included a visit to a mine and the company's "2-mile" railroad (10.6000 & # 39;)[[[[photo]"I feel that this project can only be a good and lasting good, not just because the mascot is established, but because many people who have only known Arizona in the desert so far may be part of it take home with them the idea of permanence that we enjoy in this great community. "- HA Morgan, Bisbee Daily Review, June 27, 1915

• In 1916, a drought devastated the mining area – wells dried up, cattle died and many mines closed. • On July 1, 1917, American Smelting & Refining closed its 20th anniversary. Lease the Mascot property just to give up less than a year. later probably because the operation lost money

• Following the bankruptcy of Mascot Copper, McCauley reorganized the company through merger. • The "new" Central Copper Co. commenced operations on February 15, 1919. • McCauley developed a multi-level marketing concept in which shareholders became stock traders. • The price was set at $ 0.50 per share. Purchases are limited to $ 100 / person and $ 10 / month. Financing Available • The vendors used portable, hand-cranked projectors to film the property at small gatherings of prospects

• According to reports, 70,000 shareholders were invested and were astounded when the price fell 50% when the stock came on the market. • lawsuits have been filed. • In an advertisement published in several newspapers, McCauley denied any action against the company

By January 1924, McCauley reported that $ 4.5 million was spent on the new building. By 1926, 400 employees were on the payroll, but the production of the mines proved marginal. In 1927, shareholders were informed that copper and silver prices would decrease as a result of falling copper and silver prices. Minimum amount to cover operating costs

• The following year, the company was acquired by Southwestern Securities Corporation, a holding company. • At the end of 1929 there were only 26 employees left. • On February 29, 1932, Southwestern Securities acquired Mascot Company through a public auction for $ 100,000. • McCauley moved to Tucson, was involved in a bank scandal, fled to California, then disappeared without a trace –A story of Willcox, Arizona and the surrounding areaVernon Burdette Schultz

• with the failure of Central Copper[[[[photo]And the departure of the miners began Dos Cabeza's final descent, though not without distractions. • Despite frequent mine closures and the onset of the Great Depression, the city set up a team in the Sulfur Springs Valley Baseball League, which also includes a squad representing a C.c.c. Stock • Willcox had 2 teams in the league, the Mexicans and the Americans

• Among the dwindling population of Dos Cabezas was Jack Howard, the man who "sharpened the first tools that opened the first gold discoveries of the Dos Cabezas district" and spent his last 30 years. with Mary Katherine Cummings, the story "Big Nose Kate"[[[[photo], in movies as Katie Elder –Tombstone Daily Prospector

• John Jessie "Jack" Howard (1858-1930) was born in Nottingham, England. • As one of the first miners in the mining area of Dos Cabezas, he is remembered by Howard Peak and Howard Canyon. • lived in the hills near Dos Cabezas. • He remembered as a crazy guy hiding behind his hut in a manhole to shoot at intruders as they rode into range. • On the other hand, some of his colleagues, Dos Cabezans, thought he was friendly, • divorced his wife Mary, who was divorced according to court records. a hideous and unpleasant mood, coupled with frequent outbursts of fierce temper, until she made his life a burden he could no longer endure. "

Witnesses testified of Mary's insults against insults, which included calling Howard a white man, kept a dirty house, never washed dishes or clothes, and even threatened to burn down his house and poison his camp. " –He lived with Big Nose Kate, True West

• Mary Katherine "Big Nose Kate" Horony (1850-1940) was born in Pest (Hungary). Second oldest daughter of the Hungarian doctor Miklós Horony. • emigrated with her family to the US in 1860. • taken to a nursing home after her parents' death. • stowed on a steamer in St. Louis, where she became a prostitute • 1874 fined for work as an "athlete" (prostitute) in a "sports house" (brothel) in Dodge City, KS, run by Nellie "Bessie" Ketchum, wife of James Earp

• moved to Fort Griffin, TX in 1876. • met dentist John "Doc" Hollidaywho allegedly said that he considered Kate to be his intellectual equal. • Kate introduced Holliday to Wyatt Earp

• The couple fought regularly, sometimes violently. • According to Kate, she married in Valdosta, Georgia. • moved on to AZ territory, where Kate worked as a prostitute at the Palace Saloon in Prescott. They split up, but returned to Holliday in Tombstone[[[[photos]Claimed to have experienced October 26, 1881 Gunfight in the OK Corral out of her window C.S. Fly pension

• 19 years later Kate, almost 50 years old[[[[photo]& Divorcing an abusive husband was too old for prostitution long after her romance with Doc & • In June 1900, when she was employed at the Rath Hotel in Cochise, AT, she responded to a housekeeper for $ 20 / month , plus room and board • The ad was placed by Jack Howard. • Kate lived with him as an employee ("servant" according to the 1900 census) until 1930

• On 3 January, Kate went 3 miles. to the house of Dos Cabeza's postmaster Edwin White.

"Jack died last night and I stayed with him all night."

• Howard was buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery of Dos Cabezas after living alone for 2 years. Kate sold the homestead for $ 535.30. • In 1931 she wrote the Governor of Arizona, George W.P. Hunt to take in the Arizona pioneers home in Prescott • Although foreigners were born and thus not admitted, she claimed that Davenport, Iowa, was their birthplace and was accepted. • She died 5 days before her 90th birthday. • was buried under the name "Mary K. Cummings" in the cemetery of the homeland. "Big Nose Kate, independent woman of the Wild West – Kyla Cathey

• The mascot mine was closed in 1930

• The Mascot & WesternRailroad ceased operations in 1931 – four years later the tracks were taken

• Dos Cabezas of the 1940s photos

• In 1949, the US Postal Department corrected the spelling of the city postal service from Dos Cabezos to Dos Cabezas

• mid-20th century Dos Cabeza's family[[[[photos]• The postal service of Dos Cabezas was discontinued in 1960

• In 1964, the city's population had dropped to 12

• McCauley's Mascot Hospitality House was part of the Dos Cabezas Spirit & Nature Retreat Bed & Breakfast[[[[photo]• Today, Dos Cabezas is considered a ghost town graveyard the main attraction of the city

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sheminecrafts · 6 years ago

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Zuckerberg misunderstands the huge threat of TikTok

“It’s almost like the Explore Tab that we have on Instagram” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in leaked audio of him describing TikTok during an all-hands meeting. But it’s not. TikTok represents a new form of social entertainment that’s vastly different from the lifelogging of Instagram where you can just take a selfie, show something pretty, or pan around what you’re up to. TikToks are premeditated, storyboarded, and vastly different than the haphazard Stories on Insta.

That’s why Zuckerberg’s comments cast a dark shadow over the future of the Facebook family of apps. How can it beat what it doesn’t understand? He certainly can’t ignore it. Facebook’s copycat Lasso has been installed just 425,000 times since it launched in November, while TikTok has 640 million installs in the same period outside of China. Oh, and TikTok has 1.4 billion total installs beyond China to date.

TikTok

Casey Newton of The Verge today published two hours of audio and transcripts from two internal-only all-hands Q&As held by Zuckerberg at Facebook in July. His comments touch on the company’s plan to fight being broken up by regulators, especially if Elizabeth Warren becomes President. He thinks Facebook would win, but on resorting to suing the government, he says “does that still suck for us? Yeah.” Zuckerberg also describes how Facebook is working to launch a payments product in Mexico and elsewhere by year’s end as Libra deals with regulatory scrutiny.

But beyond his comments on regulation, it’s his pigeonholing of TikTok that’s most alarming. It foreshadows Facebook failing to win one of the core social feeds that its business depends on. Perhaps his perspective on the competitor is evolving, but the leak portrays him as thinking TikTok is just the next Snapchat Stories to destroy.

Zuckeberg’s Thoughts On TikTok

Here’s what Zuckerberg said about TikTok during the internal Q&A sessions, (emphasis mine):

So yeah. I mean, TikTok is doing well. One of the things that’s especially notable about TikTok is, for a while, the internet landscape was kind of a bunch of internet companies that were primarily American companies. And then there was this parallel universe of Chinese companies that pretty much only were offering their services in China. And we had Tencent who was trying to spread some of their services into Southeast Asia. Alibaba has spread a bunch of their payment services to Southeast Asia. Broadly, in terms of global expansion, that had been pretty limited, and TikTok, which is built by this company Beijing ByteDance, is really the first consumer internet product built by one of the Chinese tech giants that is doing quite well around the world. It’s starting to do well in the US, especially with young folks. It’s growing really quickly in India. I think it’s past Instagram now in India in terms of scale. So yeah, it’s a very interesting phenomenon.

And the way that we kind of think about it is: it’s married short-form, immersive video with browse. So it’s almost like the Explore Tab that we have on Instagram, which is today primarily about feed posts and highlighting different feed posts. I kind of think about TikTok as if it were Explore for stories, and that were the whole app. And then you had creators who were specifically working on making that stuff. So we have a number of approaches that we’re going to take towards this, and we have a product called Lasso that’s a standalone app that we’re working on, trying to get product-market fit in countries like Mexico, is I think one of the first initial ones. We’re trying to first see if we can get it to work in countries where TikTok is not already big before we go and compete with TikTok in countries where they are big.

We’re taking a number of approaches with Instagram, including making it so that Explore is more focused on stories, which is increasingly becoming the primary way that people consume content on Instagram, as well as a couple of other things there. But yeah, I think that it’s not only one of the more interesting new phenomena and products that are growing. But in terms of the geopolitical implications of what they’re doing, I think it is quite interesting. I think we have time to learn and understand and get ahead of the trend. It is growing, but they’re spending a huge amount of money promoting it. What we’ve found is that their retention is actually not that strong after they stop advertising. So the space is still fairly nascent, and there’s time for us to kind of figure out what we want to do here. But I think this is a real thing. It’s good.

