#Uncanny Magazine 52

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #57 - The Rain Remembers What the Sky Forgets by Fran Wilde

Previous | Next You may well find a familiar template in Fran Wilde’s excellent short story for Uncanny Magazine #52. A harsh stepmother intent on sabotaging the adopted daughter of a recently deceased husband; the talented child who has spent considerable effort in realising a common dream with that father; and the dream itself, under threat of dissolution through the step-mother’s callous…

[fiftytwotwentythree]

Wellness Wednesday:

Making Core Memories

This entire week has been a countdown to some quality family time.

I've had effing blast and honestly didn't have single disappointment or setback.

Things went as plan - things were loose and chill. I may have lost a little sleep but it was well worth it.

Oh, and... I broke the plateau and finally surpassed 80 pound mark - just the cherry on top for the this entire week.

.

.

31st CHECK-IN:

Current Goals:

Lose 52 lbs

Completed as of 4/12/2023

New Goal: Maintain or Continue on The Weight Loss Path

Avoid "Junk Food"

Minimize Take-Out / Fast Food Consumption

Short Term:

Vegetarian-ish Diet: Completed

End Date: 4/09/2023 - 46 Days Total

.

.

Stats from July:

Food:

Oranges: 34

Salads: 28

"Bags" of Popcorn: 26

Leftover Meals: 16

Cans of Soup: 3

Take Out: 0

Candy/Sweets: 0

Workout:

Jumping Jacks: 6,200

Push-Ups: 3,100

Glute Bridges: 3,100

Assisted Push-Ups: 3,100

Reverse Leg Lifts: 1,550

Leg Kickbacks: 1,450

Sit-Ups: 1,500

Plank (mins): 80

Squats: 0

Weight Loss:

Weightloss This Month: -3.6 lbs

Average Weightloss per Week: -0.9 lbs

Total Weightloss: -80.8 lbs

Entertainment:

Movies Watched: 19

Favorite from the Month:

Barbie

Hours of Television Watched: ~ 17 hours

( Crime Scene Kitchen, The Bear, The Righteous Gemstones, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Adam Eats the 80's)

Reading

Books:

Books Completed This Month: 0

Book Title(s) Completed This Month: -n/a-

Book Total for the Year: 2

Comics:

Comics Completed: 2

Trades Completed: 15

Comic/Trade Titles Completed:

Flashpoint

The Last Ronin

Doom Patrol (2016-2018) Vol 1: Brick by Brick

Chew Vol 1: Taster's Choice

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 2: Squirrel You Know It's True (2015)

Rick and Morty Vol 1

Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe

Fantastic Four (1961) Issue #1

Incredible Hulk (1962) Issue #2

Paper Girls Vol 1

Bitch Planet Vol1: Extraordinary Machine

Umbrella Academy Vol 2: Dallas

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Vol 1

All-Star Superman

Batman '89 (2021)

All New X-Men Vol 1: Yesterday's X-Men

X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga The Complete Collection (Uncanny X-Men (1963-2011))

Favorite Comic/Trade Read:

The Last Ronin

Magazine(s):

Magazine(s) Completed: 0

.

.

Meal Tracker:

THURSDAY

Lunch:

Bowl of Progresso Tomato Basil Soup

- 10 Crackers

(1) Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Snack:

Serving of Blue Diamond Almonds

Bag of Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Popcorn

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Supper:

Large Plate of Dirty Rice mixed with Dice Hashbrowns & Peppers

- Wild Rice

- Italian Sausage

- Onions

- Celery

- Carrots

- Kidney Beans

- Steak Seasoning

- Cumin

- Chicken Broth

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

FRIDAY

Lunch:

Large Leftover Plate of Dirty Rice

(2) Servings of Blue Diamond Almonds

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Supper:

Large Leftover Plate of Dirty Rice

- Fried Egg

- Diced Hasbrowns with Peppers

Burrito

- Dirty Rice

- Diced Hasbrowns with Peppers

- (Runny) Fried Egg

- Roasted Red Salsa

- Sour Cream

- Cholula Hot Sauce

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

SATURDAY

Lunch:

StarKist Ranch Flavored Tuna on a Croissant with (2) Slices of Pepperjack Cheese

Great Value Teriyaki Tuna & Rice Bowl

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

Bag of Smartfood's White Cheddar Popcorn

Bag of Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Popcorn

Supper:

Large Plate of Spaghetti

- Parmesan Cheese

(3) Scoops of Cottage Cheese

(6) Scoops of Green Beans

(2) Garlic Parmesan Rolls

(2) Glasses of Chocolate Milk

SUNDAY

Lunch:

Bowl of Cesaer Salad with Croutons

(2) Scoops of Cottage Cheese

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

Serving of Blue Diamond Almonds

Bag of BBQ Corn Nuts

Individual Bag of Wonderful's Shelled Sweet Chili Pistachios

Bag of Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Popcorn

Supper:

Bowl of Leftover Cesaer Salad with Croutons

(2) Scoops of Cottage Cheese

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

(2) Small Oranges

MONDAY

Lunch:

Cobb Salad

Snack:

Serving of Blue Diamond Almonds

Supper:

Santa Fe Style Salad

(2) Small Oranges

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

TUESDAY

Lunch:

Chef Salad

Serving of Blue Diamond Almonds

Supper:

Spinach Dijon Salad

(2) Oranges

WEDNESDAY

Lunch:

(4oz) Bag of Sahale Snacks Pomegranate Vanilla Flavored Cashews Glazed Mix

(4oz) Bag of Sahale Snacks Pomegranate Flavored Pistachios Glazed Mix

Supper:

(4) Oven Baked Ham, Pastrami, Corn Beef, and Pepperjack Cheese Sliders

(2) Small Oranges

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

.

.

Workouts:

THURSDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

FRIDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

SATURDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

SUNDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

MONDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

TUESDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [5 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 set of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

WEDNESDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges[4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 Sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

.

.

WEIGHT TRACKER:

Starting Weight (Noon, 1/01/2023): XXX.X lbs

Weight at Last Check-In, 7/26/2023: -0.4 lbs

Weight As of Noon, 8/02/2023: -2.4 lbs

Total Weight Loss: -80.8 lbs

.

.

Closing Thoughts:

The Good:

Had a blast hanging with family.

Saw a great movie.

Got play some old and new, but all fun video games.

Broke 80 pounds.

The Bad:

If I had to make a complaint... I couldn't. This week was very chill.

The Ugly:

Nada.

[mypearchive]

(Above:  Ettinger and Ruffalo after a performance of Awake and Sing! in 2006).

Mark Ruffalo and Philip Ettinger on Playing Four Versions of the Same Two Characters in I Know This Much Is True

By Mark Ruffalo for “Interview” magazine

May 19, 2020

What do we want from entertainment when the outside world feels so bleak? Are we in search of a balm, or more salt to pour on our wounds? For Mark Ruffalo and Philip Ettinger, the answer leans toward the latter, which makes their new HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True perfectly tuned to the moment. Ruffalo stars in the writer and director Derek Cianfrance’s six-part adaptation of Wally Lamb’s 1998 novel, playing Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, identical twin brothers who couldn’t be more different. In the show’s first episode, Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, severs his own hand in a public library as a sacrifice to god, and the story refuses to let up from there, skipping back and forth in time as it digs into the traumas that have left these brothers so broken. Ettinger, a 34-year-old actor who mined similarly grim territory as a radical environmentalist in 2017’s First Reformed, plays college-age versions of the Birdsey twins, which meant he not only had two play two characters, but also sync his performances to match Ruffalo’s, an actor he grew up idolizing. Here, Ruffalo and Ettinger connected a day after the show’s premiere to discuss why challenging art is better suited to challenging times, and the cathartic experience of bringing this dark story to light. —BEN BARNA

———

PHILIP ETTINGER: How are you doing?

MARK RUFFALO: I’m doing okay, man. I’m feeling really fucking raw today and vulnerable, like I went on a bender and peed on my girlfriend’s parents’ coffee table, thinking that I was having a great time. And then I’m waking up the next morning just saying to myself, “Oh, fuck. What have I done?”

ETTINGER: [Laughs] I re-watched the premiere last night, and it’s much easier to see it a second time. I couldn’t even process it the first time I watched it.

RUFFALO: How did you nail me as Dominick? It’s uncanny to see someone doing a version of me—and doing it so well.

ETTINGER: That means a lot coming from you. I told you this before, but I wrote you a letter when I was doing This Is Our Youth in acting school because you’ve always been an actor that I’ve looked up to [Ruffalo starred in the Kenneth Lonergan play when it premiered off-Broadway in 1996]. I connected to you more than any actor, the way that you led with vulnerability and an open heart. When this audition came up, to play a younger you, it felt like the universe was handing me something. I watched every interview you’ve ever done, and before every night of shooting, I watched your scenes from You Can Count On Me, because I tried to use that as a template for my version of Dominick.

RUFFALO: I think that Dominick is kind of the 52-year-old version of Terry [Ruffalo’s character in You Can Count On Me], in a weird way.

ETTINGER: That’s so interesting. You’ve gone on to have such an expansive career, and you’re just coming off of the Avengers movies. Does this feel like you’re coming back home in a way?

RUFFALO: Kind of, yeah, because it’s about family, it’s working class, it’s in a small town. It’s real people dealing with real problems in really human ways, and it’s a guy who’s very tough, but there’s something beautiful and sensitive about him. It’s the kind of material I was doing before I did Avengers. It’s probably what I relate to the most. Will it be as popular? Probably not. But as an actor, it’s very meaningful to me. You were shooting Thomas before I did, and you really showed me so much of that character. I don’t know if you could see it, but I was pulling directly from you. And then we had that amazing walk with each other when we met that night, and talked about these two guys and tried to integrate our performances. That was really special. Not many actors would be willing to do that, and I really appreciate you opening yourself up and being vulnerable and the give-and-take that we shared in that 40-block walk.

ETTINGER: I think it happened right before I was about to start shooting, and I was totally shitting-my-pants nervous. Like you said, I was playing Thomas first, and I wanted to make my own choices and follow my instinct. But I’m in support of you, and I wanted to be in service of your performance. That night you opened your heart to me, and it’s a thing I’ll never forget. We were just walking the city streets finding it together. And I didn’t even know this, but one day before I’d play Dominick, I’d do pushups. And then then I found out that you did pushups before—

RUFFALO: Every take.

ETTINGER: The energy was so special on that set. Derek [Cianfrance] sets up a playground where you feel like you’re one organism trying to tell a story. Things would happen that were way past intellectual choices. I’m not a good impressionist, I can’t try to copy you. I just trusted that the energy would work itself out.

RUFFALO: Did you prefer playing one character more than the other?

ETTINGER: With Dominick I would get so angry and frustrated, and then I’d go to my trailer and change into Thomas, and I got to be as present and open and empathetic as possible. So it felt freeing. There’s something about Thomas, he just tells the truth, and sees with a certain type of clarity that’s not fogged up by other things. How about you?

RUFFALO: You had it much more difficult than me because you were doing both characters on the same day. How beautiful and delineated those two performances are is mindblowing. But I had a similar experience. Dominick, like you said, has this armor, he has to project strength, and he uses violence as the final way to resolve an issue, whether it’s emotional or physical. When I started to play Thomas, Derek was like, “Let your stomach go.” And I was like, “What?” And he’s like, “Let your stomach go, man. Stop holding in your stomach!” And I was like, “I’m not holding in my stomach!” And I realized I’ve been holding my stomach in my whole life as a show of masculinity, that I have this strong core, that if someone just came up and punched me in the stomach, I’d be able to take the punch. I’ve spent my whole life on-the-ready in that way. And Thomas is so soft in the stomach. He shows his belly, that softness, that vulnerability. He has a kind of freedom about who he is. I mean, the guy cuts his fucking hand off. We shot that scene on September 11, and when I came in and sat down in the coffee shop, we all took a moment of silence. In the moment of silence, I started praying, spontaneously, just like Thomas started talking, and he was praying for America. And I started to realize that if we had listened to Thomas, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The world would be a different place. The Iraq war would have never happened. We probably wouldn’t have had a second term of Bush. We wouldn’t have had the division in the country that has led to Trump. It’s just so funny that that character who we all write off as crazy, or who we’re afraid of, was so prescient to know what was right.

