#2017 week 08 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batsplat · 3 months

Note

your top 5 fave motogp races? or alternatively what races you’d show to a newbie to get them into the sport or smth

one of those things where it's painful to pick five, but at least this ask gives me the chance to hedge my bets and pick five different races for each category (most of these races will be featured in the recs lists; 27, 4+93, 46)

laguna '08: works wonders to bring both that season and the rivalry alive. delightfully visceral and vicious, there's few duels that tell you quite so much about both participants. I have lap-by-lap notes for this race. I have points tables assessing how much of a turning point it was in the season. I have read the bit in casey's autobiography about this race about a million times. how their expectations going in influenced the dynamics of the race, how the slower man won the race, what valentino was attempting to do to casey, casey's response... I could quite literally talk about this race forever

phillip island '17: idk I don't think this is objectively 'better' than the other two infamous dogfights of that era (pi '15; assen '18), but sometimes you just notice which one has the most rewatch value for you... I really like races where risk/reward calculation is a big deal, where at least one of the riders is having to actively judge how much they're willing to do to win... with the hard style of racing in this one, those calculations feel particularly present. phillip island is in such a perfect calendar spot for generating maximum drama

misano '17: maybe the quirkiest pick. marc is too good and too successful for me to ever really have been 'stressed' watching him in his prime, but bloody hell did he run me close here. something so satisfying about being so adept in wet/mixed conditions... love the spite element of this race, love the risk/reward calculations, how marc just needs to go for it in the very final lap, his dogged determination... a race where he doesn't have a massive margin over the field but just wants it so so badly that he goes for it. he's making a statement, bouncing back from a low point in the season, super compelling stuff

mugello '04: just love races that are kinda a mess! lots of twists and turns... bunch of riders fighting it out, the sete duel, the rain interruption, bunch of riders fighting it out but now on a way more slippery track... I don't know, there's just something charming about a race that has a bit of everything! of course it's also part of my beloved 2004 season, from which I could have easily included five different races (and if you're ever looking for a full season to watch, 2004 2006 and 2017 are the holy trinity - mix of title fight drama and banger races)

okay listen I'm gonna cheat here because I wrote out the word 'catalunya' and then had a crisis staring at this post. '07 I need to include because it's my favourite casey win and it's how he establishes himself as an all-round threat and is so important in the overall context of the valentino rivalry, but '09 is like... right up there with laguna as season lynchpin races and also somehow jorge has been left out from these picks... I love big momentum-switchers I love races that have so much meaning in the context of a rivalry AND season. I also love how they're connected! that valentino did the same move on casey (just not on the final lap) and had basically already rehearsed his coup de grâce two years in advance, before visualising it the week before the race... casey joking about it in the catalunya '09 presser, jorge knowing he kinda should have seen it coming, casey kinda ragging on jorge for not having seen it coming... idk!! I like this little legacy they built there together

for newbies

phillip island '23: you need to include something a little more current to give new fans a reason to watch now... phillip island races are reliably great - this one introduces you to two of the major protagonists of the current game in a way that kind tells you a lot about both of them, gives you a demonstration of one of the best types of races (the multi-rider dogfight), and it also is the most brute force way imaginable of explaining how tyres work in motogp. pedagogically pleasing! it's the kind of race new viewers will be able to enjoy in the moment, but have a lot of questions about afterwards - the sweet spot

assen '15: easily makes my top five rewatched races too, but I put it under the newbie header because again... tells you a lot! it's very likely this hypothetical newbie will have at least have SOME knowledge of who the two protagonists are and know they've fallen out, though I suppose it'd be funny to go in completely blind. obviously a great duel and a very nice introduction to the two big names plus their respective riding styles... what you really want is some late drama and a controversial finish that you can immediately have a hot take about

donington '05: we need a full wet race, not just mixed but wet wet... this one's got one hell of an attrition rate but also proper tussling between the different riders, rather than everyone just riding out on their own. it really gives you a feeling for how these kinds of races work... lot of riders wobbling around, saving near-falls, trying to get a sense of how much they can risk, riding behind each other to have somebody else test out their conditions... plus, the valentino performance kinda slaps

austria '17: got to be a marc/dovi duel in here, and this one has the clear edge not as much for the race itself but a) the novelty at the time, and b) the significance in the title fight. in dovi you've got somebody who is emerging as a threat and is providing a new flavour of challenge.... there's also that fun tension between how marc logically very much should just be happy to be there as a result of what a ducati circuit it is and he's simply supposed to be limiting the points damage... but he also really, really wants to win... actually either this or motegi 2017, almost want to change my pick. one of those two!!

brno '03: sneaking in an old race as a gateway drug, and I think this one is quite 'accessible' to the uninitiated. I considered other ones like phillip island '01 (valentino's first premier class matchpoint race, classic dogfight) or welkom '04 (first yamaha race and one of the duels) - but I think you don't need much context to get absorbed in this one. the race commentary already gives you the most important information... valentino's struggles that season, the criticisms he was facing from the italian press, how badly he wanted to win, the haircut, all of it... and then you get to see the post-race prisoner's celebrations, a flavour of the proper classic camp dramatics

slightly silly number of honourable mentions, each of which I was extremely tempted to include: motegi '10, jerez 2005, misano '19, laguna '11, jerez '10, assen '04, catalunya '04 '05 '16, mugello '05 '06, sachsenring '06, assen '04, phillip island '04, le mans 2005, qatar 2005, suzuka '01, thailand '19, austria '19, qatar '18, silverstone '19, sachsenring '10, qatar '15, mugello '16, sepang '10, assen '07 (and ones I did already kinda mention above: phillip island '15, assen '18, phillip island '01, welkom '04, motegi '17)

#almost died making this. if i made this tomorrow they'd be completely different races #race rec tag #motogp #//#brr brr #batsplat responds #is phillip island 2017 actually that good or do races get rewarded in my mind if I wake up early and they make it worth it #best lil sequences of races are '19 [austria silverstone misano] '04 [mugello catalunya assen] '17 [motegi phillip island sepang]#'04 [qatar sepang phillip island] and 2015... y'know #that's what it's all about... little runs of back to back fun races that are also narratively compelling

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ask-serendipity-sky · 1 year

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1108: Facts and observations

•Day 0

1108 started on the 8th of November of 2015.

Jimin uploaded a video of him and Jungkook to twitter:

On the 26th of January 2016, Jk uploaded a small snippet of a song he was covering.

•Day 100

And on the 15th of February of 2016, Jk uploaded the entire song Nothing Like Us and noted to listen to the lyrics as they were expressing what he wanted to say:

In Korean culture, parents celebrate 100 days after a child is born. This is to indicate that the child made it through the first vulnerable phase in their life. In the same manner, the 100 days are celebrated by Korean couples.

And this is what Jk had to say 100 days after the 8th of November of 2015:

There's nothing like us There's nothing like you and me Together through the storm There's nothing like us There's nothing like you and me together, oh

•Day 366 (1 year)

On 08/11/2016, a year later, Jimin posted another video of them:

•Day 732 (2 years)

On Oct. 28, 2017, Jungkook treated Jimin to a trip to Tokyo. It was because of this trip, that Jungkook released gcfTokyo on Nov. 08, 2017.

youtube

A fan used the images in the video and was able to determine the hotel and room jikook stayed at. It was room number 1108.

The video also used the song There For You by Troye Sivan:

Boy, I'm holdin' onto something Won't let go of you for nothing I'm runnin', runnin' just to keep my hands on you There was a time that I was so blue What I got to do to show you? I'm runnin', runnin' just to keep my hands on you

Day 811

On the 26th of January 2018, in a Japanese fancafe, Jimin gifted Jungkook a drawing of a set of champagne glasses and a bottle. Note the details of the glasses.

•Day 900

On the 25th of April 2018, a day before the 900 day milestone, Jimin had a vlive where it was obvious he wasn't alone in the room. He kept looking to the side, laughing shyly and explained:

After he said this, you can hear someone whisper, "Jimin."

Day 1000

On August 3rd 2018, Jk posted a selfie while they were all filming BV3:

During BV3, jikook were able to look around the city alone, and have a boat date under the moonlight.

Day 1013

As you all may know 10:13 is also known as Jimin ssi, or Jimin time. It only makes sense that this day would be special to jikook too.

On the 16th of August 2018, Jimin tweeted a series of 3 tweets:

Jungkook was the only member that appeared in the photos with Jimin. It is also interesting to note the 2 butterfly temporary tattoos he had on his hand.

This is the same time when they had the photoshoot with the inflatable unicorn:

The next day, Jimin uploaded a tweet with the caption "Love Ya", and one of the photos was him and Jk.

•Day 1141

On the 22nd of December 2018, when fans uploaded their selfies on fancafe, the fans let Jk know that Jimin had uploaded his own:

This prompted Jk to type "JIMINNNN" and he signed off. He later uploaded a song that he stopped at 1:18:

You take my mind away When you touch me that way This place, your face It gets hard to breathe I know you're feeling me now You're all I see Almost like we're dreaming

•Day 1394

On the 1st of September 2019, Jk made 2 tweets. One in which uploaded a snippet of Decalcamonia, which he also ended on 1:18:

•Day 1500

On the 16th of Dec 2019, Jimin posted a good night tweet:

The time he uploaded this was at 1:50.

•Day 2300

On Feb 22, 2022, Jk uploaded a story on insta where he is in a car, listening to So Good by Joan. The story was labeled 23:08 even though he uploaded it at 1:24 am.

You and me Got a lotta tension, not even to mention Ooh, that night, just two weeks ago It was half past ten Thinking about living, suddenly when you walked it You took my breath away

•Day 2315

On March 10, 2022, during the Permission to Dance Concert, Jimin used the 2315 numbers and stated the following:

2315 days had passed since November 8, 2015.

•Day 2545

On the 26th of October 2022, Jk uploaded a photo of himself while he was in Qatar. He uploaded the photo at 11:08 Korea time and, 5:08 Qatar time.

•Day 2643

On the 2nd of February 2023, Jimin answered a question on weverse at exactly 23:08. The question is now deleted.

•Day 2684

During Jungkook hosted a series of lives on White Day, 14th of March 2022. His first live was started at 8:11 pm:

During these lives, Jk changed to various outfits and had an extensive playlist. One of the songs that was included was There For You.

•Day 2855

On the 1st of September 2023, Jk hosted a short live to thank the fans for being present with him during so many birthdays. He ended his live quickly and it lasted 8:56 minutes:

My impressions

Based on Korean customs, celebrating different day milestones is typical in a Korean couple.