To Zuckerberg’s credit, he’s not dismissing the threat. He knows TikTok is popular. He knows it’s growing in key international markets Facebook and Instagram depend on to keep user counts rising. And he knows his company needs to respond via its standalone clone Lasso and more.

Lasso

But while TikToks might look like Stories because they’re vertical videos, and TikTok might algorithmically recommend them to people like Instagram Explore, it’s a whole ‘nother beast of a product and one that may be harder than it seems to copy.

To crystallize why, let’s rewind to Snapchat. With the launch of Stories, it started to blow up with US teens. Facebook’s attempts to clone it in standalone apps like Poke and Slingshot never gained traction. In fact, none of Facebook’s standalone apps have succeeded unless they splintered off an already-popular piece of Facebook like chat and users were forced to download them like Messenger. It wasn’t until Zuckerberg stuck his clone of Stories front-and-center atop Instagram and Facebook that Snapchat’s user count went from growing 18% per quarter to shrinking. There, Facebook used the same strategy laid out in Zuckerberg’s comments — push its good-enough clone in countries where the original isn’t popular yet.

But Facebook was fortunate because Stories really wasn’t that dissimilar to the content users were already sharing on Instagram — tiny biographical snippets of their lives. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel had originally invented Stories as a vision of Facebook’s News Feed through the lens of an ephemeral camera. All users had to know was “I take the same videos, but shorter and sillier, posted more often, and then they disappear”. The concept of Instagram and Facebook didn’t have to change. They were still about telling friends what you were up to. Choking off TikTok’s growth will be much more complicated.

Why TikTok Is Tough To Clone

TikTok isn’t about you or what you’re doing. It’s about entertaining your audience. It’s not spontaneous chronicling of your real life. It’s about inventing characters, dressing up as someone else, and acting out jokes. It’s not about privacy and friends, but strutting on the world stage. And it’s not about originality — the heart of Instagram. TikTok is about remixing culture — taking the audio from someone else’s clip and reimagining the gag in a new context by layering it atop a video you record.

That makes TikTok distinct enough that it will be very difficult to shoehorn into Instagram or Facebook, even if they add the remixing functionality. Most videos on those apps aren’t designed to be templates for memes like TikToks are. Insta and Facebook’s social graphs are rooted in friendship and augmented by the beautiful and famous, but don’t encompass the new wave of amateur performers TikTok elevates. And since each post to the app becomes fodder for someone else’s creativity, a competitor starting from scratch doesn’t offer much to remix.

That means a TikTok clone would have to be somewhat buried in Instagram or Facebook, rebuild a new social graph, and retrain users’ understanding of these apps’ purpose…at the risk of distracting from their core use cases. This leaves Facebook hoping to grow its standalone TikTok clone Lasso which TechCrunch scooped a year ago before it launched last November. But as we’ve seen, Facebook struggles growing brand new apps, and that effort is further hindered by its increasingly toxic brand and sheen of uncoolness. Nor does it help that Facebook must divert development resources to comply with all the new privacy and transparency obligations as part of its $5 billion FTC fine and settlement.

The Next Feed

Facebook’s best bet is to assess the future value of the ads it could run on a successful TikTok clone and apply some greater fraction of that grand sum to competing directly. It’s already made some smart additions to Lasso like tutorials for how to remix and the option to add GIFs as sections of your video. But it’s still failing to gain serious traction in the US. While typical TikTok homepage videos have hundreds of thousands of Likes, the top ones I saw in my Lasso feed today received 70 or fewer.

I had Sensor Tower run some analysis comparing TikTok with Lasso since its launch last November, and found that Lasso gets 6 downloads for every 1000 for TikTok in the US. Some more stats:

US Total Downloads Since November: Lasso – 250,000 // TikTok – 41.3 million

US Downloads Per Day Since November: Lasso – 760 // TikTok – 126,000

Average US Google Play Social App Chart Ranking: Lasso – #155 // TikTok – #2

Beyond the US, Lasso has only launched in one other market, Mexico in April, where it’s been faring better but could hardly even be considered a competitor to TikTok. They won’t even coherently fit together on a graph. Facebook needs to lean harder into Lasso:

Mexico Total Downloads Since April: Lasso – 175,000 // TikTok – 3.3 million

Mexico Downloads Per Day Since November: Lasso – 1,000 // TikTok – 19,000

Zuckerberg may need to find a coherent place for TikTok style features inside Instagram and potentially Facebook. That could be another horizontal row of previews like with Stories and/or a header on the Explore page dedicated to premeditated content. Certainly something more prominent than a single button like IGTV that still no one is asking for. One opportunity to best TikTok would be building a dedicated remix source browser into the Stories camera to help users find content to put their own spin on.

Facebook will also need to buy out top TikTok creators to make videos for it instead, and even quasi-hire some of the most prolific video meme or challenge inventors to give users trends to jump on rather than just one-off clips to watch. Its failure to offer IGTV stars monetization has led many to ignore that platform, and it can’t afford that again.

If Zuckerberg approaches TikTok as merely an algorithmic video recommender like Explore, Facebook will miss out on owning the social entertainment feed. If he doesn’t decisively move to challenge TikTok soon, its catalog of content to remix will grow insurmountable and it will own the whole concept of short form performative video. Snapchat’s insistence on ephemerality makes it incompatible with remixing, and YouTube isn’t nimble enough to reinvent itself.

If no American company can step up, we could see our interest data, faces, and attention forfeited to an app that while delightful to use, heralds Chinese political values at odds with our own.

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technicalsolutions88 · 6 years ago

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TikTok

Zuckeberg’s Thoughts On TikTok

Here’s what Zuckerberg said about TikTok during the internal Q&A sessions, (emphasis mine):

Lasso

Why TikTok Is Tough To Clone

The Next Feed

I had Sensor Tower run some analysis comparing TikTok with Lasso since its launch last November, and found that Lasso gets 6 downloads for every 1000 for TikTok in the US. Some more stats:

US Total Downloads Since November: Lasso – 250,000 // TikTok – 41.3 million

US Downloads Per Day Since November: Lasso – 760 // TikTok – 126,000

Average US Google Play Social App Chart Ranking: Lasso – #155 // TikTok – #2

Mexico Total Downloads Since April: Lasso – 175,000 // TikTok – 3.3 million

Mexico Downloads Per Day Since November: Lasso – 1,000 // TikTok – 19,000

If no American company can step up, we could see our interest data, faces, and attention forfeited to an app that while delightful to use, heralds Chinese political values at odds with our own. If only Twitter hadn’t killed Vine.

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biofunmy · 6 years ago

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In ‘City on a Hill,’ a Crime-Ridden Boston Before the ‘Miracle’

In Showtime’s new crime drama “City on a Hill,” Jackie Rohr is a cocaine-snorting, corrupt and racist F.B.I. veteran who longs for the days when the “bad men” were in power, and Decourcy Ward is a principled new assistant district attorney from Brooklyn, determined to “rip out the [expletive] up machinery” in 1990s Boston.

The characters — played with flamboyant vigor by Kevin Bacon and simmering fortitude by Aldis Hodge — shouldn’t like each other, or even be able to work together. And for much of the pilot episode, they don’t.

But one morning last April, as Bacon and Hodge filmed a scene for a later episode in Decourcy’s office — actually a set at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn — the mood was different. The characters were on good terms, maybe even kind of pals.

Decourcy shared his uneaten eggs with Jackie. (In between takes, Bacon joked about being too full to partake in the handsomely stocked craft services.) Both sported shiners on their faces but they didn’t give them to each other; Decourcy’s came from a confrontation with a church minister, Jackie’s from an “alcohol-induced haymaker” at the V.F.W. When their easy chatter was interrupted by a distressing call Jackie received on his period-appropriate oversized mobile phone, Decourcy expressed concern and moral support.

Decourcy and Jackie “don’t trust each other, but kind of need each other,” Hodge said later during a phone interview. “They both represent two sides of the same coin. One is a dark looking into the light, one is a light looking into the dark.”

That could be the tagline of “City on a Hill,” which takes place during a time when crime rates and racial tensions in Boston were exceedingly high until a coalition of community groups developed an anti-violence mission that would prove successful in the late ’90s.

[Read our review of “City on a Hill.”]

The show was created by the relatively unknown writer (and Boston native) Chuck MacLean, but it sports an impressive pedigree of Hollywood veterans, including the executive producers Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Barry Levinson. It’s a sprawling ensemble piece that’s part procedural and part machismo-fueled interracial buddy tale: Decourcy and Jackie are brought together through their mutual interest in taking on a family of armored car robbers in Charlestown led by Frankie Ryan (Jonathan Tucker). By the end of the pilot, they’re swapping personal stories and strategizing how to build a potentially career-defining case over drinks in a bar.

Their dynamic may call to mind Tibbs and Gillespie or Murtaugh and Riggs, but the show’s origins lie in “The Town,” the 2010 crime thriller Affleck co-wrote, directed and starred in, which also centered on criminals in the working-class, heavily Irish Charlestown neighborhood.

Affleck was inspired to develop “City on a Hill,” he wrote in an email, after “doing so much research for ‘The Town’ and not being able to tell the scope and scale of the story the research yielded.” The series offers a more expansive means “to explore the city and in particular what was going on politically, socioeconomically, racially and culturally at the time I kind of came of age there,” he wrote.

Affleck tapped MacLean, a self-described “bum from Quincy, Mass.” with an unmistakable accent to match, who had worked with Affleck’s brother, Casey, on a script for a movie about the Boston Strangler that never got made. The veteran writer and producer Tom Fontana, who specializes in character-driven dramas set in distinct environments (“St. Elsewhere,” “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “Oz”), was impressed by the pilot and came on as the showrunner and an executive producer after “City on a Hill” was picked up by Showtime.