ETTINGER: What is normal? We’ve created a whole society of structure and time and these jobs we have to do, and that is what makes us important. Yes, there’s a part of Thomas that can flip into extreme paranoia, but I made the decision that it stems from an impulse of ultimate truth. Like you said, he’s right on his impulse. He might take it too far, but there’s a part of him that is way more truthful and way more knowing than almost everyone else around him.

RUFFALO: Did you read the book?

ETTINGER: I read half of the book while I was reading the scripts, and then I put it aside. I’ve saved the other half of the book until this all passes so I can have my own moment with it.

RUFFALO: I totally understand the impulse of wanting to find it on your own. What was working with Derek like?

ETTINGER: When I met with you in the diner, the one thing you said to me was, “Don’t worry, he doesn’t move on until he has what he’s looking for.” I love how Derek is constantly chasing lightning in a bottle, and the ultimate truth. And you think you have it one way, and then he just pushes you into a whole different thing so far beyond anything that I can intellectually think about. It’s the greatest.

RUFFALO: It’s so satisfying and so scary.

ETTINGER: He has such a fine-tuned impulse for watching actors and then pushing them in the right direction. You’ve just got to be game.

RUFFALO: Do you think the material is too heavy for this moment?

ETTINGER: I was wondering how people would take this story during the time that we’re in, but I’ve mostly been watching stuff that has a lot of heart and has a lot of pain and has people struggling to survive. I think everyone has felt pain on many different levels, and I’ve always felt a sense of comfort and a sense of being less alone when I watch truthful stories that deal with real-life shit. I’m at a point in my life where I’m trying to be honest with my own traumas and pain, and it’s interesting how the projects that I’ve done lately have been more of an internal dive into some difficult stuff.

RUFFALO: Everyone wants to be hysterical right now, to just laugh themselves off the fucking cliff, but what I see is a world that’s full of a lot of pain and suffering and loss. And to tell the truth about that in art is a cathartic act, a reminder of who we are as human beings in a moment when I feel like this world we’re living in now is post-human, where the technology is actually leaving mankind behind. The digital image is so packed full of information that our eyes can’t even see all of the information that it’s recording. We can’t keep up with it, and we’re living in our shallow social media selves that are only projected versions of ourselves, but not real or human in any way. So find something that really tells the truth about the human experience, about loss, about love, about connection, about responsibility to each other, about fighting for something—all those things are a good reminder of what it is to be a human being in a time that’s so dehumanizing.

ETTINGER: I feel like such an important part of the struggle of just living is to feel connected to each other, to understand that we aren’t alone.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Archiving this interview in full, in case the link to the magazine that I posted earlier, expires sometime in the future.

[missionled]

How does he personally feel about people exhibiting signs of finding him to be attractive or desirable? And how does he deal with flirting!   //—   @martyrrmade​​

          it's discussed in one of the magazines in the game ( see here ) that the original cyberlife ' had perfect faces, perfect expression, and we soon realized that there was something disturbing about them that made people feel uncomfortable. '   in other words, the uncanny valley.   the magazine then talks about the immense effort that goes into ' humanizing ' an android's outward appearance, including the analysis of what is most pleasing in a voice.   it doesn't mention this but i presume that they also analyzed the aesthetic nature of both the human face and body.   have to make the androids hot, y'know.

the rk800 line was not exempt from this. even as a prototype series, connor possesses an appearance unique to him that many would consider attractive or at the very least——cute.   connor's design was a specific attempt at balancing function and aesthetic.   as explained to hank, his unassuming and mild appearance was intended to aid him in integrating with humans.   unfortunately, there are clearly some drawbacks with this, as his ' goofy ' voice and face can sometimes make it hard for people to take him seriously.   on the other hand, this makes it easier to underestimate him—or for him to manipulate people.

as an investigative android, -52 possesses sophisticated modules dedicated to psychology and analyzing social behaviour.   although it may not be perfect, -52 is able to detect flirtatious behaviour.   in fact, he becomes rather adept at doing so after the eden club incident.   as a machine, his understanding that his appearance has an effect on people opens up a realm of opportunities for him.   although he by default has NO CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING of what is ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’ and is thus entirely resistant to these distractions, he is more than capable of making puppy eyes or otherwise playing his cards to his advantage.   another notable example includes his ability to further draw in sympathy or favour by purposefully behaving like a deviant ( examples seen here and here ).   as a machine, connor has no shame for it.   as a deviant, he’s not much better if there is a true need to get his way, but in general, as someone who prefers to stick to himself, he will opt for deflecting someone’s advances or choosing to outright pretend he doesn’t understand.   regardless, persistence will make connor uncomfortable—especially if the person is intruding in his personal bubble—and if the person doesn’t get the hint, he will eventually draw the line.

as a final note and way of linking things back to cyberlife, i headcanon that cyberlife androids do in fact serve as the megacorporation’s eyes and ears ( see this magazine ), mining data for marketing and other perhaps nefarious purposes.   as a cyberlife product, -52 will occasionally provide cyberlife with information regarding his interactions with humans, which includes the way they react to him.   this here is a good example. 

[bountyofbeads]

The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: Latest Updates https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/us/politics/trump-impeachment.html

Dear Pres. @realDonaldTrump this is a #Lynching you have NOT been lynched.

THREAD: "They treated it as a social event. They even made postcards out of murders like this. Look at the smiles and the pointing..." /1

CREDIT: Tiffany Cross @TiffanyDCross

https://t.co/5oQXGwn3OY

"Yes. They lynched women too. And children." /2

https://t.co/vUohSihuOb

"I have living relatives who recall clearly the era of violent white rule." /3 https://t.co/VmvuiF8yjp

"I have living relatives who recall clearly the era of violent white rule." /4 https://t.co/VmvuiF8yjp

"So pardon our rage. Our tears. Our fears. Our angst. When it comes to a white supremacist in the White House (AGAIN) who wants this country to be great “again.” I can’t extend politeness & dignity to those who ride w/ #MAGA. I can’t extend love to those who ride with oppressors." /5 https://t.co/kinUb1BBr9

"The President of the United States comparing an impeachment inquiry to a #lynching is not a “distraction.” It is a reflection of the very real trajectory of our nation and the very repugnant evil of racism, which still permeates both legislation and language in the United States."CREDIT:Be A King @BerniceKing

"A lynching! A lynching? I’m thinking about the lies, the kidnapping, the rope, the torture, the cheering crowd, the death portrait, the people walking away with body parts of my ancestor."

"THAT IS WITNESSING A #LYNCHING."

" The audacity of this White male supremacist." CREDIT: Ibram X. Kendi @DrIbram

Trump Calls Impeachment Inquiry a ‘Lynching’

President Trump described the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into him a “lynching” and said it was “without due process or fairness or any legal rights.”

By Eileen Sullivan | Published October 22, 2019 Updated 11:01 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 22, 2019 |

President Trump on Tuesday called the impeachment inquiry into him a “lynching,” using a term associated with the murders of black people to describe a process enshrined in the Constitution.

In an early morning tweet, he added that the impeachment inquiry is “without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” and he encouraged Republicans to remember this in the future.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here - a lynching. But we will WIN!

63.8K

7:52 AM - Oct 22, 2019

The term lynching invokes the decades-long racist history of white mob murders of black people beginning in the late 1800s through 1968, according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

It was a remarkable term for the president to use to describe a legal process laid out in the Constitution.

Mr. Trump’s Twitter outburst comes as pressure builds with the stream of testimony from current and former administration officials about his efforts to use the power of the White House for personal gain.

The president regularly uses his Twitter feed to make hyperbolic declarations, but he has not used the term “lynching” in a tweet since 2015, during the Republican primary campaign. The president’s use of the word Tuesday drew immediate criticism.

“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you,” Representative Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois and a former Black Panther leader, said in a Twitter post.

“I know the history of that word,” Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the House majority whip, said on CNN Tuesday. “That is a word that we ought to be very, very careful about.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and an ally of Mr. Trump on most topics, defended the word choice. “This is a lynching in every sense,” Mr. Graham told reporters on Tuesday.

While Mr. Trump’s use of the word was striking, it was not the first time the word had been used to describe impeachment proceedings.

In 1973, during the Watergate scandal, one of President Richard M. Nixon’s most ardent defenders, Rabbi Baruch Korff, argued that the Senate Watergate committee had a “lynch-mob mentality.” Mr. Korff led a committee of Nixon supporters and invited them in 1974 to a rally “to challenge the lynching psychosis that is permeating the United States Congress.”

“Some conservatives insist on calling the impeachment campaign against Nixon a ‘lynching’ even to this day,” Kevin M. Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University, said Tuesday on Twitter. He pointed to a recent piece published in August on the conservative website, American Spectator, about “new evidence on the lynching of Richard Nixon.”

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

*********

When James Baldwin Squared Off Against William F. Buckley Jr.

By Thomas Meaney | Published October 18, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 22, 2019 |

THE FIRE IS UPON US

James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America

By Nicholas Buccola

In 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and the Watts riots, an ancillary skirmish played out across the Atlantic. James Baldwin, then at the height of his international reputation, faced off against William F. Buckley Jr., the “keeper of the tablets” of American conservatism, in the genteel confines of the Cambridge Union. The proposition before the house was: “The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” For Baldwin, who would roll his eyes more than once during the debate, the question indicated glaring ignorance. The American dream was a nightmare from which he was trying to wake. For Buckley, the American dream was a giant bootstrap that American blacks refused to employ. “We will fight … on the beaches and on the hills, and on mountains and on landing grounds,” he told the audience of students that evening, channeling Winston Churchill. Only Buckley invoked the imagery of plucky guerrilla resistance not against a Nazi invasion of the British Isles, but against Northern radicals bent on uprooting the Southern way of life.

Nicholas Buccola’s “The Fire Is Upon Us” is both a dual biography of Buckley and Baldwin and an acute commentary on a great intellectual prizefight. Baldwin and Buckley were, to put it mildly, from opposite sides of the tracks. Buckley was the son of an oil speculator who grew up in a Connecticut mansion stocked with tutors and servants. He honed his debating skills at the family dinner table and at Yale, where he was triggered by the presence of secular, left-leaning faculty members on campus, and later, in “God and Man at Yale,” called for a ban on hiring them.

Lack of godliness was less of a problem in Harlem. James Baldwin learned how to lock and load the English language as a child prodigy storefront preacher. Buckley’s postcollege trajectory included a stint in the C.I.A., while Baldwin’s extra-literary activities earned him a thick F.B.I. file. By the early 1960s, Buckley had gathered disparate right-wing tribes together in his magazine, National Review. Baldwin, despite his growing renown, would remain more of a loner. By the time he reached the Cambridge Union, he was already at odds with both the separatist agenda of the Nation of Islam and the arid progressivism of the Johnson White House.

