#all my friends are ALSO veteran editors

[windose20s]

pov me when my new blog is dead & gets no asks

[nyappyforeverbr]

【Interview】Miku (An Cafe) × ClubZy ONLINE │Part #2

In February of that year, 2023, Miku was interviewed by the ClubZy Online team. ClubZy is a Japanese magazine specializing in visual-kei artists managed by Visual-kei Oyaji/Seiichi Hoshiko. The editor in chief of the magazine is Hakuei (Penicillin).

To access the interview, it was necessary to pay a contribution/subscription fee on the ClubZy no Nico channel (Japanese live broadcast platform), Cafekko Sara signed and sent us the interview!

After starting their hiatus in January 2019, AN CAFE made a 'live comeback' at [OSAKA MUSE 35th Anniversary Event “OUR CANVAS”] held last June/2022. After such a surprise, they celebrated their 20th anniversary this year by performing at Zepp Haneda on January 5th and 6th, 2023. In addition, it was also announced that they will be performing live in Tokyo and Osaka in August this year, surely many readers are creating expectations for the full resumption of activities. We caught up with Miku (Vo.) to talk about An Cafe's past, present and future!

Interview: Takayuki Murakami Photo: Susumu Miyawaki

- An Cafe's live is full of performance, and Miku-san's vocals are amazing. Miku: No no no no! You think? (smile)

-And truth. Voice quality, music rhythm, vibrato, etc., are pleasing to the ears. And the attitude of always singing politely throughout the show was also brilliant. Miku: I always feel that I have to sing politely, and that feeling was even stronger during the January lives. I thought mistakes were unforgivable and I definitely didn't want to forget to express my thoughts. So, as I said before, I wanted to have fun, but above all, I sang with the aim of conveying my feelings. Therefore, it may have become polite music.

-I have the impression that you're the type who doesn't make excuses like "because it's a live show" or "because I got emotional". Miku: I often point the microphone towards the audience because I want to hear the audience singing. Instead of a call and response, there are places where the audience sings naturally, and I always point the microphone at them, but for this show I didn't think about making them sing. I wanted to sing it all myself, so I didn't let go of the mic.

-As expected. How about the temperature and vibrato of the song?

Miku: When I go to karaoke with my friends, they say my vibrato is really strong (laughs). It's amazing. The most modern karaoke shows the number of vibratos. So I managed to vibrato 90 times in one song (laughs). That's why, after all, the way Visual-kei sings is different from ordinary people.

-You use a lot of vibrato, yet the music doesn't sound weird. Also, the musical instruments are all very talented Miku: That's right... I guess. We grew up being scolded all the time, we've been with the same members for a long time, and we've all grown little by little, so we don't really understand each other. Because it doesn't sound like a sudden "pan!"

-All, as expected from a veteran artist, Teruki and Kanon in particular have really matured as musicians. Miku: Everyone's the same! "That's what you said in the interview just now." Hehe, that's right... I think I can sing in a difficult environment. -It's just speculation, but I think Teruki-san has a lot of drum practice. Miku: That's right. I had a set of drums at home, so I moved into an environment where I could play whenever I wanted. I'm practicing a lot. No, it's amazing. Teruki-san, I think you wish you were here (smile).

-I would like you to tell me that you learned that you are still practicing stoically (laughs). Kanon also has a wild playing and bass sound. Miku: I think you'll be happy about it too, so I'll tell you (laughs). -Please (laughs). In short, An Cafe's concert is really of high quality, with good songs, good singing and performances, a sense of the band and a variety of attractive manners. Miku: I'm happy. Really... I really want to continue as An Cafe, but it's hard because everyone has their own job. It turns out that An Cafe only has one member.

- It seems like a waste not to be constantly active. Fans flocked from across the country for the January show. Miku: For those who support us, I only have "thanks for waiting" and "thanks for coming to our live" feelings. AN CAFE took up most of mine. It was like a dream, so I'm really happy to be able to go on stage once again and spend some time dreaming. As I said at the beginning, it is not possible to create this space with just the members. It was a place where there were fans, so I'm filled with gratitude for dreaming again.

-Fans must have been happy to be able to experience AN CAFE live for the first time in a long time, so I would really like you to resume your activities. Next, let's talk about AN CAFE's 20th anniversary. First, how do you feel about the 20th anniversary? Miku: 20 years seems like a long time, but it was too short. It's been a while, 20 years. 20 years has been so much fun, so fast, and I feel like I've aged so fast. I still have vivid memories of the AN CAFE I was at as a teenager, so I feel like it got twisted in an instant.

-I understand that you have been doing a satisfactory activity. I think there have been ups and downs with the suspension of activities several times, but it's amazing that you've gotten through it and continued for 20 years. Miku: I think so too. I feel like the fact that it went on for so long is probably down to dating. It's the members, the fans, the staff, the media and I feel like our lives are blessed. I feel that I am alive because I have wonderful people around me.

-I think the reason wonderful people get together is because we are those people. Is there any secret why you guys have been with the same members for so long? Miku: What's going on? The members are very close to each other, but I don't feel like everyone decides everything together, and I think that kind of environment is good. Even if you have a lot of brains, you can't have a working band or crew. All you need is one person to show you the guidelines, and in that regard, I think AN CAFE is ideal.

~ x ~

to be continued...