While this high-wattage project is MacLean’s first foray into TV, his fascination with Boston history — his home in Los Angeles contains “wall-to-wall” crime and newspaper memorabilia stretching back to the 1930s — made him a good fit for Affleck’s vision.

“I didn’t want to spend five years talking about bank robbers and I don’t think he did either,” MacLean said. “So we started talking about the different things that were going on in Boston in the early ’90s.”

A lot was going on. The city was plagued by violent crime and racial tension, generating plenty of headlines that the series occasionally rips from, à la “Law & Order.”

It begins by citing the notorious case of Charles Stuart, a white Bostonian who in 1989 claimed that a black gunman attacked him and killed his pregnant wife. More than two months passed — during which the police went on a manhunt and Stuart eventually identified someone as the attacker from a lineup — before Stuart’s story fell apart. His brother Matthew went to the police and outed him as the real killer.

The incident exacerbated the already tense relationship between law enforcement and the black community. “The Boston police and the city of Boston — from the end of World War II, there was at least one time in every decade where they became a national embarrassment,” MacLean said.

“The Stuart one was the first time that I think the circumstances lined up that it was particularly bad, but then in the aftermath of it, it allowed for a lot of good to happen,” he added. “That’s the theme that I wanted to look at.”

MacLean, 33, was a child during the era of “City on a Hill.” But the journalist and author Michele McPhee, a writer for the show, was then a young investigative reporter at The Boston Globe, and recalls well the city’s struggles during those years.

“A little girl gets shot off a mailbox,” McPhee said. “Jermaine Goffigan — whose face I’ll never forget — he’s counting Tootsie Rolls from Halloween, still in his costume, when he gets hit by a stray bullet.”

“The city had had enough,” she added.

Jackie and Decourcy serve as the thematic entry point, their unlikely partnership an explicit allegory for the Operation Ceasefire program — also known as “The Boston Miracle.” Black clergy members, police officers, probation officers and outreach workers — once unaligned with one another — joined forces under the direction of the Harvard University criminologist David M. Kennedy to focus on black youth in high-crime areas. After it was carried out in 1996, Boston began to see a decline in homicides, and similar programs were replicated in other cities like Cincinnati with success.

“These two characters are polar opposites,” Fontana said. “But for at least a period of time, [they] need each other and are willing to overlook certain things in an effort to achieve something greater.”

The show’s creative team is primarily white, a liability for a story that aims to authentically portray a time and place defined largely by racial tension. (This season there was one biracial writer, J.M. Holmes, and one Latino writer, Jorge Zamacona.) But “City on a Hill,” doesn’t shy away from depicting its setting’s deeply ingrained racism: Within the first minute of the first episode, Jackie flippantly slings around the N-word.

“That was the world I grew up in,” MacLean said.

But, he added, he spoke frequently with Hodge and Lauren E. Banks, who plays Decourcy’s wife, Siobhan, about their perspectives. “As much as I wanted my story told correctly, I wanted everyone else’s involved in this to be told correctly,” he said.

Hodge said he “chimes in quite a bit” when it comes to the show’s depiction of Decourcy, who is partly inspired by Boston’s first black district attorney, Ralph Martin.

“That’s something that’s a priority going forward, just to get more black voices in the writer’s room,” he said. “Unless you’ve actually been the victim [of racism], you actually don’t know what it is.”

Stories about such fraught but fruitful partnerships risk turning a racist like Jackie into a sympathetic figure by having him work well with Decourcy. But in the early episodes, at least — the first 3 of 10 were made available in advance — the show is less about Jackie learning to not be a terrible human being than Decourcy’s struggle to take down the (white) status quo without becoming like it.

Decourcy is the “hero of the series” who must “deal with the devil” Jackie, MacLean said.

For Hodge, the question is: “How far will he go before he turns into Jackie Rohr?”

As for Jackie, a defining quality, Bacon said, is that he’s “so narcissistic that his belief that the ends justify the means” allows him to behave unethically. (The character is a loose composite of the F.B.I. agents H. Paul Rico, who was indicted on a charge of murder shortly before his death; John Connolly, who aided the mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger; and Dennis Condon.)

The creative team strove for authenticity in depicting the city of Boston as well, even though it almost never actually films there.

The pilot was shot in and around the city, but the production moved to New York once the series got picked up — exterior scenes were shot in Staten Island, New Rochelle, White Plains and the Bronx. (A few scenes have since been filmed in Boston.)

This decision came down to practicality: Boston lacks soundstages and the city is generally “much prettier now than it was” in the ’90s, said McPhee, who served as a kind of Boston credibility consultant.

“I was getting ready to eye-roll and say, ‘Oh God, we’re never going to get Boston,’” she said. But she was impressed with the attention to detail, adding, “There’s a set that represents [the] Bromley Heath [apartments] that I felt like I was walking through the halls of Bromley Heath.”

(“Believe me, it wasn’t my decision,” MacLean said of the move to New York.)

It’s too early to know whether there will be a second season of “City on a Hill,” though MacLean said he’s plotted out five seasons’ worth of material for the leads. According to Affleck, the plan is to move the action from Charlestown to Roxbury if the show gets renewed, and then to a different neighborhood each season, similar to the “The Wire” and its thematically distinct chapters.

“You meet two people from Boston who talk, they never talk about Boston — they talk about the neighborhood where they’re from,” MacLean explained. “The neighborhood is their vision of what Boston is.”

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click2watch · 6 years ago

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Bitcoin SV’s Delisting Isn’t ‘Censorship.’ But It’s Still a Problem

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board and a senior advisor for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.

The following article originally appeared in CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday exclusively to our subscribers.

Is cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s delisting of bitcoin SV a form of censorship?

And if so, doesn’t that make hypocrites out of all the Bitcoin Core supporters and Craig S. Wright haters who cheered the downgrading of the latter’s competing bitcoin project? Are they not applying a double standard by simultaneously arguing for immutable, “censorship-resistant” blockchains?

These are the questions bitcoin skeptics are putting to a cryptocurrency community they view as failing to comply with the Voltairean maxim that one should fight for someone’s right to say something regardless of whether you agree with it. (Yes, I know it wasn’t actually Voltaire who said that…)

Whether this “gotcha” is fair or not, it has given rise to a far more interesting crypto debate than the tiresome, yearlong squabble between Craig Wright-supporting BSV holders and Craig Wright-loathing BTC holders, the one that triggered the delisting in the first place. (Before Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, made his decision, BTC supporters had pressured him to punish Wright for filing defamation lawsuits against Twitter accounts that had refuted the bitcoin SV founder’s claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.)

A popcorn-worthy debate

It’s not all that clear who’s winning this debate. If anything, it has provided a reminder that the words used by both blockchain utopians and their hard-nosed realist critics often fail to adequately capture the nuances of what’s happening in the crypto ecosystem or, for that matter, in the wider world of social media and online communities.

The bitcoin critics’ main point is compelling. It’s that a decision to delist BSV cannot be about whether CSW is a jerk (there is almost universal consensus that the Australian “Faketoshi” meets that characterization). Jerks should not be censored just for being jerks, and doing so contradicts the Cypherpunk ideal of censorship-resistance to which many bitcoin believers subscribe.

(Full disclosure: Craig Wright blocked me on Twitter for using the j-word against him – this from his @ProfFaustus account, which, intriguingly, appears to have been deleted in recent days.)

As I munched on my popcorn, I found myself sympathizing with the ever-astute Angela Walch, a constant, formidable critic of blockchain advocates’ sweeping, hand-wavy claims to the magic of “decentralization.”

In a stage-setting tweetstorm, Walch pointed out that the cheerleading for Binance’s move exposed the “cognitive dissonance in what the space claims to be about.”

Do I have this right…one guy thinks what another guy said is not true so says no one can trade a censorship-resistant, decentralized digital asset on the first guy’s exchange. #crypto #blockchain #veilofdecentralization

— Angela Walch (@angela_walch) April 15, 2019

But then, along came investor Ari Paul, who gave the whole thing a different context.

You see, Paul said, the standard of censorship resistance does not extend to private entities that provide services on top of open systems, much as Binance does with the bitcoin protocol and those of other blockchains. These private agents are free to deal with their clients as they wish.

1/ Freedom of speech is a value near and dear to my heart, so it’s frustrating seeing people misuse “censorship” and conflate radically different cases. It’s not censorship for Amtrak to have a quiet rail car. Let’s explore Binance/BSV:

— Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) April 16, 2019

That seemed fair enough too. It accurately distinguished between the decentralized rule-setting of each system’s underlying blockchain – the layer to which the aspiration for censorship-resistance applies – and the centralized entities that access it.

And on that basis, Paul’s point matched how U.S. courts approach First Amendment lawsuits. To preserve free enterprise, courts routinely allow privately-owned entities to pick and choose whom they deal with and what information they publish, whereas they will curtail government entities’ efforts to restrict the speech of private citizens and businesses.

Similarly, we could argue that a price-quoting and trade-executing crypto exchange whose business decisions occur off-chain isn’t subject to the rigid, quasi-constitutional on-chain rules for equitable treatment that govern the decentralized network running a blockchain’s publishing protocol.

An exchange can refuse the prices and transactions of whomever it pleases. Doing so does not compromise the integrity of the free-speech/anti-censorship standards of the underlying blockchain’s governance system.

Holding the big guys to account

The problem is there are countless different blockchains. And within that environment, exchanges such as Binance don’t so much operate an application (i.e. run a private business) and subject it to a single blockchain’s governance system, but rather service the needs of people moving across those systems.

Using the same constitutional analogy, they are flag-less shippers carrying information across borders; they aren’t jurisdictionally bound by any one government.