Enshrined on YouTube and in countless documentaries, the Baldwin-Buckley debate remains an uncanny exchange. The grainy black-and-white BBC footage shows an overpacked Cambridge Union, with a sea of mostly young white men in jackets. The way Baldwin swings his body and thrusts his hands in his pockets and barely refers to his prepared notes makes him seem much closer to our moment than to the one that surrounds him. When he finally stands up after the two brittle speeches on either side of the motion by Cambridge undergraduates, he twists his eyes to the upper gallery where his sister Gloria was seated. Slowly, then quickly, he makes the alien hall his own.

Buccola, a professor of political science at Linfield College, deftly guides the reader through the rhetorical and philosophical moves of Baldwin’s speech. Baldwin adopted the tone of a preacher — “a kind of Jeremiah,” as he put it — who wants to readjust his audience’s “system of reality.” He tries to get them to imagine the black American experience from the inside. “It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians — when you were rooting for Gary Cooper — that the Indians were you.” Did the American dream come at the expense of the American Negro? For Baldwin, the obtuseness of the question demanded a pronoun switch: “I am stating this very seriously, and this is not an overstatement, I picked the cotton, and I carried it to market, and I built the railroads, under someone else’s whip, for nothing. For nothing.”

“The Fire Is Upon Us” becomes revelatory in its interpretation of Buckley’s performance. We learn, for instance, that the Cambridge students had first tried to get Strom Thurmond or Barry Goldwater to debate Baldwin, only later settling on Buckley, who seems to have been eager for the publicity. We also learn that Buckley’s speech that evening was based on an article he had commissioned for National Review by Garry Wills. Wills, a young Catholic ultra, who would later break with Buckley over racial questions and become an indispensable interpreter of the American scene, drafted a fierce response to Baldwin’s famous New Yorker essay, “Letter From a Region in My Mind.” Part of the trouble with Baldwin for Wills was that he was treated as a savior by his white liberal readership and not afforded the dignity of scrutiny that he would have received if he were white. Wills believed that Baldwin went too far in his condemnation of the West. “When a Dachau happens,” Wills wrote, “are we — as Baldwin suggests — to tear up all the Bibles, disband the police forces, take crowbars to the court buildings and the libraries?” This was a selective reading of Baldwin, who, as his Cambridge speech makes clear, was if anything more committed to upholding the legacy of the Enlightenment than National Review’s editorial board was. But what would come to gall Wills even more than Baldwin was that his boss Buckley not only lifted from his piece (before it was published) for one of his own columns but also distorted Wills’s honest reckoning with Baldwin in the interest of his own, more facile and racialist prong of attack.

Buccola shows how Buckley in his Cambridge speech was developing a new kind of conservative maneuver. In his war on the New Left, Buckley’s method — both on his television show “Firing Line” and in other public appearances — was less to engage than to expose. (The method backfired on occasion, as when Huey Newton, a founder of the Black Panther Party, began a segment of “Firing Line” by out-Buckley-ing Buckley with a loyalty oath question: “During the Revolution of 1776 … which side would you have been on?”) Charm, wit, eye-twinkling and rapid deployment of stray factoids were among Buckley’s chief rhetorical assets. His main form of reasoning consisted of forced analogies. The Freedom Riders were compared to National Socialists in the pages of National Review.

In the Cambridge speech, Buckley dialed the comparison down, comparing the Irish in England to American blacks. Had the Irish gotten the vote because of, or in spite of, English civilization? Buckley asked. “The engines of concern are working in the United States,” he assured his audience. “The presence of Mr. Baldwin here tonight is in part a reflection of that concern.” The full force of Buckley’s argument was that blacks should aspire to the condition of whiteness, however unattainable that might turn out to be. The suffering and humiliations of blacks were real, he conceded, but this was more a testament to the fallen state of man than something that could be corrected swiftly. “I am asking you not to make politics as the crow flies,” Buckley told his audience, quoting the philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Buckley’s stress on the gradualness of any accommodation told Baldwin all he needed to know: Why, after 400 years of being in America, did blacks not have access to the same bounty as their fellow Americans, including those who, like the Kennedys, “only got here yesterday?”

Baldwin’s views of race relations seesawed considerably in the ’60s, from a kind of cosmic resignation that, in the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates, “perhaps struggle is all we have.” But on that February night in Cambridge, Baldwin envisioned a different endgame. “We are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other,” he told his audience. He suggested it might be possible to create a new political synthesis if white Americans were prepared to recognize what they had done, both to blacks but also, crucially, to themselves. Alongside his more apocalyptic visions, Baldwin harbored a wary utopian presentiment that Buckley believed ignored man’s true nature and endangered America’s delicate hierarchies.

It is tempting to view the Baldwin-Buckley debate as a small victory for the idea of racial equality: Baldwin carried the floor vote 544 to 164. But part of the wisdom of “The Fire Is Upon Us” is that it leaves the import of the evening open to question. The debate, and his subsequent encounters with Buckley, left Baldwin with a bitter taste: “He’s the intellectuals’ James Bond,” he once said.

Buckley believed he had gained much more from their night in Cambridge: “the most satisfying debate I ever had.” He would lose again, badly, later that year when he ran for mayor of New York. Curiously, his main support came not from the WASP establishment of Manhattan but from white voters in the outer boroughs. Buckley’s knack for historical analogies continues to flourish. The money manager Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama administration proposal to raise taxes on hedge funds to the Nazi invasion of Poland. After the last presidential election, Buckley’s son, Christopher, took to Vanity Fair to argue that his father’s politics had nothing to do with those of the outer-borough vulgarian who had landed in the White House. It would have been more becoming had he simply tipped his hat to one of the shrewder authors of our predicament.

Thomas Meaney is a fellow at the Max Planck Society in Göttingen, Germany.

THE FIRE IS UPON US

James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America

By Nicholas Buccola

Illustrated. 482 pp. Princeton University Press. $29.95.

*********

$27 Million for Reparations Over Slave Ties Pledged by Seminary

The Princeton Theological Seminary said it was committed to “telling the truth” about its ties to slavery. Black students don’t think it goes far enough.

By Ed Shanahan | Published October 21, 2019 Updated October 22, 2019, 10:28 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 22, 2019 |

A New Jersey seminary has pledged to spend $27 million on scholarships and other initiatives to address its historical ties to slavery, in what appears to be the biggest effort of its kind.

The announcement, by the Princeton Theological Seminary on Friday, came about a year after an internal report detailed the findings of a two-year investigation that showed slavery’s deep roots in the school’s past.

The move put the seminary at the heart of a national discussion about what those who reaped the benefits of slavery — and the United States as a whole — owe to the descendants of slaves.

In a sign of that discussion’s complicated nature, Nicholas Young, the leader of a black student group at the seminary, said that the steps outlined by officials amounted to “a good start” but that they fell short of what the group had sought. About 10 percent of the seminary’s 360 students are black.

Mr. Young, the president of the Association of Black Seminarians, criticized the $27 million figure as being well below what the seminary’s own accounting indicated should be set aside from its $1 billion endowment to cover reparations-related costs.

Beyond that, Mr. Young said, the seminary needed to do more to address how faculty and other leaders had “used theology to justify the institution of slavery.”

Founded in 1812, the seminary, which is independent of Princeton University, benefited from the slave economy through investments in Southern banks and by having donors who profited from slavery, the 2018 report said. Founding members of the faculty and other seminary leaders used slave labor and promoted the idea of sending freed slaves to Africa, the report said.

Money given by slaveholders and the interest it generated accounted for 15 percent of the seminary’s revenue before the Civil War, the report said. If donors whose wealth was at least partly derived from slavery were factored in, as much as 30 to 40 percent of the seminary’s pre-Civil War revenue could be linked to slavery, the report said.

“The seminary’s ties to slavery are a part of our story,” M. Craig Barnes, the seminary’s president, said in a statement. “It is important to acknowledge that our founders were entangled with slavery and could not envision a fully integrated society. We are committed to telling the truth.”

Last month, the Virginia Theological Seminary, which was built with slave labor and whose founders included slave owners, became among the first American institutions to earmark money specifically for the descendants of the slaves, pledging $1.7 million for a reparations fund.

Last year, the Catholic sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart created a reparations fund to finance scholarships for African-Americans in Grand Coteau, La., where the nuns once owned about 150 black people.

In April, students at Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, voted to create a fund, financed by student fees, to benefit the descendants of 272 people sold in 1838 to help keep the college afloat. (Georgetown’s board of trustees has not approved the plan.)

The issue of slave reparations has also gained political traction among Democrats this year, with Congress holding a hearing on the subject and considering a commission. Several presidential candidates have also expressed support for the idea.

The reckoning over slavery’s role at theological institutions and universities with religious ties, like Georgetown, is particularly significant, said the Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, the dean of the Howard University School of Divinity.

Dr. Pierce, who taught at the Princeton seminary for 10 years before leaving in 2017, commended the seminary, but said it and similar institutions had an obligation to address the kind of existential questions that money could not.

“What is the debt owed by the places that created and developed the theology that justified enslavement?” she said. Seminaries and institutions with religious ties, she said, needed to consider “how do we change the classes, how do we change the curriculum, how do change the attitudes?”

She added: “You’re not going to do it overnight. And you’re not going to do it with a check.”

Anne Stewart, the seminary’s vice president for external affairs, said that officials did not expect the initiatives to be embraced unconditionally.

“We know that some students will challenge us to do more,” she said. As to tackling the deeper questions of the seminary’s past role in supporting slavery more broadly, she noted that, among other things, the findings of the two-year investigation would be incorporated into the curriculum for all students pursuing a master’s degree starting in fall 2021.

The other measures announced by the seminary included 30 full-tuition scholarships for students descended from slaves and for members of underrepresented groups; five doctoral fellowships for students from those same backgrounds; the hiring of a full-time director for the Center for Black Church Studies; and the naming of the center for Betsey Stockton.

Ms. Stockton, a prominent African-American teacher in Princeton and Philadelphia, in some ways embodies the seminary’s complicated, and at times contradictory, connections to slavery, as detailed in the 2018 report.

She was given as a slave to the first wife of Ashbel Green, the first president of the seminary’s board of directors. Mr. Green, who owned several slaves, also led a Presbyterian Church General Assembly committee that produced an 1818 statement condemning slavery as “a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature,” the report said.

After Ms. Stockton was emancipated, the report said, Mr. Green encouraged her religious education and missionary work in what is now known as Hawaii.

A big chunk of the report examines the deep involvement of faculty, board members and alumni in the American Colonization Society — a group that existed until 1964 and pushed for sending freed slaves to Africa, ostensibly to head off the social upheaval they believed that emancipation would cause, the report said.

Among those active in the society, according to the report, were Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller. All three, Mr. Young of the Association of Black Seminarians noted, have campus buildings bearing their names.