While some may think that jikook started dating on the 8th of November 2015, I think that's when they decided to be intimate with each other.

I feel like a jikook kiss had already happened since the last time Jimin asked Jk for a kiss publicly was in September 2015 for Jk's birthday. From there, one can only think that things proceeded quite quickly.

I think that in recent years, we have observed less mentions of 1108 because of BTS' popularity and so many fans expecting something from jikook.

It's possible that jikook has decided to not make these milestones known like they did before, but every now and then, they still reference that number. Who knows when they will do it again.

But who is counting, right?

#jikook #jimin #jungkook #1108 #Spotify

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seoul-bros · 1 month

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Jikook Week 36 Complete (13/08 - 20/08/2024)

Their 36th week in the military is now complete and it's time to celebrate this milestone with a look back at this week in 2017.

BTS were gearing up for the release of Love Yourself: Her in September 2017 and promo material was knee deep on the timeline.

On 18/08 the highlight reel was released. Each member has their own 'love story' but the order of the day was unrequited.

Jungkook

Jimin

youtube

The last episode of Bon Voyage Season 2 in Hawaii aired this week with the members reading letters that they wrote to each other.

The letters were written like this....Jin -> Jungkook -> Namjoon -> Taehyung -> Jimin -> J-Hope -> Suga....with Suga writing to Jin to complete the circle.

When reading their letters, the maknae line ranged from embarrassed (Jimin) to emotional (Tae and Jungkook). Jikook reiterated their admiration for J-Hope (JM) and Namjoon (JK) and spoke about everything they had learnt from them.

Taehyung talked about what Jimin's friendship meant to him. I bet there wasn't a dry eye in the house that day.

youtube

Bon Voyage 2 remains largely a mystery to me as I haven't yet found a way to watch it on-line and it's behind a paywall on Weverse. If anyone can point me to a reliable source, I'd love to see all eight episodes but for now I'll just have to enjoy the clips that are available.

Post Date: 20/08/2024

#jikook #jimin #jungkook #bon voyage 2 #love yourself: her

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themaveriqueagenda · 5 months

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it's trans+ history week, so i finally have an opportunity to make a detailed post about maverique history.

so here it is:

a detailed timeline of maverique history.

31/05/2014 — @queerascat coined maverique as "a non-binary gender characterized by an unconventional and unothodox internal sense of self and the interrelationship between that sense of self and society"

15/06/2014 — queerascat reworded the definition as: "a non-binary gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of gender which is unorthodox, unconventional and entirely independent of conventional concepts of gender". they created the maverique flag on the same day.

18/06/2014 — tearun suggested maver as an equivalent to man/woman and rique as an equivalent for boy/girl, the latter was never heard of again due to it sounding like "reek"

19/06/2014 — someone suggested mav as an equivalent to boy/girl, @whatdoesenbymean suggested Mv (pronounced "mav") as a title

21/06/2014 — after some confusion, queerascat reworded the definition one last time as "a gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of self that is entirely independent of male/masculinity, female/femininity or anything which derives from the two while still being neither without gender nor of a neutral gender"

22/06/2014 — the @maveriques blog was created

24/06/2014 — maveriques posted a CMYK analogy to explain maverique

28/06/2014 — maveriques posted a list of proposed maverique terms

29/06/2014 — someone suggested Mv (pronounced "miv") as a title

06/07/2014 — queerascat uploaded a video about their label change and the term maverique in their youtube channel

12/03/2015 — maveriques clearly defined maverique as not an umbrella term

11/10/2015 — queerascat posted a gender tag video from a maverique perspective on their youtube channel

13/10/2015 — someone suggested maveriquine as an equivalent for masculine/feminine

~2015/16 — there was discourse on aliagender and aporagender being racist, and that maverique was a good term to use instead because it was coined by a Black person, queerascat pushed back against this

31/07/2016 — maverine was suggested as an equivalent to masculine/feminine

18/11/2016 — @moonstruck-melts suggested the earth and sun symbols for maverique, and @feekins suggested pluto as a symbol

03/02/2017 — @the-christian-closet suggested the comet symbol for maverique, mistaking it for an alternative sun symbol

05/02/2017 — maveriques posted a poll asking how people feel about the sun as a maverique symbol

12/02/2017 — maveriques posted the results, with most maveriques liking it but having reservations

24/02/2017 — courage-archive-deactivated2018 / sneer posted the symbol with the two extending arms

17/07/2017 — veriquinity was suggested as an equivalent to masculine/feminine

~2021: the maverique subreddit was created

06/01/2022 — renée yoxon went on the fifty shades of gender podcast to talk about being maverique, trans, nonbinary and genderqueer

06/2022 — reddit user ChaoticStrange suggested a maverique visibility day on 31/05 and others agreed

16/01/2023 — renée yoxon briefly spoke about being maverique on the gender reveal podcast

18/06/2023 — @themaveriqueagenda on tumblr was born

20/08/2023 — themaveriqueagenda on instagram was born

#maverique #nonbinary #lgbt #queer #mogai #maverique pride #trans #maverique visibility #transgender #enby #maverique history #nonbinary history #trans history #queer history #transgender history #trans history week #trans+ history week

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transspeciesculture · 11 months

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We keep mentioning how transspecies as a term has existed long before the radqueer & transID communities formed, and started claiming it as part of those communities despite it's actual usage within nonhuman/fictional/unusual human species identifying spaces and objections from said spaces.

As a sort of quick thing to back this up, here are some examples before the year of 2020 (estimated beginnings of the radqueer/transID community)!

All of this excludes troll posting/mockery, and is focused on NH/FICT community's discussions. Some additional content warnings are provided for some of the e-mails, however.

This is not extensive, feel free to show us any other finds (excluding alt.horror.werewolves e-mails, we've already scoured trough everything. There is actually more mentions via that, but all from the same person).

Mentions of term:

01 - "Gender-bender" e-mail, 1999. Included in this section due to the unclearness of if the original author of the e-mail identifies as otherkin or transspecies personally.

[Link] [Link 2] [Archive] [Archive 2]

02 - "On cosmic surgery and personal identity" e-mail, 2005

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

03 - "Da Jakkal's work revisited" e-mail, 1999. Warning: has some outdated terminology/beliefs.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

04 - "Re: Introduction" e-mail, 2002

[Link] [Archive]

05 - "Re: Shifters: in need of Help." e-mail, 1999. Warning: thread has mentions of an un-nameable native American creature.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

06 - "Re: Musing of the Week" e-mail, 1999

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

06 - "Re: define were" e-mail, 1997. Warning: thread has mentions of an un-nameable native American creature. (This is the second time we've have to issue this CW. Sucks.)

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

07 - "Re: Fun with Faith" e-mail, 1997. Same warning as above, unfourtunately.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

08 - "Re: Questions on Were's/Shifting/etc" e-mail 1997. Same warning, a lot of early instances of the word being used seem to all be from this one being, sorry.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

09 - "Re: Slithering into AHWW" e-mail, 1997

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

10 - "Re: Odd Dreams" e-mail, 1998

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

11 - "Shifters: WereBreeds" e-mail, 1999. Warning: has some outdated terminology.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

12 - "On the appropriation of trans narratives by therianthropes" article, 2013. Contrary to the title, it is supportive. It does mention the native creature again due to excerpting an AHWW member's ramblings, so thread with caution.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

13 - "An Introduction to Animality" article, 2009

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

Usage of term for clear self identification (flags and symbols are included):

01 - "Re: A question to everyone out there" e-mail, 1997. Warning once again for mentions of an un-nameable native American creature, and questionable identity that may or may not be considered cultural appropriation (we have no place to say as we are not native). Still, it is an clear account of identification with the label and experiences that'd come to be associated with it.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

02 - "Chewing and biting (and intro)" e-mail, 1999. The poster at the time of posting already specifies that they do not identify with the label anymore, but used to.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

03 - "Transspecies Pride stamp" flag/pride graphic, 2017.

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

04 - "Transspecies Flag" flag, 2018

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

05 - "Why I call myself Transspecies" personal article, 2018

[Link] [Archive] [Archive 2]

06 - "Gender: Furry II (Now With More Scales)

[Archive]

07 - "Real Dragons: Transspeciesism" article, 2001

[Archive]

#tsc-resources #transspecies culture is #transspecies #transspecies community #antiradq transspecies #anti radqueer #anti transid #anti transx #nonhuman community #nonhuman #alterbeing community #alterbeing #alterhuman community #alterhuman

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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The long bezzle

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

When it comes to the modern world of enshittified, terrible businesses, no addition to your vocabulary is more essential than "bezzle," JK Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

The bezzle is contained by two forces.

First, Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop."

Second, Keynes's: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

On the one hand, extremely badly run businesses that strip all the value out of the firm, making things progressively worse for its suppliers, workers and customers will eventually fail (Stein's Law).

On the other hand, as the private equity sector has repeatedly demonstrated, there are all kinds of accounting tricks, subsidies and frauds that can animate a decaying, zombie firm long after its best-before date (Keynes's irrational markets):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

One company that has done an admirable job of balancing on a knife edge between Stein and Keynes is Verizon, a monopoly telecoms firm that has proven that a business can remain large, its products relied upon by millions, its stock actively traded and its market cap buoyant, despite manifest, repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.