[harringtontmaa]

coming off anon because I can. I meant every single word about how much I adore your Steve. I have been tempted time and time again to return to the rpc. I feel like so much has changed though.

ah, hello ! i'm glad you did come off anon, it's nice to meet you ! & i definitely understand your hesitance. as someone who has been in the tumblr rpc in general for a decade now, & involved with the st rpc since 2019, it's absolutely different now than it has been in the past. especially with st it can be overwhelming sometimes, because there are a lot of people in the rpc, which means a lot of opinions. & just like all parts of the internet, people can struggle to coexist with others with clashing opinions. i've mostly managed to avoid friction with others just by staying in my own lane, but conflict does happen sometimes in such a large community of people online.

there's also been a bit of a transition period in the community lately with formatting for rps using the new editor, but i've actually mostly figured it out despite my irritation at needing to lean a new method, with the help of people who have been super helpful with putting together tutorials & answering questions. i do also want to say that some people get really invested in their rp graphics & themes & icons, & so feeling like you need a bunch of graphics to rp can be a big challenge for some people who want to join. but while i definitely understand the appeal of having a pretty blog & decorating your posts ( & absolutely have no issue with those that do it ofc ! ), i don't really do it, & i think it's important to remember that you don't actually need all those kinds of things to rp. all you really need to be part of the rpc is the urge to write a character & the willingness to collaborate with another person & their character to make a story !

all that being said, & in spite of the issues that the tumblr rpc has, i am clearly still here ( in spite of my bouts of low activity or hiatus ) ten whole years later, so i can confidently say that there are many things and people to love here ! if you do decide to return, i encourage you to do it on your own terms & in whatever way makes you feel comfortable & supported so that you can be creative. don't feel pressured because you feel like most of the community does something a certain way — on your blog, set your own rules based on your comfort levels. & always feel free to reach out to others for help, either directly or on the dash ! i have had really amazing luck with finding partners who are wonderfully invested as they are patient, & i do believe that the vast majority of the rpc consists of kind & good people who just want to write — and would love to write with you if you ever did decide to return !

thanks so much for the message & for the kind words ! i realize you didn't explicitly ask for advice, but i hope my experience as a veteran roleplayer gives you a little more clarity. if you end up coming back to the rpc, let me know ! i'll be first in line to welcome you back, friend. 💗

[treeremovalpensacola]

Seths Cut: Wonder whats next

If you're in the Pensacola area, then you have probably already experienced the need for having to remove a tree or stump or getting your tree's trimmed. The cost of tree removal varies depending on a few factors, such as: - The type of tree that needs to be removed - The size of the tree - The location of the tree - The condition of the tree Pensacola Tree Removal offers competitive pricing for our tree removal services. For a full list of services Tree removal services visit Pensacola Tree Removal Service for a fast, friendly and reliable quote that you can count on. This will help not only beautify your property but also is the safest way to do it. Well, this one is going to be weird to write … because I want to stress that this is not goodbye. This is ‘wait for what’s next!’ Last month, the timing was just perfect. To celebrate the entrance of spring and the growing season ahead of us, on this page, I shared a photo of me and my local lawn care applicator, taken a few hours before we went to press. This month, the timing is again fortuitous. As I write this page (the last page I write of every issue), only hours ago, we shared this news with our readers: we hired a new Editor-in-Chief for Landscape Management. His name is Scott Hollister and I’m so excited to introduce you to him. A little history here: Scott and I were co-workers from 1999 to 2012 when we both worked on the magazine Golf Course Management (GCM), the official publication of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. In 2012, I was hired away by North Coast Media to lead the magazine Golfdom, a competitor to GCM. I was young(er) and eager for the opportunity to lead a magazine on my own. In the ensuing years, I think it’s OK to say that things have gone well. So well, in fact, that a little over five years ago I was asked if I would lead both LM and Golfdom in a dual role — working as Editor-in-Chief over both publications. I said yes to the promotion (of course) and I’m thankful I did; the people I’ve met and the places I’ve seen over the last 64 issues have been remarkable. But with staff turnover and the continued growth of the magazine, a change was necessary. We knew we needed another veteran editor on the magazine, and we knew we wanted someone who could come in on day one and have the connections and the experience in the green industry to make an immediate impact. That was the moment I decided to text Scott — to invite him to 23rd Street Brewery in Lawrence, Kan., so I could ask the question, ‘Can I talk to you about an opportunity I have at Landscape Management magazine?’ Scott spent 26 years working for GCM, so it was not an easy move for him. But after multiple lunches, meetings and phone calls … I’m excited to tell you that Scott is again my co-worker. I will move into the role of Editorial Director of LM, which is a fancy way of saying, ‘I get to do what I want to!’ I will also maintain my position as Editor-in-Chief of Golfdom, a job I’ve had for 13 years. Once the news went out today, Scott’s LinkedIn account erupted with new LinkedIn connection requests. That didn’t surprise me. He might be new to you, and you might be new to him, but he isn’t new to the green industry. I know he’s the perfect person to come in and build upon what the team has been doing for the past five years: creating the most trusted, valued, best magazine in the industry. I hope you’ve enjoyed the last five years of this magazine and found the content useful. Trust me when I say that you’ll be seeing more from me and all your friends at LM — in person, online and in the magazine — soon. I wonder what’s next? The post Seth’s Cut: Wonder what’s next first appeared on Landscape Management.