*********

[stone-man-warrior]

October 16, 2018: 10:52 pm:

October 16, 2018: 6:56 pm:<br><br>The following is a list of terrorist soldie... StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-10-16T22:02:55-0400 - Updated: 2018-10-17T01:52:45-0400

October 16, 2018: 6:56 pm: The following is a list of terrorist soldiers who use the Google plus platform to engage in terrorist attacks on US American Citizens. These are Google Plus account names. Simas Mileman PAIRFUM - London (by InovAir Ltd) DMV For Sale Downs Property Maintenance Best Beach Destinations Mayloz Store Luxury Hotel Pix Reege's Tech Reviews Integrated Management Let's Get Optimized - SEO Company Canada Micheal Fuller Micheal Fuller is a terrorist operative of the music industry, he is a manufacturer of electronic components that are used with electric amplified guitars. He makes high quality "stomp boxes", and other more sophisticated equipment. His company is called Fulltone <https://www.fulltone.com/> In the music industry associated with electronics, there are many sources for terrorist information, Fulltone is an example of a source for terrorist instructions, updates, and advancing orders. Premier Guitar Magazine is another source and is a centrally important source for terrorist information for terrorist soldiers who get their orders, updates and instructions from the music industry. Sign-up to receive promotional emails from Fulltone, and from Premier Guitar (PG), and when the email comes in, look at the subject line of the email, and also look at what I write about on those days that the email comes, the coincidental information between the subject line of the PG email, and the daily entries I make are uncanny. The terrorists in the music industry use a vast, and I mean really, really large size vocabulary of glyph and other information that is contained within the product names of the equipment they use in the music industry. The musical instrument, the guitar, is the weapon of the Vatican. It's an axe, It's a musical guillotine. The information associated with guitars, amplifiers, modulation signal modifiers, noise reduction equipment, etcetera and so on, is a vast library of terrorist terminology. For instance, the notion that there can be resistance within an electrical circuit measured in Ohms, is also used as a resistance meter when terrorists discuss the level of resistance associated with a given attack on American Victims. So far, there has been zero resistance, also referred to as "True-Bypass". In terrorist warfare, an attack that was said to be "true-bypass", is an attack where everyone was killed, and no one fought back. Th eterrorists love "true-bypass", and "low-impedance" in their warfare. I strongly advise studying the equipment catalogs offered by the large online music equipment retailers. Sweetwater Music; American Musical Supply; Zzounds; Guitar Center; and any other online music equipment dealers who sell guitars and amplifiers and the accessories that are available for them. Don't forget to study the drum kits, shell packs, thrones, cymbals, sticks, snare's and mounting hardware as well. The drum has been a part of warfare since there has been drums and warfare, today, it is no different. Sweetwater Music Supply, in the late 1990's and the early 2000's sold products that were specially packaged. The specially packaged products were called "VA", or "Value Added" products and were advertised at a price that included some free, usable items along with it. For terrorist soldiers who were in the know, and trained to respond to Value Added items available at Sweetwater Music Supply, those soldiers could order the Value Added products and know in advance that the value added items were packaged with a small bag of heroin inside. One example is a thing called a "Sound Hole", it is an attachment that goes on the bass drum of a modern drum set. The idea is that this plastic ring could be installed into the drum head, after cutting the appropriate sized hole in the drum head, thereby creating an escape for the air that moves inside of the drum when kicked, it is also useful as a place to put a microphone when recording the drums. So, those who order a Value Added Drum Head w/Kickport, would get the "kickport" at no extra cost, and that was the signal to the soldiers, "VA". Those soldiers would receive a drum head, a kickport, and a bag of heroin in the packaging. For a long time here in Oregon, it was not uncommon to find that every "housewife and husband" (mating pair of 7th Day Adventist terrorist soldiers) had a number of "kickports" laying around in their homes even though no one in the house plays drums, and in fact, drums are forbidden by the 7th day Adventists. They would also have large drum heads, which came in handy for making the disguises that are worn by terrorists who use Nitrous Oxide /Versed airborne gas as a weapon as means to subdue their victims, torcher them, and kill them. The heroin was the reward for the terrorist soldiers who claimed that they needed a way to "cope" with all of the mass killings that they were doing. These kinds of Value Added products are still available through Sweetwater Music, however, they do not use the Value Added symbol anymore, and I don;t know which of the products come with the heroin or how to stay informed with that regard, but the terrorist soldiers do know how to stay informed of which products come packaged with heroin from Sweetwater Music. Pay special attention to the Eastwood Guitar company, they are French Canadians and their products are geared for terrorist communication through visually looking at the products they build. I believe that a man by the name of www.rjronquillo.com/ could possibly be forced into doing what ever they want him to do. RJ is a fantastic guitar player, somehow, I don't think he is a free man. The people at Eastwood Guitars provide marching orders to terrorist soldiers. Sign up for their promotional emails and see what you think. I would like to thank Micheal Fuller of Fulltone for providing the inspiration for this entry.

Shared with: Public

+1'd by: Red Velvet Rope, Luxury Revealed, VA MA, Best Honeymoon Places, DMV For Sale, DC Windshield Auto Glass Repair, Appliance Repair Washington, DC, Ashburn Glass, DC Emergency Glass Repair Washington, DC

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-10-16T22:22:19-0400

October 16, 2018: 7:03 pm Simas Mileman, the first entry is the list of terrorist soldiers who use the Google Plus platform as an in attacking US American Citizens. This terrorist belongs to a cell that is associated with the State of Nevada, specifically with the Clark County Nevada Public Administrator. John Cahill is a terrorist specialty operative in the position of an elected Clark County Nevada official. Mr. Cahill's scope of duties includes acquisition and distribution stewardship of deceased citizens of Clark County Nevada. As a terrorist operative, Mr. Cahill is in a position that guarantees the acquisition of  real and personal property that belongs to a deceased individual, he is able to find the family members of the deceased residents of Clark County Nevada, and arrange that they are killed. The activity Mr. Cahill does is widely known as "Land Grab", where he takes control of the estate of a deceased person, makes an assessment of it's value, and then find a Screen Actor Guild member who is interested in owning the stolen estate. No one in The USA who is willed the property and belongs of their deceased loved ones and family members, are receiving the real property or the personal belongings of those deceased Clark County Nevada residents. Mr. John Cahill is another example of how the terrorists I report about on this page, are able to  "vote" in a person that is a terrorist soldier who will only serve the needs of the other terrorists while OCCUPYING the office that the official was elected. The election results that are responsible for allowing this to happen are that the US American Citizens who have been slaughtered are replaced with terrorist soldiers who assume the identification of the deceased US American Victims, AND, The VOTING RIGHTS of those Victims. The votes that put people such as Mr. Cahill into office are such that each vote received in his favor is the equivalent of and representative of one, dead American Citizen who was killed and replaced with the terrorist soldier who provided the "Vote".

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-10-16T22:28:25-0400

October 16, 2018: 7:26 pm: John Cahill, terrorist special operative for the Screen Actors Guild associated with "Land Grab" theft of personal and real property of deceased American Citizens in the State of Nevada, County of Clark.

[duhragonball]

JJBA JoJolion Chapter 14

I’ve heard people criticize the art in late-era JoJo for being to same-facey.  That seemed more noticeable to me during Parts 5 and 6, but every so often I’d see a counterexample that would convince me it wasn’t too big a deal.  To be fair, a lot of comic artists will use the same basic face for multiple characters, which is probably why everyone wears such exotic clothes in this genre. 

The thing I kept noticing before was that Jolyne Kujo looked a lot like Narancia in a lot of scenes, but they’re very different characters, with completely different hair and clothes, so it didn’t bug me much.  More importantly, what I didn’t notice was any unusual resemblance between, say, Jolyne and Hermes, or Jolyne and Trish Una, or Narancia and Fugo.  Giorno resembles some of the other JoJos, but he’s supposed to because they’re all related.  And again, he doesn’t look enough like anyone else that I saw any problem.   Everybody kind of had the same nose in Parts 5 and 6, but Araki managed to make them look sufficiently unique. 

And the hook to Part 7 was that there’s more detail on the faces, especially in close-ups, but I started to notice that they all started to run together.  Gyro and Johnny and Hot Pants all looked very different at a distance, but up close they looked like siblings.  The implication was that Araki could draw a super-realistic face, but only one.  This didn’t bug me a whole lot, since other characters like Stephen Steel and Diego looked very different, so no problem. 

And all those 25th Anniversary pinups with all eight JoJo’s in the “modern” style, yeah they all look pretty same-facey, but they’re all related, so it’s a feature, not a bug.  I think it’s kind of silly that Joseph always has to wear that aviator hat in every picture, though.  But again, his uncanny resemblance to Jonathan was established way back in 1987.   And Johnny basically is Jonathan from another universe, so of course those three are going to look alike. 

But now we’ve got 19-year-old Yasuho meeting 52-year-old Holly Joestar Kira, and they both look a lot like 14-year-old Lucy Steel.  And even this doesn’t bug me that much, except that the gag here is that Holly thinks Yasuho looks like the centerfold in a porno mag, so the sameface sort of undermines the gag.  Is this self-parody?  Did Yasuho really pose for a dirty magazine and Holly figured it out?  I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to take the joke at face value, and Holly’s just (pretending to be) goofy, but it’d work a lot better if all three women looked less alike. 

Part of the reason I’m sensitive to this is that the epilogue scene of Hellsing took this age difference into account.  Thirty years after the main story, Integra is 52, and while she’s stayed in fighting trim, you can tell she’s not 22 anymore.  All they really did was whiten her hair a little and draw laugh lines on her face, but it works, even in caricature.

And this is important because Seras Victoria hasn’t aged at all, since she’s a vampire.   I always liked this scene because my gut reaction is that it’s creepy to see Integra look so much older, since cartoon characters usually don’t age.  But then I remember that this is actually how it works in the real world, and Seras is the creepy one.  

But I suspect the only reason Hellsing bothered to redesign Integra was because age and mortality are themes of the story, like Straizo in Battle Tendency.  Otherwise, she’d probably wind up in the same boat as Holly Kira, Wilma Flintstone, Bulma Brief, etc. 

Maybe that’s not a bad thing.  People age in the real world, and they turn to fiction for an escape.  But I don’t think I like the idea of a world where everyone looks like a twenty-something from age 14 to 60.  Saiyans, vampires, Hamon Users, okay, but not everybody.

[richmondcomix-blog]

