#Revolution Blog Tour

[erikmcmanusinc]

Book Spotlight: Different - The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution

For the highly sensitive person who is committed to entrepreneurial and life success, this little book holds the potential for big impact. Filled with ancient wisdom, practical applications, and personal stories from both Heather and members of the Business Miracles Community for Highly Sensitive Leaders, this book brings a fresh, empowered perspective to what it means to be highly sensitive.…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Real innovation vs Silicon Valley nonsense

This is the LAST DAY to get my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

If there was any area where we needed a lot of "innovation," it's in climate tech. We've already blown through numerous points-of-no-return for a habitable Earth, and the pace is accelerating.

Silicon Valley claims to be the epicenter of American innovation, but what passes for innovation in Silicon Valley is some combination of nonsense, climate-wrecking tech, and climate-wrecking nonsense tech. Forget Jeff Hammerbacher's lament about "the best minds of my generation thinking about how to make people click ads." Today's best-paid, best-trained technologists are enlisted to making boobytrapped IoT gadgets:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Planet-destroying cryptocurrency scams:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

NFT frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/06/crypto-copyright-%f0%9f%a4%a1%f0%9f%92%a9/

Or planet-destroying AI frauds:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

If that was the best "innovation" the human race had to offer, we'd be fucking doomed.

But – as Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect – there's a far more dynamic, consequential, useful and exciting innovation revolution underway, thanks to muscular public spending on climate tech:

https://prospect.org/environment/2024-05-30-green-energy-revolution-real-innovation/

The green energy revolution – funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and the Science Act – is accomplishing amazing feats, which are barely registering amid the clamor of AI nonsense and other hype. I did an interview a while ago about my climate novel The Lost Cause and the interviewer wanted to know what role AI would play in resolving the climate emergency. I was momentarily speechless, then I said, "Well, I guess maybe all the energy used to train and operate models could make it much worse? What role do you think it could play?" The interviewer had no answer.

Here's brief tour of the revolution:

2023 saw 32GW of new solar energy come online in the USA (up 50% from 2022);

Wind increased from 118GW to 141GW;

Grid-scale batteries doubled in 2023 and will double again in 2024;

EV sales increased from 20,000 to 90,000/month.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/12/19/building-a-thriving-clean-energy-economy-in-2023-and-beyond/

The cost of clean energy is plummeting, and that's triggering other areas of innovation, like using "hot rocks" to replace fossil fuel heat (25% of overall US energy consumption):

https://rondo.com/products

Increasing our access to cheap, clean energy will require a lot of materials, and material production is very carbon intensive. Luckily, the existing supply of cheap, clean energy is fueling "green steel" production experiments:

https://www.wdam.com/2024/03/25/americas-1st-green-steel-plant-coming-perry-county-1b-federal-investment/

Cheap, clean energy also makes it possible to recover valuable minerals from aluminum production tailings, a process that doubles as site-remediation:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/toxic-red-mud-co2-free-iron

And while all this electrification is going to require grid upgrades, there's lots we can do with our existing grid, like power-line automation that increases capacity by 40%:

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/13/1187620367/power-grid-enhancing-technologies-climate-change

It's also going to require a lot of storage, which is why it's so exciting that we're figuring out how to turn decommissioned mines into giant batteries. During the day, excess renewable energy is channeled into raising rock-laden platforms to the top of the mine-shafts, and at night, these unspool, releasing energy that's fed into the high-availability power-lines that are already present at every mine-site:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene

Why are we paying so much attention to Silicon Valley pump-and-dumps and ignoring all this incredible, potentially planet-saving, real innovation? Cooper cites a plausible explanation from the Apperceptive newsletter:

https://buttondown.email/apperceptive/archive/destructive-investing-and-the-siren-song-of/

Silicon Valley is the land of low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development requires fewer people than infrastructure and hard goods manufacturing, both to get started and to run as an ongoing operation. Silicon Valley is the place where you get rich without creating jobs. It's run by investors who hate the idea of paying people. That's why AI is so exciting for Silicon Valley types: it lets them fantasize about making humans obsolete. A company without employees is a company without labor issues, without messy co-determination fights, without any moral consideration for others. It's the natural progression for an industry that started by misclassifying the workers in its buildings as "contractors," and then graduated to pretending that millions of workers were actually "independent small businesses."

It's also the natural next step for an industry that hates workers so much that it will pretend that their work is being done by robots, and then outsource the labor itself to distant Indian call-centers (no wonder Indian techies joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians"):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds

Contrast this with climate tech: this is a profoundly physical kind of technology. It is labor intensive. It is skilled. The workers who perform it have power, both because they are so far from their employers' direct oversight and because these fed-funded sectors are more likely to be unionized than Silicon Valley shops. Moreover, climate tech is capital intensive. All of those workers are out there moving stuff around: solar panels, wires, batteries.

Climate tech is infrastructural. As Deb Chachra writes in her must-read 2023 book How Infrastructure Works, infrastructure is a gift we give to our descendants. Infrastructure projects rarely pay for themselves during the lives of the people who decide to build them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Climate tech also produces gigantic, diffused, uncapturable benefits. The "social cost of carbon" is a measure that seeks to capture how much we all pay as polluters despoil our shared world. It includes the direct health impacts of burning fossil fuels, and the indirect costs of wildfires and extreme weather events. The "social savings" of climate tech are massive:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

For every MWh of renewable power produced, we save $100 in social carbon costs. That's $100 worth of people not sickening and dying from pollution, $100 worth of homes and habitats not burning down or disappearing under floodwaters. All told, US renewables have delivered $250,000,000,000 (one quarter of one trillion dollars) in social carbon savings over the past four years:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/climate-and-health-benefits-of-wind-and-solar-dwarf-all-subsidies/

In other words, climate tech is unselfish tech. It's a gift to the future and to the broad public. It shares its spoils with workers. It requires public action. By contrast, Silicon Valley is greedy tech that is relentlessly focused on the shortest-term returns that can be extracted with the least share going to labor. It also requires massive public investment, but it also totally committed to giving as little back to the public as is possible.

No wonder America's richest and most powerful people are lining up to endorse and fund Trump:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-05-30-democracy-deshmocracy-mega-financiers-flocking-to-trump/

Silicon Valley epitomizes Stafford Beer's motto that "the purpose of a system is what it does." If Silicon Valley produces nothing but planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams, then these are all features of the tech sector, not bugs.

As Anil Dash writes:

Driving change requires us to make the machine want something else. If the purpose of a system is what it does, and we don’t like what it does, then we have to change the system.

https://www.anildash.com/2024/05/29/systems-the-purpose-of-a-system/

To give climate tech the attention, excitement, and political will it deserves, we need to recalibrate our understanding of the world. We need to have object permanence. We need to remember just how few people were actually using cryptocurrency during the bubble and apply that understanding to AI hype. Only 2% of Britons surveyed in a recent study use AI tools:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo

If we want our tech companies to do good, we have to understand that their ground state is to create planet-wrecking nonsense, grifty scams, and planet-wrecking, nonsensical scams. We need to make these companies small enough to fail, small enough to jail, and small enough to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

We need to hold companies responsible, and we need to change the microeconomics of the board room, to make it easier for tech workers who want to do good to shout down the scammers, nonsense-peddlers and grifters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the FTC could hold Amazon executives personally liable for the decision to trick people into signing up for Prime, and for making the unsubscribe-from-Prime process into a Kafka-as-a-service nightmare:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/

Imagine how powerful a precedent this could set. The Amazon employees who vociferously objected to their bosses' decision to make Prime as confusing as possible could have raised the objection that doing this could end up personally costing those bosses millions of dollars in fines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

We need to make climate tech, not Big Tech, the center of our scrutiny and will. The climate emergency is so terrifying as to be nearly unponderable. Science fiction writers are increasingly being called upon to try to frame this incomprehensible risk in human terms. SF writer (and biologist) Peter Watts's conversation with evolutionary biologist Dan Brooks is an eye-opener:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

They draw a distinction between "sustainability" meaning "what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it?" and sustainability meaning, "what changes in behavior will allow us to save ourselves with the technology that is possible?"

Writing about the Watts/Brooks dialog for Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith invokes William Gibson's The Peripheral:

With everything stumbling deeper into a ditch of shit, history itself become a slaughterhouse, science had started popping. Not all at once, no one big heroic thing, but there were cleaner, cheaper energy sources, more effective ways to get carbon out of the air, new drugs that did what antibiotics had done before…. Ways to print food that required much less in the way of actual food to begin with. So everything, however deeply fucked in general, was lit increasingly by the new, by things that made people blink and sit up, but then the rest of it would just go on, deeper into the ditch. A progress accompanied by constant violence, he said, by sufferings unimaginable.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/preparing-for-collapse-why-the-focus-on-climate-energy-sustainability-is-destructive.html

Gibson doesn't think this is likely, mind, and even if it's attainable, it will come amidst "unimaginable suffering."