[oldsalempost-blog]

The Old Salem Post

                   Our  Local Tamassee-Salem SC Area News each Monday except holidays                                          Contact: theoldsalempost@gmail.com                              Distributed to local businesses, town hall, library.                            Volume 7 Issue 4                                                                                                  Week of December 18, 2023                https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/oldsalempost-blog                                                         Lynne Martin Publishing

EDITOR:  God awakens each of us as we journey along through many experiences:  the loss of health, a painful divorce, betrayal of a friend, the joyful birth of a child, sorrow through the death of a loved one, and the list goes on.  Joy, laughter, tears, and heartbreak are usually part of everyone’s journey.  God did not promise us an easy life. He promised to never leave us.  As we celebrate the coming of Baby Jesus born to humble parents in a humble shed, let us reflect on life, as imperfect as it is.  Mary and Joseph faced hardships: birth in a stable, away from home and the help of family, then running from King Herod and hiding for years to keep Jesus safe.  God was always with them, and He is with us now, no matter what we are experiencing.  Jesus said in John 10:10 “I come that they might have life abundantly.”  What comfort and joy the Christmas experience brings!  LMartin

TOWN of SALEM:  * Visit the Downtown Market every Sat 8am-12pm. *   Town Hall will be closed Dec 21st and will reopen on Dec 28th.    Jan. 16th 5pm swearing in Leigh Roach, new member on Town Council.

JOCASSEE VALLEY BREWING COMPANY,(JVBC) & COFFEE SHOP* 13412 N Hwy 11 Open  Wed–Sat 9am-9pm and Sunday 2pm-7pm.  Events this week:  Wed:  Blue Grass Jam 6:30pm   Thurs:  Conservation Theory Christmas and Friends at 6:30pm.  Fri: Food: LOBSTER DOGS   Music: BJ Callahan at 6:30pm  Sat– Open 9am-3pm and will close for Christmas Holidays.  Will Reopen for regular hours on Wednesday after Christmas.  More information 864-873-0048.                                            

ASHTON RECALLS:  by Ashton Hester  Here is the conclusion of the 1953 story about the county library COUNTY LIBRARY EXPERIENCED PHENOMENAL GROWTH FIRST FIVE YEARS - (The following is the conclusion of a story from the November 18, 1953 Keowee Courier. The first segment was in last week's Old Salem Post). . .There are also summer reading clubs at the main library and all three branches and a weekly story hour at the main library. . .The library was originally overseen by a commission consisting of Mrs. W.L. Norton of Walhalla, Mrs. Tom McLees of Oakway, and W.L. Jones, then superintendent of education. Mrs. Norton and Mrs. McLees are still members of the commission, and the chairman now is the present superintendent of education, T.V. Derrick. . .Mrs. Ray Green of Salem became librarian in July of 1949 and remains in that position today. Mrs. Lecil Smith of Walhalla is assistant librarian at the main library, and the third member of the staff is Miss Nettie Harvey of Walhalla. . .The first of the three branch libraries was established in Westminster in June of 1950 with some 900 books on the shelves. It now contains 1,562 books with Mrs. Frances Witherspoon as branch librarian. . .The second branch library opened in Salem in June of 1952 with Mrs. Christine Wigington as librarian and 899 books available. There are now 1,200 books. . .The most recent branch opened in Seneca in April of 1953 with Miss Margaret Holland as librarian and 1,385 books available..

Jottings from Miz Jeannie  by Jeannie Barnwell                                                                  Decorating Veterans' Graves for Christmas:  The teacher always learns the most!  And this certainly is true for a volunteer with Wreaths Across America.  My challenge began last January when I placed the order for the 30 wreaths to be placed  at Salem Methodist Church.  Then, several weeks ago, the fragrant fir branches were fashioned into wreaths and loaded in trucks to finally be delivered in Salem Methodist Church.  The congregation had planned to hold a service outside.  However, it seems that a mini- hurricane with the possibility of tornadoes is wending its way up from Florida.  I  can count on the congregation to get this job of honoring Americans done.  "If these soldiers risked their lives in battle for our country,  then we will wait for a break in the weather.   AND MEN AND WOMEN AND BOYS AND GIRLS will slosh out to the cemetery to remember and to honor veterans' sacrifices."  During the holidays, everyone is invited to stroll through the cemetery,  the resting place of veterans from the War Between the States;  World Wars I and II; Korea and Vietnam.                                                   Miz Jeannie wishes you a safe and joyful Christmas!                                                                                                           Christmas Gift:  DISCOVER Freeze Drying:  The perfect solution for outdoor living.  Easy to rehydrate.  Delicious & Nutritious.  Lasts up to 25 years!   ADCM  174 East Main Street Salem ( beside Talk of the Town Beauty Salon)  is now is carrying the HARVESTRIGHT Unit.  Stop by and check these out as well the firearms, ammo, fishing supplies,  treasures, antiques and more. 

Quote by Linus Van Pelt: "For behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’ ”   From “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  

Eagles Nest Art Center 2024 UPCOMING EVENTS  

January, 20th, 7pm Oconee Mountain Opry.  Hometown variety of local and regional artists $10   Feb 3rd, 1pm-4pm   Women Encouraging Women. 2nd annual Afternoon Retreat for women to refresh and encourage your faith.                                           

Feb.  10, 7pm  Trial by Fire,  A Journey Tribute,  GIFT IDEA:  Purchase $20 advance tickets  $25 day of  show                         

March 2nd, 2pm-5pm Second Annual Alumni Gathering 2pm-5pm 

March 16th, 7pm   Oconee Mountain Opry. $10

Raeford Farms Chicken Sale: Order Fresh on line, House of Raeford for pick up at Eagles Nest Art Center  March 4th 9am-12pm

*Visit our website at Eaglesnestartcenter.org for more 2024 events and ticket information.                                                               

GIFT IDEA:   Name a seat at ENAC!  $200 Single Name.  $250 for couples or families.  Please call Darlene at  864 710-8758.

