#ITS IN TORONTO BUT WHATEVER. I CAN ENDURE IT

[sanitizarium]

looking at college courses finally and i FOUND A DIGITAL ARTS COURSE IM ELIGIBLE FOR HRGRGGGNGHGGHGHHHHHH HRGRGRHHR

[latoyajkelson70506]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[outrotearbias]

@mccnhild tagged me in a few tags and 1) thank you!!! 2) since i’m apparently incapable of not talking abt myself on all platforms including what was meant to be a thirst blog for bts, but i haven’t actually like. said any concrete facts about myself lmao i figured i should actually talk about myself on here?? so this is a good opportunity to do that

uh well the first one is the bias selfie tag and everyone else might be cute enough to do that but i would honestly rather swallow a bee whole than directly compare myself to yoongi LIKE. i just. no. so i’ll just post a selfie. i almost never take pictures of myself so i really did not have much to choose from, ignore the janky lipstick and extremely yellow light lmao. i took these on the night that i went to go see burn the stage and YES i looked and felt extremely out of place #armysneedgothrepresentation

hate that these are so large but idk how to work tumblr despite having it since 2010

“get to know me” tag:

Nicknames/Pet names:  literally so boring lmfao, just em or emmy (although if you do call me emmy and you’re not a close family member i will be legally obliged to murder you). my grandma calls me milunia sometimes which is like a polish nickname for emily i think? that’s probably my only nickname that i actually like the sound of

Zodiac: this might get me killed for admitting this on tumblr dot com but i could literally care less about astrology. i’m a taurus but i don’t rly identify w it or care

Height: like 5′3.75 and yes i’m pretentious for not just saying 5′4 but that’s my truth

Last Movie: i literally never watch movies uhhh i think the last one was venom? i hate marvel movies normally but i will literally endure anything for tom hardy

Last Thing I Googled: "movies 2018″ bc i knew the last movie i watched was pretty recent but i couldn’t remember it lmfao

Favorite musician: radiohead, city and colour, alexisonfire, daughter, and this group that’s called bts i think??? 

Songs Stuck In My Head: desire by ateez, their new album BANGS and this song in particularly is so catchy 

Other Blogs: @thedalishelves is my main and @calebandnott is my semi/mostly-inactive critical role blog. i’ve had like a billion others but those are the ones that are (ostensibly) active

Do I Get Asks?: i used to a lot but all of the blogs i got a lot of asks on are either deleted or i don’t use them much anymore. i do kinda miss it sometimes but also now no one asks me to diagnose them or tells me their trauma in detail so it’s a toss up really

Dream Trip: i have a phobia of traveling lmfao so it’s more about who i’m with rather than the destination? like i don’t really care at all about seeing new places, more about just being with someone that i like away from daily life for a bit. that being said i do wanna go to paris before i die. also italy and poland to like. connect w my ancestry or w/e lmfao

Amount of Sleep: when i just let my body do its thing (which has been almost all the time lately as i don’t have classes any more and my job has irregular hours) i naturally sleep for abt 9-10 hours. and yes that’s a lot and YES it sucks

Lucky Number: i mean it’s not lucky but i have a Thing abt the number 3 in certain situations

What I’m Wearing: sweats and hoodie bc i’m at home and if u wear anything other than comfy clothes at home. i have nothing to say to u

Favorite food: don’t rly have one atm

Dream job: english professor!!! i’m nearly half way through my phd so. almost there! (if any jobs ever open up 💀💀💀 might get to fulfill this dream in about 40 years or so)

Play any instruments:  i used to play the piano and the baritone (lmfao) but i’ve long abandoned them

Languages: obvs english, EXTREMELY bad french that i can passably read, sort of write, almost completely cannot speak and definitely cannot understand. also i took a year of arabic during my undergrad but i only remember how to kind of read the alphabet. and i have a pretty sizable polish vocabulary (considering i don’t speak it) but absolutely do not know ANY grammar, so the best i could do is throwing random polish words into english sentences. so. basically just english and reading in french

Random fact: *vegan voice* HI I’M A VEGAN

15 questions tag:

Are You Named After Someone: yeah emily brontë bc my mom loved wuthering heights lmfao. in hindsight.. really indicative of how my life would turn out (both in the whole ‘i love reading and i’m doing an english phd’ thing and also the gothic tragic horror lmfao)

When was the last time you cried: yesterday about 461 times. sometimes it be like that

Do You Have Kids: yes one beautiful little tabby cat named faye, i adopted her in august and she’s 3 years old now and extremely annoying and also perfect

Do You Use Sarcasm A Lot: i used to a lot more but now i’m too paranoid abt people hating me and thinking i’m negative so i try not to

What’s the First Thing You Notice About Someone: if they’re a threat or not (either in the immediate physical sense, like seeing someone walking down the street towards me, or in the more complicated sense that i can’t be bothered getting into now and yes i’m aware this is a depressing answer)

Eye Color: dark green

Scary Movie or Happy Ending:  what a weird thing to juxtapose lmfao ig i’m a bit too much of a wimp to watch scary movies often so happy ending? i’m really not one to need happy endings in a movie/story though

Any Special Talents: I Cannot Stress Enough How Untalented I Am. anything that i’m good at is due to dedicating A LOT of time and practice to it.

Where Were You Born: toronto

Hobbies: video games are definitely my main hobby. other than like, listening to music and indulging in whatever obsession i currently have (like bts for instance) all i do is play video games. reading isn’t a hobby anymore, bc even though it occupies most of my time, it’s all for school

Pets: seems pretty redundant to ask about children and pets in one tag. but in addition to my own cat, my family also has a cat named chloe who is super gross but also i love her to death and i think she might actually be an angel. if you could not tell i am completely a cat person and plan on adopting 300

How Tall Are You: let’s go w the less pretentious answer of 5′4 this time even if it’s 0.25″ short of the truth

What Sports Do You Play/Have You Played: LMMMMAAAAOOOOOOOOOO DO I LOOK LIKE

Favorite Subject: i mean. english. obviously

Dream Job: since i already answered this let’s really get wild w the “dream” part of dream job. i would absolutely love to somehow become extremely rich through no work of my own, move to an isolated castle w a really big library, wifi, and like. idk an archery range and some stables w horses and a lot of cats and an incredibly hot gameskeeper that i have a passionate but somewhat detached love affair with. like i’m tryna live like a combination of enya and lady chatterley from lady chatterley’s lover except w/out the shitty husband and class critiques and soul-destroying ennui

HOO BOY i really wrote way too much huh. i’m too avoidant to tag ppl but if u read that whole mess i owe u my whole life thank u

[qttopoc]

#ncod

#ncod #oct11

i wrote this last year but was too shy to share it. i still hesitate about sharing because this isn't my whole narrative, and it isn't the only thing that defines me but it may be the only thing someone online knows about me, and that’s weird. but i share it with the hopes that it affirms the experiences of others <3 

--

five years ago i wrote this (http://qttopoc.tumblr.com/post/33377435830/to-my-loves-qtpocs-and-our-many-lives) after moving back to toronto in pursuit of a queer community where i wasn't one of a handful of people of colour in the crowd. i wrote this after my mom ripped me out of the closet where for years i had been planning to stay until my parents died. i wrote this when my dad wasn't speaking with me. i wrote it for myself, it was what i needed to hear when i was younger.

this is about my own coming out and my relationship to coming out narratives.

for years i had been navigating two homes, scarborough and kingston. running back and forth from one too tight embrace into the arms of one unsure of how to hold me. i had become an expert at navigating multiple lives since i was a child, opening and closing parts of myself as easily as the books i escaped into. learning that adults wanted me to say that things were fine and ok, and that they wouldn't hear me out if they weren't, or hear me just enough to assert that whatever was happening was my fault. 

i gave up on honesty with my parents when i was young enough to learn that the consequences of lying to them were never bad enough to give up the things i got through lying. those things being a sense of freedom, joy in doing things that they would never have given a chance because it wouldn't establish me in a career to put food on the table and a roof over my head, and of course the things that i was forbidden from doing because i was too young/fat/feminine/brown; all the things that helped me feel alive. “do now, beg forgiveness later” was really how i lived. 

i was doing the things most brown girls learn to do to balance the weight of their happiness on one shoulder and their family's on the other, our families' sacrifices for our futures with the futures we dared to dream. and i got really really good at it. 

