#Psl 2022

[lavee-art]

Mandatory fall pic

[walrusmagazine]

Why Are We So Obsessed with Pumpkin Spice?

The craze for the cozy fall flavour doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon

Since Starbucks launched its pumpkin spice latte, in 2003, love it or hate it, the flavour has become synonymous with fall. No longer limited to coffee or pie, pumpkin spice can now be found in a long list of products that includes Pringles, hummus, sausages, and cheese—and the craze doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. We asked Catherine Franssen, a neuroscientist who works at the Science Museum of Virginia, to explain the science behind our obsession with the cozy fall flavour.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

Illustration by Irma Kniivila (irmaillustration.com)

[manriah]

🎃☕ "Pumpkin Spice Extra Nice" made with watercolor, salt, and ink on watercolor paper! I wanted to evoke aesthetics from those vintage mushroom ceramic sets!! This piece combines Day 27 of 4 different prompts! Hexoween "Magic Mushroom", Mabs Drawlloween Club "Retroween", Froggy Fall "Cauldron", Cute Spooktober "Pumpkin Spice Latte"

[bigbadlesbiab]

Mira esta historia que guardé en Pocket

"Whether or not Ben-Gvir gets his main prize, a new Netanyahu government is virtually certain to employ breathtaking violence as it seeks to suppress the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom. The brutal, criminal nature of the Israeli apartheid regime will be on display for the world to see, and the global movement in solidarity with Palestine will have a major opening and responsibility to push for the international isolation of Israel. Nowhere will that be more important than inside the United States, the main sponsor of the Israeli regime."

[ssunshine-readss]

fall study date w myself

[defensefilms]

This Is Why I Haven’t Been Posting

So this is what’s had me distracted lately.

Outside of coaching kid’s soccer, I finesse some of these smaller teams, clubs, academies and semi-pro developmental clubs that need stuff photographed and captured on video.

I shoot everything from kid’s games, high school games, semi-pro guys, 11-a-side and 5-a-side games, and I’ve already been able to get around some Premiere Division teams and coaches, more on that later down the road though.

Where as I used to have my mornings to myself, because I don’t start academy kids soccer until afternoon, I now mostly go out on calls when client’s have games and need photos, and that will mostly be in the mornings.

The trickier part though, has been trying to leverage this sports media thing into something more lucrative. I’ve considered building a bigger team and charging clients more, but even that doesn’t give me maximum return on investment, you know what I mean?

Consider this, I’m turning on Youtube everyday, and I’m constantly seeing ads and other types of sports related media being used to sell stuff. There’s way more money out here than what a semi-pro team can pay me.

In the mean time, I’ll work these clients one-by-one, while building up to something that can get me in the door with a sponsor or a bigger brand, or even some agency work or something in that line. Tired of being on the block, bro.

On the other end, I got my homeboy that manages an indoor football venue and that’s been steady clientele too, but still, I need more.

My other homie, he’s the one I’m working with on coaching kid’s soccer, that’s patterned down and really we need to talk about expanding it, getting better training facilities and even having a home ground with stadium lights, so we can play games on some Friday Night Lights shit.

My client, the guy that runs Free Agents FC, he’s a top guy, he’s the one that knows all these teams and coaches in the semi-pro ranks. Within 1 month of working for this dude, I’ve already been in places to photograph 2 of the biggest club teams in my city, Sundowns FC and Supersports United. Bro is big time.

On the other end, fam, I got a shit load of semi professional players on my contacts list, some are guys that were coached by dudes I went to school with, others are in the semi-pro circuit, others play indoor football competetively, and they the ones that let me know which teams are actually worth approaching with photography sevices, and that’s how I found Free Agents.

All that’s good, and it sounds clever, but there’s more out here bro. Way more. Way, way more, n###a.

But let me lamp, contemplate this money bro. 

You can enjoy some of my photographs down below. I can garuantee the people photographed here did not recieve their photographs, unless they paid for them.

One. 

There’s no telling what’s going to happen when you photograph these games, South African football is stupid comptetetive, sometime guys play tournaments for prize money ranging from 10 grand and upwards, and games can eaily end up like the one in the photograph below.

It can get thick bro.

[stevie-kun]

Day 14: pumpkin mug ☕

[boldmovesagain]

today's bold move is trying a PSL for the first time. Not terrible, but I don't know if the hype is worth the payoff.