New books for 7/26/17

1. (SDCC 2017) MARVEL GALLERY DEADPOOL VARIANT PVC FI 2. (SDCC 2017) MARVEL GALLERY SUPERIOR IRON MAN PVC F 3. ACTION COMICS #984 4. ACTION COMICS #984 VAR ED 5. ADAM WRECK #2 (OF 3) 6. ALL NEW CLASSIC ARCHIE YOUR PAL ARCHIE #1 CVR A DA 7. ALL STAR BATMAN #12 8. ALL STAR BATMAN #12 ALBUQUERQUE VAR ED 9. ALL STAR BATMAN #12 FIUMARA VAR ED 10. AMAZING AGE #2 (OF 5) 11. AQUAMAN KINGDOM LOST TP 12. ATOMIC ROBO PRESENTS REAL SCIENCE ADVENTURES TP VO 13. AVENGERS EPIC COLLECTION OPERATION GALACTIC STORM 14. BATGIRL #13 15. BATGIRL #13 VAR ED 16. BATMAN BEYOND #10 17. BATMAN BEYOND #10 VAR ED 18. BATMAN THE SHADOW #4 (OF 6) 19. BEAUTIFUL CANVAS #2 20. BEN REILLY SCARLET SPIDER #5 21. BLACK HAMMER #11 MAIN ORMSTON CVR 22. BLACK PANTHER #16 23. BLACK PANTHER #16 KIRBY 100TH VAR 24. BLACK PANTHER #16 MCKELVIE CONNECTING VAR 25. BLACK PANTHER #16 X-MEN CARD VAR 26. BLACK ROAD TP VOL 02 A PAGAN DEATH (MR) 27. BLUE BEETLE #11 28. BLUE BEETLE #11 VAR ED 29. BPRD DEVIL YOU KNOW #1 30. BY CHANCE OR PROVIDENCE TP 31. CABLE #3 32. CANNIBAL #7 (MR) 33. CAPTAIN AMERICA SAM WILSON #24 SE 34. CAPTAIN AMERICA STEVE ROGERS #19 SE 35. CAPTAIN AMERICA STEVE ROGERS #19 X-MEN CARD VAR SE 36. CARTOONS MAGAZINE #10 37. CONAN THE SLAYER #11 38. CROAK #2 (OF 3) 39. CROSSWIND #2 CVR A STAGGS (MR) 40. CROSSWIND #2 CVR B STAGGS (MR) 41. DC SUPER FRIENDS 3 SUPER HERO TALES BOARD BOOK 42. DEADPOOL #34 KOBLISH SECRET COMICS VAR 43. DEADPOOL #34 SE 44. DETECTIVE COMICS #961 45. DETECTIVE COMICS #961 VAR ED 46. DOOM PATROL #7 (RES) (MR) 47. DOOM PATROL #7 VAR ED (RES) (MR) 48. EDGE OF VENOMVERSE #3 (OF 5) 49. EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN TP VOL 04 IVX 50. FAITH AND THE FUTURE FORCE #1 (OF 4) CVR A DJURDJE 51. FLASH #27 52. FLASH #27 VAR ED 53. FLASH TP VOL 03 ROGUES RELOADED (REBIRTH) 54. FROSTBITE TP (MR) 55. GO GO POWER RANGERS #1 56. GUARDIANS OF GALAXY TELLTALE SERIES #1 (OF 5) 57. GWENPOOL #18 58. HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #25 59. HAL JORDAN AND THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #25 VAR ED 60. HEAD LOPPER TP VOL 01 ISLAND OR A PLAGUE OF BEASTS 61. HELLBLAZER #12 62. HELLBLAZER #12 VAR ED 63. I AM GROOT #3 64. ICEMAN #3 65. IMAGE FIRSTS MAGE #1 66. INFAMOUS IRON MAN #10 67. JIM HENSON POWER OF DARK CRYSTAL #5 (OF 12) 68. JIM HENSON POWER OF DARK CRYSTAL #5 (OF 12) SUBSCR 69. JIM HENSON THE DARK CRYSTAL TALES HC 70. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #11 71. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #11 VAR ED 72. KAMANDI CHALLENGE #7 (OF 12) 73. KAMANDI CHALLENGE #7 (OF 12) VAR ED 74. KID SHERLOCK #2 75. LEGEND OF KORRA TP VOL 01 TURF WARS PT 1 76. LIFE AFTER TP VOL 04 (MR) 77. LILITH DARK #2 (OF 4) 78. LOONEY TUNES #238 79. LUCY & ANDY NEANDERTHAL HC GN VOL 01 80. LUMBERJANES #40 81. LUMBERJANES #40 SUBSCRIPTION SOTUYO VAR 82. MARVEL GRAPHIC COMIC BOXES GENERATIONS 83. MARVEL PREVIEWS VOL 04 #1 AUGUST 2017 84. MIGHTY CAPTAIN MARVEL #7 SE 85. MIGHTY THOR LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK THUNDER STRIKE 86. MIGHTY THOR TP VOL 02 LORDS OF MIDGARD 87. MOON GIRL AND DEVIL DINOSAUR #21 88. MOTHER PANIC #9 (MR) 89. MOTHER PANIC #9 VAR ED (MR) 90. MURDER BALLADS TP (MR) 91. MY LITTLE PONY MOVIE PREQUEL #2 CVR A PRICE 92. NAMWOLF #4 93. NANCY DREW HARDY BOYS #5 CVR A DALTON 94. NORMALS #3 95. NOT SO SECRET SOCIETY ORIGINAL GN 96. NOVA RESURRECTION TP 97. OCCUPY AVENGERS #9 SE 98. OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #29 (MR) 99. OVER EASY HC (MR) 100. OVER GARDEN WALL ONGOING #16 101. PAKLIS #3 (MR) 102. PLASTIC #4 (OF 5) CVR A ROBINSON (MR) 103. PREVIEWS #347 AUGUST 2017 104. PUNISHER #14 105. PUNISHER #14 X-MEN CARD VAR 106. REBELS THESE FREE & INDEPENDENT STATES #5 (OF 8) 107. REDNECK #4 (MR) 108. REVOLUTIONARIES #6 109. RICK & MORTY #28 110. ROCKET GIRL #5 111. ROCKET GIRL #6 112. ROCKET GIRL #7 113. ROUGH RIDERS RIDERS ON THE STORM #5 114. RUNAWAYS TP VOL 05 ESCAPE TO NEW YORK NEW PTG 115. SAGA #45 (MR) 116. SCOOBY DOO TEAM UP #28 117. SECRET EMPIRE #7 (OF 10) 118. SECRET EMPIRE #7 (OF 10) JS CAMPBELL VAR 119. SECRET EMPIRE #7 (OF 10) SORRENTINO HYDRA HEROES V 120. SERENITY HC VOL 05 NO POWER IN THE VERSE 121. SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER #2 (OF 5) CVR A ROBINSON 122. SHUTTER #30 CVR B IMAGES OF TOMORROW (MR) 123. SPAWN #276 CVR A ALEXANDER (MR) 124. SPIDER MAN NIGHT OF VULTURE LITTLE GOLDEN BK 125. SPIDER-GWEN #22 126. SPIDER-MAN COMPLETE CLONE SAGA EPIC TP VOL 05 NEW 127. STAR WARS BIG GOLDEN BOOK STARSHIPS SPEEDERS SPACE 128. STAR WARS DOCTOR APHRA #10 129. STAR WARS DOCTOR APHRA #10 STAR WARS 40TH ANNIV 130. STAR WARS JEDI ACADEMY YR HC VOL 05 FORCE OVERSLEE 131. STAR WARS LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK I AM A HERO 132. STEVEN UNIVERSE ONGOING #6 133. STREET ANGEL GANG HC 134. SUICIDE SQUAD #22 135. SUICIDE SQUAD #22 VAR ED 136. SUPERMAN SAVAGE DAWN TP 137. TEEN TITANS #10 138. TEEN TITANS #10 VAR ED 139. TESLA AND HYDE SCARY FAILS TP (MR) 140. THANOS #9 141. TMNT ONGOING #72 CVR A WACHTER 142. TMNT USAGI YOJIMBO CVR A SAKAI 143. TRANSFORMERS LOST LIGHT #8 CVR A LAWRENCE 144. TRANSFORMERS LOST LIGHT #8 CVR A LAWRENCE 145. TRISH TRASH ROLLERGIRL OF MARS HC VOL 01 146. UNCANNY AVENGERS UNITY TP VOL 04 RED SKULL 147. UNCANNY X-MEN SUPERIOR TP VOL 04 IVX 148. USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA LEGENDS TP 149. WAYWARD #22 CVR A CUMMINGS & BONVILLAIN (MR) 150. WEAPON X #6 WMD 151. WONDER WOMAN #27 152. WONDER WOMAN #27 VAR ED 153. WWE #7 154. X-MEN BLUE #8 SE 155. X-O MANOWAR (2017) #5 CVR A LAROSA

[marketingadvisorvietnam]

A Chinese author who won generations of Vietnamese hearts

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên http://www.ticvietnam.vn/a-chinese-author-who-won-generations-of-vietnamese-hearts-52/

A Chinese author who won generations of Vietnamese hearts

Jin Yong and his legacy will live on forever in the hearts of many Vietnamese readers.

Famous Chinese author Louis Cha Jing-Yong, better known as Jin Yong, passed away on October 30 at age 94.

His legacy spans over half a century of writing fiction novels, especially as a pioneer of wuxia (martial heroes), a genre of Chinese fantasy literature featuring fantastic adventures of magically gifted martial artists in ancient China.

His 15 works between 1955 and 1972 set him apart as one of the greatest wuxia writers ever. He was also the best-selling Chinese author of all time, selling over 100 million copies worldwide.

The novelist Jin Yong in 2002 with his book Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge at his office in Hong Kong. He was broadly popular with generations of Chinese readers. Photo by Reuters/Bobby Yip

Uncanny appeal

According to The Oxford Guide to Contemporary World Literature, Jin Yong’s novels have the rare quality of appealing to both highbrow and lowbrow tastes, as well as the ability to transcend geographical and ideological barriers.

This gave him success few contemporary writers could achieve.

The 2018 English version of Legends of the Condor Heroes 1: A Hero Born by Jin Yong.

In Vietnamese popular culture, Jin Yong’s works have had a tremendous influence among the Vietnamese literati as well as common readers.

Many of his novels has been translated into Vietnamese and published, including the The Wandering Swordsman, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, The Legend of the Condor Heroes; and republished through decades.

Many experts, critics and writers in Vietnam consider Jin Yong one of the most popular Chinese authors in the country.

The 67th issue of Vietnamese magazine Today’s Knowledge, published in 1991, noted that Jin Yong’s novels have been popular in Vietnam since the 1960s.

Poet Le Minh Quoc said that daily newspapers in the south then serialized Jin Yong novels in their feuilletons.

Vietnamese authors like Hieu Chan and Nguyen Viet Khanh have written about the Jin Yong wuxia fever in Vietnam.

“Wuxia novels by Jin Yong attracted a large number of readers in the books and publishing scene between 1965 to 1973. Everybody read wuxia novels then, students, workers, officials and even Vietnamese citizens educated in Europe,” Hieu Chan wrote.

The Saigonese loved Jin Yong so much that they named their children and their shops after characters in his novels.

“Monks love wuxia. Women love wuxia. Professors debate with students about wuxia. Children fight each other in the street over wuxia,” Nguyen Viet Khanh wrote in a 1968 newspaper.

In Vietnamese literary circles, Jin Yong was the hottest topic for long. Authors and writers of the time, like Bui Giang and Buu Y wrote reviews and articles about his novels. Many authors even used characters from his books for their pennames.

Literature critic Pham Xuan Nguyen said Jin Yong’s novels became popular in the north after 1975, when the Vietnam War ended.

“Jin Yong elevated and improved wuxia to a whole new level with the addition of chivalry in his novels. His works not only depicted conflicts between clans but also carried messages of morality, goodness and belief in the beauty of life,” Nguyen said.

A brief break

Associate Professor Tran Le Hoa Tranh said in one of her articles that after 1975 (Vietnam’s post-war reconstruction period), Jin Yong’s works did receive some negative responses over factors like cynicism, individualism, violence, and overly romantic, unrealistic love. For some time, they were banned, even.

But in the 90s, after the country’s introduction of Doi moi reform policy in 1986, Jin Yong’s works were once again in vogue. In 1999, Phuong Nam Publications became the first to buy the rights to bring out revised translations of Jin Yong’s novels.

From left to right: The Vietnamese version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes, The Deer and the Cauldron, The Giant Eagle and Its Companion are three among Jin Yong’s most popular works in Vietnam that were translated and revised by Phuong Nam Publishing. Photo courtesy by Phuong Nam Publishing.

Translator Quang Huy believes the value of Jin Yong’s works lies in the way he depicted a world that nourished people’s goodness.

Woven into the dramatic and interesting storylines were lessons about brotherhood, friendship, fatherhood and mentorship. Readers could see the author’s perspective on people and life. The romance in his novels was also moving and inspiring, Huy said.

Many fans and readers in Vietnam mourned Jin Yong with moving tributes.

Jin Yong and author Nguyen Dong Thuc on June 22, 2002. Photo acquired by VnExpress.

Simple man

Author Nguyen Dong Thuc was one of the few Vietnamese people who met Jin Yong in person.

He recalled the meeting that happened in June 2002.

“He’s a very simple man, from the way he dresses to the way he talks. It’s surprising a person like that is the creator of such fascinating characters,” Thuc said.

“The charm of Jin Yong’s works not only comes from great storylines and transcendent imagination but also unique characters that get deeply rooted in readers’ memories,” he added.

Scholar Tran Le Hoa Tranh was named after a character in the novel, The Legend of the Condor Heroes. She said that Jin Yong paved the way for many other Chinese wuxia novelists, and many authors in Vietnam are also influenced by him.