"lying" about my sexuality then never felt like that big of a deal, it was instinctual. it just made sense that this was something i didn't share in order for me to maintain the relationship that not only fed/clothed/financed my whole life, but that nurtured me, that offered love and consistent care in a yelling out of concern caribbean immigrant parental way, and gave me a connection to my culture and ancestry. but the connection to my ancestry felt foggy my whole life, and as i grew into my queerness, one that was largely shaped in white dominant spaces, it seemed to disappear. 

i felt more and more distant from my family as i was studying in university and dancing with and against my reeducation into white wealthy society that i was socialized to long for and raised to fight to get into but never really allowed to claim. at the time, i couldn't tell you which was more suffocating - my parent's desire to control me or the blanket of faux-polite-swallowing-your-anger-entitled-to-everything culture i was being steeped in.  

when my mom accosted me about being gay, i denied it. she asked again and again and i kept trying to run, searching the corners of the room for a portkey, some slice of magic to help me escape. i couldn't run anymore, the cloak that protected me was no longer invisible. she knew. and she wouldn't let it go. but she couldn't understand, partly because i never gave her the chance to, and neither did most aspects of her life up until that point. her way of thinking was rooted in growing up roman catholic in a colonial trinidad fighting its way into independence. i didn't know how to make sense of my desires to her who had dedicated her life to ensuring my success in a white capitalist society.  

after a tense conversation that ended with her telling me it was me being taken advantage of that causes me to seek relationships with women, i left the room in shock, unsure of what had actually happened. this was never the way i had imagined it. i was still in sitting in disbelief when she stormed into my room demanding to know if i was seeing someone. i said yes. she then asked "she black or she white?" i was too shook to address anything in the moment and conceded by just saying "she's white". she then spat at me "doh forget, yuh not white". and i sat there still stunned and unable to absorb her meaning. 

five years later and i still am struggling to articulate what an indo caribbean diasporic queer identity is. five years later andi am still struggling to connect to that ancestry but i blame my queerness less and less and as i do, their faces become clearer. 

what do we lose when we've been separated from ancestors by forced migration? what happens when we allow sexuality to be devoid of our cultures? when the lens handed to us to understand ourselves is opaque? what would it look it if queerness were reflected in the ocean, in the wind blowing through the fields? what happens when our families are disconnected from their histories and we disconnect from even them in pursuit of ourselves?

national coming out day is always a day i sigh over. i don't want to be reminded of my coming out story. i don't want coming out to be the narrative that defines sexuality. but i get that it can feel like a huge deal to so many of us, because it feels like the moment we are really seen, that we can be our authentic selves, that we can stop hiding. but i know now that it's not me who is hiding, that it's this culture that erases my presence. 

how do we create space for everyone's journey without centring one experience of it that may or may not be relevant? how do we support folks to connect to themselves and their ancestors and histories on their journey? 

to me, queerness in its essence is autonomy, in love, in definition, in pursuit of ourselves. autonomy granting us what we need to show up for ourself and others. and sometimes that's choosing our families before us and sometimes that's choosing us before our families. and sometimes that's getting our knowledge about our histories from our own rituals, from chosen fam, from the internet. and the stories about how bipoc people come to ourselves in that is vital, and the choices we make and sacrifices we endure are never captured fully in these narratives. 

until the day we don’t need to come out, i will still share this letter to you my loves.

[yourknightingale]

Zoo one shot!

I was at the Toronto Zoo this weekend and hey, Bechloe why not? Shoutout to the anon who encouraged me but buddy, my motivation problem was with time. I appreciate it a lot tho. (PS my zoo is in Bronx but I haven’t been there so it’s gonna be like toronto. Sorry.) Here we go!

She should’ve just rethought this whole thing. Yes, she received two tickets for free from Fat Amy who got them from one of her suitors who volunteers at the zoo where she and Chloe are about to enter right now.

For one, climate change. It’s March and she can’t possibly be more under or overdressed in this weather. The sun beams so brightly yet the windchill stings that she’s basically a walking sunburn with a frostbite.

Another thing, she doesn’t know how Chloe is with zoos. Like, is she going to be comfortable seeing animals contained? Or is she going to appreciate, at least, breeding in captivity and such?

Even Beca is torn. She cares enough for the environment, she’s not that much of a monster. Honestly, as long as they’re doing a decent job keeping the species healthy and alive, she’ll take it. She can stomach it. Enough.

So she is rethinking this whole thing.

But, it’s either this or spending yet another weekend drinking and going out in clubs. When you’re trying to adult the good way, you can’t just be wasted every other Saturday or spend money on unnecessary expenditures. If they walk all day (by that, she means 2 or 3 hours) in the zoo, she’ll be too tired at night and pass out. She gets rest and don’t use up rent cash.

Win-win.

This may be a good idea after all.

Not to mention she gets to spend a day with Chloe. Alone.

That’s the real gem in this little adventure.

“I can’t believe we’re going to the zoo,” Chloe gleams. “It has been a long while. I think I was, like, 12 the last time I went to one. Can you imagine? It’s been more than 10 years!”

The bustle of the families going through the admission is unbelievable. Beca didn’t expect people would be this devoted to trips like this on winter. (It’s still technically winter, right?) Chloe appears to be as excited to be here because she just goes straight right in with Beca falling behind.

“One would think you would frequent a place like this considering you’re like studying them or whatever. I mean, you’re a vet.” She finally replies when she’s caught up, walking side by side with Chloe.

“Not yet, I’m not. That’s why I’m trying to get into vet school, Beca.” Chloe shoots back to which the brunette just rolls her eyes.

The redhead holds the map open and checks it. “Oh look, they’ve got the red pandas!”

“Where?” Beca, who’s very enthusiastic and quick with that question, is a sucker for red pandas and the ginger knows it.

Chloe giggles and pokes her friend’s hip. “One would think that you’re this hardcore alt gal who doesn’t care but deep inside, you’re weak for cute animals.”

“They’re better than humans, Chlo.” She snaps back. Her hand flies to Chloe’s wrist and together, they start going to the direction of Himalayan Highlands.

“I would’ve been hurt by that statement if I didn’t agree with you. They are better.” The older girl allows Beca to lead the way, knowing how she’s super looking forward to seeing those pandas.

Chloe likes zoos. Animals draw her to pursue the career she’s taking at the moment. Initially, she’s thinking of becoming a family vet, inclusive of home pets. She’s had a few losses growing up and as a kid, a part of her holds on to the idea that she will grow up saving dogs, and bunnies.

But now, seeing animals contained somehow gives her more motivation to maybe expand her scope. There are different kinds of mammals, reptiles, and birds etc, that she would want to be trained to treat. Someday.

It can be an option for her to be a zoo vet. Heck, even a wildlife vet. It’s a possibility!

This trip is such a refresher for her and she can only thank Beca (and Fat Amy).

“Chloe, look! Look! Look at those red pandas!” The brunette is all giddy and excited. Very un-Beca like at all and she can only shake her head in amusement.

Beca like a child is a rare find but it’s definitely worth experiencing.

“Bec, there’s a cub, too! Over there!” Chloe joins in, pointing at an adorable tiny panda raccoon at the bottom of a tree. The baby crawls over to what they assume is its mother and cuddles.

Both the girls awww-ed and the younger girl clutches her heart. “This is cuteness overload. I can’t take it! They’re so adorable.”

“Let’s go find some more animals that could kills us!” Chloe takes Beca’s freezing hand and she guides both of them to where the grizzly bears are.

“Your hand is warm.” The younger gal notes when it eventually dawns on her that they are holding each other close. It proves to be a smart move anyway, because her face is still numb.

“I think I’m thawing yours and hopefully your cold heart, too.” Her friend winks at her.

Beca chuckles. “You wound me, Beale. I don’t have a cold heart. I’m just not as expressive as you are. Like, I can love people, too! But like, in my own way.”

She means how she lets Chloe take and hold her hand like this. How she’s not only weak for cute animals but also for Chloe. And Chloe’s going to be a vet so she’ll be surrounded by animals most of the time. Two of her favourite things in one, she’ll die for just a picture of a moment like that. Ugh, she should just marry this woman.

Woah, woah. Where did that come from?

The redhead’s laughter brings her back to reality. They explore and walk some distance, stopping to watch the penguins (“Look at how they waddle!” “Ugh, they’re so squishy!” “Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave!” “Did you just reference Madagascar? I thought you still hate movies?” “I do. But you know I can endure animated ones. They’re different!” “I know! I’m just teasing you, grumpy pants!”) and a pride of lions (both singing, “CIRCLE OF LIFE!!!”) and the giraffes (“How does it feel like to be tall?” “Are you asking the giraffes or me?” “Shut up, Beale! You’re literally just 2 inches taller than me.” “2 inches is enough not to let you live it down.”)

They are successful in reaching and seeing all the zoo animals, making most of the free tickets and their time together. Beca suggests they eat and grab something first before heading home to which the redhead happily agrees.

“Mmmm yes, warm coffee to soothe my soul,” murmurs Beca after just a sip. Chloe gives her a warm smile, too, which she thinks is really why her face is not so numb anymore.

“You know, this day fuelled me to really do my best in pursuing being a vet. These animals’ lives really matter. People should really appreciate that.” Her serious tone doesn’t go unnoticed. Beca knows how much she’s been working hard in the past months and she can only be supportive towards her just like how Chloe is very supportive of her on anything.

“You’ll get in, Chlo. Trust me. Have you seen how great you are taking care of people? How much more those animals? You’re like the best human ever.” Beca voicing out encouragements is also a rare find but Chloe knows she means it. She almost doesn’t hear when the brunette mumbles, “You’re my best human.”

“Ooohh, since you’re so possessive of me, I can be anything you want me to be.” The redhead teases while waggling her eyebrows playfully.

“One would think I’d get used to you being this weirdo but boy, you’re so weird.” She fights a smile but gives in. That’s what Chloe does to her.

“I know where you sleep, Mitchell.” Chloe warns but it’s all empty threats.

“Yes, next to me.” Beca nonchalantly replies as she readies herself to get out of the zoo. “I’m tired. Let’s go home. And please don’t kill me in my sleep.”

“If you let me cuddle you, I won’t.” Chloe still is a negotiator and Beca’s physically not up to contradict her.

“Sure, cuddle party like those otters.” The brunette resigns as she hears Chloe snicker softly that it’s a Finding Dory reference.

Beca, out of instinct, reaches out to take Chloe’s hand for warmth. She still needs that body heat until they arrive at the train station where she’s probably gonna fall asleep on Chloe’s shoulder on the ride home.