GOOD AFTERNOON FRIEND ANON! HAPPY TIMEZONE!

THERE IS BOLDNESS IN TRYING NEW THINGS, HOWEVER SMALL. THERE ARE EXPERIENCES TO BE HAD AROUND EVERY CORNER; SOME GOOD, SOME BAD, SOME NEUTRAL.

THERE IS A WHOLE WORLD OF DISCOVERIES IN FRONT OF YOU! WHAT JOY! WHAT BLISS! WHAT AN ADVENTURE TO SEEK THEM OUT AND EXPLORE~ TO KNOW WHAT BRINGS YOU DELIGHT, YOU MUST FIRST TRY MANY THINGS. HOW EXCITING!!

[drdemonprince]

So that was the DNC. The young liberals, white feminists, and leftists-in-name only have gladly fallen in line behind Kamala Harris, because she makes them feel good, and because all they have wanted was to find sufficient reason to stop feeling bad and get back to brunch. They've abandoned Palestine, the same way they abandoned the immunocompromised and abolition of the police, because these and so many other left political movements were little more than fashion to them. They were never interested in seeing the destruction of a political system that many of them could, theoretically, make themselves comfortable inside. They just wanted to be seen as current and good.

Did you know that there are 24 million millionaires in the United States? 24 Million. Millionaires. 24,000,000 millionaires. Up from 22 million in 2022. That's about 7.2% of the population. So much for "we are the 99%." There is a sizeable segment of this population that benefits from economic inequality and imperialism, increasingly so, as both the size of the lower class and the upper class expand.

Many millions of additional people have no interest in changing the U.S. political paradigm, because they have been propagandized to believe all compassion and competence fall away under "anarchy," or because they lack community in any meaningful sense and have no conception of how to act collectively. This is not their fault, but it means they act in ways counter to leftist organizing: calling the cops on people, refusing to show up for others, hoarding what property and wealth they do have, demanding that all acts of resistance be peaceful and brief, and pouring all of the political energies into exhorting others to vote (no matter how dyed blue or gerrymander red their districts are, no matter how genocidal, transphobic, and xenophobic all the options might be).

People think that participating in community is buying a $355 Chappel Roan ticket. The big voices for leftist organizing, supposedly, are individuals who market themselves as such on Instagram and TikTok in order to sell books, tarot decks, subscriptions, and workshops.

The sole method for social or political engagement that most people know of is making posts online, on an overblown advertising platform, and then complaining that they did not receive enough attention on their (monetized) posts. A person with shrewd social media instincts and a strong writerly voice can fake an entire political identity, professional connections, and expertise, and be followed by tens of thousands while doing nothing constructive in their day to day life or even being the person they claim to be. The more actively they post and generate revenue for Meta, the more lucrative their grift becomes for themselves and the more social power they accrue. Chasing power and profit for oneself is definitionally counter to leftist ideals. Even if they do not believe in electoralism, people like this produce endless content about the subject, because people follow it like it's sports. They're glorified entertainers, selling politically themed content, never taking themselves off the stage.

Challenge any of this and people will lash out at you, because you've attacked their cloth mother, and they're very lonely and afraid. The corporately-moderated semblance of connection is nearly all they ever get. You can't talk about sex, drugs, death, or any difficult human realities. If you don't present a disneyfied version of yourself you get accused or being a degenerate predator. If you don't participate at all, you must be apathetic, which is very bad, because having the wrong emotions or thoughts makes you evil.

The protests at the DNC were all either ill-conceived PSL honey traps leading dozens of 19-year-olds into arrest via Signal chat, or bloated 3-hour fundraising attempts miles away from the United Center and corralled by the police and Department of Justice marshalls and their collaborators. Everybody else is far away, enjoying brat colored cocktails and picking out demure tradwife clothing to disappear into for the fall. Dreaming of not having to worry anymore is akin to longing for death, and many liberal Americans have gladly embraced total obliteration.

It's not just conservatism that is a death cult. It's also the preservation of the nation-state. State-making obliterates whole cultures, languages, lands, traditions, and unique, person-to-person modes of relating. You get your food from a corporation or a government bureaucracy that does not know you and makes you fight for it, never from a person. This makes you forget that it's just persons, like the ones you know, like yourself, who do everything. It makes you cling to the state, and to normalcy, rather than speaking openly and messily to anybody else.