“He will always be the grandmaster of wuxia world…” famous film director Nguyen Quang Dung said.

Major influence

Director Nam Cito of the Apartment 69 sitcom fame cited Jin Yong as one of his influences.

“His works inspired me in the process of creating smart and funny characters. Our generation, born in the 80s, loved Jin Yong’s novels. There used to be a book rental service near my house and I used to read his novels day and night every summer. His works are a part of my youth and that of others,” Nam said.

Yen Nhi, a banker and a big fan of Jin Yong, went to the book store and bought all of his novels right after his death.

“This is the least I could do to show my respect to my childhood hero,” she said.

Nguyen Khac Giang, a researcher, grew up watching a lot of cinematic adaptations of Jin Yong’s novel. He said they were a big part of his childhood.

A scene in the 1996 adaptation of Jin Yong’s The Smiling, Proud Wanderer.

“In the 90s, there was only one family with a video player in my neighborhood. I used to sneak out to go there and watch movies like The Legend of the Condor Heroes and Ode to Gallantry. I used to get into fights with other kids, pretending to be the head of the clan, like in the movies. I can still remember everything, from the low video quality to the thick southern accented narration,” Giang said.

“Jin Yong’s legacy in this world will last forever…”

Story by Tuan Hoang and Nhat Thu Dung

window._io_config=window._io_config||;window._io_config["0.2.0"]=window._io_config["0.2.0"]||[];window._io_config["0.2.0"].push(page_url:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/a-chinese-author-who-won-generations-of-vietnamese-hearts-3834526.html",page_url_canonical:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/a-chinese-author-who-won-generations-of-vietnamese-hearts-3834526.html",page_title:"A Chinese author who won generations of Vietnamese hearts",page_type:"article",page_language:"en",article_authors:[],article_categories:["Others"],article_subcategories:["Others"],article_type:"longread",article_word_count:"101",article_publication_date:"Mon, 05 Nov 18 11:11:45 +0000");(function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/vi_VN/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));window._io_config=window._io_config||;window._io_config["0.2.0"]=window._io_config["0.2.0"]||[];window._io_config["0.2.0"].push(page_url:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/a-chinese-author-who-won-generations-of-vietnamese-hearts-3834526.html",page_url_canonical:"https://e.vnexpress.net/news/travel-life/a-chinese-author-who-won-generations-of-vietnamese-hearts-3834526.html",page_title:"A Chinese author who won generations of Vietnamese hearts",page_type:"article",page_language:"en",article_authors:[],article_categories:["Others"],article_subcategories:["Others"],article_type:"longread",article_word_count:"101",article_publication_date:"Mon, 05 Nov 18 11:11:45 +0000");(function(d,s,id)var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/vi_VN/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);(document,'script','facebook-jssdk'));

[filipmagnuswrites]

The Short Story Reader #54 - All These Ghosts are Playing To Win by Lindsey Godfrey Eccles

Lindsey Godfrey Eccles makes the best of a title that calls to mind a gambling den, opening her story by explicitly connecting the very first sentence to said title: “Theo is no exception.” A memorable opening, sure enough. Eccles imagines here an unpalatable afterlife, one which sees the ghosts of the deceased playing near-endless gambling games, offering up not coin but memories for their…

[fiftytwotwentythree]

Wellness Wednesday:

Better, Warmer, Closer

Last week I reported I was sick, and today... I would say I am still not 100% - I say, I am 85%.

I still need the use of cough drops, still blowing my nose multiple times a day, and still have sinus pressure.

But, none of that has prevented me from forging on.

I up'd the ante in my workout routine by increasing the sets/reps and adding squats back into the rotation.

Now, with my previous workouts I was getting my sweat on - but - with this new regiment I am sweating buckets - I am sweating from pores that I didn't even know were active.

Increasing the sets/reps and adding squats have also reintroduced the classic muscle burn - something I haven't felt since January.

I was also leery of adding squats back into the mix as they were often paired with knee pain, but I took the risk of adding squats back since I've lost over 80 pounds - so far - with the reduced weight, I have no current indications of knee pain.

Hoping I can keep trucking and feel fully recouped of illness by the weekend.

.

.

36th CHECK-IN:

Current Goals:

Lose 52 lbs

Completed as of 4/12/2023

New Goal: Maintain or Continue on The Weight Loss Path

Avoid "Junk Food"

Minimize Take-Out / Fast Food Consumption

Short Term:

Vegetarian-ish Diet: Completed

End Date: 4/09/2023 - 46 Days Total

.

.

Stats from August:

Food:

Oranges: 34

Salads: 25

Leftover Meals: 19

Bags of Popcorn: 13

Cans of Soup: 1

Take Out: 0

Candy/Sweets: 0

Workout:

Jumping Jacks: 6,200

Push-Ups: 3,100

Glute Bridges: 3,100

Assisted Push-Ups: 3,100

Reverse Leg Lifts: 1,550

Leg Kickbacks: 1,550

Sit-Ups: 1,600

Plank (mins): 75 mins

Squats: 0

Weight Loss:

Weightloss This Month: -3.8 lbs

Average Weightloss per Week: -0.95 lbs

Total Weightloss: -84.6 lbs

Entertainment:

Movies Watched: 12

Favorite from the Month:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Hours of Television Watched: ~39 hours (Riverdale, Crime Scene Kitchen, Ink Master, Only Murders in the Building, How To with John Wilson)

Books:

Books Completed This Month: 0

Book Title(s) Completed This Month: -n/a-

Book Total for the Year: 2

Comics:

Comics Completed: 4

Trades Completed: 17

Comic/Trade Titles Completed:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin - The Lost Years #1

Avengers Masterworks Vol. 1

Jughead: The Hunger Vol. 1

Vampironica Vol. 1

Jughead: The Hunger Vol. 2

Jughead: The Hunger Vol. 3

Jughead: The Hunger vs. Vampironica

Vampironica: New Blood

Blossoms 666

Pop's Chocklit Shoppe of Horrors #1

X-Men: Days of Future Past (Uncanny X-Men (1963-2011))

BRZRKR Vol. 2

Deadpool by Skottie Young Vol. 1: Mercin' Hard For The Money (Deadpool (2018-2019))

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.: The Complete Collection: Agents of H.A.T.E. Ultimate Collection

Chilling Adventures Presents Weirder Mysteries (Chilling Adventures in Sorcery)

Camp Pickens (Archie Horror Presents)

Chew Vol. 2: International Flavor

X-Men: Mutant Genesis (X-Men (1991-2001))

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2015-2019)

Superman '78 (2021)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Vol. 2

Favorite Comic/Trade Read:

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.

Magazine(s):

Magazine(s) Completed: 0

.

.

Meal Tracker:

THURSDAY

Lunch:

Large Ground Beef Burrito

- Sour Cream

- Herdez's Red & Verde Street Sauces

- Shredded Mild Cheddar Cheese

(2) Glasses of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

(4oz) Bag of Sahale Snacks Pomegranate Vanilla Flavored Cashews Glazed Mix

(4oz) Bag of Sahale Snacks Pomegranate Flavored Pistachios Glazed Mix

Supper:

(2) Squares of Broccoli Surprise

- Rice

- Ground Beef

- Broccoli

- Cream of Potato

- Cream of Celery

- Mild Cheddar Cheese

(1) Glass of Chocolate

FRIDAY

Lunch:

(1) Square of Leftover Broccoli Surprise

(3) Scoops of Potato Salad

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

(9.75oz) Bag of Smartfood's White Cheddar Popcorn

Supper:

(1) Square of Leftover Broccoli Surprise

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

(2) Small Oranges

SATURDAY

Lunch:

(1) Square of Leftover Broccoli Surprise

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

(2) Small Oranges

Bag of Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Popcorn

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Supper:

(2) Johnsonville Chili Cheese Smoked Sausages

(4) Scoops of Potato Salad

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

SUNDAY

Snack:

(14oz) Bag of Wonderful's Shelled Salt & Pepper Pistachios

Bag of Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Popcorn

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Supper:

Chef Salad

(1) Small Orange

MONDAY

Lunch:

Santa Fe Style Salad

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

Bag of Orville Redenbacher Ultimate Butter Popcorn

Supper:

Bowl of Cesaer Salad with Croutons

(2) Small Oranges

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

(1) Smoked Pork Rib

TUESDAY

Lunch:

Bowl of Leftover Cesaer Salad with Croutons

Snack:

(2) Small Oranges

Supper:

Bowl of Mexican Style Street Corn Salad

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

WEDNESDAY

Lunch:

Half-Rack of Leftover Smoked BBQ Ribs

(5) Scoops of Potato Salad

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Snack:

Bago of BBQ Corn Nuts

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

Supper:

(2) Johnsonville Chili Cheese Smoked Sausages

(5) Scoops of Potato Salad

(1) Glass of Chocolate Milk

.

.

Workouts:

THURSDAY

(200) Jumping Jacks [4 sets of 50]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Assisted Push-Ups [2 sets of 50]

(50) Reverse Leg Lifts [5 sets of 10]

(50) Leg Kickbacks [5 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

FRIDAY

(400) Jumping Jacks [8 sets of 50]

(100) Squats [5 sets of 20]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(10) Reverse Leg Lifts [10 sets of 10]

(10) Leg Kickbacks [10 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

SATURDAY

(400) Jumping Jacks [8 sets of 50]

(100) Squats [5 sets of 20]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Reverse Leg Lifts [10 sets of 10]

(100) Leg Kickbacks [10 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

SUNDAY

(400) Jumping Jacks [8 sets of 50]

(100) Squats [5 sets of 20]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Reverse Leg Lifts [10 sets of 10]

(100) Leg Kickbacks [10 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

MONDAY

(400) Jumping Jacks [8 sets of 50]

(100) Squats [5 sets of 20]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Reverse Leg Lifts [10 sets of 10]

(100) Leg Kickbacks [10 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

TUESDAY

(400) Jumping Jacks [8 sets of 50]

(100) Squats [5 sets of 20]

(100) Glute Bridges [4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Reverse Leg Lifts [10 sets of 10]

(100) Leg Kickbacks [10 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

WEDNESDAY

(400) Jumping Jacks [8 sets of 50]

(100) Squats [5 sets of 20]

(100) Glute Bridges[4 sets of 25]

(100) Push-Ups [10 sets of 10]

(100) Reverse Leg Lifts [10 sets of 10]

(100) Leg Kickbacks [10 sets of 10]

(100) Sit-Ups [5 Sets of 20]

(5 min) Planks [5 Sets of 1 min]

.

.

WEIGHT TRACKER:

Starting Weight (Noon, 1/01/2023): XXX.X lbs

Weight at Last Check-In, 8/30/2023: -3.4 lbs

Weight As of Noon, 9/06/2023: 0.0 lbs

Total Weight Loss: -84.6 lbs

.

.

Closing Thoughts:

The Good:

Been getting workouts done during regular hours which has been improving my sleep - or - the previous lack thereof.

Appetite has increased since my recent illness, and yet my weight has maintained from last week.

Put a massive dent into my student loans before interest start accruing back. Hope to have them fully paid off before the end of the year.

The Bad:

Still stuffy. Waiting on my head to clear.

The Ugly:

Nothing worst than my head-cold this week - so, not too bad.

[instantdeerlover]

Pink Bridesmaid Dresses for Destination Wedding at Chateau La Durantie added to Google Docs

Pink Bridesmaid Dresses for Destination Wedding at Chateau La Durantie

This classic black tie wedding with pink bridesmaid dresses is definitely not to be missed. Everything is so elegant, from the beautiful bride’s strapless Pronovias wedding dress to the romantic floral centrepieces and candlesticks. We also can’t get over the amazing golden hour portraits captured by Maryanne weddings. Pure magic.