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Call him whatever you want — but don’t call him inconsistent. Bernie Sanders has been on message for more than half a century. And while liberals scramble from scandal to scandal under President Trump, Sanders is like a slow-moving tank rumbling through enemy lines.

And it’s his powerful message that carried Sanders from obscurity to become America’s most popular politician. His 2016 presidential campaign started with some haphazard remarks delivered to an empty National Mall. Bernie stood calmly behind a podium, said a few words about inequality, and then walked out of frame as if nothing had happened.

His political life started in obscurity too, in the dying remnants of the Socialist Party of America. He threw himself into civil rights and labor struggles through the 1960s, but by the end of the decade the native New Yorker retreated to rural life in Vermont. His first foray into electoral politics there yielded results familiar to the American left — 2.2 percent of the vote, in a 1972 Senate special election.

But Bernie was dogged and his message was simple, denouncing “the world of Richard Nixon, and the millionaires and billionaires whom he represents.” Even back then he was reminding audiences that, “This is the world of the 2 percent of the population that owns more than one third of the personally held wealth in America.”

His words were too clear not to resonate. Though his electoral itinerary was dotted with noble failures throughout the 1970s, he triumphed in his campaign as an independent socialist running for Burlington mayor at the height of Reaganism. In the thirty years since, the contours of Bernie’s appeal haven’t changed: inequality in America is a yawning chasm and only a coalition of working people can close it. In 2016, when he married this message to a program of single-payer health care, tuition-free college, and a $15 national minimum wage, it won the support of millions. Most of them had never heard much about socialism, but were ready for a politics that put their needs first.

Almost all of the US left embraced the Bernie movement, but there were questions over just what he meant by “socialism.” The senator would invoke the legacy of Eugene V.Debs in the same breath as the Danish welfare state. But far from being “just” a modern social democrat, Sanders’s path to reform was through confrontation with elites. Rather than saying we were all going to work together to make a better America, Sanders declared that we were going to take what’s ours from the same “millionaires and billionaires” that he’d denounced a half-century ago.

Bernie Sanders, the ultimate political survivor, gave American socialism a lifeline by returning it to its roots: class struggle and a class base.

But even with millions supporting him, he came up just short in 2016. The optimism of his campaign gave way, first to the cold calculation of Clinton liberalism and then to the wasteland of the Trump presidency. Yet its importance endures in American politics, whose lexicon now includes socialism and class politics for the first time in decades, and whose leading figures have been forced to debate the centerpiece demand of Bernie’s campaign: Medicare for All.

Bernie is the Left’s only logical choice for a 2020 presidential candidate. Though he may share some of the same policy goals as progressives like Elizabeth Warren, his confrontational vision of social change makes him a more dangerous foe to the establishment. Sanders is far better positioned than he was three years ago, with widespread name recognition, a young activist base, and a huge number of small donors.

But even if he does run and win in 2020 — a distinct possibility, in the view of this publication — it will mark the beginning of the fight, not its end. A Sanders presidency would face a hostile Congress and tremendous pressure from elites. Without mobilization from social movements and a rank-and-file resurgence within labor, it’s hard to imagine his program being put into place.

Though gaining power appears possible for the Left for the first time in generations, making good on the promise of power seems less likely. Yet a Sanders presidency would bring an end to American socialism’s long years in the wilderness. We’ve become accustomed to marginality; now we may have an opportunity to shape not just a presidential term or two, but decades of world politics.

Debs, whose portrait still hangs in Bernie’s Senate office, used to say that he was no Moses, that those who followed him had to lead themselves to the promised land. To win even desperately needed reforms — let alone loftier triumphs — we’ll need to build movements beyond the Sanders campaign. But as we do, we shouldn’t forget the debt of gratitude we owe the senator from Vermont.

Bernie Sanders isn’t the easiest interviewee — his well-known message discipline was on display in the interview that follows. But he was gracious enough to speak with Jacobin for this issue.

Bhaskar Sankara:

The Right controls all branches of government — why the push around Medicare for All now when the chance of passage seems so fleeting?

Bernie Sanders:

I have no illusions that under a Republican Senate, a very right-wing House, and an extremely right-wing president, we’re suddenly going to see a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system passed.

We are bringing this up today to force a conversation about why we are the only major country in the world that does not guarantee health care to all. Our health care system is in crisis. More than 30 million people are uninsured and even more can’t afford outrageously high deductibles and co-payments. But the crisis we are discussing today is not only about health care. It is a political crisis which speaks to the incredible power of the insurance companies, the drug companies, and all those who make billions off of the current system.

Legislation which deals with one-sixth of our economy is complex and nobody, including myself, has all the answers. Unlike the Republican leadership, which tried to pass massive and destructive health care reform without one public hearing, our job now is to take this legislation to every state in the country. We want to hear from medical providers, hospitals, patient advocates, and ordinary citizens as to how we can make this bill even stronger and more effective. We want to hear from the American people.

This struggle will not be won overnight and ultimately will not be won here on Capitol Hill, but through grassroots activism all across this country. We can’t wait until 2021 to start this fight. The reality is that when millions of Americans stand up and fight back there is nothing we cannot accomplish. At that point, we will finally do what we should have accomplished decades ago, and that is to provide quality health care to every man, woman, and child in this country as a right.

Bhaskar Sankara:

What alternative models do you see for the United States abroad?

Bernie Sanders:

I recently traveled to Toronto to better understand how they are able to guarantee health care to all people as a right. What I learned on that trip, and that I hope my colleagues in the US Congress will understand, is that we are spending twice as much on health care per person as they are spending in Canada, yet we have far worse outcomes. Canadians live nearly three years longer than Americans, even though they spend just 11 percent of their GDP on health care in contrast to the nearly 18 percent we spend in the United States.

So I say to my conservative friends, people who don’t like to waste money: How are we not looking at our neighbors to the north for ideas on how to improve our health care system?

Is the Canadian health care system, perfect? No. It is true that there are sometimes wait times for hip replacements, cataract surgery, or nonemergency advanced imaging. They also need to do a better job covering prescription drugs. However, in the United States, tens of millions of Americans are turned away from these procedures because they can’t afford them.

But when Canadians are sick, when they give birth, when they get cancer or have a heart attack, they can get the care they need without being forced into bankruptcy. That is all too often a reality for people in America.

We have much to learn from Canada and other major countries around the world who have long understood health care is a right, not a privilege.

(Continue Reading)

[myfarhannus]

Which of the two is easier to care for?

Overlaid pressed wood surfaces are more straightforward to keep up with, in light of the fact that they are scratch safe, dampness safe and can simply be cleaned off with a soggy material. For best outcomes, its better to go for an overlay that has a higher thickness. Exceptionally dainty overlays can get harmed and are hard to supplant.

Great quality strong wood, for example, teak wood is water safe, and extraordinary for open air furniture moreover. It doesn't need a lot of care, however now and then (a few years) it will become hazier with age, and subsequently sanding and utilization of wood finish is needed to assist with recovering its unique sparkle and shading.

Which one will endure longer?

Relies upon the wood utilized in the two cases. Pressed wood of qood quality (Waterproof grade) is superior to the business MR grade (dampness safe) pressed wood. Marine grade compressed wood is surprisingly better than both of them. Better the compressed wood is, the more extended its life will be.

The solidness of strong wood relies upon the wood utilized. Hardwood (like teak wood or sheesham wood) is more grounded and more solid than softwoods like Mango wood or Pine wood.

What might be said about the expense?

Great quality strong wood is a lot costlier contrasted with compressed wood. This is fundamentally a direct result of the popularity and low stockpile. The stock of wood from backwoods holds must be controlled and kept restricted in view of natural worries, while the wood from estates consumes most of the day to develop.

Read: Dining tables in Toronto

As I would like to think, more than whatever else, this low stockpile of regular wood has been the no.1 justification for why more up to date designed wood items, for example, molecule sheets (produced using sawdust) and MDF (produced using wood filaments) had the option to acquire a traction in the furniture market.

Correlation dependent on the kind of furniture:

For furniture, for example, shelves, and closet entryways, compressed wood isn't the most reasonable material since it tends to twist in the center when extremely long pieces are utilized. More qualified for such cases is blockboard (which is savvy) or strong wood.

For cupboards, strong wood is viewed as all that accessible decision, the following best can be veneered pressed wood or overlaid compressed wood. For instance, a strong teak wood bureau would be superior to teak veneered pressed wood, however it will likewise cost more. (A beautifying veneered pressed wood is one, where the base material is pressed wood on top of which a superior looking regular wood facade has been stuck).

[sweetsmellosuccess]

The Best (and Worst) Films of 2017

Determining what you deem to be the “best” films of a given year – or the “worst,” for that matter – is something of a drain. First of all, what, exactly, is your criteria? Do you choose the films that made the most impact on you? The ones that months later you still remember in vivid detail? The ones that seemed the best made? Sometimes, a film you dismiss one year you eventually come to realize is actually very, very good. Other times (though more rare), a film you absolutely loathed comes around for you and you realize you made a huge mistake in your original harsh judgment. Ultimately, it has to come down to the most basic and inexcusable of fallacies: It just feels right to you, for whatever reason, and shut up, it’s my list. This obviously makes these year-end lists little more than a document of my utterly subjective whims in a given calendar year, so take any of these so-called lists, no matter how definitive they want to appear to be, with a giant salt-lick block. Withering disclaimers in place, let’s go ahead and do this.