In playing this role, cryptocurrency exchanges aren’t executing the censorship-resistant rules of a blockchain but, as the on- and off-ramps between different blockchains’ assets, they are nonetheless vital to the functioning of the wider cryptocurrency ecosystem.

That’s why critics like Walch are rightly highlighting their actions. So far, exchanges represent pretty much the only proven business use-case in this space. They are the cryptocurrency industry. Surely, they should be held to high standards of neutrality.

Comparisons can be drawn to the debate over “deplatforming” on Twitter, Facebook and other social media entities. On the one hand, these can be viewed as private entities free to censor whomever they like.

On the other, because of their giant networks, the public naturally wants to hold them to a different standard. Given the enormous role they play in our communication system, there’s a strong case for regulating their publication decisions, much as governments regulate public electricity or water utilities.

Due to its size, Binance could be characterized as the cryptocurrency equivalent of a dominant social media network. Just as being banned from Twitter and Facebook can seriously hurt the economic performance of a social media influencer, so too can a Binance delisting seriously hurt the value of a crypto token.

The role of regulation

That brings us to another analogy proffered by critics of Binance’s actions. Imagine the outcry, some said, if leaders of the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq – both integral to a functioning capital market ecosystem – suspended trading in a company because they didn’t like the comments of its CEO. The point: Binance should be held to similar standards of impartiality.

But the comparison is imperfect. The NYSE and Nasdaq, as well as countless other formal stock exchanges around the world, frequently delist companies for reasons of wrongdoing. It’s just that they apply a highly regulated framework when doing so.

Take a look at the most up-to-date list of “issues pending suspension or delisting” at Nasdaq and you’ll see that the reason many companies are on that list is, very often, one of “regulatory/non-compliance” issues.

In other words, whatever “censorship” decisions that sophisticated, traditional exchanges make tend to occur on the basis of rules set by an external governance system.

In the U.S., it’s an interconnected hierarchy that includes exchange members; self-regulatory organizations such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Industry (FINRA); the exchange’s own internal compliance teams and oversight boards; various bodies of legislation; and external enforcement agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Now consider a thought for CZ. He was under enormous pressure from both sides of the BTC vs. BSV fight to decide what he felt would best serve his and the industry’s long-term interests. But he did so without a set of external rules to refer to. If he had one, he could more comfortably have argued that his hands were tied.

I don’t expect CZ to call for more regulation. But the fact is that regulation, by externalizing the listing rules criteria, would, at least in these kinds of matters, help crypto exchanges manage their public image.

It might be tempting to believe these are just temporary problems because new decentralized exchange models will let clients maintain custody of their assets and independently execute their trades. But execution isn’t the main reason we depend on exchanges; it’s that, as centralized hubs, they bring many buyers and sellers together in one place, enabling effective price discovery.

The harsh reality is that, until someone achieves the extremely difficult goal of creating an effective, fully open-source trade-matching and price-discovery algorithm running on an entirely decentralized network, cryptocurrency ecosystems will depend upon the network effects that these necessarily centralized entities generate. And that’s why consistent listing standards, and the question of how to enforce them, matter.

In the absence of consistent, externally enforced rules, it’s perhaps unfair to hold Binance – a centralized entity, not a miner in a blockchain – to a “censorship-resistance” standard. CZ had to make a decision amid the chaotic hurly-burly of a boisterous community. By the same token, we can perhaps excuse the seemingly hypocritical stances of many BTC investors who supported that decision.

But that should not stop users from demanding that crypto exchanges establish and adhere to more consistent standards and rules. A company of such size and influence over the crypto ecosystem must be held to account – a standard no different from what we should demand of banks in the fiat ecosystem.

This, and not the tortured discussion over what “censorship” means, is the most important lesson to take from the latest bout of crypto agita stirred up by my Aussie compatriot.

Censorship image via Shutterstock

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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thenerdytomboynewb96 · 6 years ago

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Samantha Allan Park Ch. 50

Any references to TMNT or anything from popular media and culture is NOT MINE. I only own my OC's. Any references to “TMNT Out of the Shadows” DO NOT BELONG TO ME. Only my additions that I came up with myself belong to me. Anything from the films or other series ARE NOT MINE, only my OC’s and my ideas that I have added onto the story FOR FUN. Thank you.

Chapter #50

Sunday March 13, 2016. 1:00p.m. at the beach

Once everyone had discussed the room arrangements and had unpacked, everyone slept. Literally everyone. Some people found some cozy places throughout the gigantic mansion of a house, like Donatello and Kris who had explored the outside of the house and had discovered the extremely comfortable hammocks on the humongous outside deck (which there was also more than one). The majority of the group however just stayed in their rooms and relaxed. It was 12:30 when everyone was officially awake and ready for some fun activities on their very first day of vacation and the first thing on everyone’s mind was the beach.

Each room had its own mini living area including a mini kitchen and even a mini living room (including a hot tub, which everyone in the group was also eager to try out). On each fridge was a list explaining how things were run and what the group would need to take care of since there were no workers attending their jobs due to the group’s request. These lists included information about what devices were located on the docks and also what beach or outside equipment was located in a shed right by the dock as well. The group made sure to get ready and was down by the beach at 1:00p.m.

The first thing the group did was explore what materials were available in the shed and were amazed at the variety of materials available. Of course everyone first grabbed the sunscreen, even the turtles who were forced to put some on thanks to Sam (whether they actually needed it or not, no one was sure, but Sam wasn’t allowing them to take that risk, and Splinter just smiled and agreed with whatever the young and determined woman said).

Mikey and Kris then went for the volleyball and the volleyball net. The two worked together to set up the net while Raph and Leo were testing the feel of actually walking into the ocean for the first time (April made sure to take pictures because their faces were priceless and their smiles were wider than ever). So far the guys had only ever experienced the waters during their mission in Brazil, and that wasn’t exactly a fun time. This was a much better first true experience towards water outside the sewers and the boys were enjoying every second of it.

Meanwhile, Donnie was building sand castles with Renet and was teaching her what tricks to use to make the castle stand as tall and as long as possible. The rest of the group was still lotioning up at this time. “Guys we need to make teams!” Mikey called out. “I’m busy” Donnie called over. “Go!” Renet bluntly stated. “Well, I see my help has been appreciated” Donnie teased. Renet giggled. “Go play with your brothers, I’ll hold down the fort…unless you don’t trust me” she teased as she turned her head and pouted. “Ohhh, we’ve taught you so well” Donnie said as he hugged the girl and then ran over to join his brothers. Brenda and Jay then walked over, taking their turn to play with their daughter.

Raph and Leo had already exited the water and were standing amongst the group of teens. April and Casey had already been passing the volleyball back and forth nearby. “Since when did you get so athletic?” Raph called over. “Since I’ve become the mother of four mutants that can pick me up and throw me over their shoulder” she called as she hit the ball so hard that Casey missed it. He looked at her in awe. “Whatever you’re doing to train her, I want in” he said as he ran to get the ball. “Well training starts now. Get over here so we can pick teams” Leo said as he waved him over. “Where’s Sam?” Donnie asked as he started counting heads to see if they would have even teams. “She’s almost done lotioning up” April said as she then turned towards Irma who was standing further away and helping Sam put on sun screen. It was at this moment that the turtles realized that they had never seen Sam in a bathing suit. They had officially seen her in a dress, and they had seen her in sports bras that revealed nothing and covered her very well, but was this how she dressed when she went to the beach? Did she wear bikini bottoms? She had always worn shorts in front of them, so how would she look now? They each turned towards each other and gave each other a look that without words stated ‘we remain calm and show no signs of change,’ to which each of them nodded in agreement. Kris caught on to this however and let out a light laugh. “Guys, its Sam. There’s not going to be anything shocking about the way she dresses to the beach. “Yet we saw her in heels and with make-up on at the wedding” Raph said, emphasizing his surprise when he saw her that way. Kris looked confused. “Yeah, but all women dress that way at a wedding.” “Yeah, and all women wear revealing bikinis that show off their boobs and butt at the beach” Mikey said as he was using his feet to juggle the volleyball back and forth between him and Casey. “Um, I’m not” April stated. She was wearing a sporty bathing suit (she had gone shopping with Sam) where the top made a V but it was thick enough where the V did not reveal anything, this was also because athletic bathing suits were a bit tighter and didn’t allow as much jiggling up top. She was also wear athletic bikini bottoms that were solid black. “Yeah, but I can’t even picture Sam wearing what you’re wearing” Donnie stated. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing” April said with raised brows as she crossed her arms and smiled. “On you it’s fine, but Sam has never worn anything like that. She wears sports bras that reveal nothing, and we’ve never seen her wear anything other than shorts.” “So what exactly are you looking for, you know, since she’s not revealing anything?” April asked in a manipulating tone. Donnie just shook his head and smiled. “You just love twisting my words around don’t you?” he asked. “April and Sam hangout a lot now, they have become one maniacal duo” Leo stated with a smile.

“Hey guys, did we pick teams yet?” Everyone turned to see that Sam had finally ran down and joined the group. Kris was not shocked at what she was wearing because he knew her personality and knew what she would be wearing. April already knew what she would be wearing since she had gone with Sam when all the women in the group went to buy bathing suits. Casey just saw Sam as being Sam and, well, he also wasn’t a teenage boy (plus he was focused on how gorgeous April looked in her athletic wear). The guys all smiled as they saw Sam wearing a very comfortable bathing suit that fitted her personality perfectly. She was wearing a sporty crop top bikini top that covered everything perfectly and had thin straps that ran over her shoulders and along the back of the suit (no ties of course, she wasn’t going to allow any part of her top to come off and reveal her breasts) and she was wearing a bikini bottom bathing suit, but no one would ever know since she was wearing a pair of board shorts that reached down to her mid-thighs over top.