                       WHAT MADE OUR DAY UNIQUE

“We were so lucky to have the wedding of our dreams in an idyllic 18th century French Chateau. It was simply magical. The estate had plenty of rooms, enough for all our friends and family to stay on the property. We were able to host a three-day affair, celebrating in peace with lots of privacy. We truly got to spend time with all our loved ones and we could not have asked for anything better to commemorate our love and new life together.” – Ashley & Christopher

Pink Bridesmaid Dresses

I love group shots, and today’s destination wedding is full of them. From candid getting ready portraits in the morning right through to the formal pictures, Maryanne Weddings has allowed this gorgeous wedding party to have fun and feel the joy. The groomsmen look dapper in tuxedos and the bridal party kill it in pink bridesmaid dresses. Taking centre stage is, stunning bride Ashley, who absolutely owns her strapless Pronovias wedding dress. The gorgeous Chateau La Durantie makes the perfect backdrop for all this elegance and the golden sunlight makes every moment and capture even more magical.

INSPIRATION & STYLING

“The vibe was intimate and relaxed, yet formal. The inspiration for the styling was French Chic. The Chateau provided us with a directory of suppliers that they had worked with and recommended. We chose the ones that suited us and that we felt we had good interactions with. We did our own research via Google and Instagram to find our makeup artist and photographer, and were able to find amazing individuals in this manner! I think the favourite moment was near the end of the night when our friends hoisted us on their shoulders so we could dance together above them in the middle of the dance floor to Beyonce’s cover of “Before I Let Go”.” – Ashley & Christopher

                   PHOTOGRAPHY

“Our photographer, Maryanne Weddings was exceptional. She travelled from London to capture our special day and made the experience amazing. She was not only professional but charming and delightful to work with. She was prepared and incredibly mobile and responsive during the day. My dad joked about her uncanny ability to be everywhere at once and catch all the action. The pictures she took are some of the best I have ever seen, and I felt like we were in some sort of wedding fashion magazine feature. She captured my wife perfectly and showed her to the world as the breathtaking beauty she is. Without hesitation, she extended her time with us at the end, when we wanted to add an additional hour for her to capture more festivities on the dancefloor.” – Ashley & Christopher

Finding a wedding photographer to capture your day is so important. We’ve written a couples of articles How To Find The Perfect One – The First Steps and 10 Tips For Choosing Your Perfect Wedding Photographer to help you on your quest, and once you know what photography style you like, we recommend searching our handpicked wedding supplier directory, The List for lots of amazing photographers in your area.

The post Pink Bridesmaid Dresses for Destination Wedding at Chateau La Durantie appeared first on ROCK MY WEDDING | UK WEDDING PLANNING & DIRECTORY.

via ROCK MY WEDDING | UK WEDDING PLANNING & DIRECTORY https://www.rockmywedding.co.uk/pink-bridesmaid-dresses/Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://trello.com/userhuongsen

Created July 23, 2020 at 12:50PM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

[findasongblog]

And some more albums ;)

Granfalloon - RGB

Granfalloon, is the musical project of Manchester based artist and producer Richard Lomax. Lomax makes a hybrid of lo-fi folk, experimental music, and electronica - weaving oddball elements, such as Omnichords, acoustic guitars, and vintage drum loops, into dreamy songs and cinematic soundscapes.

Following the release of Richard Lomax’s ambitious solo album ‘Calendar’ in 2015 (an epic 52-song omnibus that compiled the fruits of a song-a-week writing period for the prolific songwriter), he would then turn his attention to a more collaborative project that would become Granfalloon’s acclaimed debut LP ‘Down There For Dancing’ in 2017. The new album, ‘RGB’, was recorded in Manchester between John Ellis' Limefield Studio, WR Audio, and their own studio, The Dogan. They worked with producer Andrew Glassford (One Little Atlas), and Australian electronic artist/producer Jack Prest (Jonti/Sampa The Great), with Lomax producing as well. Liverpool star Natalie McCool also provides guest vocals on the track: ‘Objects of Love’. Seamlessly weaving folk and electronica into rich and intricate compositions, Granfalloon has received praise from the likes Richer Sounds and Q Magazine who hailed the outfit as Artist Of The Week respectively, not to mention garnering consistent radio support from BBC Introducing in Manchester (who recently premiered new single ‘The Elephant’). (press release)

Michael Horse - HorseWorld

pizzagirl - first timer

Pizzagirl, or Liam Brown to give his off-screen name, has fine-tuned his hyperactive DIY-pop to an esoteric art. The result is technicolour debut album ‘first timer’, out now via Heist or Hit (Her’s, Baywaves, Honey Moon). It’s a triumph in world-building and split-personality genre jumping that’ll have you bopping, laughing and crying before the closing credits. Introverted in daily life, Liam uses Pizzagirl as a flamboyant alter-ego - the tracks across the album are different costumes for him to wear, reflecting different moods and emotions, expressed as loose vignettes tied together as a complete whole. Sometimes songs are autobiographical to varying degrees, of his own life and sentiments, and sometimes they’re entirely fanciful. The outcome is an uncanny but internally coherent alternative reality with Pizzagirl as the off-kilter protagonist. Across 10 tracks he connects the dots between 80s John Hughes soundtracks, the oddball-pop flair of Ariel Pink, and New Wave icons David Byrne, DEVO. He also takes cues from a similar bedroom-pop space, defined by his own rules, as Clairo, Gus Dapperton or Brad Stank. The approach exemplifies a typical pop cultural magpie approach of Gen Z'ers. (press release)

ROOM8 - Transduction

Based between LA and Stockholm, production duo ROOM8 are releasing their new full-length Transduction.

On the concept behind the new album, the band tell us “Transduction means the transfer of one form of energy into another, like the conversion of an electrical voltage into a sound wave by way of an oscillator in analogue synthesis. Shades of 1980s synth pioneers such as Tangerine Dream can be heard along with contemporaries Years & Years and Com Truise.

ROOM8 have collaborated with the likes of Little Boots, The Sound Of Arrows, Morgxn and Electric Youth (best known for their work on the Drive film soundtrack), which led to a number of No.1 spots on HypeMachine.

Fresh off the back of producing the score to upcoming 2019 film Cuck, the cinematic nature of their work shines through, creating an album of eclectic, progressive electronica.

In their words “for us it also alludes to the various film scores and song productions that created emotional impressions on us in our childhood, that we have converted through our own perspective and life experience into this album.”

This emotional depth shines through on tracks such as ‘Only You’ (ft. The Sound Of Arrows), a song about being uneasy with people out in the world and taking refuge in someone that you trust. Recent single ‘West’ explores the concept of escapism, a feeling of needing to be rid of melancholy for a short while and tune out the things that just don’t seem to make sense. (press release)

Karnaval Blues - You Come With The Rain

Showcasing intricate electronic beats and soulful vocals, the body of work immediately marks Karnaval Blues as an artist to watch heading into 2020. Speaking on the release, Karnaval Blues states:

I’ve been working on this project for a while now and it’s importance in my life is indescribable. I want this project to bring an immersive sense of nostalgia to everyone that listens, and create a musical landscape that captures the entire spectrum of human emotion, from the lowest blues to the highest symphony.

Around two years ago, Karnaval Blues was working in a bank – “a real 9-5, grey and lifeless, stereotypical, mind draining, bad job.” But each evening when headed home, he’d sit back at his desk and dive into a brand new world. (press release)

[comics-manga-videos]

The Origin Of The Inhumans (TPB) (2013) [eng]: En 1965, una extraña familia de marginados hizo su debut en las páginas de FANTASTIC FOUR. Los misteriosos Inhumanos se convirtieron rápidamente en algo más que un grupo más de adversarios, ¡y todos se apropiaron de la revista y la hicieron suya! Los misteriosos orígenes de Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Triton, Karnak, Crystal y Lockjaw se revelaron mes tras mes hasta que la demanda del lector les dio su propia característica en THOR. ¡Ahora, la historia de los Inhumanos y su tierra maravillosa y secreta, Attilan, se recoge desde el principio! Desde el debut de Medusa como miembro de los Horribles Cuatro hasta la batalla para romper la Gran Barrera, ¡todo está aquí en la incomparable manera de Stan y Jack! In 1965, a strange family of outcasts made their debut in the pages of FANTASTIC FOUR. The uncanny Inhumans quickly became more than just another set of adversaries – and they all but took over and made the magazine their own! The mysterious origins of Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Triton, Karnak, Crystal and Lockjaw were revealed month after month until reader demand gave them their own feature in THOR! Now, the story of the Inhumans and their wondrous, secret land Attilan is collected from the very beginning! From Medusa’s debut as a member of the Frightful Four to the battle to break the Great Barrier, it’s all here in incomparable Stan and Jack fashion! Collecting FANTASTIC FOUR (1961) #36, #38, #41-47, #54, #62-65 and ANNUAL #5, plus portions of #48, #50, #52 and #55-61; and material from THOR (1966) #146-152. https://ift.tt/2IS8GI1 https://ift.tt/2IYaKds https://ift.tt/2IQVRxE

[baedlyweathered]

2-50 evens only

ok but only cause im super bored and high

2. Do you take the shampoos and conditioner bottles from hotel? 

No theyre too small, whats the point of taking a bottle that lasts you MAYBE two showers unless you steal em from the housecleaning cart or something and theyd be a pain to use even if you did that and they usually are the cheapest possible shower products so like............. whats the pint

4: Have you ever stolen a street sign before?

no but i have considered it and may in the future. do you need like, boltcutters for that? a screwdriver? guess i never really looked

6: Do you cut out coupons but then never use them?

I don’t get the newspaper and those in-store magazines seem to always just be price listings, like a catalogue, and not actual coupons, so. where would i get coupons?

8: Do you have freckles?

no but i have some dots on my arms that i think are cute

10: What is your biggest pet peeve?

I dunno I’m autistic so i get annoyed with a whole lot of things...

12: Have you ever peed in the woods?

i think only once, on a day-long nature hike in elementary school

14: Do you ever dance even if theres no music playing?

nah

16: How many people have you slept with this week?

zero i am very lonely i wanna cuddle

18: What is your Song of the week?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIbZJQcew98 the actual sound of my soul its uncanny

20: Do you still watch cartoons?

yeah! almost exclusively. easier to process ig

22: Where would you bury hidden treasure if you had some?

it depends on the rarity of the treasure and how often i need to access it.... and i’d probably choose a semirandom place, too...... .:/

24: What do you dip a chicken nugget in?

god ok i work at dominos and i steal the dipping cups a lot so, usually one of those or ketchup

26: What movies could you watch over and over and still love?

i dunno i get bored watching the same thing too much in a short time... plus the thing where live action is harder to watch, so idk if i have any movies i like that much rn. i kinda want to watch fury road again tho

28: Were you ever a boy/girl scout?

no

30: When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper?

probably when i sent care packages to a couple friends

32: Ever gotten a speeding ticket?

no but this one time i got a ticket for running a red left hand turn light which i fully did not and i took it to court because i was told that the cop would need, like, a modicum of proof to win, and also, took pictures of the intersection to show that the cop couldnt have seen it clearly. well i did end up having to pay less than i wouldve if i hadnt contested it and for some reason the infraction didnt actually get added to my driving record?? but cmon that was so bull’s shit

34: Favorite kind of sandwich?

god i do this thing where i make a grilled cheese sandwich but with extra ingredients including tuna salad, i think thats probably what a tuna melt is, so , tuna melts.