The 20 Best Films of 2017

20. Wind River Taylor Sheridan’s directing debut – a whodunit conducted on reservation lands in frigid Wyoming, lead by a BFW hunter (Jeremy Renner) and a neophyte FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) -- does have some glaring weaknesses – he does seem preternaturally fond of the whole “female agent in over her head” dynamic, and there is certainly some White Guy in Native Lands stuff that might turn people off. But one thing he does get right is the landscape, in all its pitiless beauty, and a sense of just how thoroughly American society has largely turned its back to the plight of our country’s native peoples. It’s a murder mystery with more of a political kick than you might expect. Full Review

19. Logan Just when the superhero genre had about exhausted its bag of tricks, James Mangold’s more haunting vision of a Wolverine (played for the last time by Hugh Jackman) old, riddled with guilt and doubt, and loss of purpose felt like a revelation. The lion in winter, whose adamantium claws were still in effect – and to particularly bloody purpose, with the application of the hard ‘R’ rating – became a version of the character we hadn’t seen before, and one that proved to have much more emotional complexity. Full Review

18. The Meyerwitz Stories (New and Selected) I realize Noah Baumbach, with his archly literary sensibilities and dynamic wordplay between admittedly sad sack, often dislikable characters, isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But I’ve always found his stuff riveting, and here, with a full-blown cast (including Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Emma Thompson, and Ben Stiller) and a bevy of characters whose intricate interactions yield emotionally rich scene work, he’s in fine fettle. Sandler, proving once again that he’s capable of far more than brainless, lazy fart comedies when pressed by a good director, is very strong, and Hoffman, playing an irascible, egocentric aging patriarch, is excellent. Full Review

17. Berlin Syndrome Another film I thought would do better than its limited-run-straight-to-video release might indicate, Cate Shortland’s cat-and-mouse thriller about an Aussie tourist in Berlin (Teresa Palmer) who has a brief affair with a German man (Max Riemelt) before he abducts her and keeps her locked in his apartment for months on end. The film is smart and riveting – featuring yeoman work from the two leads, and a pulse-tripping last act that welded me to my seat – and, in this unofficial Year of the Female, featured a strong-as-nails heroine standing up to the worst sort of male oppression, a perfect metaphor for 2017. Capsule Review

16. Free Fire Amongst an admittedly soul-searing line-up at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival, Ben Wheatley’s absurdly entertaining shoot-em-up struck me as exactly the kind of elixir I needed to pick myself up off the floor. With a sterling cast – including Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, and Oscar-winner Brie Larson – and a can’t miss bottle-episode premise – a pair of gangs during a gun-buy gone bad are forced to square off against each other in an abandoned umbrella warehouse in ‘70s-era Boston – work to make this thing pop like a series of firecrackers. I actually expected it to be a bigger hit than its more modest returns indicate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it picks up steam after repeated viewings on cable and streaming services. Someday, it will get its due. Full Review

15. A War Quietly, Tobias Lindholm has been making tremendous films over the last decade, either working with director Tomas Vinterberg, or on his own helmed projects. This military drama stars “Game of Thrones” actor Pilou Asbek – a star in his own right in his native Denmark – as a captain of an outpost in Afghanistan forced to make a difficult, but totally understandable, decision that leads to his having to endure a court martial hearing. Asbek is absolutely masterful, and Lindholm has a way of creating difficult and complex narratives that puts his characters and his audience in a moral quandary. Full Review

14. The Salesman Every film from Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi is a cause for celebration, and this film – an interesting meditation on repressive misogyny, Iranian social politics, and Arthur Miller – is no exception. The film utilizes Farhadi’s trademark tightly wound, concentric narrative wrapped around a central core mystery. While it’s not quite at the level of some of his best work (including A Separation, and The Past) it’s nevertheless a fascinating film further probing deeply into the human condition. Capsule Review

13. Strong Island I had the pleasure of watching Yance Ford’s deeply moving doc, about the murder of his older brother and the ways his loss devastated her once-happy family, at last spring’s True/False festival. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time: “Shot in a pastiche of styles – for most of the interviews, the camera keeps a respectful distance, but for Ford’s own confessions, he shoots almost uncomfortably close, almost daring us to look away – the somber themes are greatly enhanced by the addition of inspired poetic visuals: an angled roof against the blue of the sky, snow swirling in air against a dark night, a particularly haunting overhead shot of the grease stain on the concrete outside the garage where his brother lay down to die, which untether the film from clear narrative delineation, and send it into spiraling layers of grief and acceptance. The result is uncompromising and almost impossibly raw.” Capsule Review

12. Wonder Woman Just when we were all ready to take the DCU and chuck it into Zack Snyder’s garbage disposal, along comes Diana Prince, who revitalized the entire comic book genre, and breathed new life into what had been Warner Bros. desultory foray into comic book universes (a life almost immediately put back on life support after the disastrous Justice League debacle this past fall, but I digress). Gal Gadot’s star turn as the heroine of the summer could not have come at a more precipitous time, given the political wave of female empowerment, and Patty Jenkins’ film was thrilling and ground-breaking. DC might have only given us one winning film this year, but it certainly was a doozy. Full Review

11. Graduation Cristian Mungiu’s narratives always challenge his protagonists in deeply disturbing ways, either by dint of the oppression they are under, or the moral quandaries he elicits. His latest film, about a well-connected Romanian doctor (Adrian Tetieni) who uses his influence to illicitly aid his stricken daughter (Maria Dragus) on the eve of her college entrance exams, is another master study of moral nuance and precise scene composition. A single, wordless shot of the doctor coming home with his wife (Lia Bugnar) sitting in the kitchen tells us everything we need to know about their marriage, which is fantastic filmmaking. Mungiu greatly helped spur the Romanian cinematic revival over the last two decades, this film continues to cement his considerable legacy. Capsule Review

10. The Unknown Girl Recently, the Dardennes Bros. have been quietly making some of the more ethically absorbing films of the last few years. In 2014’s Two Days, One Night, we got to see the plight of a depressed woman attempting to get her old job back by pleading with her co-workers; here, we follow an obsessive doctor, Jenny (Adèle Haenel), after a young woman is murdered after first trying to gain entry into her small clinic after hours. Jenny devotes most of her time and energy not to try and solve the crime, but only to discover the identity of the woman so she can notify her family. You get the impression the Dardennes – whose previous oeuvre contains many unflinching dramas – want to lay out the ways we need to respond to our fellow human beings in order to be truly happy with ourselves. It says something that their protagonists stand out so much for simply just doing the right thing. Capsule Review

9. Personal Shopper Kristen Stewart has become far more than a starlet; she’s a bloody force of nature. Working again with Olivier Assayas (their previous collaboration, Clouds of Sils Maria, was also very strong), the two have made a film so filled with provocative energy, it can’t stay in one place for very long. Part ghost story; part fashion treatise; part character study; part Millennial ode, it moves in so many directions, you can’t catch your breath. Rather than feel scattershot, however, it’s anchored by Stewart and her undeniable screen presence. It will be fascinating to watch the rest of her career play out as she gets older and her muse carries her in different directions. Full Review

8. My Happy Family One of the joys of going to a festival like Sundance (and having critic friends with excellent taste) is getting to catch films you likely wouldn’t have seen under normal circumstances. Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß’s Georgian drama concerns a middle-aged matriarch (Ia Shugliashvili, in a fantastic performance) who suddenly decides to move out of her busy apartment where her vast extended family live, and move into her own flat where she can hear herself think. To her husband’s consternation, no matter how tightly the thumbscrews are applied, she remains resolute, which comes to make more and more sense as the drama unfurls. Currently on Netflix, I can’t recommend this one strongly enough. Capsule Review

7. I, Tonya One of the true surprises at last year’s TIFF, Craig Gillespie’s black comedy plays out the life and times of Tonya Harding with verve, wit, and absolutely brilliant performances, none more so that Allison Janey’s scene-stealing turn as Tonya’s witheringly acerbic mother. “Through a series of recreated interviews with the participants, screenwriter Steven Rogers has a grand time, breaking 4th walls, and giving glorious, epithet-spewing life to its decidedly lowbrow characters. Admirably, it also manages to make salient points as to the nature of celebrity culture, and the simple, one-dimensional character forms that American society so adores. It’s a colorful noisemaker, with a strand of barbed wire wrapped around the handle.” Capsule Review

6. Lady Bird Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut was a spiky, scintillating reverie on teen identity, and the difficulties of holding onto those things that most matter to you even as you strive to open yourself up to totally new experiences. “At its heart, too, through all of its sweetly comic undertones -- and laugh out loud bits of extemporaneous dialogue that flows through Gerwig's script like a guzzle of warm syrup -- it's an emotionally powerful evocation of the way loving parents and their children have to forge a way to learn to live apart from one another. "I want you to be the very best version of yourself you can be," her mother tells her at one point, and Lady Bird's struggle to figure out just who that might be is thoroughly captivating.” Full Review

5. The Florida Project A kind of reimagined Little Rascals, but set at an Orlando residence motel on the dirty outskirts of the strip outside Disney World, Sean Baker’s film is filled with the vitality and spark of life, even as the lives it depicts are difficult and often suffering. As far as the children of these hard-scrabble parents are concerned, the whole area is like an unsupervised playground. Featuring fantastic performances from the children – and a wondrous turn by Willem Dafoe, as the building manager – none more so than impossibly young Brooklynn Prince, the film is smart, sassy, and, at the end, extremely moving. Full Review