The Eagles Nest Treasure Store will not be open Saturday morning Dec 23rd.       More Information: 864-280-1258                                                                             

CHURCH NEWS                                                                   Bethel Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), 580 Bethel Church Rd Walhalla, 29691, worships at 10:30 a.m. Advent Schedule , 12/24 7:00 pm, Candlelight Service and Carols. Bethel Presbyterian Church,  580 Bethel Church Rd, Walhalla,29691. text for more info: 864-723-4936 or 757-288-3893. Like us on Facebook:  Bethelpresbyterianchurchwalhalla  Love to sing?  Join us! Love to be in charge? Come lead! All worshipers are welcome.  

Boones Creek Baptist Church, 264 Boones Creek Road, Salem invites you to join us for regular worship service on Sunday morning with Sunday School at 10am and followed by worship at 11am. 

Salem Methodist Church: 520 Church Street, Salem meets at 9am for breakfast, 9:30am for Sunday School, and 10:30am for Worship. Join us for worship, especially during the Advent Season.  On Sunday Dec 17th we lit the  third Advent Candle representing Joy that comes only from our Heavenly Father.  You may tune in to our live service on Facebook or view it later on our website.

CHRISTMAS MIRACLE for TS-Elementary:   On Monday, December 11 at 6pm at the District Office, 414 SOUTH PINE STREET,  Walhalla, SC, The School Board of Oconee County voted to SAVE TAMASSEE-SALEM ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!  Send each board member a “Thank-you” for open minds and hearts to put their time and energy for research and to make a different plan.  Amanda Holder, our District 1 Council Representative made a motion to amend the Plan A , item 3 to read “build Keowee Elementary a new school,” leaving off the closing and consolidation of TS-E with Keowee.  Sandra Sloan made the second and all were in favor of accepting the amending of Plan A. Plan A was then voted on and accepted.   One mother told me, “I am so happy.  I went to Tamassee-Salem Elementary, now I know my children will get to go.”  

I pray you have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! The Old Salem Post will take holiday time to enjoy friends and family for the next two weeks.   Will resume print Jan 8th.                       May God Bless us one and all! 

Lynne R Martin                                                             

                                                           !  

[briankeene]

The Greatest Show On Earth

Someone asked me the other day what's the most fun I've ever had working on a project, and what was the most rewarding. That's a tough question to answer. There have been novels that were absolutely fun (with bold italics) to write -- EARTHWORM GODS, THE COMPLEX, and the various CLICKERS books immediately come to mind. Certainly, the most I've ever laughed while working on a project was when Jesus and I would try to one-up each other with the CLICKERS books.

But for an overall combination of Fun and Rewarding? I'd have to go with SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR.

In 2018, I was approached by Serial Box (now Realm Media) -- a producer of audio dramas. They'd just obtained licensing deals for a number of media properties, including Orphan Black and Tony Valenzuela's Silverwood. I'd enjoyed the first two seasons of Blackbox TV’s Silverwood -- they were pioneering as far as made-for-YouTube original horror content went. So when Lydia Shamah (now Director of Original Content Scripted Drama at Audible, but then with Realm) asked if I'd be interested in serving as showrunner and head writer on a new Silverwood series, I immediately said yes. 

Then I contacted a bunch of friends who had actually served as showrunners on various television and audio series, and I said, "Hey, I just signed a deal to be a showrunner, and I should probably find out what that actually is and what I've gotten myself into." And so I got a crash course from some of the best in the business.

The first thing I did was come up with an overall concept for what would effectively be season 3 of Silverwood. It had to be respectful of the continuity of the previous Blackbox TV series, and wrap up some plotlines from those. But it also had to be readily accessible to people who had never watched Silverwood and weren't at all familiar with the show. I also wanted to run the gamut, as far as the horror genre went. The first two seasons of Silverwood had lent themselves to cosmic horror, extreme horror, slashers, quiet horror, bizarro and more. I wanted a plot that encompassed all of those things. When I had that, Lydia and I ran it by Tony and then by her bosses at Realm. And once it was approved, we started putting together the team.

Throughout this initial process, I really enjoyed working with Lydia, and it remained that way throughout the rest of the production. To this day, she remains one of the best editors I've ever had the pleasure of working with, and she's a big part of why Audible's original scripted shows are doing so well. Tony was great, as well. Protective of his I.P., which he absolutely should be, but gracious and supportive and enthusiastic of what I wanted to do with it.

For the writing team, I was allowed to have three writers in addition to myself. I decided that the fair way to do it was to tap one veteran, one up-and-comer, and one talented newbie who needed a big break. 

The up-and-comer was an easy choice. Stephen Kozeniewski was already making a stir in science-fiction and horror circles by then, and his stuff was firmly played in both of those genres -- something which was crucial to the pitch I'd developed. Furthermore, he had a good sense of corporate and business pathos, irony, and culture. (Everybody talks about the influence of Alien on his novel The Hematophages, but I'd argue that Office Space is the bigger influence on that book). And since one of the plotlines I'd pitched involved a group of office employees on a company retreat, I knew he'd be able to deliver on those characters and their stories.

The veteran was a hard pick. Lydia and I both came up with wish-lists, and then we narrowed it down. She suggested that, since I'd known him twenty years at that point, Richard Chizmar might be a good pick. I agreed that Rich would be great, but I had my doubts as to whether or not he'd do it. Those of us who know Rich personally know that he is absolutely all about his family. He dotes on them and is devoted to them, and he is disinclined to get involved in anything that will take time away from them. He's also, like myself, a creature of strict work routines. For him to abandon the comfort and familiarity of the Cemetery Dance office, and take a week away from his family to go sit in a writers room in either New York or Los Angeles? I didn't think he'd go for it.