The oldest three thought that this outfit fit her perfectly and weren’t shocked like when they had seen her at the wedding. The youngest brother however, was a bit shook. He was expecting much thicker straps, or even a long sleeve surf shirt, he had never expected to see such thin straps criss cross along the top of her shoulders. And he assumed her shorts would reach down closer to her knees, not so short that they only reached her mid-thigh, which was also skin he had never seen before. Sam loved to wear epic designed spandex under her shorts and also did so in case she needed to change shorts so that she wouldn’t have to run somewhere and change in private. But all those spandex shorts run long, she never wore volleyball spandex, so seeing this sight was a surprise to him. Mikey was so shocked at what he was seeing (even though no one would ever know since he bore the same exact same calm smile as his brothers) that when Casey beamed the ball back to him, it hit him right in the face. It stung a bit, but he was in the back where no one could see him, so he just stood there and continued to smile, pretending he was fine. April had seen everything though, but she wasn’t going to say a word.

“Alright let’s pick teams!” Raph called. “I’m team captain.” “Whoa! Why do you get to be team captain?” Mikey called out. “Because I can kick your butt if you try to say otherwise” he said as he shoved his hand into his brother’s face and pushed him backwards. “Well I get to be team captain because I’m the leader” Leo said. “I think I should be team captain because I can hold the ball so that none of you can touch it” Donnie said with a smirk as he knocked the ball out of Raph’s hand, who had been preventing Mikey from getting to it. “I say you all get stuck working together since right now you all sound like annoying 4 year olds” Sam said as she crossed her arms. “Heyyyyyy” came a young voice from further behind them. Sam displayed an apologetic smile as she slowly turned around. “Hehe, sorry Renet” Sam said with her hands clapped in front of her. “Hmmmm that does sound interesting though” April said. “What?” Casey asked. “Mutant brothers verse the humans. I think we could take em. What do you guys think?” The youngest three brothers looked at each other and shrugged. Raph nudged Leo in order to get a response. “What?” Leo asked. He had been staring off as he watched Renet run over and pull Splinter by the hand down to where her sand castle was. He had been meditating, but seeing this child’s creation and then help her build it so that it was even sturdier obviously was much more important which was made evident by the huge smile on the rat’s face. “Humans verse mutants. You cool with crushing their hopes?” “I’m sorry, what?” Casey asked as he now got closer to Raph. “You heard me” Raph said, now taking a step closer towards Casey. “I think we can take care of ourselves” Casey said, trying to act tough. Raph just shook his head and smiled. “Alright tough guy” he said as he snatched the ball from Donnie, who had been holding it at his side, and then shoved it into the stomach of the man in front of him, “let’s see if you can stay true to your word.” “Hey! You guys are wearing the bathing suits I bought you!” Sam randomly called out. Casey and Raph just stared at her. “Good luck having dazed and confused on your team” Raph said with a smirk. “I’d make a comeback if I wasn’t so happy you’re wearing the bathing suits I looked for two weeks for” she said with a beaming smile. She then turned towards Mikey. “So you’re cool if I’m not on your team this round?” she asked, since usually the two were a dynamic duo. “Yeah, there will be other rounds” he said, waving his hand to show that this was no big deal. Sam smiled. “Alright, just checking. Don’t hold back” she said as she pat his shoulder and then ran past him. Mikey smiled as if everything was okay, but in a way he was glad they weren’t on the same team. He wasn’t sure he could work with her when she was showing off so much leg!

The first game started. The guys weren’t sure what would be the best strategy to determine where each should stand, so they just went based on age. Leo and Mikey were in the front, with Raph behind Leo and Donnie behind Mikey. On the other team stood Kris and Sam in the front, and then Casey and April in the back. This way there was always a guy and a girl in each rotation so that the guys couldn’t try to take advantage of that aspect. Donnie was the first to serve the ball and was shocked to see April bump it back with ease. Raph bumped the ball up so that Leo could spike it downwards, but Casey called it and dove forward so that when he got to it in time Kris was able to spike it downwards. They got the point that time. However, the next time the ball was served and this happened, the ball was right by the net and of course Raph was there to get it before Kris could jump up and slap it back to the other side. There were multiple times throughout the game where the match got playfully intense. Of course there were times where Raph and Sam were matched up and they basically made it their own personal goal to see who could spike the ball down in front of the other as many times as possible. Mikey would playfully flirt with April each time they were in front of each other, and of course the first time this happened she made sure to bump the ball high enough so that Mikey couldn’t reach it. He caught on quickly and also made it a personal goal to always pass the ball to where she was, and being the ninja he was, he always hit it in spots where it was difficult to determine whether she or the person next to her should go for the ball. She shook her head and smiled. “You’re going down Hamato” she said as she pointed at him. “Bring it angel cakes, make my day” he said with a smirk. Leo and Kris somehow also made it clear that they were challenging each other as well (even though none of these challenges were ever truly spoken, but they knew who was challenging who). Kris was constantly mocking Leo’s stances as he tried to stay poised and ready for anything that might come up, and because of this Leo constantly spiked the ball at the boy’s feet. “Hey! My eyes are up here” Kris said, pointing from his toes to his face, “I didn’t give you permission to look further down” he pouted as he crossed his arms. “It’s just so tempting” Leo mocked as he stared the other teen right in the eyes and smiled. “Get a room!” Sam called out as she cupped her hands around her mouth. The two boys looked at each other and shrugged. “We got one” Leo said. “Then let’s go!” Kris said as he ducked under the net and then jumped into Leo’s arms. “Later guys!” the two screamed as Leo began to run off. “Well that’s a ship I didn’t see coming” April said “I thought Raph was gonna run away with Casey first. Guess Raph is too wimpy to confess his love.” “HEY!” Raph called out and pointed at the woman. “I’m not wimpy! Casey already knows he’s mine! I bought him jewelry and everything!” Casey was now nodding his head. “It’s true, for my birthday he got me a man necklace.” “A what now?” Sam asked, raising a brow and leaning to her side in a cocky manner. “You know, a man necklace. A necklace for guys. Obviously he wouldn’t wear the same necklace that you would see April wearing” Raph said crossing his arms and leaning onto the man in front of him. Casey nodded his head. “What can I say? He gets me” he said as the two bumped knuckles. “Well apparently you don’t love each other as much as those two” Donnie teased. Mikey then turned towards Jay. “Hey Jay! Kris loves Leo more than you do!” he shouted over to the man who was being buried in the sand. “What?!” he screamed. “Dad! Go prove you love Uncle Leo more!” Renet said with a beaming giggling smile, and with that Jay was now chasing after the duo. He then quickly turned around and called out to Mikey “dude come with me! You take Kris while I win back Leo!” Mikey smiled as he then ran off to catch up to Jay (with Casey and Raph not far behind because of course they had to declare their bromance as stronger than the others). Donnie held his arms out to the side of him. “That’s cool, I don’t get a bromance. Whatever. I don’t care.” He then noticed Brenda had walked up beside him. “Well, you could help me win my husband back from the mutant man he just left me for” she said with a wicked yet teasing smile. Donnie laughed. “Need a ride over there? You know, before we piss off your husband?” Brenda smiled as Donnie turned around and allowed her to jump onto his back.

April and Sam stood there with their heads tilted to the side as they saw the group as they made their way back to one of the decks and were joking around near one of the large outside pools. They turned to see that Renet was still playing with Splinter, while Keeno was sleeping in a carrier under a large umbrella, with a blanket hanging over top his carrier so that the sun could not touch him. He was located next to Irma and Vern who were happily talking away, but constantly turning to check on the baby. They overheard Renet asking questions to Splinter about his sons, in which he replied “I don’t know them.”

April then turned to Sam. “You okay with Leo stealing your man like that?” she provoked. “Jay?” Sam said disgusted, “no that’s my brother. Let Leo do whatever he wants with him.” “That’s not what I meant and you know it” she said as she squinted her eyes at the teen. Sam just stood there, her expression making it very clear that she was very confused. April rolled her eyes. “I mean Kris! Everyone knows you like him” she said as she nudged the girl. Sam looked down at her shoulder where she was just nudged and then slowly lifted her head to look at April, her mouth slightly open and showing her lightly gritted teeth while the rest of her face was scrunched up. “I like who now?” she said in a low and sloppily muttered voice. Now it was April who looked confused. “Do…do you not like him? Like, like-like him?” Sam shook her head, and not in the rapid way that would mean she was nervous. She genuinely shook her head no. “Does…does everyone think I like him?” “No, well I guess I assumed people thought that since I did. No one has ever actually said that to me though. I know me and Casey think you like him.” “No, I stopped liking him a long time ago, why did-” “Aunt Sam!” Renet cut in, running as quick as she could over to her aunt with her arms open wide, signaling she wanted to be picked up. Sam’s expression changed once the young child had come closer, and she scooped the young girl up into her arms. “What’s up buttercup?” she asked as she gently rocked the child while she held her against her hip. “Will you go in the water with me? Sensei is going to check on the uncles to make sure they’re not acting younger than me” she said with a giggle. “Well I would love to go in the water with you! Did you ask Aunt April if she would like to join us?” Renet’s eyes went wide. “Sorry Aunt April! That was rude of me. Would you like to join us and go in the water?” she said with a beaming smile. April walked over and bent down a bit so she was eye to eye with the girl being held in her other aunt’s arms. “Maybe a little later, that volleyball match tired me out. I’m not anywhere near as athletic as the rest of your aunts and uncles. I’m going to go check on your brother, which I think your mother had the same idea since she’s jogging back over here now.”