4. Get Out Much digital ink has already been spilled (um, generated?) in praise of Jordan Peele’s stunning directorial debut, a brilliant comedy/horror-based dissection of racial politics in this country, but here’s just a bit more: Peele’s film is so tightly constructed and carefully put together, it works equally well on multiple levels. That a film so loaded with racial politics can also be so damn entertaining is a marvel that needs to be seen multiple times before fully appreciated. Full Review

3. Phantom Thread Not that there was any serious doubt before but Paul Thomas Anderson is so fully in control of his craft he can make a riveting, emotionally wrenching film from a fussbudget dressmaker who likes his breakfast to be eerily silent. It helps when you have the luminescent efforts of a fantastic cast – lead by Daniel Day Lewis, in his reported last ever film role – but PTA is also the man who put that cast together and got such fantastic performances out of them. It’s a love story from a particularly obtuse angle – in this way, somewhat reminiscent of PTA’s earlier Punch Drunk Love – but takes such vibrant risks along the way, it’s all you can do to keep from applauding midway through. Delicate, fussy, nuanced, and absolutely gorgeous to look at (thank you, DP PTA!), with a wondrous score from Johnny Greenwood, it’s almost shockingly good. If this is indeed Day-Lewis’ last film, he’s gone out with a hell of a swansong. Full Review 

2. Call Me By Your Name I have written more about this film, and the year’s best winner, over this year than I can ever remember doing before. Hence, I quote but one of my various musings thusly: “The film’s first couple of hours are perfectly entertaining, but is in its closing scenes that it goes from engaging to sublime, including a monologue from [Michael] Stuhlbarg, consoling his now-bereft son, that is truly one for the ages. The closing credits, set over a long, single-take of Elio’s face in front of the fire, will sear your soul.” Full Review

1. A Ghost Story Ladies and gentlemen, David Lowery’s powerful meditation on love, time, and the fallacy of human legacy was the only film this year that very nearly dropped me to my knees in anguish as I departed the theater. You can actually view it as having something of a happy ending, but even so, it strikes nerves deep in your cerebral cortex you never even knew existed before. “It’s a film of felt, quiet spaces, whose emotional intensity builds in small increments to become at times almost overwhelming. It goes places you don’t expect, and keeps you there, frozen stiff in your chair, as it comes full circle. It’s definitely not a film for everybody – if, for example, you require three full acts and complete character arcs, you might want to take a flyer – but for the people who can hang with it, it has an enormous amount to offer.” Full Review

Other Worthy Mentions:

47 Meters Down, A Gray State, Abundant Acreage Available, Atomic Blonde, Baby Driver, Bad Day for the Cut, Beach Rats, Beatriz at Dinner, Blame, Did You Wonder Who Shot the Gun?, Dunkirk, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Jane, Killing Ground, mother!, Quest, The Cage Fighter, The Endless, The Force, The Square, Thumper

The 5 Worst Films of 2017

5. Mary Shelley “Unfortunately, working from a truly terrible script from Emma Jensen, Al Mansour’s film is at best inartful, and at worst, the kind of simplistic, every-scene-has-a-point! pabulum that would embarrass a high school English class. Each element of Frankenstein is foreshadowed (here, Mary learns about galvanism; here, she sees an article about sewing body parts together, et al.), as if all she needed to do to write the novel was to pluck them directly from the sources. Even the film’s strongest moments – where Al Mansour, the worlds first female Saudi director, gets to show 18th century male oppression at its most vile and condescending – get watered down under that lead weight of a script. Everyone deserved better.” Capsule Review

4. Hostiles “Cooper confuses macho bravado and grittiness for any kind of verisimilitude – there are a staggering number of plot holes, and character inconsistencies – including the continual presence of a pretty frontierswoman (Rosamund Pike), whose family was wiped out by a group of marauding Comanche – that only serve to move the meandering plot forward. Worse yet, the action sequences themselves are both incoherent, and oddly designed (one of the oddest choices is putting us outside a closed series of tents in one scene, such that the action sequence is totally lost on us). The male actors sport very real and copious facial hair, as to suggest the worthiness of the project, but any filmmaker that can take a pair of powerhouse actors like Bale and Ben Foster and reduce them to this level of low-wattage really needs to self-examine.” Capsule Review

3. The Promise “Worse than any of its stylistic decisions, however, is to take something as horrific and criminally under-represented as the Armenian genocide and saddle it with a hokey love story that is virtually lifeless on its own. Naturally, the timeliness of the film -- taking us back to another age where virulent nationalism ran rampant, and minority groups were targeted as the subjects of its wrath -- is all too sickeningly relevant in the age of Brexit and Steve Bannon's type of exclusionist populism, but even there, the film either falters on the side of its overbaked plot, or sticks its more relevant political points in blithely didactic lurchings. ("This whole country is a graveyard," one character says.)” Full Review

2. Aardvark “A turgid, draggy drama (mostly around the premise that Slate’s character has to be an almost impossibly bad therapist to do to her patient what she pulls off here), a pasty comedy, coddled around a fantastically unbelievable premise and its flailing execution, the film tries to play with our sense of reality, using Quinto’s recurring hallucinations, but it doesn’t even want to bother to play by its own rules. It’s hard for me to imagine those talented actors reading this script and signing off on it, but here we are.” Capsule Review

1. Kidnap “As a means of conveying information, Knate Lee's "script" calls for Karla to talk incessantly to herself in the car, narrating her dilemma ("So now what's the plan?" she asks herself at one point, quickly concluding that she hasn't got one) pretty much so former Oscar-winner Berry has something to do other than grit her teeth and bleed out the nose. She also has a penchant for broad exclamatory statements ("Wherever you go, I'll be right behind you, no matter what!" and so forth). The effect is like overhearing a young boy playing with his GI Joes.” Full Review

Other Dishonorable Entries:

Axolotl Overdrive, Baywatch, The Mummy

Random Notes:

Inexplicably Overrated: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Biggest Welcome Surprise(s): I, Tonya, Lady Bird, Logan

Most Bitter Disappointment(s): Downsizing, Mary Shelley, The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Film That Critics Got Wrong: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Film(s) I Totally Whiffed On: Coco, I Love You, Daddy

Best Upcoming Releases of 2018

1. The Rider 2. Lean on Pete 3. Happy End 4. Chappaquiddick

[love-and-sex-sarahmay]

Dear self of many years ago,

It’s the summer of 2020 and you’re about to finish your undergrad at Ontario Collage of Art & Design in Toronto, and you are about a hundred years old. Not quite, but it feels that way – which is fine – this letter isn’t about your age. As part of your final assignment for your philosophy class on Love & Sex you’ve been asked to write an epistolary review, which is essentially a letter. Maybe in this case even a sort of love letter. I decided to write mine to you; here are a few insights into your learning and processing of the information you tried to put into your brain during that year.

There’s a lot I gained from this class, but I feel like the most significant thing I’ve taken away is that learning is a process that takes a unique form for everyone. When it comes to philosophical texts and ideas, it may be better to let things wash over you before rushing to meet new theories with judgment or emotion. If the study of philosophy itself could be seen as the development of new ways of thinking about the world – this takes time. Don’t rush the process. In many cases there were philosophers or ideas I thought I wouldn’t agree with who I later discovered I was fascinated by, or whose thought process I came to realize sharpened my own point of few. Also, and you’re going to hate this – you still don’t know what you don’t know.

The most surprising thing I encountered in this class was realizing how much I conflated sex with love. Read that again. I noticed this while studying Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic – which has now become a sacred text. Lorde has transformed the ways I think and speak about the erotic in relationship to sexuality, spirituality, feminism and acts of resistance. I had never before heard the erotic used in such an intentional way; connected to the essence of existence and belonging while meaningfully connected to both love and sex but NOT in the same way. She wrote about the erotic as a resource that lies within all of us; waiting to be utilized – firmly rooted in the power of our unacknowledged and unexpressed feeling. This sharply contrasts what our patriarchal, capitalist world would have us believe – that this source is ornamental, shallow, only present in the young and normatively beautiful, and only accessed in the sexual realm for the benefits of men. Lorde writes: “The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic – the sensual – those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings. (Lorde, 56)”

There were ideas and thinkers I encountered that changed my way of thinking, and I thought about Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and her work of collected stories called, Islands of Decolonial Love, in this regard. In the search for knowledge and understanding there are dark and twisty paths, but you don’t have to go there alone – there are people who have been there before you. Coming across the artist/activist/academic Simpson was wonderful. Her existence as resistance and her work as activism in motion; always critical, thoughtful and somehow managing to stay soft. Her lived experience as an Indigenous woman is so different from ours, but her desire to tell the stories of her people, to heal intergenerational trauma, and to look critically at decolonial practices will speak volumes to you. In Buffalo On she writes, “you better know how to save yourself, you better know how to get the fuck up. you better know how to pick up the pieces and move on. you better know how to quit feeling sorry for yourself and pull up your socks.” (Simpson, 86) As well as this line a few pages later, “only drunks and children and ancestors tell the truth.”(Simpson, 91) You didn’t know philosophy would bring you real truth tellers but you found a few.

You should definitely take this class but try not to do it during a global pandemic. Or a racial uprising if you can help it. I also think you should give yourself real time with these texts if you can. I’ve bookmarked the texts I know I need to go back to so that I can make sure I finish that work. Find a way to prepare for this in a way that ensures you’ll take out what you should from this work that has been done by the masters you’re about to study. You’ll wish you had, just trust me.