This week, Verizon shut down Bluejeans, an also-ran videoconferencing service the company bought for $400 million in 2020 as a panic-buy to keep up with Zoom. As they lit that $400 mil on fire, Verizon praised its own vision, calling Bluejeans "an award-winning product that connects our customers around the world, but we have made this decision due to the changing market landscape":

https://9to5google.com/2023/08/08/verizon-bluejeans-shutting-down/

Writing for Techdirt, Karl Bode runs down a partial list of all the unbelievably terrible business decisions Verizon has made without losing investor confidence or going under, in a kind of tribute to Keynes's maxim:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/10/verizon-fails-again-shutters-attempted-zoom-alternative-bluejeans-after-paying-400-million-for-it/

Remember Go90, the "dud" streaming service launched in 2015 and shuttered in 2018? You probably don't, and neither (apparently) do Verizon's shareholders, who lost $1.2 billion on this folly:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/07/02/verizons-sad-attempt-to-woo-millennials-falls-flat-face/

Then there was Verizon's bid to rescue Redbox with a new joint-venture streaming service, Redbox Instant, launched 2012, killed in 2014, $450,000,000 later:

https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/verizon-redbox-to-pull-plug-on-video-streaming-service-1201321484/

Then there was Sugarstring, a tech "news" website where journalists were prohibited from saying nice things about Net Neutrality or surveillance – born 2014, died 2014:

https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/2/7324063/verizon-kills-off-sugarstring

An app store, started in 2010, killed in 2012:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/5/3605618/verizon-apps-store-closing-january-2013

Vcast, 2005-2012, yet another failed streaming service (pray that someday you find someone who loves you as much as Verizon's C-suite loves doomed streaming services):

https://venturebeat.com/media/verizon-vcast-shutting-down/

And the granddaddy of them all, Oath, Verizon's 2017, $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo/AOL, whose name refers to the fact that the company's mismanagement provoked involuntary, protracted swearing from all who witnessed the $4.6 billion write-down the company took a year later:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/12/if-youre-surprised-verizons-aol-yahoo-face-plant-you-dont-know-verizon/

Verizon isn't just bad at being a phone company that does non-phone-company things – it's incredibly bad at being a phone company, too. As Bode points out, Verizon's only real competency is in capturing its regulators at the FCC:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/02/new-verizon-video-blatantly-lies-about-whats-happening-to-net-neutrality/

And sucking up massive public subsidies from rubes in the state houses of New York:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/14/new-york-city-sues-verizon-fiber-optic-bait-switch/

New Jersey:

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/04/25/verizon-knows-youre-sucker-takes-taxpayer-subsidies-broadband-doesnt-deliver-lobbies-to-drop-requirements/

and Pennsylvania:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/06/15/verizon-gets-wrist-slap-years-neglecting-broadband-networks-new-jersey-pennsylvania/

Despite all this, and vast unfunded liabilities – like remediating the population-destroying lead in their cables – they remain solvent:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/verizon-sued-by-investors-over-lead-cables-environmental-statements-2023-08-02/

Verizon has remained irrational longer than any short seller could remain solvent.

Short-sellers – who bet against companies and get paid when their stock prices go down – get a bad rap: billionaire shorts were the villains of the Gamestop squeeze, accused of running negative PR campaigns against beloved businesses to drive them under and pay their bets off:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/meme-stocks/#stockstonks

But shorts can do the lord's work. Writing for Bloomberg, Kathy Burton tells the story of Nate Anderson, whose Hindenburg Research has cost some of the world's wealthiest people over $99 billion by publishing investigative reports on their balance-sheet shell-games just this year:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-06/how-much-did-hindenburg-make-from-shorting-adani-dorsey-icahn

Anderson started off trying to earn a living as a SEC whistleblower, identifying financial shenanigans and collecting the bounties on offer, but that didn't pan out. So he turned his forensic research skills to preparing mediagenic, viral reports on the scams underpinning the financial boasts of giant companies…after taking a short position in them.

This year, Anderson's targets have included Carl Icahn, whose company lost $17b in market cap after Anderson accused it of overvaluing its assets. He went after the world's fourth-richest man, Gautam Adani, accusing him of "accounting fraud and stock manipulation," wiping out 34% of his net worth. He took on Jack Dorsey, whose payment processor Square renamed itself Block and went all in on the cryptocurrency bezzle, lopping 16% off its share price.

Burton points out that Anderson's upside for these massive bloodletting was comparatively modest. A perfectly timed exit from the $17b Icahn report would have netted $56m. What's more, Anderson faces legal threats and worse – one short seller was attacked by a man wearing brass-knuckles, an attack attributed to her short activism.

Shorts are lauded as one of capitalism's self-correcting mechanisms, and Hindenberg certainly has taken some big, successful swings at some of the great bezzles of our time. But as Verizon shows, shorts alone can't discipline a market where profits and investor confidence are totally decoupled from competence or providing a decent product or service.

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

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marybeatriceofmodena · 2 years

Text

Trading Site Reopening and Gifting Spree!

So. After weeks of work (*insert alpaca scream here*), my trading site is open for trading! To celebrate, I decided to gift a few audios and videos from Phantom of the Opera, a few audios from Les Misérables, two cast recordings from Elisabeth das Musical, and a cast recording for Sweeney Todd. Enjoy!

(If you're the master of a listed audio/video, please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you want me to remove your stuff from the list.)

POTO audios

Michael Crawford, Rebecca Caine (alt.), Steve Barton October 10, 1987; London Michael Crawford and Steve Barton's last in London. Soundboard, very good quality, and this one is complete. And Rebecca Caine sounds amazing in it (as she always does). https://www.mediafire.com/file/pttrjfqzb84gatm/POTO_West_End_10-10-1987_-_Crawford%252C_Caine%252C_Barton.rar/file Steve Barton, Rebecca Luker, Gary Lindemenn (u/s), Marilyn Caskey, Jeff Keller, George Lee Andrews, Leila Martin September 26, 1990; Broadway Soundboard audio. Because Steve Barton was almost as good of a Phantom as he was as Raoul, and Rebecca Luker is a legend (RIP). https://www.mediafire.com/file/xc9ywojtdesptje/POTO_Broadway_26-09-1990_-_Barton%252C_Luker%252C_Lindemenn.rar/file Davis Gaines, Tracy Shayne, Matthew R. Jones, George Lee Andrews, Jeff Keller, Lelia Martin October 5, 1996; Broadway Davis Gaines's last performance. Because Davis Gaines has one of the best voices I've heard in the role. https://www.mediafire.com/file/w1ybvl8v6e4ex6r/POTO_Broadway_05-01-1996_-_Gaines%252C_Shayne%252C_Little.rar/file Brad Little, Lisa Vroman, Tim Martin Gleason, Kim Stengel, DC Anderson, David Cryer, Patti Davidson-Gorbea, Kate Wray, Jimmy Smagula December 5, 2003; Los Angeles Lisa Vroman’s second-to-last performance as Christine. Both she and Brad Little are glorious vocal-wise. https://www.mediafire.com/file/muavx4ocvs62eav/POTO_US_Tour_05-12-2003_-_Little%252C_Vroman%252C_Gleason.rar/file Anthony Warlow, Julie Goodwin, John Bowles, Andrea Creighton, John O'May, Derek Taylor, Jackie Rees, Nadia Komazec, David Rogers-Smith August 15, 2007; Melbourne Not the biggest fan of Anthony Warlow acting-wise, but he does not disappoint on the vocals - and neither does Julie Goodwin. https://www.mediafire.com/file/3pm0ksips30n3it/POTO_Melbourne_15-08-2007_-_Warlow%252C_Goodwin%252C_Bowles.rar/file John Owen-Jones, Katie Hall, Simon Bailey, Angela M. Caesar, Andy Hockley, Simon Green, Elizabeth Mars, Hannah Cadec, Vincent Pirillo September 29, 2012; Edinburgh Not the biggest fan of the restaged tour, but... Katie Hall's "Tears of HAAAAAATE" is pretty great. And John Owen-Jones! https://www.mediafire.com/file/00vtvziy172lpkv/POTO_UK_Tour_29-09-2012_-_Owen-Jones%252C_Hall%252C_Bailey.rar/file Hugh Panaro, Elizabeth Welch (u/s), Jeremy Hays March 3, 2014; Broadway Great trio overall, but Elizabeth Welch is a standout (to me at least). https://www.mediafire.com/file/1hc1ozi96vok5pd/POTO_Broadway_03-03-2014_-_Panaro%252C_Welch%252C_Hays.rar/file Dmitry Ermak, Tamara Kotova, Eugeny Zaytsev, Irina Samoylova, Alexei Bobrov, Yuri Mazihin, Elena Charkviani, Valeria Migalina, Rustim Bahtiyarov (u/s) July 16, 2015; Moscow A lovely production that I miss - Tamara Kotova in particular is great. https://www.mediafire.com/file/w56tx5d7fkh4kse/POTO_Moscow_16-07-2015_-_Ermak%252C_Kotova%252C_Zaytsev.rar/file John Owen-Jones, Celinde Schoenmaker, Nadim Naaman, Megan Llewellyn, Michael Matus, Christopher Dickens, Jacinta Mulcahy, Alicia Beck, John Ellis September 7, 2015; London First performance of the 2015-2016 cast. https://www.mediafire.com/file/5hswf44ldku6ngm/POTO_West_End_07-09-2015_-_Owen-Jones%252C_Schoenmaker%252C_Naaman.rar/file Peter Jöback, Emmi Christensson, Anton Zetterholm, Karolina Andresson, Glenn Kjellberg, Rolf Lydhal, Sanna Martin, Tehilla Blad, Sindre Postholm March 19, 2017; Stockholm Given Christine is from Sweden, it's only fair to include the recent Stockholm production. https://www.mediafire.com/file/zkl38t9388gcvh7/POTO_Sweden_2017-03-19_PJ_EC_AZ.wav/file Tim Howar, Amy Manford, Jeremy Taylor, Kimberly Blake, Ross Dawes, Alan Vicary, Jacinta Mulcahy, Georgia Ware, Paul Ettore Tabone September 7, 2019; London This one is different from the one listed as NFT (so don't get mad at me, haha). Last performance for Amy Manford in the West End production. https://www.mediafire.com/file/vf60ie1er18rkon/POTO_West_End_07-09-2019_-_Howar%252C_Manford%252C_Taylor.rar/file Ben Crawford, Meghan Picerno, John Riddle October 26, 2019 Because we all love a Christine with opera chops. https://www.mediafire.com/file/9gji0khgfoazjqd/POTO_Broadway_26-10-2019_-_Crawford%252C_Picerno%252C_Riddle.rar/file