But the universe of possible technologies is quite large. As Chachra points out in How Infrastructure Works, we could give every person on Earth a Canadian's energy budget (like an American's, but colder), by capturing a mere 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface every day. Doing this will require heroic amounts of material and labor, especially if we're going to do it without destroying the planet through material extraction and manufacturing.

These are the questions that we should be concerning ourselves with: what behavioral changes will allow us to realize cheap, abundant, green energy? What "innovations" will our society need to focus on the things we need, rather than the scams and nonsense that creates Silicon Valley fortunes?

How can we use planning, and solidarity, and codetermination to usher in the kind of tech that makes it possible for us to get through the climate bottleneck with as little death and destruction as possible? How can we use enforcement, discernment, and labor rights to thwart the enshittificatory impulses of Silicon Valley's biggest assholes?

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/30/posiwid/#social-cost-of-carbon

[mortdeheros]

Saw Les Miserables US Tour Today. Feeling very Not Normal about Kyle Adams as Grantaire. His dynamic with Gavroche literally restarted my Les Mis unwellness. If you’ve been following me since my blog started (unlikely but I was live-in-tricolor) You know how Special Grantaire is to me and he just GOT it.

He has a way of moving and acting in a very, it was all in his body for real. His line in Drink with Me has so much anger ugh 10/10 understanding of a cynic who joins a revolution for the privilege of sitting next to someone who Only believes in the revolution.

His reaction to Gav’s death? Killer.

Now I have to also give my flowers to Haley Dortch’s Fantine she was mind blowing but this ain’t about her but it should be.

[spade-riddles]

Spade, I'm not trying to be a troll here, I swear. But you said recently how disgusted you would be to see Taylor playing aunt to a Kushner child. But don't you think this whole thing is going to end with Taylor pretending to be stepmom to two Kushner kids? It seems like the only logical outcome.

You said you're following Taylor because you think she's planning something big. But what if she's not? To me, songs like Dear Reader suggest the opposite. That Taylor is choosing her family and her happiness above playing the role people want from her. "Find another guiding light." I think that's addressed to us as much as the Hetlors, and I think the same about the themes of TTPD. Everyone in the fandom is going to have to swallow something they don't like, when it all shakes out. At first that seems to be Matty Healy, then it'll be Karlie (for the Gaylors and the Hetlors) and then for us, it'll be the Kushner association. I think she's been warning all of us she's not our hero, for a long time. But we only hear what we want to hear.

The 🎃 messages end the same way as Fresh Out The Slammer - with Taylor going home to the woman she loves. Making sacrifices for the woman she loves. It's not the story of a grand fight on behalf of something bigger. It's one scared woman fighting for the right to be human and live in peace with her family. People help her in the kitchen, she's not helping them. She walks the plank, but she does it to protect her lover. Not anyone else.

♠️ used to talk about a revolution - but that was years ago, and frankly I just think Taylor's priorities have changed. None of the riddles we've received in recent years seem to be about anything other than the freedom to be with Karlie. For me, I'm okay with that. I'm not saying you have to be too. I guess I'm just wondering how you would feel if a stepmom situation was how this all ended? Would it taint everything for you, or do you think you could still be happy for Taylor on some level, and proud of everything you did here?

Hi Anon, thank you for the thought out ask.

For clarity, I did not use the word 'disgusted'. I also do not believe those are Karlie's kids we see, so I do not believe Taylor will play the auntie or stepmom to 'Kushner' kids. Do we forget how many 'Dad' references Taylor has made? Or how Taylor wore pink, the night Jerk announced the birth of a boy.

I lean toward the two boys we see likely being Jerk's kids with Mikey. See this post for why I feel this way. My guess is that Karlie and Taylor will just keep their children very private, and we will not learn about them for years. In the meantime, Karlie stops posting about the two boys. I am not the only person who thinks they have a daughter.

I am not following Taylor because I think she is doing something big. I am following her because she is a brilliant musician, who I believe to also be a good human. Separately, I also think she is going to do something big/important. I was under the impression around here that people think she is going to burn it all down ... hence the imagery of the Lover house on tour. I would have to re-read the 🎃 messages again to see if that sways me. Regardless, if she sneezes it is big news. So if she does choose to come out, it will be huge.

I do agree that she is doing whatever she can to be with Karlie publicly and privately, and anyone caught in the cross-fire be damned. I have listened to Dear Reader as directed at myself/us, of course, and I believe it has merit. But I also know that I have a lot of emojis who visit this blog, seemingly wanting to keep us on board.

FWIW, if she never comes out that is completely fine. I have never been here chasing that goal. Do we get excited when we see her get loud? Yes. But it is her life to live as she chooses. The recent emoji anons say that she is ready to open the door, and she is not afraid.

If she played the stepmom role to Karlie's kids that the public would think are Kushners ... I would be gone. That would mean a lifetime contract with the Kushners and by association through Jared and Ivanka, the Trumps. It would mean that Ivanka and Jared are Taylor's children's aunt and uncle. How can anyone wrap their head around that idea? Why would a super powerful billionaire woman sign up for that? If she is coming out, why do so under that big of a lie? And, why put that kind of stain on your children? Why would we think she would sign up for that? Remember Karlie showed a turkey baster, and Taylor talked about her buns in the oven. Karlie did not have Jerk's kids. So why would they allow the Kushners to latch onto them for life?

If that is the narrative though, I would regret that I ever spent my time on here, other than for the education I have received over the years about Hollywood PR, and the friendships I have made. I would know I played a small part in her story though, as we have brought in many new Kaylors to support her. But, Taylor raising perceived 'Kushners' would be too much for me.

I would ask people to consider this ... no one on Tumblr calls out the Kushners for their criminality more than I do. If Taylor is pals with him, as some people around here believe, why did she play Paper Rings, seemingly at my request? Also, why did she drag him in I Bet You Think About Me, while also mocking Mikey? Maybe we share similar views of them?

[veevee-the-artist]

Okset /äkˈset/

Species: Oktigi Sex & Gender: Male Affiliation: Industrialist Role: Antagonist Occupation: CEO

Mun/artist: Open to asks on this blog!

Brief Info/History: Owner of the Breath Easy Air Purifying and Ventilation Company, Okset is a stoic Business man of few words. Okset is a bit of a recluse and spents most of his time within his office researching different ways to improve his business. It's uncommon for him to leave his residence, only leaving for business trips, parties he's been invited too, and the rare factory tour. Okset is pretty transparent with his company, he cleans air for factories, apartments, and houses.

However do not mistake his company as well meaning. While vast majority of buyers enjoys his products, Okset saw an opportunity when it was presented. Since the start of the industrial revolution, Okset was quick to notice the air pollution. He started his business with the intention of dependency. once you get used to his his machines to cleaning the air, customers will get sick on the highly polluted air once they step outside. Plus any filters removed from replacements services are often burned for quick disposal thus adding to the air problem.

[thgfanfictionlibrary]

Hi, I love this blog so much!

Do you happen to know some fics where Katniss is actually pregnant in Catching Fire? Thank you for all the work you do!

Hello Anon!

I am so glad you've been enjoying the blog! Below are a couple of pregnantduringCF fics that I could find in my searching:

A Fight For the Two of Us-MBrabs1996 (ff.net) Summary: What if Katniss had been pregnant during the Quarter Quell? Follow Katniss and Peeta as they face the games a second time while trying to keep themselves and their unborn child alive.

Four Weeks-OfPearlsAndShoelaces (ao3) Summary: He thinks of all those nights on the train, where the simple comfort of one another’s arms had turned into so much more. His mind races with every leading kiss, every languid thrust, every moan of delicious bliss swallowed by wanton tongues. He regrets it. All of it. Because it led them here. Catching Fire/Mockingjay AU.

Ghosts That We Knew-ILoVeWicked (ff.net) Summary: Katniss wakes up in District Thirteen to discover that she was pregnant during the Quarter Quell. Now, she must juggle the titles of Mockingjay and Mother as the revolution rages on and continues to change the world of everyone around her. Set during Mockingjay with elements of AU and continuing into post-Mockingjay. Told in 8 different characters' POVs

Ghosts with Just Voices-monroeslittle (ff.net) Summary: "I have a secret for you," he says, his breath warm against her cheek. "The top floor," he whispers. "If you hurry, you might be able to stop it." AU. Katniss makes a deal with Snow that changes everything.

I'll Never Hurt You, Never-L345 (ff.net) Summary: "If it weren't for the baby." The line changed everything, but what would it change if Peeta weren't lying? Peeta and Katniss have one night together that changes everything for both of them, forever.

Love is Weird-OllyWritesAO3 (ao3) Summary: Peeta's Quarter Quell announcement is true. And Katniss is struggling.

Made of Ashes-liberalkitsch (ao3) Summary: Katniss has survived the Quarter Quell. Barely. She has woken up to a world at war, expected to take on the role of the Mockingjay. But the choice to lead the rebellion is not an easy one. Katniss is pregnant with a child she never intended to have, while Peeta — the only one who could bring her any comfort — is in the Capitol. For the sake of herself, her child, and the people she loves, Katniss must become the face of the revolution, or risk losing everything. Sequel to Sparks Fly, a Catching Fire pregnancy AU.