Until he did. He was noncommittal at first, but after his family and Mindy and Brian at Cemetery Dance convinced him this would be a good career move, he joined the team. As he said, "I guess it can't be too bad if I've got Keene watching my back."

Now we had to pick a newbie. I knew that I wanted a woman, and I knew that I wanted someone who could alternate between extreme horror and quiet horror, often within the same episode. I finally settled on Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason, aka The Sisters of Slaughter. There was just one problem. I was only allowed one more writer, and they were a pair. So, Lydia and I went to the higher ups at Realm and said, "They're called the Sisters of Slaughter. You can't just hire one sister. You have to hire the pair".

And thus, the dream team was assembled.

What came next was the writers retreat -- what was supposed to be a week spent with all of us gathered together in a conference room in either New York City or Los Angeles, brainstorming and coming up with our characters and the plots of the individual episodes and such. Once again, Lydia came through for us. The Sisters both had young children at home, and they couldn't just up and leave them for a week. So Lydia convinced her bosses to rent us an Airbnb in the Sisters hometown in Arizona. 

That week remains probably the single most fun and rewarding experience I've ever had working on anything. As I said, the CLICKERS series was always fun, but Jesus and I weren’t shooting for anything more than blowing off some steam with those books. SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR was a different kind of animal. We had things to say. The creative energy inside that Airbnb is impossible to describe. It was absolutely magical. We lived together in close quarters for a week (the Sisters went home to their families at the end of each day). Every morning, we woke up and had coffee and sat around a big conference table -- me, the Sisters, Stephen, Rich, Tony, and Lydia. We hammered out everything -- every character, every plotline, every episode -- the works. Tony contributed his knowledge as the creator of the Silverwood universe, and he was so gracious and excited and kind. Lydia contributed editorial notes, and let us know what was possible with audio -- a format that none of us had ever written for before that. She was our guide, opening us up to all kinds of possibilities that we wouldn't have thought of, otherwise. I served as showrunner, jotting down everyone's contributions onto sticky notes and placing them all around the room. And by the end of the week, those sticky notes formed a season long narrative -- a living, breathing story. It was fucking magic.

It occurs to me now, looking at these photos -- we were in Arizona for a week, and it was scorching hot, and that Airbnb had a private swimming pool in the back, and we didn't use it at all that week. Not once. That's how much fun we were having. 

Mostly, we stayed on site for the week. But we did go out to eat as a group, and see a bit of the town, and have a few drinks at the local bars. And Paul Goblirsch of Thunderstorm Books visited us a few times and hung out. And there was a whole side misadventure with Rich and the home's Alexa A.I. assistant (Kozeniewski and I often refer back to that when trying to make each other laugh) . But the vast majority of our time was spent communing together, and being creative together, and basking in that wonderful group energy, and I've got to tell you -- it's very hard to go back home to your life when you've been basting in that sort of incubator for a week. 

Back in Pennsylvania, I transferred all of our post it notes around the kitchen, and for the next month, Mary was constantly plucking them out of the sink, the cat bowl, and various things cooking on the stove. Then I got to work on writing the show bible -- a long, in-depth document that outlines the entire season's overarching plot, the plot of the individual episodes, the characters, their biographies, etc. I then wrote the pilot episode, and the team began writing their episodes, and I also wrote episode eight and the season finale, and then we went through many rounds of revisions and rewrites (because that is going to happen in episodic media work like this, just as it does in television, comic books, video games, etc). Eventually, Tony signed off on everything and Realm signed off on everything, and the next stage of production -- the audio narration -- began.

Here is what the kitchen looked like during that time. Photos by me.

I remain extremely proud of the work we did together on SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR. I believe it is some of the best writing any of us have ever done. I absolutely think it's some of my own best writing, particularly the burn victim in the finale, and the father-daughter main characters and their struggles with her OCD. That stuff was extremely personal for me. And that is part of the reason why it was such a satisfying and rewarding experience. It’s also scary as hell.

Sadly, although we left it open and set it up for a season four, nothing further was ever greenlit. Eventually, Lydia moved on to Audible, and Tony moved on to new horizons with Blackbox TV, and Rich, Stephen, Michelle, Melissa and I went back to writing books. The five of us ended up writing for Realm again with EXQUISITE CORPSE, and I wrote for the company again with NOT ALONE and THOR: METAL GODS. But none of those projects ever quite recaptured the magic and energy of that SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR creative retreat. I think for NOT ALONE and EXQUISITE CORPSE that's because they happened during the pandemic, and it was impossible to get everyone together. And THOR: METAL GODS was initially soured by a fly in the ointment, who luckily, wasn't involved in the final product or final drafts. Sure, it was fun to play with Thor and other Marvel characters, but that's all it was -- fun. Playing with Tony's characters and with Silverwood? That wasn't just fun. It was rewarding. It was a rare kind of magic that I wish I encountered more often in this job, and it was done alongside the best creative team I could have ever hoped to work with. They were a joy, each and every one of them. 

While it lasted, it was the greatest show on Earth.

SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR is available in the following formats.

eBook: Publisher - Kindle -  Nook - Kobo - Apple

Audiobook: Publisher - Audible - Apple 

[atlanticcanada]

Life Changing Choice: A Liver for Karla – COVID-19 concerns hours ahead of surgery

EDITOR'S NOTE: This series was produced by veteran CTV Atlantic Anchor & Reporter Bruce Frisko, documenting his sister's successful liver transplant surgery in May of 2022. Karla Frisko found a match in Scott Watson, a co-worker who was inspired to sign up for living donor testing after hearing her story. Although liver transplants are performed across Canada, living donor programs are not available in some provinces.

It's the first of May 2022, and with the promise of spring ever closer, Edmontonians anticipate longer, warmer days after a long winter slumber.

A new beginning.

In an Airbnb in Southwest Edmonton, my sister, Karla Frisko, welcomes Scott Watson and his husband, Joe Connors, into the unit.

After exchanging hugs and acknowledging the television camera, Scott turns semi-serious, telling Karla he brought her a gift.

"I figured, 'You can never have enough napkins,'” he says, handing her a bundle with a mischievous smile.

Karla immediately begins to laugh, and displays the message on the package.

"Shut up, liver -- you're fine," it reads.

“That's good, right?" says Scott, laughing with everyone else.

The levity is appreciated, even necessary.

It's the eve of perhaps the biggest day in the lives of Karla Frisko and Scott Watson.

Approved for the transplant list in July of 2021, Karla waited months, hoping for a donor as her liver disease progressed to the inevitable.

Friends and family lined up for testing, but none proved suitable.

Discouraged, Karla mentioned it on a conference call at work, and Scott was inspired to put his name forward for testing.

The match was perfect.

The stunning act of generosity was made even more remarkable by the fact they hardly knew each other: co-workers at Sunlife Financial who'd never even met in person.

Now, though, with surgery scheduled first thing in the morning, a complication.

"Last night, Scott got a phone call from the University of Alberta to tell him that his COVID-19 test had come back 'indeterminate,'" said Karla. "And so, if he tests positive, that simply means our surgery is delayed."

It would be a crushing disappointment after the flurry of activity that got them to this point.

"This is our last day before we go in for a pretty major surgery -- a life-saving surgery," said Scott. "But also having to wait for that COVID-19 test to come back negative adds an extra layer of worry."

With surgical teams booked and the clock ticking down, there are fears COVID-19 could derail the plans, which feel serendipitous: Scott was born and spent his early years in Halifax, a city I've called home since 1995.

"All of my extended family, cousin and all of them still live in Halifax and Cape Breton," said Scott. "So, my story's made it back there, and it's starting to be shared on social media, through Facebook and other platforms, so it is becoming bigger than I ever expected it to be."

"And I'm from Newfoundland, and Newfoundlanders are quite proud of their own," added Joe Connors. "So, by proxy, they're quite proud of Scott and everything that's he's been going through right now."

After a couple of hours of small talk over coffee, the news finally comes in a text message.

"Negative! Negative COVID-19 test," said Scott. "PCR is good!"

"Karla, how do you feel about that?" I ask my sister.

"I'm super-excited," she says. "We're moving ahead."

And so they are, with both heading to hospital in just a few hours: one by chance, and one by choice.

A new beginning just ahead of the biggest day of their lives.

Keep an eye out for Part Two of Life-Changing Choice – A Liver for Karla, airing Tuesday on CTV News at Five.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/tA3mS2r

[24x7newsbengal]

The Trailer Of Bumper Christmas Release ‘Projapati’ Launched

Kolkata, 1st December, 2022:- Bengal Talkies, Mr Pranab Kumar Guha and superstar, Dev, today, released the trailer of their upcoming Christmas release ‘Projapati’ in the presence of the director Mr Avijit Sen & Mr Atanu Ray chaudhuri along with the star cast. ‘Projapati’ features superstars Dev & Mithun Chakraborty in the lead roles. Veteran actress & danseuse Mamata Shankar will also be seen playing a major role in the film along with talented actors like Kharaj Mukherjee, Ambarish Bhattacharya, Biswanath Basu, Konineeca Banerjee & Koushani Mukherjee amongst others. Popular small screen actor Shweta Bhattacharya is debuting in this movie.

“After the ground-breaking success of ‘Tonic’, we are coming with ‘Projapati’ this season that will connect with everyone. The movie has a mass appeal and will portray the endearing relation between a father and his son. Projapati is also very special as almost forty-seven years after Mrigaya, this movie reconnects ace actors Mithun Chakraborty & Mamata Shankar where they will be sharing the screen space together. The warm and emotional story is bound to captivate the audience”, said Mr Atanu Ray Chaudhuri on behalf of Bengal Talkies.

“Working with two superstars will always remain afresh in my memory. We all need a good friend, a companion in our lives, Projapati narrates the story of this father-son duo so benignly that will empathize with the audience. Debutante Shweta Bhattacharya has skilfully acted and the audience would also like Mamata Shankar’s role in the movie”, said Mr Avijit Sen, Director.

Rathijit Bhattacharya, Surojit Chatterjee and Anupam Roy have composed the soulful tunes of Projapati. The lyrics of the songs are penned by Surojit Chatterjee, Anupam Roy & Prasen.

Projapati has Sujay Datta Ray as the Editor, Gopi Bhagat as the DOP, Tanmoy Chakraborty as the Art Director, Anindit Ray & Adip Singh Manky as the Sound Designers and Rajarshi Mukherjee as the Costume Designer. Script & Dialogues are by Subhadip Das. Projapati, jointly written by Atanu Raychaudhuri & Avijit Sen, releases across leading multiplexes and single screens on 23'rd December, 2022. Photography by Rajib Mukharjee Read the full article

[miralnitro]

Intermission picture

#INTERMISSION PICTURE MOVIE#

#INTERMISSION PICTURE PS4#

#INTERMISSION PICTURE PROFESSIONAL#

The enhanced audio files are available for upload if requested. In some cases the audio track was separated and remixed in an audio editor to enhance the sound.