POTO videos

Earl Carpenter, Rachel Barrell, David Shannon, Wendy Ferguson, David Lawrence (u/s), Sam Hiller, Emily Harvey (u/s), Heidi Ann O'Brien, Rohan Tickell January 2006 VOB format. If you want to see Earl in London right now but can't... this video is the best quality overall that features him, and Rachel Barrell is a fantastic Christine - one of my favorites in the role. https://mega.nz/folder/u09GQKyR#gjNHj4Letd9YInTsuLowjA Gary Mauer, Elizabeth Southard, Jim Weitzer, Kim Stengel, John Jellison, DC Anderson, Patti Davidson-Gorbea, Kate Wray, John Whitney April 6, 2006; Dallas VOB format. For my Eristine moots (I see you!): Gary Mauer and Elizabeth Southard were (and as far as I know, still are) married while performing as the Phantom and Christine, and you thought Ramin and Sierra's chemistry was off the charts, think again. https://mega.nz/folder/PtExxS5A#D4yyf2g_lXoN-cIDPkMU2Q Anthony Crivello, Kristi Holden, Andrew Ragone, Geena Jeffries Mattox, John Leslie Wolfe, Lawson Skala, Tina Walsh, Brianne Kelly Morgan, Larry Wayne Morbitt August 8, 2008; Las Vegas VOB format. This is the Las Vegas Spectacular production, which is abriged compared to the original but totally worth seeing. If you want to understand why I love Meg Giry so much, Brianne Kelly Morgan is one of the best I've ever seen in the role. Also, if you’re meh about Raoul... with Andrew Ragone, think again. He’s one of the most Superman/Clark Kent Raouls I’ve seen. And I really like Kristi Holden’s Leroux-esque Christine too. https://mega.nz/folder/Sh1zxSAB#twtXau8Y8pd_L9tMQLa4Mg Jeremy Stolle (u/s), Samantha Hill, Greg Mills (u/s), Michele McConnell, Tim Jerome, Richard Poole (u/s), Ellen Harvey, Kara Klein, Christian Sebek March 9, 2013 VOB format. Missing part of Act 1 (‘Stranger Than You Dreamt It’ to Il Muto), but otherwise complete. This is one of the best trios I've seen on Broadway, and Samantha Hill is just a fantastic Christine overall. https://mega.nz/folder/y1slyJRD#OP1Tp5Cj_fMk9LbAWJMqAA Tomas Ambt Kofod, Sibylle Glosted, Christian Lund, Louise Fribo, Carl Christian Rasmussen, Sebastian Harris, Elisabeth Halling, Imogen-Lilly Ash, Rasmus Jupin March 2019; Copenhagen VOB format. This one is more recent, but given it's been uploaded on YouTube, I guess it's fine to gift it (again, if you’re the master and you want me to remove this, please let me know).This one has one of the best casts ever caught on tape. Seriously. Everyone in this is a star. https://mega.nz/folder/q40hTagI#Zui14MWo-F2YSQ0gNdaL6Q

Les Mis Audios

Colm Wilkinson, Roger Allam, Patti LuPone, Alun Armstrong, Sue Jane Tanner, Michael Ball, Frances Ruffele, Rebecca Caine, David Burt 1985; London Preview at the Barbican Centre. This is interesting since it includes Cosette's song "I Saw Him Once", which has been cut later. https://www.mediafire.com/file/jbedqiemuk9qnd1/Les_Mis_West_End_1985_-_Wilkinson%252C_Allam.rar/file Symphonic recording (1989) Gary Morris, Philip Quast, Debra Byrne, Michael Ball, Tracy Shayne, Kaho Shimada, Anthony Warlow, Barry James, Gay Soper https://www.mediafire.com/file/n7gp30jcpnjfkf7/Les_Miserables_Symphonic_Recording.rar/file Kyle Jean-Baptiste (u/s), Earl Carpenter, Erika Henningsen, Chris McCarrell, Samantha Hill, Brennyn Lark, Max Quinlan (u/s), Gavin Lee, Rachel Izen August 13, 2015; Broadway For Kyle Jean-Baptiste, who was an amazing performer gone way too soon. RIP. https://www.mediafire.com/file/fzj2qubunkrrfhc/Les_Mis_Broadway_13-08-2015_-_Jean-Baptiste%252C_Carpenter.rar/file John Owen-Jones, Michael Ball, Carrie Hope Fletcher, Craig Mather (u/s), Lily Kerhoas, Shan Ako, Bradley Jaden, Matt Lucas, Katy Secombe, Earl Carpenter October 16, 2019; London All-star concert! https://www.mediafire.com/file/nh28zdry93vhry2/Les_Mis_London_Concert_16-10-2019_-_Owen-Jones%252C_Ball.rar/file

Elisabeth das Musical

Original Cast Recording (1992) Pia Douwes, Uwe Kroeger, Ethan Freeman, Andreas Bieber, Viktor Gernot, Else Ludwig https://www.mediafire.com/file/fagi9ctooeq2y11/Elisabeth-Original_German_Cast.rar/file Vienna revival cast recording (2006) Maya Hakvoort, Mate Kamaras, Serkan Kaya, André Bauer, Fritz Schmid, Else Ludwig https://www.mediafire.com/file/7wpqbotp8oszzz3/Elisabeth_-_2006_Vienna_Cast.rar/file

Sweeney Todd

2000 Concert Cast Recording George Hearn, Patti LuPone, Davis Gaines, Heidi Grant Murphy, Paul Plishka, Audra McDonald, Standford Olsen, Neil Patrick Harris, John Aler Pretty sure this isn't on Spotify, which is a real shame given its cast. So enjoy! EDIT: Someone pointed out to me that the recording is incomplete - probably a result of the Great Hardware Crash of 2016, so until I get the full version, this will probably stay incomplete. Sorry about that! https://www.mediafire.com/file/ywoiqe5bnlzr7bs/Sweeney_Todd_2000_New_York_Concert_Cast.rar/file

#phantom of the opera #les miserables #elisabeth das musical #sweeney todd #too many people to tag lol #audio gift #video gift #musical trading

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intoloopin-archive · 3 months

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JJ knows his strengths and how to highlight them so even if he isn't that musically gifted he can still keep up! His upbringing didn't allow him to be anything but a little diva and I love that for him but I wonder how his personality fits into the group.

But your little character breakdown/plot posts are always good!

GIO.

I've been treating this ask like a very fancy bottle of wine, really waiting for the perfect moment to answer it in the most interesting way possible, and now that LOOPiN is FINALLY (!!!) free from New Wave Music and they officially have a new home, I believe a post dissecting how they used to work under Seo CEO's awful control is a must. And here I have the perfect little moment to ramble about it! Which I love!

So, the short answer to your questions is: J.J fits in very badly on a personal level, and most of the other guys consider him unmanageable to say the least, but! LOOPiN as a whole has been so desensitized to Jiahang's (annoying!) personality because, as long as they were under New Wave, they all knew that he was an untouchable constant; both because of his father's grip on the company stock, and because in mid 2021 J.J made the very strategic decision to take active part on backing LOOPiN financially, and he did so by paying for their dorm room accomodations and making that his sole responsability - which is why in some pieces set on their 'flop era' you can notice that their home is just waaaaay too fucking nice.

But yeah, with anyone who's not Minwoo (from late 2020 up until literally a week before he publicly retired from making music), Haegon (often enough) or Hanjae, Jiahang has had very big professional and personal feuds that still linger. It gets ugly sometimes guys, it really does.

Now! To the longer answer!

NEW WAVE MUSIC's LOOPiN & ITS HIDDEN HIERARCHY:

[❗] TWs: corporate abuse, medical neglect.

If in universe iNSYNCs or just people aware of them were to be consulted, they would say that the chain of command and order of company favoritism while LOOPiN were under New Wave Music (2017 - 2023) ended up as:

01. Minwoo; 02. Seungsoo; 03. Haruki; 04. O.z; 05. J.J; 06. Hanjae; 07. Gyujin; 08. Dylan; 09. Taesong; 10. Haegon.

*Former member Lee Beomseok is not included, but just so you know, he wouldn't crack the Top5.

Which, by looking at the graphic you can see it's pretty off! Let's dissect it!

(NOTE: The two white boxes around the Top4 symbolize leadership roles, and they obviously entail the Produce Line, but less obviously, in a ground right above it, stands Minwoo and J.J in a duo that we can informally call as 'LOOPiN's Crisis Management'.)

At the very top of the food chain, we have J.J: As mentioned above, and also said in posts in the past here and there, Jiahang's spot in LOOPiN was 100% bought by his father, but his privilege goes way beyond just sharing surnames with a major sponsor: J.J has an entire personal team of lawyers, a private stylist and his own manager/financial consultant, Han Qiong (39), which puts him miles ahead of everyone else who depended on New Wave's shady and unprepared staff team. Jiahang's influence is also very present in everything on LOOPiN's two last years under New Wave (which came as consequence of him being Minwoo's "apprentice"), but it's all very subtle, as he always hid behind Minwoo to not spoil his incompetent brat persona to CEO Seo Chanhyuk - many marketing stunts, a good parts of their visual identity and even some promoted songs were handpicked by him but signed off as Minwoo's decisions, and even the members don't know that. As of now, speaking of 2023-0T9-Rare-Rhythm-LOOPiN, only Taesong and Haruki are aware of their past almost co-leadership deal and know how frail J.J actually is with this start over on the career department. He has pretty much no idea how and what he should do next now that he doesn't have a clear advantage! A giant really fell!

Minwoo: Even before he took over the official leader position from Taesong in 2021, everyone working with LOOPiN behind the scenes knew Minwoo was the guy in charge: not only was he the frontman of the Produce Line, but not a single decision even outside the group's sound was made without consulting him, mostly because people felt like they should - his... passionate involvement, let's say, about every aspect of the group was very clear. He also kept riding the wave of his Boy Of The Week days as "the golden trainee", and the respect he build in the industry after butting heads with Chanhyuk and his brigade of shareholders to make LOOPiN creative independent, even though it did give everyone consequences - Seo CEO came to HATE his guts right after they debuted, and was a bitch about them just because Minwoo was always just as much of a bitch back. Him making Taesong the leader during their group debut despite Minwoo's obvious crave for that title was just as much of a move made to try to control them as it was petty, childish shit.

O.z: Wu Zhiming is not someone you can restrain, and New Wave Music came to learn that a beat too late; they also didn't know how to fully support him as a music producer, which O.z took no time to notice and start quietly networking his way into opportunities. Now, his music career outside of LOOPiN is the most stable - he's been the major producer and collaborator with Nico, an independent (and faceless!) singer that in universe has internet fame reaching the likes of Pinkpantheress, and he's definely the first member to reach stable international fame, even if it's a tad controversial. And that's something he did despite New Wave Music, and Zhiming has talked about it publicly with no fear, so everyone knows he's truly independent! You go, O.z!

Seungsoo: Seungsoo always has a hard time seeing the bigger picture, and with his career it was no different: he always assumed the Produce Line was an equal triad and even that he was Minwoo's second hand man (which, LMAO. NO!), and he constantly failed to see everyone always respected him the less. But he was and is a group producer, he did have a voice and some control of LOOPiN as a brand, and that automatically puts him above a lot of the members. Seungsoo is also very popular with the public, known as a sweet talker and charming guy, and his music is very sought after for girl groups and female soloists. He was not doing the worst.