Married In The Quarter Quell-riverknowshisname (ao3) Summary: What would it be like if Katniss and Peeta were really married in the Quarter Quell, and what if Katniss was actually pregnant, how much different would the Games have been? And what would the rebellion be like? Is Peeta still hijacked?

More Than Words-OfPearlsAndShoelaces (ao3) Summary: At the end of their ill-fated Victory Tour, Katniss and Peeta are forced to do the unthinkable to save their families from President Snow's wrath. Together, they struggle to cope with a different set of circumstances and hold onto themselves while rebellion simmers in the background. A Catching Fire AU. Adult content and mature themes.

One Night, One Mistake-Free17 (ff.net) Summary: AU! What if one night ended with Katniss pregnant before the 74th Hunger Games? Story will start in first book and finish in Mockingjay! Journey through pregnancy, relationships, games, and more!

Sparks Fly-liberalkitsch (ao3) Summary:-Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games, but nothing is as she wishes. Katniss' relationship with Peeta is strained, and rumors of rebellion swirl around them. As they embark on the Victory Tour, Katniss agrees to be friends with Peeta, but soon realizes she wants more. Their romance becomes real, but as pressure mounts to prove their love, Katniss believes that a public proposal is the only way to convince President Snow and the districts of their love. However, Snow's reaction leaves Katniss worried that their efforts are in vain.

Swan Upon Leda-FyreFlys (ao3) Summary: the fic where Everlark aren’t together yet, Katniss is pregnant during the Quarter Quell, Peeta isn’t supposed to know but then figures it out, Peeta never gets taken by the Capital and hijacked, and they try to live their “happily ever after”.

The Sharp Edge of Memory -titania522 (ao3) Summary: "Even if by some miracle I did survive and he did not - if I did not follow him to the grave from desperation soon after - I would live my entire life trying to solve the puzzle of how to get him out." What would have happened on the beach during the Quarter Quell if Finnick had not interrupted them? 2013 EVERLARK SMUT AWARDS NOMINEE!

there are worse games to play-weasleysking (ao3) Summary: “Maybe I'd think that, too, Caesar,” says Peeta bitterly, “if it weren't for the baby.” As the bomb explodes, it sends accusations of injustice and barbarism and cruelty flying out in every direction. Even the most Capitol Loving, Games-hungry, bloodthirsty person out there can't ignore, at least for a moment, how horrific the whole thing is. I am pregnant. Peeta drops the baby bomb - but this time, it's true.

Unkept secret-KelsiMellark (ff.net) Summary: What if Katniss really was pregnant during the Quarter Quell? What if she decides to keep it from Peeta? One-Shot.

Yours-lunalark (ao3) Summary: Everlark. Mockingjay AU. After the last night in the training center before the Quell, Peeta’s “baby bomb” becomes a reality. It has been 5 months since the Quell, and Peeta has just been rescued from the clutches of the Capitol.

Hope these ones are new to you! Happy reading!

Feel free to add any more you guys know of in the replies, tags, or reblogs and I’ll add them to the list!

[nordleuchten]

Ah, Tumblr. Why would they hide my question from you🥲? Here is the rather long question that I wanted to ask.

I've been wondering about Lafayette's interactions with his in-laws—not the Noailles, but his children's. What did he think about his sons-in-law? Did they get along? How did the marriages take place, or anything related to them?

I'm currently in the very long process of writing a novel about Adrienne, now entering the French Revolution, still having a long way to go before any of the Lafayette kids get married. But my God, the French Revolution is stressful as hell to write☹️. I just want my girl to get some rest… And so, I guess I just want to skip ahead to the lighthearted part. While Adrienne’s thoughts and interactions are pretty much all in Virginie’s book, and maybe some in her sister’s memoirs, Mister Lafayette’s is a bit confusing for me because he has so much information from all different sources. (Which brings me to my next question: What book do you recommend for referencing information about Gilbert? It’s too stressful to always go from one source to another for him.😭)

The information on this blog has been immensely helpful! I would have been lost as to where to find the sources that I needed. hope you have a good day, and hold on to your historical passion! 👍☺️

Dear @daydream-247,

first of all, that sounds like a very interesting project! When you come around to publishing something, I would absolutely love to read it! And thank you for your kind word, it is always nice to hear that other people can take something away from what I post and are not annoyed by me. :-)

As to the partners of his children, La Fayette had a very good relationship with all of them. I am actually quite happy that you asked about that part of the family, since this topic is quite dear to my heart. I think there is not enough talk about that – as it is with so many things in La Fayette’s life that have nothing to do with Revolutions and America. The La Fayette’s and their family and friends were so tight nit, so intimate and loving. La Fayette – and also Adrienne, while she was still alive, loved being grand-parents and in La Fayette’s case later great-grandparents. While their children were able to go their own ways in live, they and their families always remained very close to their parents. The children’s marriages were happy ones – not without personal tragedy of course, but they all weathered the challenges thrown at them. To the best of my knowledge, there were no affairs, mistresses, and betrayals in that generation.

But enough of me being fascinated by family dynamics, lets us get to your question! La Fayette wrote on December 1, 1802 to James Madison:

I Live in an Agreable place, About forty Miles from paris. My Children are With me. Georges Has Married the daughter of Tracy whom Mr. Jefferson Has known in the Constituent Assembly and Who is One of His Warmest Admirers. My Elder daughter is the Wife of Charles La tour Maubourg the Youngest Brother of My Olmutz Companion and Has two Lovely Little Girls. My daughter in Law is Within a few Months to Encrease Our family. Georges is Now at turin Where the 11th Rgt of Huzzards Has its Quarters. Virginia, My Younger daughter, will, I think, Be Married Before Long.

“To James Madison from Lafayette, 1 December 1802,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/02-04-02-0176. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series, vol. 4, 8 October 1802 – 15 May 1803, ed. Mary A. Hackett, J. C. A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, Susan Holbrook Perdue, and Ellen J. Barber. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, pp. 166–170.] (01/25/2024)

La Fayette was right concerning Virginie. She married on April 20, 1803. She would probably have married sooner, but La Fayette slipped on the icy pavement that winter and broke his femur close to the hip bone – an injury that is no laughing matter, neither in the 21st nor in the early 19th century. The wedding was postponed, giving La Fayette time to recover.

Let us now have a closer look at the marriages and resulting families of each of Adrienne’s and La Fayette’s children. Anastasie, their oldest surviving child, was the first one to marry. She married Juste-Charles de Faÿ de la Tour-Maubourg. Charles was the younger brother of Marie-Charles-César de Faÿ, comte de la Tour-Maubourg. César was one of La Fayette’s dearest friends. Do you remember this heartbreaking letter La Fayette wrote after Adrienne’s death? That letter was addressed to César, and I have never again seen La Fayette lay his soul and emotions so open – not even in front of Washington.

Charles was for a very, very short time imprisoned as well but quickly freed. After all the prisoners of Olmütz were set free, they settled at Wittmold and were reunited with their respected families. It was there that Anastasie met – or at least fell in love with, Charles. They were married on Mai 8, 1798 in the private chapel in Wittmold by the Abbé Luchet (and oh this blasted certificate of marriage! One day, one day …) They soon started their own family, and it was here that tragedy struck. While both of their twin daughters survived the birth, one died only a few weeks later. Sadly, the little girl is often forgotten and not at all mentioned when La Fayette’s grandchildren are discussed. I will not say much about the grandchildren here in general because firstly, this post would get even longer than it already is (I am so sorry!) and secondly, I have a post in the making going through all of the grandchildren and possible some great-grandchildren – including the ones that died young or were stillborn/miscarried. I feel they should not be left out. Anastasie lost at least two, if not more children and Georges lost at least one daughter. So, different topic for a different post if you do not mind.

What is interesting about Anastasie’s marriage – especially her Noailles relatives appeared to be less than enthusiastic about the match. Anastasie’s aunt, the Marquise de Montague wrote in her own memoirs:

Frau von La Fayette fand die Parthie nicht allein sehr angemessen, sondern auch wie man damals das Recht hatte zu hoffen, sehr vortheilhaft. Der General war von ganzem Herzen damit einverstanden. In Witmold aber schrie man laut dagegen, wie nur das Projekt zur Sprache kam. Herr von Mun behauptete nur bei den Wilden Amerika‘s könne man sich so verheirathen, und Frau von Tessé bestand darauf, man hätte seit Adam und Eva nichts Gleiches gesehen. Die Sarkasmen nüßten Nichts, Frau von La Fayette hielt sich fest, und als Alles unwiderruflich entschieden war, sah man, wie sich die Unzufriedenheit der Frau von Tessé in eine zärtliche und liebenswürdige Sorgsamkeit auflöste.

Marquise of Montague, Anna Pauline Dominika von Noailles, Marquise von Montague – Ein Lebensbild, Münster, Aschendorff, 1871, p. 204.