With that, April walked back over to where everything was set up, and Sam placed Renet back down on the ground and took her hand. “Have you ever felt the ocean water before?” Sam asked, now noticing Renet was holding onto her hand tightly once her feet touched the ground. “No…I thought you were gonna carry me in” she said with a frown. “Then why didn’t you say so?” Sam asked as she then scooped the child back up with a spin and then hugged her close and blew ‘raspberries’ against her cheek. “Are you ready now?” she asked the hysterically laughing four year old.” “Yes!” Renet said, throwing her arms around Sam’s neck. Sam took a few steps into the water and sighed. “The temperature is perfect. There’s enough sun where the cold water feels just right. The sun isn’t beaming down to the point where it’s unbearable, and the water isn’t so cold that it makes you feel miserable. Everything is just right.” Sam was now standing far enough in that the water had reached her upper thighs. A wave splashed up and hit Renet’s legs. “It’s chilly!” she giggled. “Well that’s because you’re not walking in it, so when it hits you it’s going to feel really cold. Your body isn’t used to the temperature yet. I’ll walk a little further so that part of your body is more in the water. Is that okay?” The little girl nodded her head as she held on tight to her aunt. Sam now walked far enough in so that the water was hitting her waist, and now was hitting Renet’s legs. The girl got so excited every time the water splashed up and hit her tummy. “I wanna feel the water more!” Renet exclaimed as she happily kicked her feet. Sam laughed as she tightly held onto the girl. “Now hold on, we have to go back and get your swimmies if you want to fully go in the water. It’s starting to get to high now-” Ironically, just as Sam was referencing the high waves, a rather large wave had come crashing down and was up to Sam’s neck, meaning it had hit Renet in the face. It was powerful enough to knock Sam backwards and she would have fallen backwards if a tall turtle hadn’t shown up behind her at the perfect time. Sam instantly began checking on her niece and was waiting for the girl to cry (she knew she cried the first time she was splashed in the face when at a pool when she was a kid) but Renet just shook her head and puckered her lips together. “Ew, that’s yucky” she said. “Are you okay?” Sam asked in a worried tone. “Yeah, I just taste yucky” Renet said. Sam sighed and then tilted her head back some. “Thanks D, I owe you.” Donnie smiled down at the two ladies in front of him. “I came to see how you two were doing, looks like I made a smart choice.” “As always” Renet said, making the other two laugh at her blunt honesty. “Let’s go back and wipe our mouths with a clean towel. I don’t like that salty taste either.” “Uncle Donnie, why is the ocean salty?” Renet asked as the three made their way back to shore. “Salt is poured into the ocean from rainfall on large rocks from land. This salt builds up in the ocean because the only way water can leave the ocean is through evaporation. And when the water evaporates it doesn't take the salt with it. So you end up with less water, and the same amount of salt, resulting in a pretty salty sea” he said nonchalantly. “Renet” Sam said. “Hm?” “Repeat what Donnie just said.” “Salt comes from rocks on land. The water only leaves the ocean from evaporation, or the water turning into air. But the salt doesn’t leave with the water, so the ocean becomes even more salty.” Sam raised her eyes and nodded. “Alright, just checking.” Renet narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t think I understood him, did you?” “Well, most four year olds wouldn’t have a clue what he just said, but then again, you’re not like most four year olds” Sam said with a smile. “She’s a bright one alright” Donnie said, ruffling Renet’s hair as she was placed back on the sand and then ran over to her parents. “They couldn’t have picked a more perfect child to fit this quirky family” Sam said, leaning onto the tall turtle. “I was worried that she would tell others about us, but she’s bright. She knows how to keep secrets, and not only that, but she comprehends why they’re important. She’s going to change the world one day. I just know it.” “Well someone is jumping to conclusions pretty quick” Sam teased. “I thought so to the first time that crossed my mind, but she just…doesn’t follow the guidelines for how children develop. She can comprehend things that typical children in general wouldn’t understand. I was literally talking to her about different parts of the world the other day because she found a globe in my lab, and she absorbed everything I was telling her. I was even asking questions that would prove whether or not she was understanding me and she was able to properly respond to everything. Heh, and then she sees Mikey and goes back to acting like a typical 4 year old” he said as he saw Mikey run up to Renet, who was running up to him, and then watched as Mikey fell back and hold Renet up high as if she had knocked him over all on her own. Donnie couldn’t tell which of the two had the bigger smile on their face. “I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t noticed it either. She’s intelligent. Oh god, that means she’s going to turn out like you” Sam said as she looked up at Donatello with a worried wide eyed expression on her face. He squinted his eyes as he looked down at her. “And what’s wrong with that?” “That means…she’s going to be a geek!” Sam scream-whispered just loud enough so that her friend could hear.

“Oh” Donnie pouted as he turned around and took a few steps out into the water. Sam took a few steps and followed him, afraid that she had touched a nerve. “What’s wrong?” she asked, slightly concerned, slightly mockingly. “I just think you’re confused” Donnie said. “Cause geeks can’t do this” he said moving so swift that Sam couldn’t react and that fast was scooped up and thrown far off into the deeper waters. When she popped her head back up above the water, she saw that Mikey had now tackled Donnie screaming “only I can do that to my best friend!” Of course, if two brothers were water wrestling, then the other two just had to join, so now it was Raph and Mikey verse Leo and Donnie. Of course, Sam had to avenge her best friend! So when Leo wasn’t looking, she ran up behind him and jumped on his back, covering his eyes with her hands. “I’ve got him!” Sam called. “Back to the water!” Donnie called as he grabbed her and tossed her back. “Oh we can do that to” Raph said with a smug look as he caught up to his second to youngest brother and tossed him further out. When Sam rose her head from the water, Donnie had made a splash right next to her. “Ha! Karma boi!” she said. Donnie’s reply was to push her back into the water and then run away to avenge his oldest brother, who right now was being lifted by Raph and Mikey. Now Kris was joining to avenge his bromance brother. The match was now 3 vs. 3…until Renet ran in to avenge the losing team (at the moment, Kris, Leo, and Donnie). “Rawr!” Renet called with her hands up in the air. “RUN!” Mikey yelled as he literally threw Sam over his shoulder. “SHE CAN’T BE STOPPED!” Raph shouted as the two brothers darted onto the shore with a tiny Renet chasing after them. The other group was laughing, until Jay walked near the edge of the shore with an even tinier Keno in his arms. “Grrr fear me! I have powerful poopy powers! Fear me as much as my diaper!” Jay said in a high pitched voice as he carefully held his son in front of him. “Nnn” the three men said as they pretended as if they had been cursed and were losing feeling in their bodies, twitching their arms and grabbing their chests. “I can’t move!” Leo called out as he fell to his knees. “Is this the end?!” Donnie shouted. “Hold me” Kris said as he basically trust falled onto Donnie, and the three playfully collapsed in the water. “Dang, we have some strong kids! I feel proud as a parent” Brenda said. “We’re heading back guys. We want to put Keno down for a nap and get him out of the heat.”

The teens all nodded and decided that now was a good time to head back and relax as well. They all headed to the pool while the older humans (being all coupled up) and Splinter as well (who wanted some meditation time since it was happily taken from a young girl on the beach) headed to various places inside the gigantic house. The 6 teens decided to test out the gigantic pool, along with its numerous water slides. It was now 2:30, and the teens slid and swam for hours. Eventually they made their way up to the literal designated relax space filled with comfy chairs. They were still wet so they didn’t want to go back in just yet, so they all just hung out and talked for a while. They never meant to, but they all drifted back into sleep (they had been playing on the beach and then in the pool for many hours now). Most of them hadn’t even realized they had fallen asleep, Mikey being one of them, as he was the first to wake up. He sat up very slowly, rubbing his eyes as he tried to look around. The sun was setting now and there was a beautiful pink and red glow across the clouds. He was about to wake up his brothers so that they could see the view as well, but he then realized that Sam was no longer amongst the group.