#INTERMISSION PICTURE PROFESSIONAL#

These clips are also louder than the originals. Browse 2,135 professional intermission images available royalty-free. Magenta tinted films were especially difficult. I've adjusted the brightness/contrast, and color correction to the best of my ability. Its Saturday, and that means its time for what has become one of the theatre communitys most beloved traditions- BroadwayWorlds Saturday Intermission Pics roundup In this weeks edition we. Picture Intermission Kawasaki Z H2 Design Sketches While youre waiting for my review of the new Kawasaki Z H2 to go live on Cycle News (UPDATE: heres that. They have been carefully cropped to remove excess black frame while preserving as much of the actual image as possible. Huge collection, amazing choice, 100+ million high quality, affordable RF and RM images. This luxury vessels exterior design is the work of Burger and she was last refitted in 2018. Find the perfect intermission stock photo. her new EP The Intermission, being vulnerable and overcoming criticism. Her interior is styled by design house Brockschmidt & Coleman and she was completed in 1998. Despite things looking picture-perfect, however, Mimi hinted that their trip. The central image on the card shows Carole Hersee. Windrush) was built by Burger in the United States at their Manitowoc, Wisconsin shipyard. Off-air screen capture of BBC Test Card F, as seen on BBC1 between 17 February 1991 and 4 October 1997. High school students, parents invited to attend Virtual Preparing for College. PLEASE NOTE: These clips have been modified from the originals. The 30.78m/101 motor yacht Intermission (ex. Ben Narbuth Ribbon Cutting View All Photos. Most are color but there are a few black & whites because of their quality or uniqueness. I could remove the Completed part from the bottom or move it 8px. The current graphic crashes if its 320x200, but WinQuake doesnt give me that resolution normally.

#INTERMISSION PICTURE MOVIE#

This clip is from a compilation of drive-in intermission films found here on Internet Archives in the Drive-In Movie Ads section. it was taken in 320x240 mode, so everythings big and centered. She has a drastically different playstyle to the existing characters in FF7 Remake, and it will be interesting to see how she compares to Cloud and his friends on the battlefield if they eventually unite.Title: Intermission 2 (from Drive-In Movie Ads)ĭescription: Mix of animation, stop frame, narration and footage of snack bar food to remind viewers to stop by the drive-in refreshment stand. It's clear that Square Enix has put a lot of work into Yuffie's combat style, which suggests that she will have a major role in future FF7 Remake entries (otherwise her mechanics and animations would go to waste) and that she won't be relegated to optional party member status. Each text superimposed on humorous photograph, and the whole shown in a fancy carved frame. Positive paper print from lantern slide used in motion picture theaters as announcement.

#INTERMISSION PICTURE PS4#

Despite making previous owners of the game pay extra and leaving out PS4 players entirely, what Square has revealed so far about FF7R Episode INTERmission's story makes the DLC sound like a joyful exercise in fan service for Final Fantasy veterans. Intermission Summary Photo shows two cats on top of a barrel. Weiss was also introduced, but fans of Dirge of Cerberus will already know who he is. The contact between Avalanche and the Wutai government is Zhije, while the members of Avalanche Yuffie will be dealing with are Nayo, Billy Bob, and Polk. Further, information about the characters that will feature in the DLC has been shared, as well.

[bnprime]

so i’ve been DMing my first dnd game for about a year now. three of the five players are new to the game, and two are experienced. the title of my homebrew game is “the king in yellow journalism” and it’s a mishmash of cosmic horror, x-files references, jokes about new england and america in the late 1880’s, and having to write articles for one of the two magazines (one is based on national geographic, the other is based on “the fortean times.”). in order to generate excitement and subscriptions for both magazines, the editors have decided to send the writers out to cover the same thing from their different perspectives. as the players are slowly discovering, there are many things wrong with their world. aside from the prevalent racism and oppression, i mran… they explored a farm which was the site of a meteor impact, where all the people got turned into monsters (the color out of space). they visited a pirate village which had gotten too friendly with fish people (shadow over innsmouth). they’re currently investigating a west virginian miners strike, involving a missing union leader, and a bunch of other weird crap. anyway, it’s wild. but here’s the cool bit. of the five players, i think only the two veteran players and this other guy caught onto the cosmic horror vibe from the start, when i told everyone the title of the campaign. the other two are both entirely unfamiliar with the genre stories, and the general way people play dnd. which is great, because the new players are gonzo. one of the characters is a halfling who is pure id. they will just eat anything i put in front of them. cursed fruit? poisoned food? yes! they are ready for adventure! and they also roll very high for lore checks. so anytime someone mysterious wanders past covered in mysterious symbols, our halfling immediately recognizes them and knows their significance. uh, for example. they were camping in a cursed orchard (two of them had just eaten some weird contaminated fruit) and our halfling was on watch duty. and they saw a weird robed guy harvesting the contaminated fruit, so they went over to talk to him (!!) and then (when seeing that they had eaten the fruit and become contaminated) he invites the camp to go to a meeting. and they say yes, on behalf of the camp (!!!) . so he teleports them to a big cult gathering (!!!!) where the halfling eats more of the fruit and then can see the goddess they are worshipping, and because they always roll high on lore, they know that the thing being worshipped isn’t the goddess they are naming and oh boy. another new player is a aarakocra bard who plays a cursed viola (leading to a ‘the music of erich zann’ subplot somewhere in the future). and he is just terrific. like, he’s just this bro guy, but he’s always excited to perform and people just like.. want to be his friend and tell him everything. he’s become the group’s “face man,” and he also makes unpredictable choices. like adopting a partially monsterized little girl who had a horse head, and then asking his parents to take care of her. i really love our other characters too, but that’s probably enough for now. but if you have a fun setting you’d like to play in, and know some people who and clever, playing dnd in your homebrew universe with your friends is really great because everyone gets invested into your story, and things work out in really unexpected unpredictable ways. especially of the characters your friends make have no impulse control.