My translation:

Madame de La Fayette not only thought the match very appropriate, but also, as one had the right to hope at the time, very advantageous. The General was wholeheartedly in favour of it. In Witmold, however, they protested loudly against it as soon as the project was brought up. Mr von Mun [I have no idea who he was] claimed that only among the savages of America one could marry in this way, and Madame de Tessé insisted that nothing like it had been seen since Adam and Eve. The sarcasm was of no avail, Madame La Fayette held her ground, and when everything was irrevocably decided, Mademe de Tessé’s dissatisfaction dissolved into a tender and amiable diligence.

As you see, Adrienne’s and La Fayette’s primary concern was the happiness of their daughter. La Fayette wrote on May 20, 1798 to George Washington:

We Have spent the winter in Holstein, on danish territory, in a Hired Country Seat about Sixty English miles from Hamburgh—My friend Latour Maubourg and His family were with us—we had visits from france and other Countries—(…). Here My eldest daughter Anastasie was Married to Charles Maubourg my friends’ Youngest Brother.

“To George Washington from Lafayette, 20 May 1798,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-02-02-0213. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series, vol. 2, 2 January 1798 – 15 September 1798, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, pp. 282–285.] (01/25/2024)

I am honestly not quite sure what the problem here was. Since the Noailles part of the family voiced their criticism, the problem seems to lay primarily with Charles. The critics very much still belonged to the “arranged-marriage-for the advancement-of-the-family” generation and I suppose that was the issue. The marriage was not arranged and both the La Fayette’s and the La Tour-Maubourg’s were “ruined” during the French Revolution. There was not much for both parties to expect – beside a happy marriage based on mutual love and affection.

La Fayette at once started to include his new son-in-law in his letter:

My wife, my daughters, my Son in law Beg the tender Homage of their Affection, Gratitude and Respect to Be presented to you, my dear General, and to Mrs Washington (…)

“To George Washington from Lafayette, 20 May 1798,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-02-02-0213. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Retirement Series, vol. 2, 2 January 1798 – 15 September 1798, ed. W. W. Abbot. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, pp. 282–285.] (01/25/2024)

The next one to marry was Georges. He married Françoise Émilie Destutt de Tracy. Just like with his older sister’s husband, there was already a connection between La Fayette and his new in-laws. Émilie’s father, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, was one of La Fayette’s oldest friends. They became friends prior to the French Revolution and both later served in the Chambre des Deputes and had similar political views, they both opposed Napoléon’s rise to power.

Based on his writings alone, Émilie might have been La Fayette’s favourite. He wrote to Thomas Jefferson on January 20, 1802:

My Son Has Returned to His Regiment in Italy—I Expect Him in the Spring, and probably to Marry a Very Amiable daughter to the Senator tracy Whom You Have known as a patriot Member of the Constituent Assembly

“To Thomas Jefferson from Lafayette, 30 January 1802,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-36-02-0305. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 36, 1 December 1801–3 March 1802, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 480–481.] (01/25/2024)

He reported on November 1, 1802, again to Thomas Jefferson:

With me they Now Are Retired into the State of Rural Life Where I am fixed Among the Comforts of An United Loving family—it Has Been, Encreased, as I Did in time inform You, By the Happy Acquisition of an Amiable Daughter in Law (…)

“To Thomas Jefferson from Lafayette, 1 November 1802,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-38-02-0551. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 38, 1 July–12 November 1802, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011, pp. 616–617.] (01/25/2024)

He wrote on August 18, 1800 to his friend Masclet:

My whole family is now collected at this place, where my aunt had been for many years despairing ever to see us. It has been also for me a great satisfaction to present to her my beloved daughter-in-law Emilie Tracy, now the wife of the happy George, and in whom I find every amiable quality my heart could wish for. I intend conducting the young couple back to Auteuil towards the middle of Fructidor, my return there being hastened by the news of the intended journey wherein General Fitzpatrick and Charles Fox are to meet at Paris.

Jules Germain Cloquet, Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette, Baldwin and Cradock, London, 1835, p. 110.

Here is what La Fayette wrote about Émilie to Thomas Jefferson on February 21, 1825, right after the death of her mother:

We intend to Come again from Boston to Newyork, Philadelphia, Washington and to pay you a Visit at Monticello Before we Embark By the Middle of August for france Where We Are Recalled, Sooner than We Expected, By the most lamentable death of mde de tracy george’s Mother in law. I Have urged My Son to Return immediately But His generous wife, who is a tender daughter to me, Had on the first moment of the loss, adjured Him not to leave me, and it is a Great Motive for Me to Make as much Haste As We Can With propriety do it.

“To Thomas Jefferson from Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, 21 February 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-4986. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series. It is not an authoritative final version.] (01/25/2024)

La Fayette wrote much about Émilie and all that he wrote was very positive. What he wrote about his sons-in-law was different – not to say that there was less affection, but it was, at least on paper, expressed differently. Now, why was that? It could be for personal reasons, La Fayette simply “clicked” better with Émilie. It could be because Émilie spend much more time with and around La Fayette than his sons-in-law did. It could be because, by social convention, you would and could write differently about your daughter-in-law then about your sons-in-law. Lastly, and that is just a hunch of mine, Émilie, as a woman, was the one to bear the children. For La Fayette children were definitely in the female domain – not because he necessarily thought that childbirth should be a women’s only purpose but because I think he understood and valued that the birth of a child was the result of a great deal of pain and work on the women’s side and a, while biological important, negatable part on the man’s part. In short, I like to imagine that the thanked and valued Émilie for her hard work in making him a grandfather.

La Fayette addressed and described Émilie as his daughter, he wrote about having “three daughters” (to James Madison, August 28, 1826). While the same sentiment was definitely present in the relationships with his sons-in-law, I think he never put it quite that distinctly to paper. But enough about Émilie, let us move on to the last couple.

As I have already mentioned Virginie married Louis de Lasteyrie du Saillant, Marquis de Lasteyrie on April 20, 1803. I believe that Louis was a nephew of a friend of La Fayette but I would need to check that again. Louis died quite young, aged 46 in 1826 and he was buried on the ground reserved for the La Fayette family on the Picpus Cemetery. He was buried there after Adrienne and before La Fayette.

Things were looking pretty good on the domestic front for La Fayette. Within five years, all of his children were happily married and two of them had already little families of their own. What was probably most important, despite her failing health, Adrienne saw all three of her surviving children marry.

In letters to his friends, particular to Thomas Jefferson, La Fayette never forgot to give updates not only about himself but also about his children and their families. He often asked for them to be remembered to people just like he wanted to be remembered. He gave also updates on the military careers of his sons-in-law. Louis entered the Light Dragoons in 1804, leaving the army as a Colonel. Charles and George often served in closely related positions. They both realized that being attached to La Fayette would make advancement in the army difficult and so both of them left the army eventually. Neither of them seemed to hold any grudges.

That much in “short”. Now, as to books – the unsatisfactory answer is: It depends? Are you looking for a general overview, an overview about a specific topic, a political analyses, a character analysis, something critical, a personal account, something contemporary or something that was written much later, a collection of anecdotes to flesh out La Fayette’s character? There are sources for all of this, but they all serve different purposes.

I hope I could help you out and give you a starting point for your research. A chapter about the love lives of Anastasie, Georges and Virginie could definitely serve as a little cheer-up chapter between the French Revolution and Adrienne’s death – both for the readers and your characters. Happy writing and I hope you have/had a lovely day!

[literaryxbones]

Goth History-Episode 2: Gothic Fashion

Welcome back to my Second Episode of Goth History. If you're new to the @literaryxbones blog, don't worry! You don't have to look at the previous episode to follow this one.

Today we'll be discussing the history of gothic fashion: it's historic origins, connection to music, and its modern evolutions. Consider this a more generalized overview of goth style. There are many different iterative substyles that could warrant future entries.

Before delving into the contemporary goth scene, we must not neglect modern fashion's original, archaic influences. Stylistic inspirations date back to the Romantic Period. At the tail-end of the eighteenth century, people became disillusioned with the Industrial Revolution. They attached a sentimentality to nature, beauty, and simplistic living. Corporate technologies had long been eroding this traditional way of life.

As a result, discontent transformed clothing conventions. Dresses, vests, suits, and pants began to don elaborate, ornate patterns. Laces and ruffles exemplified its flair. A more restrictive, darker color palette of black, scarlet, purple, and brown was worn. The writings and dress of Edgar Allan Poe helped popularize the aesthetic.

With the rise of the Victorian period, British nobility adopted the darkened elegance displayed by its counterculture. In 1861, Queen Victoria mourned her husband's passing. Ever since his death, she was only seen wearing black. With the public clad in funeral garb, the commonfolk and the royalty grieved together. The color black possessed a strengthened association with death.

In the late 1970's, a rebellious post-punk subculture emerged. An emphasis on individualism, non-conformity, and a dark appreciation pervaded in their fashion. Victorian touches remained in the jackets, fishnets, and expressive makeup worn by early post-punk bands. Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, and Bauhaus flaunted this style on their tours.