Gyujin: Gyujin, the newest loop dude of them all, stands right in the middle. He joined LOOPiN at a crazy time, but he is flexible by nature and he worked himself into the public's good graces very quickly, all on his own; it barely took him 7 months to be iNSYNC's new darling dearest, which did give some brownie points with Seo CEO at the time. Gyujin is also very familiar with the entertainment industry, which barely changed in the years he spend retired from child acting, so he knew from the get go what to watch out for. His contract signing took 3 weeks because he kept going for legal tweaks, something that immediately set off warning sirens inside Seo CEO's head, but at that point, Gyujin was all he had to try to set off the fire of Beomseok's departure - and many other accusations! If he had more time inside the company, Gyujin could definely pull a J.J and find something to use to his advantage against Chanhyuk, because if there's one thing he'll always do, is find an angle.

Hanjae: As soon as Sangwon got out of the picture as LOOPiN's manager in early 2022, Hanjae found himself in a very interesting position, that being his elevation from someone that was literally hidden for two years inside their own group to a hotshot debutee actor - fully backed by Chanhyuk, who was so fucking tired of LOOPiN having collective fame at this point. As we know, Hanjae's crush on Haruki was old and a well known fact inside New Wave, and it ended up causing his professional downfall; Sangwon mismanaged him on porpouse in LOOPiN's early years to not only punish him for his feelings, but also just to torment Haruki. Recently, Seo CEO has committed the big mistake of trying to convince Hanjae to sell his exclusive contract to an acting agency on New Wave's last days, and despite Hanjae double crossing him and immediately telling everyone about the company's hidden fate back in January so they could prepare for it, Chanhyuk still planted a lot of doubt on Hanjae's mind about his Idol future, and that will be at play very soon, thanks to 'Kick It' winning the comeback poll! So stay tunned!;

Taesong: As said on the Minwoo section, Taesong's role as LOOPiN's leader was given to him because Seo CEO needed someone in charge to be under his thumb, and Taesong filled that role okay enough for as long as he could - Minwoo's very harsh criticism of his every move plus everyone's lack of respect of the sentimental way he used to run things eventually got to him mentally. He had many hiatuses in his career, and with each new one came more of a lack of interest from New Wave Music in him as a way of income. If it wasn't for his own volution and need to get better, Taesong wouldn't be the vocal powerhouse he is now - he payed for his own vocal coaches, all non affiliate with the company! By the time he returned from his most serious and longest hiatus in early 2021, making the (not so willing) decision to give out the leader position to Minwoo, all without notifying Seo CEO first, made him public enemy number #2, and it definitely showed on his sudden erasure of schedules.

Haegon: From pretty much day one, Haegon was not taken seriously by anyone inside New Wave Music as an Idol or person, specially in Seo Chanhyuk's eyes: his very unsettling attachment to former member Beomseok paired with his short temper painted him as a kid unwilling to grow up, and when Beomseok left and Haegon put up a whole dissapearing stunt for a week (he had to be fake announced to be put on hiatus!), any slight interest or patience Seo Chanhyuk had for him died. Dare I say, Seo CEO saw Haegon as his biggest signing mistakes, when you take into consideration that "he wasn't even good enough to make the main vocalist stay" - his own words! So Haegon was not encouraged to train beyond his habilities or given any sort of solo schedules. Haegon himself felt the company's disbelief in him in his bones, too, and found it hard to try.

Haruki: Despite being made the public face of LOOPiN from 2021 and onwards, and eventually starting as a model with a lot of company apparent support (big highlight on apparent), Haruki was not the target of favoritism in the slightest; it was the very opposite. None of the investment made by New Wave towards Haruki was genuine, made to be long term or took what he wanted to do as an artist into consideration. It was just Seo CEO buying his silence about his horrible involvement with Sangwon without explicitly saying to Haruki that he was buying his silence. Haruki also never had freedom of movement from the moment he became a Week Boy, and even small decisions he had the impression of being made without Sangwon's involvement over the years always ended up with his involvement despite his demands for the contrary, because Seo CEO did not care or respect him, ever. (Which is in my humble opinion one of his worst crimes: knowing and doing nothing for a share price. Fuck that man, honestly, fuck him.)

And in the lowest of lows, Dylan: In the old blog I had a piece that was fully narrated by Chihoon, and in it we caught a glimpse of the situation with his private contract under New Wave Music and by extension, Blockberry Creative; how his trainee dept was thrice everyone's size because he lost a private defamation lawsuit against both companies back when he was on Boy Of The Week, plus one claiming neglect from Seo CEO directly. Dylan's contract as a whole was barely legal and made by a lawyer that was at the time Seo CEO's wife-to-be (🥴), and the disparity definely showed as LOOPiN went on. Mind you: his first ever solo project (given how he did not promote his debut track 'Monster' or 'Teenager' with LOOPiN Look(a)Like due to an hospitalization), was his rebellion album released in 2022, and that obviously had no company support. Dylan also was on the down low obligated to see a 'company psychiatrist', something that is exclusive to him and was as shady as it fucking sounds - a lot of his growing paranoia as his career goes on it's not only caused by the things he becomes a witness to, but also the bad intentioned changes made in his medication.

#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ development .#this is a mega merge of 3 things I wanted to do. I'm crazy but I am free.#fictional idol community #kpop oc #kpop fanfic #kpop au #fake kpop group

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not-poignant · 9 months

Text

December 2023 Writing Round-Up

Here's the monthly round-up of everything written and posted in December 2023! It's the final round-up of this year! It's been a great month for housekeeping, and behind-the-scenes stuff happening on Patreon (and Ream!) But here's the chapters that were released: Underline the Black 73

Underline the Black 74

Underline the Black 75

Underline the Blue 07

Underline the Blue 08

Constellations 01

The Nascent Diplomat 39

The Nascent Diplomat 40 (Augus+Gwyn Tier+)

Underline the Blue 11 (Augus+Gwyn Tier+)

Constellations 04 (Gary+Efnisien Tier+)

Chapter Commentary - Underline the Black 31 (Mosk+Eran Tier+)

Chapter Commentary - Underline the Black 32 (Mosk+Eran Tier+)

2014-2017 Chapter Commentaries - Full Compilation (Mosk+Eran Tier+)

2023 Chapter Commentaries - Full Compilation (Mosk&Eran Tier+)

Song Spotlight - Full Compilation (All Tiers)

FANFICTION

A Stain that Won't Dissolve 27

A Stain that Won't Dissolve 28

Palmarosa 12

Palmarosa 13

Palmarosa 14

Palmarosa 15

It was a much quieter month on the writing front. I managed 43,000 words by some miracle, across a bunch of different stories.

A reminder that enrolment into the Merch Tier to get the May/June rewards is still valid until mid February!

On the writing side, I wrote across multiple stories: Palmarosa, Constellations, Underline the Black, and Underline the Blue.

I had to step back on posting for my own health/sanity. And I'm taking the first two weeks of January off from posting chapters. I'll still be writing, but in between raising a puppy and also just general burnout, I'm still putting some mega health-preservation in place so I don't get really sick.

You will mostly notice this in the form of one Underline the Black chapter not going up each month, to give me a Sunday-to-Sunday stretch with no chapter updates. I will still be active and around! These aren't holidays from writing or interacting with you all, just from the schedule itself. :D

For those who remember the Merchantverse novel Tradewinds, this is coming in book / e-book form to Patreon and Ream only in the Gary+Efnisien Tier or higher. It is a completed Fae Tales Verse story, that focuses on merchant fae in the southern hemisphere, and Seelie vs. Unseelie merchant traders. This will come in January 2024.

I'll see you all in January 2024! Which is in one hour! Thanks so much for making this year incredible! :D

#housekeeping #chapter round up #underline the black #palmarosa #thespectaclesofthor #not poignant #underline the blue #a stain that won't dissolve #constellations #all the things!#managing my health with a puppy is kind of funny #but it's been happening #dsalkjfdsa

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autumnslance · 1 year

Text

LynMars FFXIV Write 2023 Master Post

This year's challenge completed! Congrats to everyone who wrote anything at all this month, even if just one prompt! Thanks again to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for 7 years of this!

Previous Years Master Posts: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

Anything wolcred ship-related is marked by an asterisk* as usual. Commentary and stats for anyone interested below the Read More.

01. Envoy: ARR; Aeryn makes her Grand Company choice. 02. Bark: Dark has the wrong pie thief suspect. 03. Free Day! 04. Off the Hook: EW; Lucia & Maxima explore their new HQ. 05. Barbarous: HW; Aeryn's frustrated by the land of her birth. 06. Ring: EW; keepsakes & memories of Aeryn's mother. 07. Noisome: Dark & Iyna contend with ubiquitous seasonal flavors. 08. Shed: EW; Aeryn answers Zenos at the edge of everything. 09. Fair: EW; Azem's brother tries to ensure the future has his aid. 10. Free Day! 11. Once Bitten Twice Shy: ShB Bozja; unwarranted concerns. 12. Dowdy: Backstory; Aeryn's always had Opinions about fashion. 13. Check: Iyna discovers C'oretta's personal business. 14. Clear*: ShB; semi-poetic sweetness of coming together. 15. Portentous: Backstory. Zaine speaks to Tanzel about a decision. 16. Jerk: EW; Aeryn meets an old friend as the Final Days loom. 17. Free Day! 18. Fish Out of Water: Shb: G'raha gets used to his new life. 19. Weal: EW; Vrtra sees to his people and their home. 20. Hamper: In a possible future, Iyna answers academic questions. 21. Grave: Legacy; Zaine Striker returns to his childhood home. 22. Fulsome: C'oretta sorts through her parents' old promos. 23. Suit: ARR; what the Scions wore that most fateful night. 24: Free Day! 25. Call it a Day: Pre-ARR; Iron Summer contemplating his daughter. 26. Last: EW; a final conversation between ancients. 27. Sole*: Post-ShB; Thancred vs the perils of Aeryn's flip-tastic jobs. 28. Blunt: Post-ShB; working with Gaius, like it or not. 29. Contravention: EW; "In from the Cold" violates laws of nature. 30. Amity: EW; Varshahn & Aeryn discuss Thavnair & Garlemald.

Only 2 short shippy prompts all month! All 4 modern girls got a couple spotlights, various family cameos and backstories, a future prompt as is tradition, Zaine had a few posts, a few NPC-only scenes, a LOT of Endwalker, and even Ancient Icarus got a story, tying into 2021's "Destruct" prompt and how/why the siblings' souls have been connected through time and reincarnations.

A few of these are alternate takes on scenes I've touched on before, but it's interesting what a new prompt at a different time can get one to say, how we change as writers in what we focus on and how we say it.