Read your copy of The Second Sex ahead of time. It will help you with the chapter The Woman In Love, which might be easy to misinterpret but which you actually agree with more than you thought. You’ll laugh out loud reading this sentence, “It is agonizing for a woman to assume responsibility for her life,” the joke is it is actually agonizing for everybody (Beauvoir, 214). At the end of the day you agree with the idea that gender is a total social construct – in fact in your opinion it is a violent one. Although Beauvoir writes about female passivity she is actually advocating for active, creative women – just like you are.

Finally, I’ve been asked to relay an idea or argument that will stay with me for a long time or has shaken me to my core, so I’m ending this letter with Lorde because I love this passage so much that I have sent it to all the women I love:

“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings...The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women (Lorde, 57).”

To my understanding, along with my previous translations of her work it simply means keep pushing and learning and don’t let the bastards get you down.

[juliajoybell]

Home for the Holidays

Today a bit later than usual, my review about the Christmas Special !

This is just happened in * Murdoch Mysteries *  

. The Murdochs  are travelling . 

I like the idea to let William and Julia having a trip, “let’s go for an adventure. “

My God, six days to cross the country… 

. Oh yes Brack too good to be true. 

Things I have learn in life : When it’s an “easy money”, it’s too good to be real. It’s a bit like magic “ Magic always has a price “ ( I’m lot into quotes it seams today, this one is from “Once Upon a Time” ) 

.  William knows  how to make Julia happy . 

I need someone like this man, seriously, he is super cute with his wife and what a gift he makes to her, too bad the family ruined it. 

. Jasper and Daphné .

I am soooo glad to see William’s brother back. I am a bit less with his wife Daphné and these children? Oh poor Julia, no champagne for you my Dear. 

Kate Hewlett is Daphné Linney. I knew her from Stargate Atlantis, she is so cool ! Daphné definitely less… 

. Ruth is still dating Higgins . 

They are cute together and I am glad they are both in this Special. And Higgins didn’t always wanted to improve his life? Now he sees what is like to try to satisfied a true Lady ;) 

.Ruth and Nina are friends.

I have to say they are so funny together 

. Still want children Julia ? .

Oh Rudolphina and Georgina  are two little devils and sure makes you regret to want children… 

. Mrs B. obsess with money .

Nothing new here. 

. Julia doesn’t like family .

I have the feeling there is a bit of the Grinch in Dr. Julia Ogden. A perfect christmas for her sounds more like; staying in bed, William, only a dinner with civilized people and champagne… We can”t blame her ;) 

But if I found her more into the chrismas spirit in the two first movies, I must say in this one she is not really into it. For me she is the kind of people that doesn’t really hate christmas, but whom are not happy to endure all the festivities…especially family! Who never wish to not spend time with one of their relatives and the endless dinners… 

- Dr Julia Ogden .

- Pleased . * Absolutely don’t care * 

I have laught because yes, this is happened to everybody once in a lifetime ;) 

. Megan Follow . 

If you don’t know her it’s perhaps because you haven’t watch enough Canadian shows. She is awesome. Go check her work. That’ all. 

. The place is beautiful on Vancouver Island .

I’ve planned to visit the Canadian West Coast in 2019. This movie confirmed my decision to do it. These landscaps are breathtaking! I’m glad to see them outside of Toronto and particulary this year they found beautiful spots. 

. Ho-ho-ho a corpse .

It’s not Murdoch Mysteries without a corpse. 

. Yes skiing is stupid I agree with you George . 

For the record, I have never skiing in my life, and I’m not really ready to try. I dislike snow, I dislike cold and spending my whole day to go up and down of a mountain with cols feet, is clearly not something I would do, add the fact I’m clumsy and I will probably be more on the ground than on my feet…. so yes George, I understand you. 

. Nina and Ruth BFF . 

George and Henry are friends, Ruth and Nina are friends…. 

. Oh william you have to save Julia . 

William is her hero, especially when he saves her from spending time with his family. 

. It doesn’t sound good for the Brackenreid I mean this is a new lifestyle….

I see the troubles coming about the Brakenreids spending their money without thinking. 

. William’s snowflake . 

That’s our William. 

. Oh no Higgins .

Oh poor Higgins, I felt so sorry for him. Actually I felt sorry right after I laught out loud. 

. At least William and Julia are living in a hotel . 

And they are together , that’s the matter right ? It’s just a less luxuary. 

. I like the (sad ) historical facts . 

Because it’s true, but it”s a part of the History they enlight and that is great.It’s sad too, unfortunetly each country has its dark side. 

. Auntie Julia is the best . 

Aaaw I knew Julia will be a great aunt. She is always great with children. It took time, but these two little girls became her friends. 

. Oh George telling lies . 

We see he is good at telling stories. Ou pas. 

. Brothers time . 

William and Jasper reunited in the woods was a good moment. I truly liked that scene. 

. Indiana Julia . 

SHE IS BAAAACK in pants “Let’s go for an adventure “ indeed. 

. Oh miss cherry ? . 

I didn’t see Miss Cherry coming back. I’m not sure how I feel about her. I was glad to see her tho. 

. Ruth is awesome . 

Don’t you never see that Newsome is close to “Awesome”? That she is Ruth. 

. William’s humour about jasper children . 

I’m glad Julia’s humour became a bit of William’s humour. Because the joke about the children in the woods was fun. 

. Robert Carli is playing jiggles bells it the cabaret .

Just in case you missed it ;) 

. Brack the bear . 

When Bracks fight, he fight for the win. He is the Lion King of the Station Four, but honestly he is a Teddy Bear too. And we love him for that. 

. Daphné’s story. 

I knew there were something behind the characer of Daphné. I believe a lot of women at that time turned like that. And sometimes it’s sad to see it’s still happens today. I like how Julia speaks with her. And I like how the story of Daphné is the opposite of the Indians women that was actualy the Chef behind the men of the band. How in a same country people considered as “ Civilized” shout down women voices, as if they were men property, (even if it wasn’t the case from Jasper), and in front of that the people from this native land were totally the opposite. I found that great to show us that, that way. 

. Oh Thomas . 

There is any Murdoch Mysteries episode without Margaret calling Thomas “OOOH THOMAS ! “ 

. Higgins being  friend with Thomas Brackenreid ?! .

No, Henry, don’t dream too much ;) 

. Julia and Daphné being friend after all . 

Of course they are, it’s Julia. 

. “The important is to who we are with and not what we have.” . 

I believe I’m close to the quote said by George at the beginning of the episode. And I believe that’s true

. A skeleton !!! . 

BEST. PRESENT.EVER 

I hope one of these girls will become a great Doctor one day ! 

. The last scene is beautiful . 

I have nothing more to add. It’s powerful and hopefull. 

So, that’s what I thought about the Christmas Special this year. I’ve been a bit quick and late, sorry all. I have enjoyed it. It was quite different from the others and clearly not like a traditionnal Christmas Movie like we can see on screen every year from November to January. I believe we are so much used to see all the same kind of movies at that time that this one is not like “one of them”. I believe this was the choice they made. To be honest, it’s not my favourite. I had good laughts, and I will re-watched it again, for sure. I may be wrong but I feel like this one has the approach to begin with what people clearly hate in the Holidays time : Find the right gifts, see that our budget is tricky, spending time with people we don”t want to, travel during hours, days for a traditionnal reunion, games and all, trying to makes others happy even if it’s not making us happy… And at the end of the movie, the only thing that matters is knowing who we are, what we love, giving not expensive gifts but just our time, spending it with people we really want to, knowing from where we come from. It’s respecting others, and their beliefs. Christmas in the real life is not a Christmas movie ! 

This movie show us “ the other side” and the one we see more often.

Well, that’s what I have feel. Feel free to comment below and share what you think about that special Christmas Special. And I wish you all a happy day, whatever you like christmas or not, because every day should be an happy one ;) 

JJB 

[techcoffee]

Episode 45

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/05/gowork-india-debt/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/05/carro-jualo-series-b-extended/

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Good morning 

Alright, let's go over some 

We are on 

Episode 45. It's a coffee here in South Bend, Indiana 

We're gonna go over tech news business startups entrepreneurship and live 

Online 

We have about 20 minutes and we'll get rolling and from there 

We direct you to tech coffee that org and you can see the news we talked about and the links 

Documented video 

So, let's see you can follow along on online 

Hashtag Tech coffee 

And then afterwards, I'll post up all the information 

and stuff about 

tech coffee org 

Let's start over on TechCrunch 

Today 

Art Walk is going on this week here himself in so this is a piece of heart behind me that's been installed for me 

Digitizing so Tech Brown should try the construction sites with scaled robots 

I didn't get a chance to a video last week, but I added this story 

hmm to episode 44 

It's interesting how they map over 

the construction site and so 

Current cycles can be seen so prior to the process of construction to be build in the digital environment 

What the building is gonna look like you start to build and until the very end. You usually don't see 

The progress or the process or where you're at or how far things are compared to what you designed them to be? 