A sprinkle of Punk-designer Vivienne Westwood's carnival themes cultivated the angular trad-goth makeup look shared all over social media today.

Bauhaus often used bat symbolism in their song lyrics and outfits. These nocturnal creatures are loved by many goths alike. Bats also recall to mind the Bat Cave, a London club.

I couldn't write about the history of our subculture's fashion without mentioning DIY. "Do-It-Yourself" attitudes were embraced by multiple alternative fashion scenes. Oftentimes, people thrifted, upcycled, and sewed clothing out of necessity. Younger members couldn't afford the expensive outfits worn by celebrities and made by fashion designers. Before online-shopping, most alternative fashion was inaccessible.

DIY also allowed for more creativity. Creations became an extension of the person wearing them. Goths chose from a variety of chains, collars, charms, and rosaries as accessories. They could implement these decorations in infinite ways. Different methods of distressing, cutting up, and patching clothes gave each piece a unique quality. Upcycling became an avenue for self-expression. People made what they liked.

In more recent times, second-hand shops and the DIY ethos has been centered around anti-fast fashion movements. Fast-fashion is when big corporations mass-produce a vast catalogue of items. Production is usually outsourced to other countries with cheaper labor costs. In these places, there are little regulations protecting workers. Popular sites for sourcing alt fashion like Ali Express, Shein, and Amazon use Chinese sweatshop slavery to produce their clothes.

Overall, gothic fashion is catalyzed by scene artists, ethical dilemmas, and the creative spirit. Now, a ton of styling subgenres are gaining traction. Pastel Goth, Trad-Goth, Victorian Goth, and Cybergoth are just some of these newer terms.

It is important to remember that these styles are all goth, and that dressing to a certain aesthetic does not make you goth. Goth is in your heart. It's in the music you listen to. It's in the interests you find beauty in. You don't need to wear loud microtrends to have your identity recognized. Just have fun, wear what you want, and explore your own creativity.

Phew, that was a long post! Thank you for reading all of it. Maybe I could add in a prize for readers who read all the way to the bottom, like a hidden sticker or stamp you can use or something!

Sources:

A Fascinating Look at Gothic Fashion History and Its Roots – Midnight Hour

Gothic Fashion: Brooding, Forceful & All About the Black | FashionBeans

DIY Goth Battlevest Created by @Lord_Dagger on Reddit

Written by SORDID

[hiidkwhatimdoing7525]

hello and welcome!

I mostly draws and talk shit

I post about

American Revolution, including Hamilton, turn Washington’s spies…

interview with the vampire (2022) plus vampire chronicles book

biggest Marquis de Lafayette fan ever

history (sometimes Napoleon and French Revolution)

my Amrev oc

Currently posting a lot about Lafayette’s farewell tour of 1824-25 (bicentennial anniversary). Everyday I post where he’s at. Every. single. fucking. day

You can find it under #lafayette farewell tour board updates. #lafayettes farewell tour. #lafayette farewell tour…

I suggest you don’t go really far into my blog. It’s real shitty before.

English is not my first language and mistakes will be made

Also asks are always open

Thank you!

[historicalfightingguide]

"Inspired by the incredible true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr. in a tour de force performance) rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) and her court. Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Marton Csokas, Alex Fitzalan, Minnie Driver"

If you are interested in learning more about his fencing feats you may want to check out these older posts.

Furthermore if you specifically want to learn how to use a smallsword you may find the Smallsworders facebook group or the Smallsword Symposium facebook page useful.

Similarly this video may be a fun intro to smallsword fencing.

Honorable mention to the sparring clips embeded here.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Some advice on how to start studying the sources generally can be found in these older posts

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience by   Kajetan Sadowski   may be relevant as well.

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“How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills”  by Rob Gray  as well as this post that goes over the basics of his constraints lead, ecological approach.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Trauma informed coaching and why it matters

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Look at the previous posts in relation to running and cardio to learn how that relates to historical fencing.

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Why having a systematic approach to training can be beneficial

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Why we may not want one attack 10 000 times, nor 10 000 attacks done once, but a third option.

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How consent and opting in function and why it matters.

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More on tactics in fencing

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Types of fencers

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Open vs closed skills

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The three primary factors to safety within historical fencing

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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And if you train any weapon based form of historical fencing check out the ‘HEMA game archive’ where you can find a plethora of different drills, focused sparring and game options to use for effective, useful and fun training.

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Check out the cool hemabookshelf facsimile project.

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For more on how to use youtube content for learning historical fencing I suggest checking out these older posts on the concept of video study of sparring and tournament footage.

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The provoker-taker-hitter tactical concept and its uses

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Approaches to goals and methodology in historical fencing

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A short article on why learning about other sports and activities can benefit folks in combat sports

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Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

[sirendeepity]

For the fanfic writer ask game:

♥️👻📗

Nikiiiii, my love, it's so good to see you here! <333

❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

So, this one's tough. Not because I have the hands of Midas, but because I simply... Have no idea? I did skim through metanoia, though, because if that's where the good stuff is, and I found a few because I'm physically unable to choose just one I really liked, two of which are quote quotes

“I gave him the power he thinks he has now, and by not agreeing on meeting with him we’re just proving his point: that he has something, that he’s worth something. I’d rather die than give him the satisfaction.”

That night was not for deep, belly laughs. That night was for healing what others had broken. To build anew.

while the third is more of a context quote

What caught her attention the most, tho, had been the fact that Rhysand had been ready to put so much of himself, of what he’d been through, at stake. For her. Nesta shifted in her seat, not stomaching the starlight violet any longer. She felt Night caressing her mental shields, purring, asking to get in. She let it. You’re worth the risks. She turned, the bones in her neck cracking with the fast motion, and stared speechless at Rhysand. She’d let him in her mind, yet the voice wasn’t there. He’d said those words out loud, had made sure the stars heard them too.

👻 What is your wildest headcanon?

I answered this one here, bUT I'll give you another one, which is also a spoiler for a possible future multi-chapter fanfic I've been thinking about for a while and recently I'm entertaining the idea of actually try to write it? We'll see. Anyway I have this idea that the Valkyries (well, Nesta, at least, since she's the one who's part of the Inner Circle) will "give up" their citizenship? And they're not members of the Night Court anymore? Or they're just a private citizen like any other? I still have to think this trough, but they're going to do all that because they are going to tour around Prythian to recruit and train more females and officially revive The Valkyries, and make them an army for the people: basically, there will be a base in every Court and legions/battalions for each, but overall they don't belong to a single Court but rather all of them, but really, if you think about it, none at all. They're like an independent army, the "neutral party" which will not stay so neutral if things get dirty. They'll stand for equality and freedom, they'll protect the innocents, and by not "legally" belonging to any Court they won't have a High Lord or High Lady that can order them around and such, so they'll be like an Eight Court of sorts without really being a Court at all. Does this make sense?

📗 Do you want to write something outside of fanfiction? If so, what about?

Oh bestie I'm so happy you asked this because y e s. Yes. Yes, I do. And I am completely cool about it. Not acting weird at all.

I'm almost done with the first draft of this personal project of mine that I've been working on and off for the past ..year..s? But I keep procrastinating so I've been "-10 chapters!!" for the past week, but still. To keep things sweet and short, I'll make you a list, because we love lists on this blog:

Crown of Thorns (4): (high?) fantasy; reluctant found family where each and every one of them is "in it" for their own personal gaining, but what started as a shallow "they took my crown from me so now I'll take it back because I can? and because I'm petty and hold grudges" will turn into "I have to stop the Lord of Darkness from coming back from the dead and destroy the world as we know it, and maybe start a revolution while I'm at it". It's messy, and sometimes I think I won't be able to pull this off the way I intended to (good intentions, bad delivery, you know?) so don't ask me to tell you more than this because I really don't know how without spoiling the entire thing;

Cursed Goddes/Blessed God (2): CoT spin-off that is actually a prequel and kind of explains/shows the events that led society to become the way it is in CoT and yes, I really did dig my own grave with this whole series, but now I'm in too deep to stop so down we go;

Kill Your Darlings (1): dark academia-ish, paranormal vibes and a hint of mystery, too? Think House of Anubis, but everyone is gay and mentally ill. That's it, that's the plot.

The Haven Island series (3): contemporary romance, interconnected standalones following a group of friends navigating life in their 20s, where every story is meant to represent a different aspect of girlhood/womanhood (aka toxic/abusive relationships, motherhood, sexism and mysoginy, etc.)

I'd also like to write something in the dystopian sub-genre, because who doesn't love that feeling of impending and unavoidable doom? But I have absolutely nothing in my hands if not some sort of relationship dynamics that for the sake of logic and coherency I had to cut out from the CoT plot, so, yeah, we're really basing it all on vibes at this point

Ask me a question!

[hotarutranslations]

Hawks Fest

Evening

Hawks Fest! Thank you very much!

Today in Fukuoka, at Mizuho PayPay Dome,🐣

Really, thank you very much, I'm really really honored to have had this opportunity I'm really happy…..