At first he assumed she had just gone inside, but then he saw that her flip flops were still outside. She would have taken them inside if she had gone in, so she had to be somewhere. A slight bit of panic began to rise in him as he wondered where she was. He stood up from his lounge chair and walked around some, first checking (and then sighing in relief) to see that she wasn’t floating alone in the pool. As he continued to walk around, he saw that the shed door was still open down by the end of the dock. He took a few more steps forward and smiled in relief when he saw her lying on a boogie board out in the ocean. He jogged down until he reached the water and then slowly walked out towards where his friend was lying down. She turned her head when she felt more ripples growing stronger, and she smiled when she saw her best friend walking towards her. “Getting a taste of the ocean before the night ends?” she asked. “I am now. I was wondering where you went. I was afraid you fell asleep out here.” “Nah, too paranoid a wave would get me and I’d panic. This is a place to relax, not to end it.” “Heh, good to know” he said sarcastically as he leaned back on his shell, floating alongside his female friend. “I never thought I would see the ocean again” Sam said calmly. “Why?” Mikey asked. “I dunno. Life just got dark for a while. I guess I assumed I wouldn’t experience normal things like trips to the beach anymore.” “Ahhh, so that’s why you’re out here. Letting your thoughts roam, huh?” Mikey said, but Sam could tell by the way he spoke that he was being serious and genuine rather than silly and playful. She smiled. “Yeah. It’s easier to let thoughts roam when you’re alone.” “Do you still have bad thoughts?” he asked. “Not the same way I used to” she said as she now turned onto her stomach on her boogie board. “I mostly just have nightmares every once in a while, but even those have died down.” “What did you used to think about?” he asked, cautiously, not wanting her to speak of anything that would upset her or make her uncomfortable. She sighed. “Robbing stores, figuring out what I could get away with. Not caring about the consequences. Just wanting attention because I was always alone.” “Why?” Sam scoffed. “Why to which one?” “All of them” he replied softly. Sam turned her gaze towards her friend and now realized how concerned his face was as he stared back at her. “Well, I was mad at the world because of what I lost, and I felt like there was nothing to look forward to every time I came home to an empty house. Jay had to work, well, what I thought was actual work in order to provide for us, so he was rarely ever home. I would come home to an empty house with no one to tell me right from wrong, so when I got angry or upset I did whatever I wanted. I never meant to get arrested, but it happened a few times.” “Then what happened?” “Jay would fight for me to get free bail, reminding the authorities about what I had lost and why I was lashing out. That’s when therapy started. That was one of the reasons why I stopped stealing and doing petty crimes. God I wanted therapy to end, that was just so frustrating” she groaned as she now turned back over to her back side. “What were the other reasons?” Sam folded her hands across her stomach. “Mostly therapy, but my coaches and dance instructors said I wouldn’t be able to participate if I kept acting the way I was, and I was reaching a point in life where soccer and dance had so much meaning and purpose for me that I couldn’t lose that. That and there was one other reason…” she trailed off. Mikey stood up in the water and put his hands on the side of the boogie board. “We don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready” he said. Sam then sat up herself. “It’s fine. Just, don’t tell the others okay? I’ve never really talked to anyone about this.” “Of course, you know me” he said. “Well…I got into an accident once. I was running from a store where I had just stole a couple packs of gum, and I wasn’t paying attention and ran right in front of a car…you okay?” Sam asked in fear of the uneasy look her friend was displaying. “Yeah” he said with a fake smile, “just, thinking of things.” “Like?” she asked, wanting him to further explain himself. “…just thinking of when we saw you almost die…twice…sorry, this is your story” he said, shaking his head. Sam then gently placed her hand on his arm. “Don’t ever apologize for being worried about me, it’s literally saved my life before. And I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t talk about it.” “Well now I need to know what happened” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “Luckily it wasn’t anything serious, but I broke my arm and sprained both ankles, so I was in the hospital for a few nights, and I stayed home for about a week. The pain didn’t really faze me…but my brother. That’s what truly changed me.” “Did he lose his shit?” Mikey asked, cringing as he thought of Jay lashing out at Sam, just like when they all returned from Brazil. “That’s the thing,” Sam began, “he was so silent. He got a call that I was in the hospital and from what Brenda eventually told me, since he physically seemed calm, but mentally be was breaking down so she had a talk with me in his place, and apparently he was a mess when he got the call. Almost got into an accident himself speeding to the hospital. I had been so selfish and was so absorbed in my own thoughts that I had forgotten the way he reacted when he found me about to throw back pills the morning I woke up, just hearing the rest of my siblings had died-” “Stop” Mikey sternly interrupted. “You’re shaking…” he said as he clutched his hand tighter onto her arm. She smiled at him. “It’s okay, I don’t think I can every calmly talk about this, but I promise I’m okay” she said in a calmer and sweet tone. “So, your brother made you change your ways?” Sam nodded. “Now I wasn’t ready to completely change everything, but I knew I needed to make smart changes. I had learned a lot from my failed robbery attempts, and that’s what lead me to learning coding and hacking so that I could sneak into places overnight. That’s honestly also why I wanted to get back into martial arts and self-defense training. I convinced Jay that it was all so that I could safe, and also more confident in soccer and dance. Those weren’t lies, but it wasn’t the full truth either.” “But you made changes for the better. You were able to take better care of yourself so that you weren’t in danger like you were before. You still snuck out at night which wasn’t safe, but now you could protect yourself. That meant you weren’t adding to your record and you weren’t hurting your brother. I’m glad you made those changes.” “Oh really? Why so?” Sam said with a chuckle. “You’ve said in the past that you also would sneak out so that you’re siblings would send you a signal that they were watching over you. Well, since Jay allowed you to train yourself, and you stayed home and did things like study up on skills you could use to your advantage sine you weren’t sneaking out during the day anymore, you made discoveries at night. And that lead you to the greatest sign your siblings could give you to show you they cared.” “And that was?” Sam asked with a smile, already knowing where he was going with this. “To us. To your new family” he said gently. “I know. And I thank them for that every day.” “I wish I could thank them in person. You’ve changed our lives. Heh, none of us ever thought we would be here.” “Neither did I bro, neither did I.”

“HEY! Get up here! Dinner is ready inside!” The two turned to see Raph calling down to them from further back closer to the house. “I love how my stomach doesn’t think of food until someone else mentions it” Sam said as she now held her stomach. Mikey stood up in front of Sam. “Hop on. Your suit looks like it’s dry, so no point in both of us having to dry off when we get back.” “My, what a gentleman” Sam teased she hopped onto her friends back. Mikey walked her back to shore and then ran the boogie board back to the shed, hoping that maybe that would help dry his suit off some. It didn’t do much, so Sam ran inside and grabbed him a pair of soft and dry sweatpants (man she was good at buying comfortable and appropriate sized clothes for the guys!) and then ran them back outside so that Mikey could change in the outside bathroom (since of course there was a lovely bathroom outside, like full plumbing and clean as could get, it was a beautiful bathroom and changing space!) The two then made their way inside where they joined the rest of the family in the dining area in the lobby where all the fancy tables were located. Everyone was already sitting down and had begun eating food along the dinner buffet. The list of instructions left by the original owners of the house stated that the mutants only needed to be hidden for a short period of time at the beginning of every day when a couple of trucks dropped off food that was usually served buffet style to guests staying at the house (it was easier to serve larger crowds that way). The instructions then informed the group of how to simply prepare the food so that they could eat all three meals each day at the house. The two joined everyone for dinner, and after everyone was showered up afterwards, it was straight to bed where everyone fell asleep in mere minutes.

It had been a great first day.

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linabrigette · 7 years ago

Text

Amid Chaos, Our Decentralized Future Is Being Built

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of BTC News Today’s advisory board and a senior advisor of blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.

The following article originally appeared in Consensus Magazine, distributed to attendees of Consensus 2018.

If, during BTC News Today’s Consensus conference in May 2017, I’d predicted the crypto and blockchain industry’s subsequent experiences, you wouldn’t have believed me.

Back then, BTC News Today’s Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) was around $2,400. Six months later, it passed through $10,000 – right when 1,300 investors and financial professionals attended the inaugural Consensus: Invest conference. But that was only a way station to $19,783, an all-time high in mid-December.

This came as the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched bitcoin futures contracts, giving professional entities a vehicle for betting on the cryptocurrency. Come 2018, the entire mood shifted. Bitcoin lost two-thirds of its value in less than four months as regulatory clampdowns in China, South Korea and the U.S. ensued.

Bitcoin was not alone in this volatility, either. In the eleven months following Consensus 2017, $8.3 billion was raised in initial coin offerings, according to BTC News Today’s ICO Tracker. At its peak in early January, the market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies and digital tokens listed on coinmarketcap.com surpassed $831 billion, a 900 percent rise from May 2017. As Consensus 2018 wrapped up recently week it was $375 billion.

With all this money being made and lost, and the “What the hell is going on?” questions it provoked among the general public, bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology were thrust into the headlines. Suddenly, they were topics of conversation at dinner tables. Mothers were asking their crypto-obsessed teenagers what coin to buy.

And those of us who’d floated around the space for some years were looked upon with intrigue: Are you one of them? A bitcoin billionaire? (For the record, I most decidedly am not.)

This level of public curiosity was totally new. But the market mania wasn’t, not for crypto. Ratio-wise, the BPI chart of 2017–2018 looks similar to the 12 months from April 30, 2013, when bitcoin started at $144.30, soared to $1,151.30 on December 4, 2013, and then slid to $445.87 on April 30, 2014, where it more or less stayed for the rest of the year. The same goes for the calendar year 2011, when the price started at 30 cents, peaked at $29.60 on June 8, and then closed the year at $4.25.

I believe we were in a bubble in 2017, but we were also in one in 2013 and in 2011. In those two cases, recovery to higher highs came much sooner than it did for, say, the Nasdaq, which took 15 years to top its dot-com bubble peak of March 2000. The crypto markets may be redefining the nature of investment booms, speeding up the entire process of speculation, correction, retrenchment and recovery.

Under the hood

Price, though, is a distraction. It makes people miss the forest for the trees, overlooking the important innovations on which the investment ideas are supposedly founded. So, we must note that amid all the money mania, big changes were also occurring with the development of crypto technology itself.

In that same 12-month period, the bitcoin community’s three-year internecine war, otherwise known as the “block size debate,” came to a divisive conclusion with a software hard fork to create bitcoin cash, a new, competing version of bitcoin with a larger block capacity. That left the community that supported the original small-block standard, now known as Bitcoin Core, free to incorporate code changes of its own. Most importantly, the Segregated Witness (SegWit) protocol upgrade was introduced, which streamlined data management and enabled other software improvements.

In particular, SegWit facilitated one of the most exciting cryptocurrency innovations since Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper: the lightning network. Now live on bitcoin, litecoin and other cryptocurrencies but still in its infancy, lightning is an off-chain payment channel solution that promises to significantly increase transaction-processing, enable derivative-like smart contracts, and lower costs.

Not to be outdone, ethereum developers introduced their own scaling initiatives. These included the lightning-inspired Raiden and Plasma, which aimed to enable smart contracts at massive scale. Meanwhile, new projects from Polkadot, Ripple and Cosmos and others sought cross-blockchain interoperability while still more worked on decentralized exchanges for custody-free token trading.

Meanwhile, businesses, NGOs and government agencies launched blockchain projects covering a smorgasbord of use cases. Almost every day a new private or public collaboration was launched for supply chain management, digital identity, land titles, trade finance, commodity exchanges, decentralized electricity or additive manufacturing.

The UN, the IMF and the World Bank set up blockchain labs. Consortia comprising established companies, startups and even state governments and cities were formed to explore open-source standards in energy, climate data, and the internet of things. People everywhere were striving to make blockchain go live.