And there's a robot driving around 

all of digitizing construction sites with scaled robotics 

That they're mapping what's currently happening so you can compare it to what we designed it to be 

As it wants to do that 

Cyber 

Severus 

The reason raises 200 million for its enterprise security platform 

Security is always a big business financial services market compared age' group raises 

20 million in new funding led by experienced 

He is go work, all right 

Maybe these two we can talk over 

Then it's sorry if I missed him and I'm looking forward to chatting with you 

Okay, so I'll link over on Twitter here 

So India's go work raises 53-million 

Serious in debt, my name is Amaya so they took on debt and away equity 

based business 

They had something build some people they needed to hire or whatever the case may be and they know they have a process 

so if they inject this amount of money 

into this process it's going to 

pump out X amount of revenue that will then cover that debt, so they're definitely 

My hope would be that they've run the numbers well enough existing business debt, they know they can cover 

Whatever carry that debt holds 

The debt round for the 

two-year-old startup not to be confused with an Indonesian startup to the same name that operates in the same space Wow, so 

India 

India and Indonesia 

Have a company with the same name in the same space go work 

Is financed by private fund made by black rocks private credit team and CLS a Capital Partners 

special situations group 

Prior to announcement into the race. I'm just closed amount from another fund. So they've already raised some 

Plans to expand its accommodation capacity to 

25,000 people up from 12,000. Yep, so it's going to 

Allow more people to work 

More more capacity it makes sense 

You have the process and you know, it's working and you know, it's running. You know, how 

Rejecting more into it's only gonna make that grow. So do you have the people and 

capital to to make that happen 

Processes 

So go work is taking the brick-and-mortar aspect of co-working concept further as well as consistent measures to ensure young businesses 

to enable young businesses to reach their highest potential 

We look forward to go work offering optimal operational efficiency for startups as well as corporates 

Interesting, they're not just focusing on space. They want to enable young businesses to reach their highest potential 

It tells me they have some sort of secret sauce going on 

Baked in to the space, maybe some mentorship resources connecting to a network 

That would make sense 

I'll be over here 

Couldn't get youtube to 

Stream this morning. You usually can do your encoder or you can do your YouTube live and YouTube 

There's so much changing about it 

I'm gonna figure that out applying later not a priority right now 

Alright so 

that was the 

Go work automotive market place 

karo acquires Indonesia's 

Giallo 

Extending stairs being it's a 90 million borrow 

Let's see what car is doing 

There you go follow along up on the Twitter 

See an automotive marketplace and car financing startup based in Singapore 

Is that true 

This is tennis, okay 

so carro 

CA RR Oh reminds me of Turo but as I'm reading an automotive market place car financing started up in Singapore 

Raised 30 million close. It's 90 million round 

wants the skills business into another 

geographic market Southeast Asia 

Around 

was funded by 

Softbank ventures government linked to local investor 

EDB I 

Detrick 

Foundation and and poor ventures 

And the series if there's no overflow of interest, of course in 

our serious beat which we initially close to at the end of the year at a lot of quality strategic investors coming to and 

coming to 

and there and uh 

Coming to the and therefore decided to extend the round around so officially closed 

As a masked 40-minute million monthly active users transactions worth 1 billion per year interesting 

Rollo 

One of the Indonesia fast growing market places really sellers trade new used Goods 

so karo acquired a new and used Goods 

calm 

forty million monthly active users 

transactions worth a billion dollars last year 

So karo maybe wants to 

Continue that business but and and amassed those users 

So when it does come time for them to purchase a car make that big purchase the car can be 

Already in their lexicon already in their ecosystem. Okay 

Karo and Turrell, I guess karo is really focused on actually trading a car here. Here's a car 

Here's money or or whatever you want to trade for it Turo is more 

let me rent your vehicle while I'm in some place or whatever period 

Carro which sees more than 70% of its transactions come from outside home Singapore will reveal expansion plans to new markets new 

Acquisition deals later in the year. The subscription service will also be extended 

Rival does any startup including Bella Mobile in? 

Indonesia are some high car age' and rocket Internet's are movie. Although with its new raise and 

Bank. Karo is the best funded by some margin 

So far as the marketplaces for deals and just 

Bartering barter systems to see more and more of those 

What's back on beta codes 

Shopify to host program for developers re-entering tech industry after extending leaves 

Interesting 

All right. So let's do Shopify first. It says Shopify 

Your Shopify to host program for developers 

re-entering tech ministry after extended leaves this whole 

40 to 60 year old age range the boomers and the tail end of the boomers 

re-entering the workforce 

In some capacity whether it be something they wanted to do and didn't or something they were 

Doing they wanted to do a new role or have a new capacity with those skills. Very interesting to me 

you definitely have 

30 40 more years to live people think they're done because they retired they they killed it for 30 years 

You definitely have some years ahead of you 

so if the Walmart and breeder thing got boring after a year - if sitting on the beach or reading a book 

Got boring after a year or two 

What? 

Boomers are gonna start to do is reenter the market or do phase two of their career or start a new career 

Start a new business start a new project and 

Ran during the workforce in what capacity? 

It's interesting 

what is it they're going to reenter as 

You're bringing 

30 plus years of experience with you 

You're gonna you're going to be dangerous 

All right, so here we go 

Five - host program so the talent shortage reportedly being 

Enduring endurance of growth in the Canadian tech ecosystem and everywhere across the globe 

Shopify has created a program supporting engineers developers who choose to take time off work for personal reasons and want to reenter the industry 

The welcome back program is what they're calling it. Love it 

Like 

like a college freshman 

Welcome me something like that. Welcome back the program. I'll link you over to it 

It's a paid program designed to support software developers will take an extended leave for the absence from the tech industry to re-enter the workforce 

The program focuses on helping talent refresh developers then skills through hands-on workshops and custom programming 

Led by the company's engineering and learning development teams 

Qualify for the program applicants must have been out of a software development workforce for a minimum of two years 

Have more than three years of experience of professional software developer strong foundation and object-oriented principles 

And fluency and the in at least one 

object-oriented language and a passion for 

Curiosity of software. All right passion for curiosity. I love that 

Three-month program will run from October to December in downtown Toronto 

Successful participants will be partnered with Shopify 

Mentor after the first month to support their growth and well-being applications will close September 13. So get your applications in 

September 13, that's exciting. Alright, so you have to go up to Toronto. There's three months 

Well, that's one way to go Shopify 

Love to see more programs like that in high tech in engineering and manufacturing and fabrication and assembly 

All these high skilled trades jobs 

Just get people to re-enter the workforce 

Doing something they know and love 

have a lot of experience and 

probably 

Then right having this long experience of them then retraining the people who are entering the workforce for the first time 

If anything they can be the trainers 

And don't do the actual thing 

We go to markets for energy 

Tools or startups and lessons learned helping ecobee challenged industry incumbents 

Axis experience with eco be in that industry 

Hear what they have to say a 

Ticket, all right. There you go. It's the preview up on Twitter 

There's a nice picture of a bunch of white dudes just like me 

every year thousands venture-backed startups 

Did that coffee, you know, thanks chicory cafe 

Every year venture-backed a-- and viciously go to market challenging entire category and industry incumbents companies like Airbnb 

Casper we were gonna show you how a dedicated team with the great idea can knock the pins out from under the fiercest market giants 

The Challenger brand is not defined by its size the midget up and its status quo. Yeah 

you can go in steal market share because you have something better some secret sauce about service or you 

Identify the customer base better 

It is what it is. The market will decide not your longevity 

Now because you've been doing it for thirty years if you've been doing it the same way for thirty years 

You're in trouble 

That means someone else is gonna come in and better serve your customers, you know better identify your customers 

It's just the market will decide not you and your opinion about your business. It doesn't work that way 

So here are three tips that a to successfully take on long established leaders startups must define what they want 

To be in the world. So this is 

Beta kit and eco B's challenge to industry incumbents by the way industry 

incumbents 

You could be doing this exact same thing to yourself 

Right you're serving the market 

So there three things are the powerful value proposition a clear target customer and a strong competitive response 

So you could be doing those three things for your market by bringing a value proposition 

That is clear a clear target customer 

Well, you know who you've asked about who you listen to and a strong competitive response 

You could bring a strong competitive response to yourself 

Hey, we've been doing these things, but we're hearing from you that you want these things 

Just do them 

Don't have to be an incumbent rookie veteran you could just serve your market 

So it says we'll break down each of these with some helpful links and resources for startup founders or incumbents 

So first was the value proposition value proposition is your promise to your customer. It must tell them how to solve their problem 

How you solve their from? 

Qualify the value you deliver and explain why they should choose 

There's some more ways to think about value prop 

Having talked about value prop quite a bit and in front of 

FIRST robotics teams and that startup Ekans and with entrepreneurs one on one 

Who I like at the end how they give clear value props from 

From companies so ways carpools save time and money by writing together fair. Get the car on your phone get a car on your phone 

Jiffy home maintenance without the hassle 

Whether that meets a customer segment or not, that doesn't that's not the point in the value of profit 

Is it a clear? Is it a powerful? 

clear value proposition 

Concise clear and powerful does it drive home a mess efficient? 