This is where it all begins and ends. The hope of a revolution rising up to somehow liberate Palestine was always a fantasy, the stuff of kid's movies. The truth is much darker, but more bearable, because it's real. We are very far from a dramatic political change. Most people aren't willing to even let a stranger into their homes to keep them sheltered. Did we really think they were going to rise up and put their body on the line to fight the state? Give up Starbucks and their PPO? Break the law? Lower their property value? Of course not. Get real.

And so, where do we start? By moving far, far away from the individualistic, capitalistic, clout-based avenues of political "participation" that do nothing but benefit people who present themselves as influential voices. By doing the small, slow, humble work of actual community building. Talking to your neighbors, feeding people, housing people, sacrificing something for others, driving a senior to the doctor, building a way outside of your own head.

We have to become more reliant upon one another and less moved by big personalities who will never know us or give a damn about us as people. Instagram pays me the more of you look at my posts and share them on their app. It pays every other high follower account you take political guidance from, too. You should be suspicious of me. And all the rest of them. You should place more trust in your friends, your neighbors, and the power of your own mind.

The way out of all this will not be easy. And it will not happen on here.

[ghelgheli]

Stuff I Read In February 2024

bold indicates favourites

Books

The Mantle of the Prophet, Roy Mottahedeh

Serious Weakness, Porpentine Charity Heartscape

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson

Pamphlets, Zines, etc.

Queer Fire: The George Jackson Brigade, Men Against Sexism, and Gay Struggle Against Prison [link]

Reform or Revolution? Rosa Luxemburg

Armed Joy, Alfredo M. Bonanno [link]

Designing Freedom, Stafford Beer [link]

Yuri/GL

Kill Switch, 1172

Immortal Parody, Kim Jong Geon

Her Tale of Shim Chong, Seri & Biwan

There's Weird Voices Coming from the Room Next Door! Suzuki Senpai

An Easy Introduction to Love Triangles (To Pass the Exam!) / Goukaku no Tame no! Yasashii Sankaku Kankei Nyuumon, Canno

Gentle Flutters, One Useless Dogggg

What Does the Fox Say? Gyeomji & Gaji

Our Dreams at Dusk / Shimanami Tasogare, Yuhki Kamatani

There Is No Love Wishing Upon a Star / Kono Koi wo Hoshi ni wa Negawanai, murasakino/Shinoa

Short Fiction

Serious Weakness but with Girls, Porpentine Charity Heartscape [link]

Dirty Wi-Fi, Porpentine Charity Heartscape [link]

Bist-o-chār sā'at dar xāb o bidāri / 24 Restless Hours, Samad Behrangi [link]

Yek hulu o hezār hulu / One Peach and a Thousand Peaches, Samad Behrangi [link]

Palestine

What Does It Mean To Be Palestinian Now? Noura Erakat, Ahmed Moor, Noor Hindi, Mohammed El-Kurd, Laila Al-Arian 01/25/2024 [link]

"If You Say Anything to Anyone, a Zaka Van Will Run You Over", Brad Pearce 10/18/2023 [link]

The Epistemicide of the Palestinians, Abdulla Moaswes 02/02/2024 [link]

Manufacturing Content, Nora Barrows-Friedman & Matt Lieb [link]

Comparison is the Way We Know the World, Masha Gessen 12/19/2023 [link]

The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé, Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw 02/28/2024 [link]

Queer &c

Hands off our lives, our stories, and our bodies, AC 06/10/2022 [link]

Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance, Talia Mae Bettcher [doi]

A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway

Why Are "Gender Critical" Activists So Fond of Gametes? Julia Serano 02/13/2024 [link]

Pol

Why I Left the PSL… or the DSA or Socialist Alternative or whatever, filler kid 07/20/2021 [link]

Allies Not Accomplices: An Indigenous Perspective & Provocation, 05/02/2014 [link]

Basic Program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism, Attila Kotányi & Raoul Vaneigem 1961 [link]

Abolition, Nsámbu Za Suékama 06/06/2020 [link]

The Eye Upon Us Has Turned Upon Them, Nsámbu Za Suékama 07/16/2023 [link]