Many of these ideas are ahead of their time, mostly because the underlying infrastructure, the protocols and programming rules that govern platforms such as bitcoin or ethereum, aren’t sufficiently developed for them. That they are being proposed puts pressure on core blockchain developers.

Unlike the mostly academic and publicly funded founders of the internet, who worked for decades in relative obscurity before their work on packet switching and the Transmission Control and internet protocols was ready for the online boom in the nineties, blockchain developers are in the spotlight. The world is already demanding applications while highly speculative crypto markets want returns on their money.

Having hundreds of billions of dollars at stake does not make for an ideal, tranquil environment for testing and developing software.

Still, developers have no choice. Like it or not, the ecosystem is coming together at once rather than in sequence. Programmers and cryptographers are working on cleaner code, designing smarter security solutions and installing faster transaction mechanisms at or on top of the base protocol layer, while established companies and startups are rolling out smartphone products at the higher, application layer.

All this is occurring as day-traders flip in and out of multiple crypto tokens, creating huge, distracting gyrations in the developers’ own net worth.

Out of this chaos, order will eventually come. It will partly be forced by regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, which will set rules and enforce them, hopefully without killing innovation.

Order will also come from the community itself, driven by the demands of the market. We need best practices for token-issuing startups, software audits and other quality assurances, and self-regulating governing bodies to encourage standards, adjudicate disputes and disincentivize wrongdoing.

Welcoming the bubble

Although the hysteria ensures this industry’s development won’t chart a methodical straight line, the crazed market need not be viewed as a negative phenomenon.

Throughout history, the arrival of transformative technologies has been accompanied by Wild West-like speculation. It happened with electricity, with railroads, and with the internet itself in the 90s.

As the economist Carlota Perez explains, speculation and bubbles are not just a byproduct but are core feature of how new, disruptive technologies are developed, deployed and ultimately incorporated into our economy.

Speculation unlocks cheap capital. Much of it just lines the pockets of early investors in crazy, overvalued proposals such as Pets.com in 1999, but it also funds real, valuable infrastructure.

In the dot-com bubble, money went into physical infrastructure: fiber-optic cable, giant server farms, research into 3G mobile technologies. People lost billions on silly ideas in the nineties but their money also paid for the infrastructure that would underlay internet 2.0 post-bubble. It enabled algorithmic search, cloud computing, smartphones, social media, big data and all the other functionality that have changed our way of life and made a few titans of tech fabulously wealthy and powerful.

What’s the equivalent now? The capital unleashed by the crypto bubble isn’t funding physical infrastructure but social infrastructure. Token valuations might be out of whack with reality and imply big losses for many. But they’re also incentivizing global groups of innovators to come together online, conceive of new decentralized economic models, and codify those ideas in open-source software.

Their startups may fail but their code will be freely available for others to later work with, even more readily and cheaply than the dot-com era fiber helped Google, Facebook and co. in the 2000s.

We don’t know what new innovations will emerge, but it’s fair to say these early innovators are laying the building blocks of our future, decentralized economy.

The big idea

At times like this, there’s a broad understanding that something big is going. It’s just hard to predict its economic impacts. So people throw scattershot money at everything. Inevitably, their bets overshoot and prices decline. That this is going on in crypto is perhaps vindication of the underlying technology’s importance.

This raises some fundamental questions: What is the paradigm shift, the big idea that breeds such excitement? Why, after almost ten years is the market assigning $144 billion of value to a digital asset based on a software system that no one controls? What’s so special, anyway, about a decentralized, censorship-resistant system of value exchange?

The big, underlying idea, I believe, is that blockchain technology can upend not just the business models of recent decades but a millennia-old societal practice of deep significance to civilization.

Its decentralized structure portends a profound change in ledger-keeping, a dramatic re-imagination of society’s methods for tracking and assigning value. It overturns the centralized model installed with the first ledger, the Code of Hammurabi, which was founded around 1754 BC in Babylon.

It’s hard to overstate how important ledgers are to our way of life. Without bookkeeping, modern society simply couldn’t function. We’d have no idea of who owes what to whom and of how much value to assign to the assets of individuals, companies and entire economies.

It’s how we overcome the core challenge of mistrust among strangers, the means by which we reach agreement on sets of facts and make exchanges of value. This is the stuff of civilization. Anything that transforms this function is, by definition, extremely important.

Until now, we’ve had to rely on centralized ledger keepers, essentially requiring us to trust the say-so of those who control the books. We’ve assigned regulators and auditors to randomly check their work, but for the most part we are blind to the accuracy of the data, beholden to what the bookkeeper tells us.

This siloed recordkeeping results in a “cost of trust” that takes many forms. One is found in financial crises, such as that of 2008, when society lost faith in the ledgers produced by banks such as Lehman Brothers and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Another is less obvious: the endless work of millions of accountants at businesses around the world, each reconciling their company’s books to those of their counterparties. Why? Because they don’t trust each other.

Blockchains promise to supplant this centralized approach with a distributed, shared ledger whose updates follow a robust, ongoing consensus in real-time. At any given time, everyone who’s with access can know the current state of agreed-to transactions and balances. No more need for weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual reconciliations and audits. The entire rhythm of our financial system could change.

And it’s not just financial data. Valuable information of all kinds can be tracked in this decentralized manner. It includes the online data that defines digital identities, titles to assets, and compliance information. It could disintermediate middlemen of all stripes because, by having a decentralized algorithm resolve our mutual mistrust rather than depending on all-knowing centralized ledger-keepers, we can trade directly with each other. When this system is reliably attached to trusted devices in the internet of things, it could even allow for machine-to-machine trade.

Such a transformation points to unimaginable new efficiencies. It could create untold new forms of value. And it could massively disrupt existing businesses and jobs.

These prospects have stirred a hive mind of dreamers and fueled an unprecedented bout of economic speculation. We don’t know where it’s headed. But we sense something profound is afoot.

Blockchain is a software technology, but its sweeping potential has fostered a giant sideline industry of speculation and ideation. As the technology “goes live,” this hurly-burly process of creative innovation and destruction will only intensify.

That’s both exciting and daunting, but it poses massive potential payoffs. Join us for the ride.

Fractal form and math image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, BTC News Today is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. BTC News Today is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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bujoloveme · 6 years ago

Text

Ghost Town, v02, Dos Cabezas, AZ (1879), USA

Doz CabezasAZ (about 1879, population <25), height 1,549 m (1582 m)

• Tips For stagecoach travelers, Cowboy Chronicles

• The passenger experience, Desert USA

"There is every reason to believe that Dos Cabezas will be one of Arizona's largest mining areas" – Henry Laub, 1902

• In 1914, the company founded Mascot Townsite & Realty Co. to sell land in a new town they developed at Mascot Canyon:

"UNUSUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR PERSONAL GAIN By buying a property on the MASCOT TOWNSITE This new city should have a population of 5,000 in a few years." – May 1915

• Although most Mexican residents of the area lived in Dos Cabezas, some, such as Esperanza Montoya Padilla (1915-2003), lived in Mascot:

• moved to Fort Griffin, TX in 1876. • met dentist John "Doc" Hollidaywho allegedly said that he considered Kate to be his intellectual equal. • Kate introduced Holliday to Wyatt Earp

• On 3 January, Kate went 3 miles. to the house of Dos Cabeza's postmaster Edwin White.

"Jack died last night and I stayed with him all night."

• The mascot mine was closed in 1930

• The Mascot & WesternRailroad ceased operations in 1931 – four years later the tracks were taken

• Dos Cabezas of the 1940s photos

• In 1949, the US Postal Department corrected the spelling of the city postal service from Dos Cabezos to Dos Cabezas

• mid-20th century Dos Cabeza's family[[[[photos]• The postal service of Dos Cabezas was discontinued in 1960

�� In 1964, the city's population had dropped to 12

from WordPress http://bujolove.enfenomen.com/2019/03/02/ghost-town-v02-dos-cabezas-az-1879-usa/

#bullet journal

0 notes

bujoloveme · 6 years ago

Text

Ghost Town, v02, Dos Cabezas, AZ (1879), USA

Doz CabezasAZ (about 1879, population <25), height 1,549 m (1582 m)

• Tips For stagecoach travelers, Cowboy Chronicles

• The passenger experience, Desert USA

"There is every reason to believe that Dos Cabezas will be one of Arizona's largest mining areas" – Henry Laub, 1902

• In 1914, the company founded Mascot Townsite & Realty Co. to sell land in a new town they developed at Mascot Canyon:

"UNUSUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR PERSONAL GAIN By buying a property on the MASCOT TOWNSITE This new city should have a population of 5,000 in a few years." – May 1915

• Although most Mexican residents of the area lived in Dos Cabezas, some, such as Esperanza Montoya Padilla (1915-2003), lived in Mascot:

• moved to Fort Griffin, TX in 1876. • met dentist John "Doc" Hollidaywho allegedly said that he considered Kate to be his intellectual equal. • Kate introduced Holliday to Wyatt Earp

• On 3 January, Kate went 3 miles. to the house of Dos Cabeza's postmaster Edwin White.

"Jack died last night and I stayed with him all night."

• The mascot mine was closed in 1930

• The Mascot & WesternRailroad ceased operations in 1931 – four years later the tracks were taken

• Dos Cabezas of the 1940s photos

• In 1949, the US Postal Department corrected the spelling of the city postal service from Dos Cabezos to Dos Cabezas

• mid-20th century Dos Cabeza's family[[[[photos]• The postal service of Dos Cabezas was discontinued in 1960

• In 1964, the city's population had dropped to 12

from WordPress http://bujolove.enfenomen.com/2019/03/02/ghost-town-v02-dos-cabezas-az-1879-usa/

#bullet journal

0 notes