At the start, Ikuta Erina, whose from Fukuoka, did the ceremonial pitch,

Everyone watched over her~⚾️✨

Didn't I just notice that there!? with her hand wavering, I watched while feeling nervous as well⚾️✨

Also the opening dance acrobatics They were really cool!

On the grass in the circular stadium, what and how to be conscious of, lets make a wonderful formation like this, right! I was interested in that perspective as well 🫣Even if we stand on the baseball field in a line, it should be more difficult than our normal🫣

Like the view from the 2nd row diagonally.. It was really beautiful..

It was cool!

Thank you for your time after the game,

For Morning Musume '24, We performed 4 songs, LOVE Machine SaiKIYOU Renai Revolution 21 The☆Peace!🌻

The time was over in the blink of an eye, Those who had been looking forward to it this time, Those who waited after the match for it, Thank you very much, for spending time with us!

Dancing on the grass..

When I'm on my knees, it feels kinda? Nostalgic?😂

It maybe feels like when I did Rakuten Cheer.. I don't think that I kneeled all that much but for some reason..

Thank you very much, on top of this precious grass!

Since there is a photo captured of me solo🫶🏻

I'm happy there was a ton of light🫶🏻

Last week,

Hellocon Hokkaido, and the next day MM at Pia Arena

This week,

Hellocon Miyagi, and the next day at Mizuho PayPay Dome

Its amazing every weekend its really amazing every weekend💎 I'll also have to do my best next weekend too~~💎

Receiving your support in various places,

Suddenly just now,

I've though that, we haven't really had a space, where I can convey my thanks.. Evvennn though I have made my graduation announcement🫣← I am filled with gratitude every day, and since it'll be our single release soon! And the events have already been decided! The desire to express my thanks has grown even more, I wonder if I can say it well~~

Therefore although I'm putting it in writing, I wonder if its conveyed~~

…This is that, right, Listening to, Nandaka Sentimental na Toki no Uta

🫣🫣lol

Its a bit like, Since this song has a darker atmosphere, Its a bit different to now though😂😂

Thank you very much for this every day💎

Thank you for your hard work today as well

Lets do our best this week again~~~🌻

Play▶️List

Graduation Announcement Blog🐣🪽

Hello! Station #531 I also talk about my graduation in this video

📺Hello Pro Dance Gakuen Season 11

Every other Thursday at 11:30PM~ Learning Locking from HIYORI-san

📺Sendai Broadcast "Ara Ara Kashiko" Ishida Ayumi Goes~! I appear once a month as part of the AraKashi Family

The previous shows, and makings, are on OX VIDEO STORE!

📺Otoboke POPS

TokyoMX August 17th (Sat) 9:30~10:00PM Ishida, Sakurai, Yumigeta are appearing

Thank you for following.. Instagram💙🩵

💿 August 14th new single✨ "Nandaka Sentimental na Toki no Uta/saiKIYOU"

̗̀📣Cheki Sign Talk Meet Announcement

̗̀📣Limsta

🪩Hello! Project 2024 Summer ALL OF US "Vega" "Altair" From July 13th~September 1st Traveling To 7 Cities Nationwide All Hello! Project groups are performing🔥

🪩"Morning Musume '24 Concert Tour Autumn WE CAN DANCE!"

Its Ishida Ayumi's last tour💙 I'm looking forward to seeing you

📚July 20th Release "non-no September" special issues cover is, Morning Musume '24

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Releasing on July 23rd

"Up To Boy vol.341" September Issue I will be on the 7net limited cover page

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📻Morning Musume '24 Morning Jogakuin ~Houkago Meeting~

Airs Every Saturday, On Radio Nihon at 12:00AM~

Past Broadcast Episodes Are Available →Program Details

I visited as a guest🪽 "Sayashi Riho and The Time From Now On" presented by Meiji Bulgarian Yogurt

Yesterday! I wrote that I wanted photos to be sent to me, Ruru-chan and Yagishio sent them! Happy

see you ayumin <3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Async mugwump linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

For 20+ years, I've processed all the information that came over my transom by blogging – mulling on why something I saw in the world caught my attention and trying to summarize it for strangers. This turns out to be a very powerful way to do a lot of different kinds of mental work:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

With Pluralistic, the solo blog I founded 4 years ago, I've moved into longer, more synthetic essays that try to connect the things that caught my attention today with all those things I've written about for the past two decades. That's also proven very fruitful:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

But this move to longer works has a downside: sometimes I'll arrive at the week's end and have a list of things that caught my attention without there being any obvious way to connect them, and when that happens, I devote a Saturday edition to a linkdump. There's been 15 of these so far:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Welcome, then, to the 16th Pluralistic linkdump, and a warning, this one starts with an obituary.

Ross Anderson was one of the heroes of the cryptographic revolution, a brilliant scientist and communicator, a fantastic activist, and a scorching curmudgeon. Ross died this week. He was 67, and had chronic heart issues as well as long covid:

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2024/03/29/rip-ross-anderson/

There's so much that's been written about Ross and his legacy already, and there's doubtless more to come, but I've picked out two pieces to point you to. The first is from Danny O'Brien, who was also the guy who talked me down off the ledge the first time Ross flamed me on a public mailing list, leaving me bleeding and furious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868983

As Danny says, Ross was "the model of a politically and socially involved computer scientist," a man whose blazing intellect, fierce moral center and relentless curiosity inspired a generation of technologists to think about politics, and a generation of political activists to think about technology. Few of Ross's eulogizers (thus far) have mentioned how Ross's passion came out as fury, and – as someone who counted Ross as a friend and inspiration – I think this is a serious omission. It's hard to imagine Ross doing all that he did without understanding the anger that – along with his ethics – fueled his passion.

(Compare with @neil-gaiman's classic essay on the anger of Terry Pratchett:)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

The other obit that I want to point you to comes from Bill Buchanan, one of Ross's closest collaborators. Buchanan's memorial for Ross does a superb job of rounding up Ross's technical contributions to the field of security engineering:

https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/ross-anderson-rip-59233c75fadf

Buchanan embeds videos for some of Ross's best speeches, links to his key papers (including the classic "Programming Satan's Computer," on "programming a computer which gives answers that are subtly and maliciously wrong at the most inconvenient moment possible), reminiscences of Great Moments In Ross Anderson, and terrific, lay-friendly breakdowns of some of Ross's key mathematical work.

As an unreasonable, angry person, I take great inspiration from people who channel their unreasonable anger to socially beneficial conduct – like whistleblowers. After Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge was totaled by the 95,000-ton cargo ship MV *Dali(, a vast cohort of instant experts in structural engineering, sea freight and shipbuilding has taken to the internet with a slurry of takes on the Meaning Of the Bridge.

Some of these are very stupid indeed, like the idea that somehow "DEI" caused the collision. But you don't have to be an expert in maritime issues or civil engineering to understand the importance of this report from The Lever about shipping giant Maersk's culture of retaliation against whistleblowers:

https://www.levernews.com/feds-recently-hit-cargo-giant-in-baltimore-disaster-for-silencing-whistleblowers/

Maersk is the company that chartered the MV Dali; Maersk is also a key player in the cartel that controls the world's shipping. Maersk was just sanctioned by the Labor Department for retaliating against a whistleblower who complained of unsafe conditions on the ships that Maersk chartered:

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/news%20releases/Maersk-Sec%20Findings%20-FINAL%20071423_Redacted.pdf

Maersk's policy required employees to bring concerns to their supervisors before alerting the Coast Guard or others. This is not how that stuff is supposed to work. OSHA called this policy “repugnant” and a “reprehensible and an egregious violation of the rights of employees,” which “chills them from contacting the [Coast Guard] or other authorities without contacting the company first.”

The whistleblower – chief mate on the Safmarine Mafadi – complained of "unrepaired leaks, unpermitted alcohol consumption onboard, inoperable lifeboats, faulty emergency fire suppression equipment, and other issues." We don't know (yet) what happened on the Dali, but it's obvious that a company that retaliates against whistleblowers, rather than heeding their warnings, is prioritizing covering its ass, not operating safely.

Which brings me (inevitably) to Boeing, and to poor John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who took his own life earlier this month. Barnett's suicide has stirred up similar low-yield online chatter focused on whether Boeing assassinated Barnett, a question that categorically cannot be answered through the method of arguing with internet strangers.

But there is a lot to say about Barnett: in particular, there's the substance of his whistleblowing, the specifics of his complaints about Boeing. For that, we can turn to the always-fantastic Maureen Tkacik, whose American Prospect piece "Suicide Mission" is definitive:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Tkacik does a great job of painting a picture of Swampy as a member of the tribe of unreasonable and angry people who refuse to sideline principle in order to get along. More importantly, Tkacik shows us what made Swampy so angry: a company that was hell-bent on lobotimizing itself by forcing out any technical expert who might point out inconvenient truths about the safety risks of high-profit strategies.