Separately, then you have a target customer 

So there's second outline identified target customer allows you to focus your marketing dollars in brand messaging on a specific market 

That's more likely to buy from me. You're looking for 20% of the market that will make up 80% of the revenue 

Okay, so they're saying that a simple and expensive place of starters with an outline review of your competition 

It is what it is you outline the market and listen to those people 

Those people will define market or a market segment that you can target 

Competitive research tools that here's some tools 

And we got paid for some of those and the competitive response 

So competitors Fonseca understand their competitors anticipate our action to your market and trigger 

Just hustle against your target audience 

Check your marketing to relaunch 

Aiming to win with a customer 

ID feel be responded to 

our competitors by aiming to win with the customer designing a beautiful product address the fundamental design flaw and 

alternate stats 

Yeah that last one I would I would reorient to 

Competitively go after your market or your market segment and just out hustle out 

Out-innovate any 

Competitors and you don't have to worry about yours focused on serving your market or your market segment 

Anyway, that's a fun outline. There's some 

there's some good resources and tools it seems like I 

might give some of those a read or a look into to 

Orient to a market or orient to how they thought about their market 

Definitely understanding, someone else's way of thinking helps. You understand then the landscape you're dealing in 

that landscape 

Perspective can be super helpful just to know where you sit within it. I always say there's three things. There's you understanding yourself 

You're understanding the world and the hardest part is understanding yourself within the world 

And you can apply that to business - right and that's the business and how it works a market and the world you're playing in 

and then understand 

Yourself within that market you're playing in 

You can be 

If you can work on that work on that fast and of a fast 

You can be 

Competitive you have the opportunity be competitive right the opportunity to be competitive. So 

What are you looking at? What are you working on? 

What's new in the news where you're at tech news or otherwise news business startups entrepreneurship? 

Jerris from South Bend 

Episode 45 a tech coffee. I'll see you next week Tuesday morning at 7:30 

But we'll go over the tech news entrepreneurship start-up in business. You can follow along online 

You can follow along on tech coffee org on Twitter chat coffee or go online 

Instagram Facebook 

or YouTube 

[rockrevoltmagazine]

AWAKE AT LAST Taps Spencer Charnas for "The Change"

Dover, DE based Dark Pop / Hard Rock Band AWAKE AT LAST has released a vivid visualizer for their single, “The Change (Feat. Spencer Charnas).”

“‘The Change’ is anthemic and bold. It’s a call to arms to our listeners to not only make a change in themselves to pursue more fulfilling lives, but also to lead by example and BE the change in the world that show’s others they don’t have to be afraid to make the transformation themselves.””I can’t wait to finally release the title track of this amazing record we’ve worked so hard on.” – AWAKE AT LAST

Click HERE to Pre-Order The Change Online!

Catch AWAKE AT LAST Live with Famous Last Words, Dayshell & At My Mercy and Eyes Set To Kill & Rivals on 2019 Tour Dates

AWAKE AT LAST with Famous Last Words, Dayshell, and At My Mercy: 05/10 @ Legends Bar and Venue – Convington, KY 05/11 @ The Champ – Harrisburg, PA 05/12 @ Alchemy – Providence, RI 05/13 @ Revolution Music Hall – Amityville, NY 05/14 @ Kingsland – Brooklyn, NY 05/15 @ Championship – Trenton, NJ 05/16 @ Canal Club – Richmond, VA 05/17 @ Drunk Horse Pub – Fayetteville, NC 05/19 @ Soundbar – Orlando, FL 05/21 @ Crowbar – Tampa, FL 05/22 @ Connect Live – Acworth, GA 05/24 @ House Of Rock – Corpus Christi, TX 05/25 @ Dirty Dog Bar – Austin, TX 05/26 @ Prophet Bar – Dallas, TX 05/27 @ 89th St Collective – Oklahoma City 05/28 @ Fubar – St Louis, MO 05/29 @ Vaudeville Mews – Des Moines, IA 05/30 @ Amsterdam Bar and Grill – St Paul, MN 05/31 @ Annex – Madison, WI 06/01 @ Citadel – Indianapolis, IN

AWAKE AT LAST with Eyes Set To Kill and Rivals: 06/28 @ Let There Be Rock School – Frederick, MD 07/01 @ Bungalow – Manchester, NH 07/02 @ Alchemy – Providence, RI 07/03 @ The Cave – West Haven, CT 07/05 @ Mohawk Place – Buffalo, NY 07/06 @ Crofoot Ballroom – Pontiac, MI 07/07 @ Rockpile – Toronto, Ontario 07/08 @ Rockpile – Ottawa, Ontario 07/09 @ Salle Multi – Quebec City, Quebec 07/10 @ Piranha Bar – Montreal, Quebec 07/11 @ Montage Music Hall – Rochester, NY 07/12 @ INKCarceration Fest – Mansfield, OH

Click HERE for Additional Tour and Ticketing Information

Both as a band and as individuals, Awake At Last continue to stand for positivity, spirituality, self-help and making an impact every single day. Returning with their debut full-length release, The Change, they have never sounded more confident, more energized, or been more determined to reach out to those who might be struggling in the world. The Change releases June 21st via Outerloop Records. “We pushed ourselves to our limits as songwriters,” states guitarist Imran Xhelili. “There is more variety on this record and there are songs that lean in a heavier rock/metal direction with other songs being a lot lighter and more dynamic. All of the choruses on this album have huge hooks, and there are more sections that are less guitar heavy and carried by different elements, like pianos and orchestral instruments.

The lyrics are also more direct in how they carry across the messages we have always had at the forefront of our music.” While making waves with their previous output, this combination is the sound of a band who have truly come into their own. From front to back, every song carries a message of hope. Having commenced writing for it even before the release of their Life/Death/Rebirth EP in 2016, the finished result is not something that came easily. “We all had demons we had to battle mentally and physically,” explains vocalist Vincent Torres. “You wouldn’t believe the pressure that comes down on you when you begin the process for a full length record. After we pushed through the turmoil and embraced the wonderful things that came as a reward it became pretty clear that what we had made should be called The Change. I think this is a perfect name, because it represents the spiritual evolution that we all went through.”

Having achieved a lot in 2018, including a stint on the final run of the Warped Tour – commencing the day after they finished tracking The Change – appearing on the iMatter Festival alongside Underoath and August Burns Red and opening for Asking Alexandria in Louisville, Kentucky, the band are striding into the fifth year of their existence on a high. The first taste of the record is single “Dead Generation”, which stands as a wake-up call, urging everyone who hears it to stand up and speak with their own voice, rather than becoming part of said dead generation. This perfectly represents both the band – rounded out by guitarist Eric Blackway, bassist/vocalist Tyler Greene and drummer Jon Finney – and their core message, continuing to place their fans first, and wanting to do all that they can to help improve their quality of life. “I want people to understand the symbiotic relationship between a band and its fanbase and I want them to feel like they’re along for the ride with us,” Torres states. “We are a band that is built on the foundation of endurance and perseverance, and nothing we’ve accomplished has been easily accessed. I want our fans to know that the reason we are able to live this dream is because they continue to support us and allow us to do so, but most of all I want them to understand that whatever it is that nurtures their soul can also be obtainable if they strive for it and believe in themselves.” Xhelili expounds on this, noting “As individuals, it can feel hard at times to find our own identity and our individual greater purpose. It all may feel rather heavy and bog us down constantly. However, we are here to take a stand and try to rise above all of that and be a respite for all of the darkness around us, as a shining light.” The casual listener also might be unaware of the interconnectedness of Awake At Last’s releases, with Torres explaining that there’s a deep-rooted storyline following a character on their journey through multiple lives.The Change in fact serves as a direct sequel to Life/Death/Rebirth. “The being who experienced the afterlife in Life/Death/Rebirth is reborn into a new vessel in The Change, but in order to interrupt the endless cycle of life and death they’ve been going through they attempt to imbue their new vessel with all of their cellular knowledge. They believed that by doing this the vessel in The Change could bring about a great revolution in the world and finally end the process so the soul may finally rest. What happens next is yet to be determined.”

The album was produced by Kile Odell of Failure Anthem and Josh Landry in Greensboro, NC, the energy and the dynamic of the team essential to shaping the record into its finished product. With Xhelili admitting the pressure of making a full-length was nerve-wracking, he also claims that this nervous energy helped them nail it down. “We all were striving and yearning for this to be the biggest and best album it could be and we all walked away very proud and satisfied with the end result.” For Torres, the process was not an easy one, the sessions taking a toll on him, having his lyrics chopped and changed by the production team after extensive demoing not something that immediately sat well with him. “It was hard fought but after all was said and done I’d learned so much about taking many words and turning them into poetry, and I believe the sessions made me a much better musician and songwriter. After some push and pull I think the compromises made created the perfect record and I think you can feel some of that struggle in the music, but also feel how to get through it.”The Change also marks the band’s transition from a fully independent band to one partnered up with Outerloop Records, which is a landmark event in their story. This partnership has allowed the band to make the album they want, and having the backing of a label will allow them to spread their music far further than they could with previous releases. “They believed in the vision we were striving for and we signed with them for this record to see the vision come to life,” explains Torres. “It is a bit of an adaptation process when you go from being completely DIY and independent to having a team behind you, but overall it’s really cool to be able to bounce ideas off of multiple sources and work with some amazing people who want the same thing that we do.”

As they continue to build momentum, the quintet’s ambitions remain true to their original aspirations: wanting to establish an even stronger connection to their fanbase. “I want to create a movement where individuals from all walks of life can come together and support one another as we continue to evolve and make changes in order to pursue fulfilling lives,” states Torres. Given the demons that had to be battled and overcome to reach this point it’s unsurprising how eager they are for people to hear what they have achieved. “This is the moment we’ve spent years working towards and these are by far the strongest Awake At Last songs we have written,” says Xhelili. “I feel proud of every single song that made the record and there is no filler. This is an album the fans can listen front to back and be immersed in the underlying concept and themes that tie it all together.”

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AWAKE AT LAST Taps Spencer Charnas for “The Change” was originally published on RockRevolt Mag