This comes in roughly 300 words shorter than last year, at 18,493. The week of the 18-22 I had off work for my birthday, and that had the most 1k+ prompts, with a word count nearly double the other 3 full weeks. While the longer prompts are good, I'm really happy with how so many of the short ones turned out!

I was again trying to be realistic about my time, energy, not pushing free write days...and also working on an original writing project on the side, so I actually did do more writing over the month, just not FFXIV related!

(Also why some of my responses were in just under the wire...)

But this was a good break and exercise from that other writing, and let me try a few new things.

And comparing to earlier years--especially 2017 and 2018 when I was getting back onto the writing horse and feeling out my OCs--I feel like my growth as a writer, especially to be more succinct yet still evocative when needed, is evident. I've gotten a lot of practice in over time, and this challenge is one of the things that helped me get to where I can write an original story on top of my fanfic!

Breakdowns for funsies: Longest: 21 Grave; 1,652 words Shortest: 14 Clear; 106 words

Between 100-500 words: 1 Envoy; 2 Bark; 4 Off the Hook; 5 Barbarous; 7 Noisome; 8 Shed; 14 Clear; 15 Portentous; 26 Last; 27 Sole. Between 500-1000 words: 6 Ring; 11 Once Bitten, Twice Shy; 13 Check; 16 Jerk; 18 Fish Out of Water; 22 Fulsome; 23 Suit; 25 Call it a Day; 28 Blunt; 29 Contravention; 30 Amity. 1000+ words: 9 Fair; 12 Dowdy; 19 Weal; 20 Hamper; 21 Grave.

I didn't look at the totals until the end; I only checked some of the shorter ones during the challenge to see if they hit my personal "500+ words" cut off for adding a Read More to the posts.

"Grave" honestly could have been a lot shorter; I started the plot too early, and much as I like Zaine making one last visit to his childhood Nana, for the purposes of the challenge, I could have just focused on going to the lichyard to save myself time and energy, and wrote about the visit on my own another time. On the other hand, it's done now!

Not sure which is a favorite; there's a lot I like.

As usual, these will be revised at...some point (some more than others, probably) and added to Ao3, in my various series and threads.

#final fantasy xiv #ffxivwrite2023 #Lyn Writing #Aeryn Striker #Dark Autumn #Iyna Cauld #C'oretta Khell #Zaine Striker #Scions of the Seventh Dawn #A Realm Reborn #Heavensward #Stormblood #Shadowbringers #Endwalker

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 7 months

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Most days, this bit would have made me smile a bit in the moment, but I wouldn't have found it significant enough to actually cut out and post. Because "broadly in favour of gay pride" is hardly a controversial stance for a comedian these days to take, it's not a particularly big deal.

But this happens to be a week when a town in my own country has voted to outlaw public depictions of pride, and I usually try not to use this blog to talk too much about current events (because 1) I don't think social media is the place for actual news, and even if it is, maybe news can be okay if coming from journalists' social media accounts, it shouldn't come from random people like me, and 2) if I comment on one current issue then I get concerned about all the other ones I'm leaving out, so I avoid all of them, everyone could safely and accurately just assume that I am constantly paralyzed with horror at everything going on in the world so I don't need to spell every single one out), but that particular banning of pride stuff has been particularly depressing me lately, in addition to the larger issues across Canada and the United States of a massive backlash against queer people. I think in the area of queer acceptance, the Overton window is start to move to the right for the first time in my lifetime, and that is fucking awful to watch.

So given that, hearing John Robins and Elis James say some fairly basic "gay pride is good" stuff was, actually, pretty fucking uplifting. And I happened to listen to this bit while on a break at work, in a job where I'm an autism therapist and that job has a lot of overlap with the job of being a teacher. And my sexual orientation... okay it sometimes involves theoretical attraction to men, like I can find certain men attractive if they fall into the narrow range called "my type" but in actual practice I know from experience that even being very attracted to a man is not enough for me to actually enjoy sleeping with one, so on a practical level the word "lesbian" probably describes me accurately, even though when describing my own sexual orientation I tend to use the word "gay" because that feels a little bit broader and like lesbians aren't allowed to sometimes be attracted to men, even men with whom they don't wish to actually have physical sex, but "gay women" are allowed that because there's more scope in that term, I think, I'm not really sure... but anyway, my sexual orientation is certainly not far off from lesbian, and my job is not far off from teacher, so hearing those guys say they're in favour of lesbian teachers was a pretty fucking cool thing, while I sat in an empty classroom on a break at work and listened to this podcast. Might have got mildly emotional hearing that, specifically because I've spent most of this week being depressed about some of the local rulings on pride in Canada, and the implications they have for more regional areas that have just been looking for opportunities like this, and of course the significant backlash against queer people that's happening all over North America right now.

I don't know. I realize a British comedian saying queer people are fine is hardly groundbreaking. But if anyone's feeling depressed about The Backlash right now, and how many comedians have turned out to be disappointingly fine with said backlash, here are John Robins and Elis James in 2017 talking about how great pride is. John Robins even suspending his usual policy of getting furious at people who don't follow the rules, because that's just how great pride is.

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offender42085 · 1 year

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Post 0557

...The DNA test showed that his profile is at least 163 octillion times more likely or otherwise expressed -- the number 163 followed by 27 zeros......

Chet Neilson, Idaho inmate 134749, born 1988, incarceration intake in 2020 at age 31, parole eligible on 08/23/2034 with full discharge on 08/22/2044

Rape

A man who almost got away with a violent rape for over two years was sentenced. District Judge Steven Boyce sentenced 31-year-old Chet K. Neilson to 15 to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to felony rape. The courtroom was packed and deputies brought in extra chairs for people attending the sentencing hearing.

Neilson’s comments during the hearing were barely audible to other people in the room. Neilson never looked at anyone else in the eye and constantly looked to the floor as he spoke.

The guilty plea came as part of an agreement made with Teton County Prosecutors at a mitigation hearing. In exchange for the guilty plea, prosecutors dropped a felony battery charge and felony enhancement of infliction of great bodily injury.

Investigators with the Teton County Sheriff’s Office tied Neilson to the Aug. 4, 2017, rape by collecting his used chewing tobacco and matching it with DNA from a sexual assault exam of the victim.

“Mr. Neilson, you committed a shocking crime,” Boyce said before handing down the sentence. “I’ve been in the law 25 years and this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”

Neilson attacked the then 26-year-old woman as she was walking in the Victor City Park around 1 a.m. that August morning. The man, later identified as Neilson, grabbed her mouth and threw her to the ground before raping her. During the assault, Neilson repeatedly said he would kill her if she made any noise.

During the sentencing hearing, it was made known that Neilson strangled the victim to the point she passed out. The lack of oxygen caused blood vessels in her eyes to burst. Boyce said he’s only seen injuries like that in cases where the victim does not survive.

The Teton County Sheriff’s Office opened its investigation immediately after the attack but had little leads. Last August, detectives received a tip that led them to Neilson.

The following week, detectives, along with the Idaho State Police and the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, began a surveillance operation to collect a DNA sample from Neilson. Investigators were successful in obtaining used chewing tobacco spit from Neilson’s mouth.

Lab results from the DNA test showed the “profile is at least 163 octillion times more likely to be seen if Chet Neilson is the source than if an unrelated individual randomly selected from the general population is the source.”

Deputies arrested Neilson and he confessed to the violent rape.

Defense attorney Sean Moulton recommended his client serve a rider and said when he first met Neilson, he was completely candid about what he did and wanted to plead guilty. He mentioned how Neilson has no prior criminal record but struggles with cognitive disabilities. Moulton described reports calling those cognitive deficits as “thinking errors.”

Boyce referred to a psychosexual evaluation done before Neilson was sentenced showed deception in a polygraph. He also said it’s concerning how Neilson said he saw the victim and had a “sexual urge” before raping her in a seemingly random act.

“This rape was so violent she was literally fighting for her life,” Boyce said.

In addition to time in prison, Boyce ordered Neilson to pay a $1,000 fine and $375 in court costs. He will also have to pay $5,000 to the victim as well as restitution.

Neilson will have to register as a sex offender for life.

“You’ve thrown your whole life away with one random act,” Boyce said.

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deadcactuswalking · 25 days

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 31/08/2024 (Fontaines D.C.'s Romance, Sabrina Carpenter, Coldplay)

Well, Sabrina Carpenter has done what Taylor couldn’t do: fill out the top three with her hits, though only the #1 debut - her third song to top the chart - is new, that being “Taste”, with her #1 album, which sold over 89k here, launching other Short n’ Sweet hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” to #2 and #3 respectively. Hell, while we’re here, let’s just chalk out Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” at #4 and Chase & Status’ “BACKBONE” with Stormzy at #5. It’s… one of those weeks. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

content warning: sexual and mental health references

Rundown: Oasis Special

This week has a lot to discuss, a decent amount happening, but it’s all scattered throughout the entire chart and, really, not much of it is all that interesting, though that may just be a me problem in this case. There’s plenty of interest to many fanbases, including one of the biggest in the country but I personally can’t call myself a fan of Fontaines D.C., Sabrina Carpenter - the album was good, though - or even Oasis, the divisive but still massively successful Britpop band who have “reunited” (let’s be tentative about this) for a tour after over a decade of inactivity, though many people don’t recall or respect the years of shovelling out garbage that occurred long after their heyday, so it may seem like even longer. They do have three of their biggest, most respected hits on the chart this week, though only one of their eight #1s - more a demonstration of their quantity of hits than any comment on their lasting legacy.

Firstly, the song used in headlines about the reunion as if this really isn’t the most unstable tempering of relations since North and South Korea: “Live Forever” is back at #19. It debuted and peaked at #10 for two weeks in 1994, whilst Wet Wet Wet’s “Love is All Around” was #1, and made appearances lower down the chart for pretty much all of the 90s… and then 2017. It’s Liam Gallagher’s personal favourite Oasis song, and has since become a bit of a tribute ballad due to its sentiment.