As Tkacik writes, Boeing once thought about "knowledge" in terms of expertise that could be brought to bear on the unimaginably complex task of making reliable, airworthy jets. But under the "value-engineering" financialized culture that arose after the McDonnell-Douglas merger, the company viewed knowledge as "intellectual property, trade secrets, and data." In other words, the point of knowledge was rent-extraction, not safety.

At the root of this transformation was the Jack Welch protege Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, the former 3M CEO who took the helm at Boeing. McNerney was openly contemptuous of the company's senior engineers, branding them "phenomenally talented assholes" and rewarding managers who found ways to force them out of the company. It was McNerney who decided to produce the 787 "Dreamliner" in non-union shops, far from Seattle and its phenomenally talented assholes. Instead of these engineers, McNerney turned to Boeing suppliers to do the major engineering work on the 787 – despite the fact that many of these suppliers "lacked engineering departments."

The 787 was, infamously, a $80b-over-budget boondoggle, haunted by technical failures. Swampy was part of the "cleanup crew" that tried to salvage the 787, and witnessed first-hand how the company purged all the engineers who managed to ship the 787 despite McNerney and his "value engineers" and retaliated against workers who tried to unionize the South Carolina facility.

In particular, it was safety inspector who came in for the most savage punishment. When the FAA decided to let Boeing mark its own homework – hiring in-house safety inspectors to replace government inspectors – they pretended to believe that these Boeing-payrolled inspectors would be able to operate independently of Boeing's leadership. The inspectors tried to operate this way (not least because they were criminally liable for oversights that occurred on their watch) and McNerney's Boeing came down on them like a ton of aviation-grade aluminum.

To further neuter these inspectors, Boeing management ordered the inspectors to outsource their work to the mechanics they were supposed to be supervising – that is, the FAA outsourced safety checks to Boeing inspectors, and the inspectors outsourced those checks to the mechanics themselves. Tkacik: "Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal under the Federal Aviation Administration charter."

Swampy kept careful records of every way in which this system produced unsafe aircraft and an unsafe workplace – including the day he discovered that someone had removed 400+ defective parts from the rejects box and installed them in aircraft in order to meet deadlines. Swampy's reports were key to establishing that the company's much-trumpeted "improvements" in safety reports were down to a culture of "bullying" – not any improvement in safety itself.

When Boeing went to war against Swampy, they barely bothered to pretend that they were playing by the rules. He was told one day that he was four-weeks into a 60-day "corrective action" that no one had told him about. The "corrective action" paperwork had a blank for Swampy's comments. He wrote, "Leadership wants nothing in email so they maintain plausible deniability. It is obvious leadership is just looking for items to criticize me on so I stop identifying issues. I will conform!"

Shortly thereafter, he was forced out altogether. Managers who tried to bring him on their teams were told that no one was allowed to hire John Barnett. His name appeared on a secret internal memo entitled "Quality Managers to Fire." Meanwhile, the value of Boeing shares had tripled.

After Boeing's 737 Maxes started falling out of the sky, Swampy's painstaking documentation of the flaws in the 787's production took on a new urgency. A program of random inspections of 787s found major defects in all of them ("Boeing Looked for Flaws in Its Dreamliner and Couldn’t Stop Finding Them" –WSJ). An Aviation Week diagram of problem spots with the 787 marked red arrows over "every single section, from the tip of the nose to the horizontal stabilizers":

https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/new-boeing-787-fix-details-reveal-extent-gap-check-challenge

Boeing's war on "brilliance" did its work: after everyone who understood how to make a safe aircraft was forced out of the company, financialized CEOs were able to cut corners on safety, triple the share-price, scoop up billions in government subsidies and bailouts, all without those pesky "phenomenally talented assholes" pointing out that they were going get (lots of) people killed.

Tkacik closes by saying that Swampy's former work colleagues refuse to believe he killed himself. A former executive told her "I don’t think one can be cynical enough when it comes to these guys…It’s a top-secret military contractor, remember; there are spies everywhere." I confess that I don't know what to make of that, but I'll say this: if Boeing killed Swampy, that's just one of hundreds of murders they committed. Whether or not Swampy's death was their fault, the deaths of everyone who went down on the 737 Maxes that crashed is on their hands.

That's what "profits before people" means, after all: sacrificing human lives to make yourself richer. It's the foundational tenet of the conservative movement, though that impulse is often checked by other factors, like human decency. It's only when sociopaths get a sustained run at leadership that you see what they really want.

Which brings me to the UK, which has been governed by the Conservative Party for 14 years. The Tories are tipped to get destroyed in the next election, and a long article in the New Yorker by Sam Knight catalogs the many ways in which Tory rule has devastated the UK:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

The thing is, after 14 years, it's impossible for the Tories to blame anyone else for the state of the UK. With strong Parliamentary majorities, Conservatives were able to govern as they pleased – the only compromises they made were between their own internal factions. The ideological commitment to making the rich richer, privatizing everything, subordinating governance to market forces – that's all them.

It's all them: the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars, on them. The catastrophic traffic, housing, jobs market, and precarity, on them. Plummeting health, on them. The austerity, on them. The withering of the country's courts and prisons and police, its wilderness, its programs for young people and pensioners, its public health, its diplomatic corps, its road maintenance – on them.

A country where the police can't afford to prosecute burglaries – on them (4% of burglaries are prosecuted). The 2.5 year delay between a rape arrest and its trial? On them. Mass closures of schools that are literally crumbling? On them.

43% of the countries courts have closed. On them. Cuts to prison funding, coupled with longer sentences? On them.

And of course, Brexit – on them. Every part of it. The referendum. The referendum question. The failure to negotiate a deal with the EU. All on them. The collapse in British living standards, all on them. The fact that the 20% richest households in the UK have been untouched by all this? Also on them. But you might not notice it in London, where people earn an average of 400% more than people in Nottingham.

The only growth sector outside of London are the Citizens Advice Bureaux, whose client rosters are growing even as their funding is cut. Where the CAB once primarily catered to people who couldn't make ends meet due to disability, unemployment and other reliable predictors of economic distress, today, CAB advisors are seeing homeowners, people working two jobs. Desperation is "like a black hole, dragging more and more people in,"

More Conservative growth: Tories presided over a doubling in the rate of NHS antidepressant prescriptions, and a 20% rise in long-term health conditions. No wonder Tory Britain had the world's worst pandemic outcomes for a wealthy nation – that's on them, too.

Knight's article closes with a Tory MP who believes that "the key thing for the Conservatives now is to be more conservative…Toryism must have its day again."

We can't count on oligarchs to rescue us from oligarchy – not even when oligarchy's failures push society to the breaking point. There's always a rationalization explaining why we just had to lean harder into oligarchy.

You hear echoes of this in the pro-monopoly choir, whose squeals of outrage at the rise of a new anti-monopoly movement grow louder even as monopolism's failures grow clearer. One of the more tangible expressions of monopoly's failures is the Ticketmaster/Livenation octopus, which controls the entire live music industry – key venues, promotions, and ticketing. Ticketmaster fucks over music fans, but it also cheats famous musicians, the kinds of people with big microphones, so we know a lot about how bad it is:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/20/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-will-eventually-stop/

Of course, the fact that Swifties hate Ticketmaster lets the pro-monopolists dismiss critics as foolish young girls, not Very Serious People Who Understand Economics and thus can see that Ticketmaster's monopoly is Good, Actually.

Last week, Congressman Bill Pascrell dumped a ton of litigation documents related to Ticketmaster's sleaze, and Matt Stoller broke them down:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/explosive-new-documents-unearthed

The docs reveal how Ticketmaster's system of (formerly) secret kickbacks let it choke out any competitor, so that it could charge fans more and pay artists less. The mechanics of the scam are beautifully laid out in Stoller's post – as is the many ways in which it violated both the law and Ticketmaster's numerous consent decrees arising from its previous lawbreaking.

This kind of scam breakdown is essential. It's easy to think that we, as mere normies, can't hope to understand the machinations of the corporations that prey on us. But once you pierce the veil of performative complexity, what's left behind is a set of crude tricks and transparent ruses.

Here's one of those transparent ruses: Discord's terms of service require Discord users to actively opt out of its "binding arbitration" system. Binding arbitration is when you sign a contract saying you can't sue the company no matter how much it harms you – instead, you promise to have your disputes heard by an "arbitrator" (a fake judge paid by the company that screwed you). Unsurprisingly, these fake judges are awfully tolerant of their employers' crimes.

Discord says that once you click through its garbage legalese novella, you have just a few days to opt out of this binding arbitration clause – if you happen to miss that fine print, you have "consented" to giving up your legal rights.

But every time Discord changes its ToS, the clock for opting out starts ticking again, and Discord has just changed (that is, worsened) its ToS again:

https://discord.com/terms

That means that if you send an email right now to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com with "I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord" in the body, you can escape this consent theater:

https://mamot.fr/@trishalynn@mastodon.sandwich.net/112175832989845038

Consent theater is a particularly galling corporate ruse – the idea that we chose to allow them to abuse us. Consent theater gets more outrageous by the day. Take Soofa, who operate streetside digital kiosks that identify you by grabbing your phone's unique wifi and Bluetooth identifiers:

https://gizmodo.com/digital-kiosks-snatch-your-phones-data-when-you-walk-by-1851368948

Soofa sells this data to advertisers – claiming that by walking down a public street, you "consented" to being tracked and sold.