The Hindu Nationalists Using the Pro-Israel Playbook, Aparna Gopalan 06/28/2023 [link]

Ram Mandir and Hindutva Fascist Myth of Decolonisation, Rida Fathima 02/07/2024 [link]

How the United States Crippled Haiti's Rice Industry, Leslie Mullin [link]

A Talk to Teachers, James Baldwin [link]

Stranger in the Village, James Baldwin [link]

Other

no good alone, Rayne Fisher-Quann 04/03/2021 [link]

Everyone's A Critic, Richard Joseph 01/13/2022 [link]

Neoplatonic kingship in the Islamic world: Akbar’s millennial history, Jos Gommans & Said Reza Huseini [link]

Is `Race Science' Making a Comeback? Angela Saini 07/10/2019 [link]

you’ve been traumatized into hating reading, Ismatu Gwendolyn 02/15/2024 [link]

[innytoes]

Hello, can I request 14. Every time I come home there are more tiny pumpkins everywhere and it’s driving me insane from your autumn prompts list, with Alex being the one who's being driven insane? - @michelangelinden

Also for @floating-in-the-blue who asked for Willex + 14

Listen, it wasn't like Alex minded the way all his friends seemed to go insane about fall every year. He was used to Luke pouncing on him whenever he saw someone had placed a pumpkin at their front door, hollering 'it's decorative gourd season, motherfucker'!. He thought it was cute that Reggie, Flynn, and Julie did a Pumpkin Spice Latte Grand Tour to find which coffee shop had the best one. (Even if he always needed to call for backup when they came to the studio full of seventeen small PSLs worth of caffeine.)

He helped Reggie and Carlos hang up their ghost lights in the studio, he complimented Mister Molina's wreath on the door, and he quietly wondered why everyone seemed to be celebrating the start of flu season. Still, he didn't want to be a killjoy over something so harmless. He had way better things to be a killjoy about.

So when the first pumpkins arrived in his apartment, he didn't even notice at first. They were clustered in a little group of three on his coffee table. It was right after The Great Pumpkin Spice Latte Disaster Of 2022, so he almost managed to convince himself that maybe he'd put them there himself. Despite his best attempts (and because Luke and Willie were no help) they'd dragged him to the dollar store. Reggie kept adding fall and Halloween themed stuff to their basket, even though they said they just wanted some snacks.

He'd tried to put them back discretely, but clearly some had come home with them. Maybe he'd taken some home with him.

But then more pumpkins arrived. Another three, clustered on his book shelf, next to his favourite cactus, the one Willie called Alex Junior. One on his nightstand, on top of the book he was reading. Three lined up on the top of his ancient not-that-flat-screen TV. One in the soap dish in his shower.

It would be cute if Alex didn't live alone.

Reggie was the only one who had an emergency key, but Reggie swore up and down that he hadn't broken in to keep leaving tiny pumpkins at his place. In fact, at the anxious look on Alex' face, he carefully asked if Alex was okay and if he wanted Reggie to sleep over or something.

He almost said yes, but somehow that made his whole 'tiny pumpkins keep appearing in my apartment and I'm worried I might be axe-murdered by an evil Halloween spirit or a serial killer who has a Tiny Gourd Fetish' anxiety feel more real and grounded in reality. It probably wasn't that. It was probably just Luke playing a prank or something. Right?

He was fine. Totally fine. It wasn't freaking him out or anything.

But then one day, he came home, to find Willie perched on top of a stool on top of his coffee table, carefully trying a pumpkin on a seethrough string to his ceiling fan.

"YOU!"

"Hey, Hotdog!" Willie said cheerfully, finishing up his handiwork with a flourish before hopping down.

Alex spluttered at the lack of guilt. "You... how... you don't have a key!" Not that he didn't want his boyfriend to have a key. He was waiting for their anniversary in a few weeks to ask him to move in with him, okay? He had this whole romantic date planned.

"Babe, you think I need a key to get into your apartment?" Willie asked. "That's so cute." He came over and pressed a kiss to Alex' cheek. "Do you like it?" he asked, making jazzhands at the now seemingly floating pumpkins above his coffee table.

"I just... why?" was all that would come out of Alex' mouth.

"Because you love the season so much," Willie said. "But you never decorate or do anything for yourself. I wanted to do something special for you."