At #17 is “Wonderwall”, which is possibly their most iconic tune and has spent a whopping total of 90 weeks on the chart, yet never matching its first-week peak of #2 in 1995, being blocked by a double-A-side release by Robson & Jerome that nobody remembers. It spent a couple weeks meandering throughout the 90s but resurged on digital sales platforms since 2008 and occasionally makes appearances lower down on the chart since, most recently in November of last year. Though the track may go down as one of the most-covered songs of all time, only a few non-Oasis renditions have appeared on the UK Singles Chart. The Mike Flowers Pops Orchestra actually took it to an identical peak of #2 that Christmas, being blocked my Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”. 1996 would see dance versions by Bombayblue and De-Code reach #82 and #69 respectively, and American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams charted in 2004 with his rendition at #27. For my money, the best version of “Wonderwall” is when JAY-Z pettily butchering the song at Glastonbury in response to Noel Gallagher indicating his genre wasn’t welcome at the festival. Other than straight-up covers, you can hear elements of the track in Simple Plan’s 2008 hit “Your Love is a Lie” (#63) and Bugzy Malone’s 2017 hit with Tom Grennan, “Memory Lane” (#65). They are, like the original song, not worth listening to.

Finishing the Gallaghers’ trio of songs is my personal favourite of the three, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” which has actually spent barely over half of the weeks “Wonderwall” has on the charts. It debuted at #1, peaking there for one week in 1996, beating out spacemen, hippies and children. It dwoddled around for the next year, returned in 2017 and returned even higher today. The Wurzels reached #59 with their version in 2002.

As for the rest of what’s going on, well, don’t we usually start with the notable dropouts? Songs exiting the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40? Yes, you’d be correct, I guess I just decided some angry middle-aged Mancunians was of more importance. Regardless, this week, we say farewell to: “You’re Gonna Go Far” by Noah Kahan, the “Set My Heart on Fire” mashup of “I’m Alive” and “The Beat Goes On”, overall credited to Majestic, The Jammin’ Kid and Céline Dion, “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar, “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” by Tommy Richman, “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, “Birds in the Sky” by NewEra and Natasha Bedingfield with both “Unwritten” and the Badger remix of “These Words”.

As for our notable gains and re-entries, we have the return of Fontaines D.C.’s “Starburster” thanks to their album release - we’re actually going to review more songs from them than Sabrina - then solid boosts for a handful of tracks, thoe being “Close to You” by Gracie Abrams at #68, “Bring Me Joy” by Rudimental and Karen Harding at #61 and “Cry Baby” by Clean Bandit, Anne-Marie and David Guetta at #51. Now that’s all out of the way - in a different order this time - let’s crack down on the songs that arrived on the boat this week.

New Entries

#73 - “Diet Pepsi” - Addison Rae

Produced by Luka Kloser and ELVIRA

Sigh… first of all, I’m a Dr. Pepper girl myself. Secondly, Addison Rae is the exact kind of person I would never care about: a TikTok personality largely famous for being a social media “it girl” that makes industry-backed moves into traditional media outlets but never really performs too well, gaining a cultish fanbase in part because of that. You can say that she served only for long enough until people start asking, well, “what did she serve exactly?” I had the same opinion of Ice Spice when she first came out, but Rae is being propped by people I actually care for like Charli xcx and A.G. Cook, so surely there’s something there… no, there is not. Bizarrely, for an Internet personality, this feels dated and out of time with what is actually popular. This is a 2018-era falsetto-driven alternative R&B-esque track, complete with weirdly-mixed trap-adjacent percussion that really loves my left ear and synths straight out of The Weeknd’s Google Drive he shared with, like, Halsey, watt, Post Malone and co. back in the late 2010s. There are vague references to Lana Del Rey who approached this sound better on “Summer Bummer”, but there really just aren’t many lyrics here at all in this murky sex jam to form much of anything. The bridge is a vocaloid drop circa 2017 EDM but without any of the build-up, impact or even bothering to properly resolve that aborted bridge. It all just reeks of wanting to be interesting and not actually going for it.

#69 - “Favourite” - Fontaines D.C.

Produced by James Ford

I have yet to listen to Irish indie outfit Fontaines D.C.’s most recent record, Romance. I said when reviewing “Starburster” a few weeks ago that I was not familiar and the single had convinced me on them, but I guess I have my priorities, like relistening to middling James Blake albums from 2019 and contemplating the marketing tactis of the Grimace Shake. At the same time, of course. They would have topped the albums chart on any non-Sabrina week and are at #2 today, but we have more debuts from them to discuss, and I may be missing out on some greater album context, so bear with me on that regard. This was another pre-release just charting in the top 75 for the first time, and starts with a cascading guitar riff not dissimilar to 80s post-punk with a reverb-affected mix that cleans up quite nicely overall but does give vocalist Grian Chatten an interesting dynamic where despite a technically good and clear recording, he appears to purposefully restrain himself from hitting the notes exactly or enunciating all that well, meshing in with the thematically dazed content. He reminisces on simpler times, but ensures to place those times in context and understand that a lot of that nostalgia comes from an ignorance that he no longer has, or has to be strewn out on numbness to experience it, not that it helps since now, all that numbness does is prevent him from feeling anything at all. I will say that amidst the driving jangle of the track, there isn’t a solid hook, which again makes perfect thematic sense for the disoriented dream he’s having here but doesn’t string me back to this song in particular. That main riff is incessantly catchy but it feels a bit wasted on a more hypnotic structure that thrives more on that droning tedium emphasising how distant they are from youth and how paranoid that’s made him in his relationships. This is still very good, but outside of knowing how it fits into the album’s themes, I’m not sure why I’d choose this song in particular.

#53 - “Wait for You” - Myles Smith

Produced by Peter Fenn

Oh, the world’s just been waiting for the “Stargazing” follow-up. This is similarly plucked straight out of 2014, with the folk pick-up and over-processed vocals that really reach a territory difficult to listen to in that pre-chorus, and become a full-on wall of vocal on the chorus about waiting for this other person to be… happy. Okay, so lyrically, there is an interest to this that there isn’t really to its instrumental - I like the perky drums that pick up the pace in the second verse, though - as whilst it’s not too specific, it appears to be about an undying loyalty to a friend struggling with mental health, always being by their side, but also, it hits a weird note on the idea of waiting, not actually acting upon the compassion he has for this person, and because of the focus on Myles himself and just how he wants to wait for this person to be okay, it fails to be inspirational or a generic empowerment anthem, yet it cannot function as a love song either because of how dedicated he is to the mental health angle. Some of the lyrics downplay the issue, though, deriding it as “words in [their] head”, and that trust me, he knows what it’s like, but it’s still their problem to deal with it. It appears well-meaning until that one line in the chorus: “you can’t push me away”. It almost seems obsessive and hopeless, that Smith is clinging onto someone who he’s already tried helping with the meaningless platitudes he fills this song with. I may just be reading too much into a badly-written folk-pop motivational song, but there’s a hint of weirdness to the emotional balance here that is very distracting and self-focused, that I can’t help but think this won’t connect on the same level as “Stargazing”, even if it’s a bit more tolerable on a sonic level to me.

#52 - “In the Modern World” - Fontaines D.C.

Produced by James Ford

Our second of the pair of Fontaines songs is much newer, with the album pumping it up to their highest peak so far, and I’m starting to find it really interesting just how numb these tracks from an album titled Romance are. I also start to understand why this one in particular was what got so high, given the on-the-nose lyrics about just feeling nothing in particular in the 21st century - not feeling anything, but at least not feeling bad - and the clearly post-Britpop strings that bring this into 2000s UK radio rock territory. This really isn’t that far from mid-era Feeder’s wheelhouse, which is not a comparison I think I’d have made for a charting song in 2024, but hey, if I get Feeder propaganda out there, I will. Some empty promises are made to a lover that they complete Chatten, help him belong and hence he’ll make sure that when he does feel some life, she’ll be included, and it’s largely thanks to her… but he doesn’t want to dwell on that too much, he wants to remain some sense of authority in that softly-spoken bridge. The back-and-forth between Chatten and the even wispier Conor Deegan on the chorus is a really unique take that feeds into these lyrics but, wow, the song just goes nowhere. It ends about as empty and airy as it started which actually does not fit as well to me as the less solid structure of “Favourite”. This could be taken to much grander spaces and feel arbitrarily shortened, or at least having cut some paths in the songwriting process that might have actually been worth exploring. This is far from bad, but it’s somewhat disappointing that the song feels like this much of a draft, though it iis pleasant enough to listen to, and I do think that given its middle placement on the album, this could be a case of needing to understand how it plays into other tracks. As far as I can tell, though, this is far from what it could be.

#44 - “WE PRAY” - Coldplay featuring Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna and TINI

Produced by Max Martin, ILYA, Bill Rahko, Daniel Green and Michael Ilbert

I saw the album’s tracklist. I knew this was happening. Yet it still doesn’t make sense when it’s being written out like that. This is a Max Martin-produced Coldplay track with conscious rapper Little Simz, Nigerian Afrobeats crooner Burna Boy and barely substantial vocal contributions from Palestinian singer Elyanna and Argentine TINI… in less than four minutes. Now, as of recent, Coldplay have done similarly off-the-beaten-path, artsy stringing together of disparate collaborators and ideas for vague conscious platitudes, Everyday Life is probably the most obvious example, but this really does not function properly as a song, over anything. As a reflection of multicultural understanding and collaboration, it’s something, but it also sounds like Imagine Dragons. That weak hip hop beat is placed under some grandiose strings that are at least clearly orchestrated and expensive, but Chris Martin’s vocal delivery is not very inspired, and his lyrical framing of being on the outside looking into struggles experienced not just by unnamed brothers and friends, but specific indigenous political activists in Guatemala, but still claiming to be “in the valley of the shadow of the death”, is either a misunderstanding of the phrase or giving himself some detached self-importance that does not help the populist tinge of what is supposed to be a relatively inspirational track, praying for better times to take us out of the difficulties of now. Burna Boy sounds great and I actually appreciate that he and Simz get to play off each other in backing vocals but by that point, the song’s nearly finished and both Elyanna and TINI are rendered part of the choir singing a wordless refrain, turning what I’d call meaningless platitudes about a better world into, well, literally and objectively meaningles lyrics. I don’t think Virgilio Aguilar Mendez can “la-la-la” their way out of false arrest and systemic oppression. I’m also just ashamed that the one time I talk about Little Simz on this series, she delivers her most generic and phoned-in verse that, for what it’s worth, spreads the love more evenly than Martin’s. I really wanted something like this to work, for the sake of the promising ambition and social context it’s supporting, but I really don’t like this at all. It has the grandiosity to pick up the entire world in its mix but does little more than shake it around and make pleas, which… honestly may be a more fitting analogy for modern society than I’d hoped for.