The only reason this flies is that the US hasn't passed a federal consumer privacy law since 1988's Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video-store clerks from telling people which VHS cassettes you took home. Congress keeps on failing to pass a privacy law, despite garbage companies like Soofa.

But that hasn't stopped the administrative agencies from acting to defend your privacy! The FTC just dropped its latest Privacy and Data Security Update, a greatest hits list of the actions the Commission took while Congress failed:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2024.03.21-PrivacyandDataSecurityUpdate-508.pdf

One of the best things about the current administration is the number of extremely competent regulators who know exactly how much power they have and aren't afraid to use it to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

The new FTC report, which details how the Commission's existing powers let it go after the commercial surveillance industry from smart doorbells to review fraud, from kids' programming to medical data, from lax security to data-breaches, is a bright spot in an otherwise grim week.

One more bright spot, then, before I wind up this linkdump. All week, I've been humming a half-remembered lyric, "come on baby/you're a link in this chain/put your hands together/and get free of the pain." For the life of me, I couldn't place it.

Last night, I searched for it (using Kagi, the post-Google search engine I've been paying for for the past month, and which I'm loving) and discovered that I had somehow completely forgotten a whole-ass band that I once loved: Toronto's Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, whom I saw live on many occasions.

The mystery lyric came from "Death is the Great Awakener," a fucking banger of a post-gospel track that I've been listening to on nonstop repeat as I wrote this. It's a hell of a tune and I'm intensely grateful to have it back in my life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6RUb63Tx3w

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/30/dewey-502/#rip-ross-anderson

Image: Waffleboy https://www.flickr.com/photos/waffleboy/28198395465/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[wolfliving]

"Fun Palaces," then and now

In 1961 Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price designed a Fun Palace building – a ‘laboratory of fun’. They imagined a building linked through technology to other spaces, accessible to those who wouldn’t normally go to arts venues or great centres of learning. Joan said, “I do really believe in the community. I really do believe in the genius in every person. And I’ve heard that greatness come out of them, that great thing which is in people.”

The original design said:

“Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what’s happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.”

Unfortunately that ideal space was never created, although there were a few incarnations of potential Fun Palaces, Joan’s Stratford Fair in 1975 among them. In 2013 we re-imagined Fun Palaces as a space that any of us could create, wherever we live – championing more equitable uses of the under-used buildings and spaces we already have and genuinely community-led. There’s a blog about how our version started here.

This first imagining was simply as a celebration of Joan’s centenary – what we didn’t know in 2013 was how many people would be excited by this idea and how many communities would take it on and make it their own, helping us grow it into a campaign for cultural democracy and the annual Weekend of Celebration it has become – local people sharing skills, creating tiny revolutions of connection.

Stanley Mathews has a great piece about the original Fun Palace design here.

Joan Littlewood, Theatre Director (1914-2002)

Joan was born in South London on 6 October 1914, she died in 2002. At eighteen she won a scholarship to RADA and, having left drama school early, she walked from London to (almost) Manchester to get away from the constraints of 1930s London theatre. In Manchester she met Ewan MacColl. They worked with actors and writers, making dynamic and provocative work. Following political activism during the Spanish Civil War and WW2, the company reformed as Theatre Workshop. In 1946, they were invited by Ruth Pennyman to live and work from Ormesby Hall, which they did for eighteen months. The company toured and worked together, developing the Laban-based movement work and ensemble that became their hallmark. At the end of 1952 the company decided to return to a settled base. MacColl chose to stay in the north, Theatre Workshop moved to Stratford.

The Theatre Royal Stratford East was a dilapidated palace of varieties when Littlewood and her partner Gerry Raffles took it over in January 1953. The company renovated the building and Joan’s great causes – community and political theatre, improvisation, the working class language, the inclusion of children – helped change the face of British theatre.

She had numerous hits, most notably Oh! What A Lovely War, Fings Ain’t What They Used To Be and A Taste of Honey. Her production of Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow brought Behan international acclaim. Joan worked with many artists at the start of their careers, people who later became household names including Barbara Windsor, Harry H Corbett, Lionel Bart, Victor Spinelli and Murray Melvin....

[wouldyoustilllovemeifiwasawyrm]

Get to know 9 people tag game

big thanks to @spices28 for tagging (and for the very nice things they said about my fic!)

Last song listened to: Low by Andrea Marie

Currently reading: Not really reading anything in particular? But here's my bookmarked series.

Letters to the Stars by osulity - Hetalia, America (non-ship) set in the American Revolution. Written by a friend of mine who used to rp with me way back in the day. We reconnected through a mutual beta and they asked if they could put my old OC into their fic. So this is my godchild-fic now.

Rouse Your Bold Heart by articifiallsatillite - Hetalia, AmeriPan, also AmRev, Kiku gets isekai'd into 1774. Shenanigans ensue.

The Promise by zeldaelmo - Legend of Zelda, Zelink, arranged marriage, elopement, Pride and Prejudice but make it Zelda and unhinged. 10/10.

Play with Me: A Musically Romantic Christmas Story by flutefemme - Legend of Zelda, Zelink, modern AU, Zelda is a pianist and works at the mall where Link is a music store cashier, they fall in love over an old piano in front of the store, very sweet

Sweet/spicy/savory: Spicy!

Current obsessions: My own fics, Stardew Valley, Linked Universe, my trash goblin Hetalia rp blogs

Relationship status: single and conflicted about it

Last thing I googled: Iron Bowl 2023 - I needed to know who won so I don't wear the wrong color to work next week

Currently working on: in order of activity 1) A Lullaby for a Princess, 2) Skyfaller, 3) The Body and the Blood (ATLA, not posted anywhere), 4) Washington's Southern Tour

Tagging my lovely friends in a variety of fandoms

@ferdamine, @akira-pink, @jdetan, @zeldastrife, @paperworkanddogs, @ourfairdominion, @torenchao, @zeldaelmo, @runecatwrites

[aphrogeneias]

i have always been a slightly more than casual fan of the Beatles but the past year or so i have been really getting into the Beatles but also i feel so like lost when I try to learn their history or lore i guess lol. i know you're a huge fan and was wondering if you had any suggestions of where to start?

all right, bucke up, babe. i have some lifelong knowledge to share with you.

if you haven't already watched the anthology series, that's where i'd recommend you to start. it's pretty comprehensive, there's a cohesive timeline from start to finish, and it's told by the beatles themselves (sans john, unfortunetely, for obvious reasons). i think you can easily find it through torrent, but there's some bits on youtube as well. another documentary that is pretty introductory is the compleat beatles from 1982, which you can watch for free here. there's also the more recent ones like eight days a week, which is about their touring years, and get back, but i believe you must have watched at least one of them by now (but if you haven't, you absolutely should).

oh, and their movies as well! and yes, even magical mystery tour. that's unskippable, i'm sorry. do it for the music clips.

there's also other more specific documentaries like mccartney 3, 2, 1 on hulu and living in the material world which is about george harrison's life and was directed by scorcese. i highly recommend both. there's also "the u.s. versus john lennon" which is a bit a controversial but a must watch in my opinion. same with movies like nowhere boy and two of us.

i also recommend doing a lot of reading. when i was younger i used to read a lot of rock magazines and that's where i got a lot of information about the bands i liked, but those aren't really a thing anymore, unless you look for them online. for example, rolling stone has a really good article about the beatles's break up from 2009 which you can read here, and it gives you some pretty good insight into that moment of their lives. if you want, you can search for more articles that are available online.

as for books, my absolute favorite book about the beatles is called "dreaming the beatles: the love story of one band and the whole world", by music journalist rob sheffield. it's a beautiful book and also a pretty chill read, i highly recommend it, i think it's gonna make you fall in love with them even more. the biography by bob spitz is considered to be the best, most complete one, so i'd recommend that one as well. "revolution in the head: the beatles records and the sixties" is also a favorite of mine.

there's also other books by people who were close to them, like geoff emerick who was their sound engineer, and mark lewisohn who wrote a ton of books on them, i recommend those as well, hunter davis too. there are a ton of books who go song by song and tell the story and recording bits of each of them, that can also be fun if you're more into the details of how their music was made.

the thing about the beatles is that given how huge they are, and how beloved they've been for decades, there's no shortage of content about them. you could search for fan content as well, there are plenty of podcasts out there that are made by huge beatles nerds with all kinds of lore you can find, there's blogs, there's independent publications. you really have to dig in, but there's a whole world of things beatles-related to find out there.

there might be stuff i'm missing out here because, honestly, my introduction to beatles lore was my grandfather telling me those stories when i was a kid, and then when i got more seriously into them when i was a little older i already a pretty solid base of basic knowledge, but i hope i could help somehow <3