"I don't... I- okay." The fact that Willie had gone through all this trouble just to do something to make Alex smile made his heart hurt. He pulled Willie close, kissing him thoroughly.

"I love it."

Maybe he did like fall a little after all.

[redwineconversation]

Olympique Lyonnais Le Progrès Article (August 25, 2023)

I hate conspiracy theories almost as much as I hate social justice keyboard warriors, so this is both to nip any conspiracy theory in the bud and also me taking out frustration at people's inability to think critically.

Blah blah you already know this. @OL Comms: a grande PSL with soy milk and whipped cream comes to $5.95 xoxo

Lyon - Ajax: The Return of Griedge M'Bock

Almost a year after her second major injury, the center back is part of the group selected for the game on Saturday against Ajax, and could play a few minutes.

It's just a step but it's an important one. Almost a year after the surgery to repair her ACL, the result of an injury during a game with the French National Team on September 6, 2022, Griedge M'Bock is back with the team to play the third preseason game of the season, against Ajax on Saturday morning.

Excellent news for Lyon and especially for the international defender, whose career was already put on hold following a severe injury to her Achilles tendon in 2020. "We'll see at the last minute, depending on how the game is going, whether we can give her her first minutes," Sonia Bompastor confirmed.

After pretty much five weeks of preseason without her 14 international players taking part in the World Cup, the Lyon head coach is slowly replenishing her arsenal. Six of them returns this week, three of which were given the all clear to be part of the group: Dabritz, Gilles, and Horan. Hegerberg and Majri nonetheless took part in the team training whereas no risk was taken for Dumornay, who suffering a small ankle injury during the World Cup. The return of Endler in goal should also be noted, who missed the game against Olympique de Marseille. As a reminder, the French international players (Renard, Bacha, Becho, Le Sommer, and Diani) and Dutch internationals ([Damaris] Egurrola and van de Donk) are expected back on Monday, a few days before the Australian Ellie Carpenter. "They had a good mental break, and they're not starting from scratch, physically, after the World Cup. They suffered from disappointment during the World Cup but they're coming back with big smiles and it's very positive."

Against Ajax, the reigning Dutch champions who have only played one preseason game (a 3-0 loss against Paris FC), the Lyon head coach is expecting a better defensive performance after the 3-3 draw against Olympique de Marseille. One last preseason game is scheduled around September 2 before the camp in Divonne and the Trophee des Championnes on September 10 against PSG.

[daloy-politsey]

Not surprised to hear this at all about PSL. TW for sexual abuse and rape

[bigbadlesbiab]

Party for Socialism and Liberation: The people reject the program of the far right!

The right wing’s hopes for an overwhelming wave election that would hand them sizable majorities in Congress and control of a greatly expanded number of governorships failed to materialize. Votes in some parts of the country are still being counted, and other important data is still emerging, but at this stage at least one conclusion can be drawn: there is a large and determined current in society that wants to stand against the far right.

[bpod-bpod]

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Tubular Cells

Epithelial cells form a sort of skin that lines our organs and tissues. During development, whole sheets move into place in process called collective cell migration. But our tissues aren’t always flat, and here researchers investigate how such cells move along curved surfaces, using fluorescently-labelled MDCK cells (green) – epithelial cells grown from cells that used to belong to kidney tubules. Growing inside a cylinder of nourishing hydrogel, the cells rotate around the curved surface, like people walking down a spiral staircase. The team finds epithelial cells align their inner cytoskeletons to determine which way to rotate and also link together – giving the population a direction or polarity. Researchers believe this rotational movement might be important during development, but also essential for cancerous cells to migrate during cancer metastasis.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Alexandros Glentis & Carles Blanch-Mercader, and colleagues

Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Institut Jacques Monod, and Institut Curie, PSL Research University, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, 75005 Paris, France

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, September 2022

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[pikapikafilms]

« Le Goût de la Beauté » est le dernier court-métrage documentaire de Keïko Courdy tourné à l'été 2022 au Chateau de Cerisy lors du Colloque "Beauté.s Vitales -pour une approche contemporaine de la Beauté" en ligne. Une commande de La Chaire Beauté.s, Université PSL. Une coproduction PIKA PIKA FiLMS - PSL - Les Films D’ICI avec le soutien de L’Oréal.