#1 - “Taste” - Sabrina Carpenter

Produced by John Ryan, Ian Kirkpatrick and Julian Bunetta

This was far from my favourite on Short n’ Sweet - in fact, I think it’s relatively unremarkable, even if still good - but its narrative about a breakup between Sabrina and her partner, who’s gone back to his ex-girlfriend but now has the lingering influence of his relationship with Ms. Carpenter when he’s back together with her, or at least that’s what Sabrina wants to believe, makes for a good, sapphic music video where actress Jenna Ortega murders her boyfriend because she hallucinated that she was kissing Sabrina instead. Carpenter - in seemingly both the video and the song - plays a nonchalant but quietly obsessed figure who drives the two to paranoia through very specific and often sexual remarks that are cute, pointed references to her own public image and potential celebrity feuds. It’s definitely the ultimate pop star move for the social media age, but the song’s just fine: the slick guitars are cute and I like the subtle distortion in some of the vocal takes and drum patterns, particularly that moment before the chorus, that adds an edge to what is otherwise a very shiny little song, made to be an earworm but also a flickering reminder of her existence to this new girlfriend that doesn’t really connect with me because… well, who cares? Relationship drama on this level without higher stakes doesn’t really grab me as anything worth caring about, especially without a whammy of a bridge to really hold it together. I prefer it to “Please Please Please” but the album overall, a very nice collection of pop songs that’s lackadaisical and surprisingly organic, has a better selection of songs to choose from. “Good Graces”, “Sharpest Tool”, “Juno”, “Dumb & Poetic”, to name a few. I’m definitely not complaining about this new #1 though, it probably has a lot of legs, I can see this one sticking to people real fast.

Conclusion

Well, that was… something, wasn’t it? I feel like there are genuinely just a ton of mixed bags here, not just between songs but within them: a lot to love, a lot to dismiss and a fair bit to just be unsatisfied with. Best of the Week goes to Fontaines D.C. for “Favourite”, but it’s not that impressive and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” gets a very faint Honourable Mention. It’s the same case for Worst of the Week, though, as nothing in here is offensively bad, just sighworthy. Honestly, Coldplay might get Worst of the Week for having the gravitas for a mostly empty statement in “WE PRAY”, whilst Addison Rae is close behind with the very ignorable “Diet Pepsi” as the Honourable Mention. As for what’s on the horizon, Rizzle Kicks will swoop in at #1, mark my words. Welcome back, lads. Thank you for reading, long live Cola Boyy, and I’ll see you next week!

#uk singles chart #pop music #song review #coldplay #sabrina carpenter #short n sweet #taste #little simz #tini #elyanna #burna boy #addison rae #fontaines d.c.#romance #myles smith

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saintmeghanmarkle · 9 months

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William Sitwell Emily Lopes connection to Prince Harry and Queen Camilla by u/Negative_Difference4

William Sitwell, Emily Lopes connection to Prince Harry and Queen Camilla So there I was minding my business (well not really), but definitely doing something NOT Harry and Meghan related. And stumbled on yet another Harry and Meghan connection. This isn't a racy revelation post... its more of a ... who knew that the upper class were so 'incestuous' Yesterday, I watched the Masterchef Critics UK show. Basically it is a show where food critics become the masterchef contestants. One of the contestants, William Sitwell, sounded familar but I couldn't quite place him. So what does one do when they have that little brain itch? Google them, of course! Lo and behold... William was the editor for Waitrose Food magazine (Waitrose is basically a posh supermarket in the UK). He got into a drama due to a random snarky joke about vegans with a freelance journalist via email and then basically lost his job / resigned. You can read further here, if you like. It was in the news for a whole week! Anyway, turns out William is a posho. He went to Eton (of course!) and is descended from some baron, godfather to Jacob Rees Mogg's daughter. Basically, POSH and well connected. He remarried Emily Lopes who does sports PR. But look at what the article says... she was tipped as an ideal partner for Prince Harry. DailyMail Article source dated Dec 2017https://ift.tt/if7nRYW another Dailymail article dated June 2017. It says that Emily has introduced William to her younger friends Prince Harry and his girlfriend Meghan Markle. Also here's another royal connection Emily's cousin is Harry Lopes is married to Queen Camilla's daughter!https://ift.tt/s1d7DW4 DailyMail article dated 2011 says:No wonder the 26-year-old Prince is said to have taken to wearing a woman’s blonde wig as a disguise when he moves between his favourite nightspots.Its funny given Harry kissing and groping men. Now, Harry is dressing as a women!Even in the U.S., wealthy young heiresses are admitting to setting their sights on a royal title. One 25-year-old from California, hat designer Courtney Fleming, even writes a blog about her efforts as a self-confessed ‘Harry Hunter’, which include staking out the Prince’s favourite nightclubs in a low-cut dress and hanging out at society events such as Henley Royal Regatta. This paragraph is funny as some Californian women were defintely googling Harry! Anyway ... this is what they had to say about Emily Lopes https://preview.redd.it/4tyt7ex33a9c1.png?width=976&format=png&auto=webp&s=9debaa218c92f331df55d49888c071df4512958ehttps://preview.redd.it/887asxmo4a9c1.png?width=754&format=png&auto=webp&s=17c32fcbfc2ac6a7a1d37e4b14bc51820b30fa5e post link: https://ift.tt/BmvAXZ4 author: Negative_Difference4 submitted: December 29, 2023 at 08:00PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Spirit warned investors that merging with Jetblue would be illegal

++++

Jetblue is trying to buy Spirit Airlines. It’s a terrible idea. Consolidation in the US aviation industry has resulted in higher fares, less reliable planes, spiraling junk-fees, and brutal conditions for flight- and ground-crews. The four remaining US major airlines, who gobbled their rivals, are three times more profitable than their European counterparts:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/04/22/a-lack-of-competition-explains-the-flaws-in-american-aviation

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/they-put-it-in-writing/#that-was-then

That’s great news if you’re an airline shareholder. It’s terrible news if you’re hunting for your lost bags, or if you’re a flight attendant or pilot being squeezed, or if you’re being hit for billions in covid bailouts — or if you’re one of one million Americans who were stranded during Christmas week by the failure of Southwest Airlines’ IT systems, which use duct-tape and wishful thinking to hold together the IT systems of all the airlines SWA bought:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/16/for-petes-sake/#unfair-and-deceptive

The collapse of competition in the US airline industry is the result of a deliberate policy, the “consumer welfare” theory of antitrust, which says that monopolies are “efficient” and good for the public. It’s a theory that took root under Reagan, and was reaffirmed and expanded by every president, R or D, since.

Until now. For the first time in two generations, the Biden administration has taken up the neglected, noble art of trustbusting, blocking mergers and promising to break up the mergers we’ve already seen, through enforcers like Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Lina Khan at the FTC:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Which is bad news for the proposed Jetblue/Spirit merger. Last week, the DoJ filed suit to block the merger, joined by the AGs from NY, MA and DC.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.254267/gov.uscourts.mad.254267.1.0.pdf

Notably, Pete Buttigieg — who has been historically shy of using his prodigious powers as the boss of a large agency — will also block the merger:

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-statement-justice-departments-lawsuit-block-proposed-jetblue-spirit-merger

Spirit’s shares are in the toilet. Writing in his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller explains why shareholders are bolting for the doors: the case against the Jetblue/Spirit merger is incredibly strong. A slam-dunk, even:

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/an-end-to-airline-consolidation

Spirit, after all, is America’s most famous budget airline. That means that it attracts fliers by undercutting the Big Four. That puts downward pressure on the Big Four, who are faced with the choice of taking lower profits to retain fliers’ business, or losing all the profit when those fliers take Spirit. Remove Spirit from play and that downward pressure on fares disappears. You don’t need newfangled “neo-Brandeisian” antitrust to see why this is bad — even under “consumer welfare” antitrust, anything that will obviously make prices go up is prohibited (indeed, this is the only thing consumer welfare antitrust cares about).

How do we know that a Jetblue/Spirit merger is a price-increasing, illegal antitrust violation? Spirit says so.

[Image ID: A slide prepared for Spirit Airlines’ board, titled ‘Shareholders should think about the conversation with regulators,’ and laying out the case that a Jetblue/Spirit merger is illegal.]

This is truly delicious! You see, last year, there was a bidding war for Spirit and Jetblue was the outside bidder. Spirit’s board wanted to convince their shareholders to reject Jetblue’s bid, so they commissioned some aviation economists to do a study on the matter, which Spirit then circulated to its investors.

That report is unequivocal: it estimates that a Jetblue/Spirit merger will be a disaster. Spirit’s participation in a route lowers fares by 17%. When Spirit stops competing on a route, fares go up by 30%. Spirit CEO Ted Christie called the proposed merger “unlawful” and “unethical”:

https://simpleflying.com/spirit-ceo-shareholder-rejection-jetblue-cynical-disruptive-offer/

Spirit is a major competitor to Jetblue. As Stoller notes, they compete on hundreds of routes, and are adding more all the time. Jetblue clearly understands that removing Spirit as a competitor would let it raise fares. As one Jetblue manager — quoted by the DoJ — explained: “I don’t think we should be selling the [Spirit] fare if [Spirit] is not serving the market.” Jetblue’s internal memos on the merger include an executive stating that the merger will allow the airline to realize “efficiencies” by reducing service and increasing fares. This isn’t the kind of “efficiency” we want.

Stoller notes that even with this damning evidence, there are still some spoilers. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has cut a deal to back the merger, even though Florida stands to suffer the most of any state from this merger due to the number of Spirit flights taking off from its airports. And, Stoller notes, the judge presiding over the case is an 82 year old Reagan appointee — a ideology-addled dotard named William Young.

But, Stoller notes, with Buttigieg and the DOT on the case, it’s hard to see how this merger can go through — the DOT has very broad powers to block mergers that reduce routes and don’t have to meet the same evidentiary standards as the DoJ would in court.

Stoller thinks Buttigieg has had a “moment of truth” — that outside pressure from activists and critics convinced the secretary that his future political fortunes would be better served, on balance, by boldly using his powers (and pleasing the public), rather than sitting on his hands (and pleasing future industry donors):

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/pete-buttigiegs-moment-of-truth

If that’s so, it’s welcome news. While I would prefer that our political leaders acted boldly in the public interest out of a sense of duty, I will happily settle for bold action motivated by fear of the voters’ wrath.

[Image ID: A crashed WWI biplane, redecorated in Spirit airlines livery. The scene is decorated with text-snippets cut out of a Spirit Airlines internal investor presentation slide advising that merging with Jetblue is ill-advised and possibly illegal.]

#pluralistic #matt stoller #spirit airlines #jetblue #aviation #monopoly #mergers #petard #antitrust #southwest #swords

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