36: What is your usual bedtime?

oh i work til after 1 or 2 in the morning, and i have severe adhd so it takes me a while to settle down plus i have to eat because i havent for like 12 hours by that point and also i usually smoke a bit, sooo even on weekends i certainly dont get to bed before midnight

38: When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween?

different stuff... i think i mostly went as a wizard after like, 10, like in these brown robes my mom made me and like, a belt with a bunch of cool stones and stuff hanging off it... in high school junior or senior year i went as mathis quigley from unsounded..... the year i was at college i wore this giant patchwork coat with embroidery that i got for free and my rainboots and walked around campus all evening sharing an umbrella with people and then ran into some friends and watched the babadook with them it ended up being a pretty nice halloween

40: Are you horny?

no

42: Which are better legos or lincoln logs?

how could lincoln logs possibly be better than legos??? unless youre like, a toddler

44: Who is better…Leno or Letterman?

who ?

46: Are you afraid of heights?

a healthy amount

48: Do you sing in the shower?

no sometimes i whistle because i like,,, always do

50: Ever used a gun?

no they scare me (though im not really pro-gun control because i recognize the necessity of them and also that gun control is as selectively enforced by our fascist watchdogs as any other law)

52: Do you think musicals are cheesy?

yeah i think everyone thinks that but that doesnt mean you cant like them so, yes but who cares

54: Ever eat a pierogi?

yeah i made shitty ones last thanksgiving and also ate them as a kid cause my grandmothers slovakian

56: Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?

marine biologist was the first one when i was rly young but i never could really imagine any kind of long term future for myself

58: Ever have a Deja-vu feeling?

oh yeah constantly i think maybe i have prophetic dreams

60: Wear slippers?

no im autistic and my feet dont like it

62: What do you wear to bed?

t shirt and panties usually

64: Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart?

walmart i fuckin guess

66: Cheetos Or Fritos?

cheetos i fuckin guess

68: Ever hear of the group Tres Bien?

no

70: Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing?

not really i dont have much of a concept of the future these days either

72: Ever won a spelling bee?

pass

74: Own any record albums?

like.... physical ones? no

76: Regularly burn incense?

no

78: Who would you like to see in concert?

ive never been to a concert i dont think id like it

80: Hot tea or cold tea?

cold sweet tea is good

82: Sugar or snickerdoodles?

sugar i think

84: Can you hold your breath without holding your nose?

are ... there people who cant? anyway i used to do swimming so yes definitely

86: DJ or band, at a wedding?

DJ

88: Ever have plastic surgery

no the only surgery ive ever had was when i was a baby

90: Can you knit or crochet?

i have knit a couple times but not very well

92: Do you want to get married?

yeah maybe, i mean ideally yeah

94: Who was your HS crush?

by high school i was like, convinced that straight male attraction was super creepy and since i actually believed i was a straight boy i just refused to acnowlkege any more than an aesthetic attraction to anyone and that is mostly still repressed and something i have to like, guess at and then perform? or something? im kinda sad sorry

96: Do you have kids?

no i am nowhere near ready to be a mom

98: Whats your favorite color?

cerulean ig

[newstfionline]

The Uncounted

By Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, NY Times Magazine, Nov. 16, 2017

Late on the evening of Sept. 20, 2015, Basim Razzo sat in the study of his home on the eastern side of Mosul, his face lit up by a computer screen. His wife, Mayada, was already upstairs in bed, but Basim could lose hours clicking through car reviews on YouTube: the BMW Alpina B7, the Audi Q7. Almost every night went like this. Basim had long harbored a taste for fast rides, but around ISIS-occupied Mosul, the auto showrooms sat dark, and the family car in his garage--a 1991 BMW--had barely been used in a year. There simply was nowhere to go.

The Razzos lived in the Woods, a bucolic neighborhood on the banks of the Tigris, where marble and stucco villas sprawled amid forests of eucalyptus, chinar and pine. Cafes and restaurants lined the riverbanks, but ever since the city fell to ISIS the previous year, Basim and Mayada had preferred to entertain at home. They would set up chairs poolside and put kebabs on the grill, and Mayada would serve pizza or Chinese fried rice, all in an effort to maintain life as they’d always known it. Their son, Yahya, had abandoned his studies at Mosul University and fled for Erbil, and they had not seen him since; those who left when ISIS took over could re-enter the caliphate, but once there, they could not leave--an impasse that stranded people wherever they found themselves. Birthdays, weddings and graduations came and went, the celebrations stockpiled for that impossibly distant moment: liberation.

Next door to Basim’s home stood the nearly identical home belonging to his brother, Mohannad, and his wife, Azza. They were almost certainly asleep at that hour, but Basim guessed that their 18-year-old son, Najib, was still up. A few months earlier, he was arrested by the ISIS religious police for wearing jeans and a T-shirt with English writing. They gave him 10 lashes and, as a further measure of humiliation, clipped his hair into a buzz cut. Now he spent most of his time indoors, usually on Facebook. “Someday it’ll all be over,” Najib had posted just a few days earlier. “Until that day, I’ll hold on with all my strength.”

Sometimes, after his parents locked up for the night, Najib would fish the key out of the cupboard and steal over to his uncle’s house. Basim had the uncanny ability to make his nephew forget the darkness of their situation. Basim was not a particularly religious man, but that small article of faith underpinned what seemed to him an ineluctable truth, even in wartime Iraq: Everything happens for a reason. It was an assurance he offered everyone; Yahya had lost a year’s worth of education, but in exile he had met, and proposed to, the love of his life. “You see?” Basim would tell Mayada. “You see? That’s fate.”

Basim had felt this way for as long as he could remember. A 56-year-old account manager at Huawei, the Chinese multinational telecommunications company, he studied engineering in the 1980s at Western Michigan University. He and Mayada lived in Portage, Mich., in a tiny one-bedroom apartment that Mayada also used as the headquarters for her work as an Avon representative; she started small, offering makeup and skin cream to neighbors, but soon expanded sales to Kalamazoo and Comstock. Within a year, she’d saved up enough to buy Basim a $700 Minolta camera. Basim came to rely on her ability to impose order on the strange and the mundane, to master effortlessly everything from Yahya’s chemistry homework to the alien repartee of faculty picnics and Rotary clubs. It was fate. They had been married now for 33 years.

Around midnight, Basim heard a thump from the second floor. He peeked out of his office and saw a sliver of light under the door to the bedroom of his daughter, Tuqa. He called out for her to go to bed. At 21, Tuqa would often stay up late, and though Basim knew that he wasn’t a good example himself and that the current conditions afforded little reason to be up early, he believed in the calming power of an early-to-bed, early-to-rise routine. He waited at the foot of the stairs, called out again, and the sliver went dark.

It was 1 a.m. when Basim finally shut down the computer and headed upstairs to bed. He settled in next to Mayada, who was fast asleep.

Some time later, he snapped awake. His shirt was drenched, and there was a strange taste--blood?--on his tongue. The air was thick and acrid. He looked up. He was in the bedroom, but the roof was nearly gone. He could see the night sky, the stars over Mosul. Basim reached out and found his legs pressed just inches from his face by what remained of his bed. He began to panic. He turned to his left, and there was a heap of rubble. “Mayada!” he screamed. “Mayada!” It was then that he noticed the silence. “Mayada!” he shouted. “Tuqa!” The bedroom walls were missing, leaving only the bare supports. He could see the dark outlines of treetops. He began to hear the faraway, unmistakable sound of a woman’s voice. He cried out, and the voice shouted back, “Where are you?” It was Azza, his sister-in-law, somewhere outside.

“Mayada’s gone!” he shouted.

“No, no, I’ll find her!”

“No, no, no, she’s gone,” he cried back. “They’re all gone!”

LATER THAT SAME day, the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria uploaded a video to its YouTube channel. The clip, titled “Coalition Airstrike Destroys Daesh VBIED Facility Near Mosul, Iraq 20 Sept 2015,” shows spectral black-and-white night-vision footage of two sprawling compounds, filmed by an aircraft slowly rotating above. There is no sound. Within seconds, the structures disappear in bursts of black smoke. The target, according to the caption, was a car-bomb factory, a hub in a network of “multiple facilities spread across Mosul used to produce VBIEDs for ISIL’s terrorist activities,” posing “a direct threat to both civilians and Iraqi security forces.” Later, when he found the video, Basim could watch only the first few frames. He knew immediately that the buildings were his and his brother’s houses.

The clip is one of hundreds the coalition has released since the American-led war against the Islamic State began in August 2014. Also posted to Defense Department websites, they are presented as evidence of a military campaign unlike any other--precise, transparent and unyielding. In the effort to expel ISIS from Iraq and Syria, the coalition has conducted more than 27,500 strikes to date, deploying everything from Vietnam-era B-52 bombers to modern Predator drones. That overwhelming air power has made it possible for local ground troops to overcome heavy resistance and retake cities throughout the region. “U.S. and coalition forces work very hard to be precise in airstrikes,” Maj. Shane Huff, a spokesman for the Central Command, told us, and as a result “are conducting one of the most precise air campaigns in military history.”

American military planners go to great lengths to distinguish today’s precision strikes from the air raids of earlier wars, which were carried out with little or no regard for civilian casualties. They describe a target-selection process grounded in meticulously gathered intelligence, technological wizardry, carefully designed bureaucratic hurdles and extraordinary restraint. Intelligence analysts pass along proposed targets to “targeteers,” who study 3-D computer models as they calibrate the angle of attack. A team of lawyers evaluates the plan, and--if all goes well--the process concludes with a strike so precise that it can, in some cases, destroy a room full of enemy fighters and leave the rest of the house intact.

The coalition usually announces an airstrike within a few days of its completion. It also publishes a monthly report assessing allegations of civilian casualties. Those it deems credible are generally explained as unavoidable accidents--a civilian vehicle drives into the target area moments after a bomb is dropped, for example. The coalition reports that since August 2014, it has killed tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and, according to our tally of its monthly summaries, 466 civilians in Iraq.

Yet until we raised his case, Basim’s family was not among those counted. Mayada, Tuqa, Mohannad and Najib were four of an unknown number of Iraqi civilians whose deaths the coalition has placed in the “ISIS” column. Estimates from Airwars and other nongovernmental organizations suggest that the civilian death toll is much higher, but the coalition disputes such figures, arguing that they are based not on specific intelligence but local news reports and testimony gathered from afar. When the coalition notes a mission irregularity or receives an allegation, it conducts its own inquiry and publishes a sentence-long analysis of its findings. But no one knows how many Iraqis have simply gone uncounted.

Our own reporting, conducted over 18 months, shows that the air war has been significantly less precise than the coalition claims. Between April 2016 and June 2017, we visited the sites of nearly 150 airstrikes across northern Iraq, not long after ISIS was evicted from them. We toured the wreckage; we interviewed hundreds of witnesses, survivors, family members, intelligence informants and local officials; we photographed bomb fragments, scoured local news sources, identified ISIS targets in the vicinity and mapped the destruction through satellite imagery. We also visited the American air base in Qatar where the coalition directs the air campaign. There, we were given access to the main operations floor and interviewed senior commanders, intelligence officials, legal advisers and civilian-casualty assessment experts. We provided their analysts with the coordinates and date ranges of every airstrike--103 in all--in three ISIS-controlled areas and examined their responses. The result is the first systematic, ground-based sample of airstrikes in Iraq since this latest military action began in 2014.

We found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history. Our reporting, moreover, revealed a consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims properly or to keep records that make it possible to investigate the claims at all. While some of the civilian deaths we documented were a result of proximity to a legitimate ISIS target, many others appear to be the result simply of flawed or outdated intelligence that conflated civilians with combatants. In this system, Iraqis are considered guilty until proved innocent. Those who survive the strikes remain marked as possible ISIS sympathizers, with no discernible path to clear their names.