[tallmantall]

#JamesDonaldson On #MentalHealth – The People Left Behind: #Suicide From A Survivor's Perspective

By Pachari Middleton Army.mil Editor's Note: The story below contains descriptions of self-harm and #suicide that some readers may find distressing. If you are having thoughts of #suicide, call the #Veterans/Military Crisis Line for confidential support 24/7, 365 days a year. Call 1-800-273-8255 and press 1; text to 838255; or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat. For those not affiliated with the military, call the #NationalSuicidePreventionLifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text the Crisis Text Line (text HELLO to 741741). Both services are confidential, free and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On July 16, 2022, dialing 988 will route callers to the #NationalSuicidePreventionLifeline. ???????????? SUMTER, S.C. — Virginia Cooper sat beside her son and stroked his hands over and over. She knew these hands — she had kissed his tiny little fingers when he was a baby, held them as they crossed streets together, and swatted them away when he tried to steal a taste of her cookie batter. “I remember wanting to get some gloves for his hands, they were so very cold,” she said. She told him again and again she loved him. And in the silence of that room, she cried. Virginia wanted to stay at her boy’s side. “I kept saying I didn’t want to leave.” “We’ll take good care of him,” the funeral director assured her, as he walked her out. “I promise.” Virginia’s son, Joshua Jaymes Wood, a #veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, was 30 years old when he took his life on November 7, 2021. According to the #CentersforDiseaseControlandPrevention, #suicide is the second leading cause of death among #youth aged 10 to 14 and #adults aged 24 to 35. In 2020, 46,000 people took their own lives, but there are many more who’ve had thoughts of #suicide or have made an attempt, which are risk factors for future #suicideattempts. In Josh’s case, prior to his #suicide, he’d been cutting himself. Self-injury, such as cutting, is a way to cope with emotional pain, anger and frustration. Virginia and her family found out about it only after he’d cut himself too deeply on one occasion and ended up in the hospital. Virginia was stunned. “I don’t ever remember him not smiling or making a joke.” Josh had been undergoing counseling and Virginia constantly checked on him, but there was nothing to raise any red flags. And Virginia can quote all the red flags. As the Soldier and Family Readiness program manager at U.S. Army Central, she takes some of the same training service members go through on #suicideprevention and #substanceabuse. But, she said, Josh, as a Marine reservist, had gone through the same training and knew how to deflect the questions Virginia asked. “I don’t think he was being completely honest with his counselors either. It’s not that he was being deceitful — he was just not letting his guard down so he could get the help he needed.” Virginia was also shocked to find out Josh’s brother and one of his friends had both been in situations with him that should have ended with Josh in a hospital. “The remark was made ‘I thought I could talk him down,’” Virginia recalled. “It infuriated me because nobody — not even I — could talk a person down. We need to get them to help.” While going through her son’s belongings in his apartment, Virginia came across some letters written by Josh before his death. They were not addressed to any of the family members. In these letters, Josh asked his friend to pass on messages to his relatives. “With every bit of my fiber I believe he couldn’t say our names. He couldn’t do it,” said Virginia. What Josh did express in one of his letters was his displeasure with the #healthcare he’d been receiving, and wrote “Tell my mom. She’ll be mad and do something about it.” #James Donaldson notes: Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes. Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use. Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space.  #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticle Order your copy of James Donaldson's latest book, #CelebratingYourGiftofLife: From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy http://www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com Virginia is still not sure what she’s going to do about it, but she does feel that the #stigma that still exists related to coming forward to get help is causing preventable deaths. She said people who are feeling #suicidal can't see past their pain, thinking their deaths will remove a burden from their family and friends. “Truth is,” Virginia said, “they don’t see the pain that’s on the other side, because now what they’ve done is they’ve taken that and they’ve transferred it to the all the people who care, especially in units. Everybody is affected by it, even if you’re not close to the person.” Virginia also believes that training needs to include families. “If someone is struggling and can’t ask for help, or know they need help, the people around them should reach out for them. With family #suicide prevention and planning, we need to ramp up #substanceabuse and gun safety. I wholeheartedly believe every pistol owner should have to take a class with a #suicideprevention module.” Virginia’s thoughts on weapons safety matches up with a military #suicideprevention study group scheduled to begin this summer. The panel will study #suicideprevention and #behavioralhealthprograms across the services. It will include experts in lethal weapons safety, as well as experts in #substanceabuse and #mentalhealthservice. In the meantime, Virginia said she wishes there was a way to make #suicide real for people. “Show them the cost and not just the dollars. This is what #suicide looks like,” Virginia said, gesturing toward herself. What does #suicide look like? It looks like the friends, family members and co-workers who are left behind when someone takes his or her own life. For Virginia, #suicide is the absence of her son, who hid his pain behind the smiles and jokes he always had for his mom. “I wish I had one more time to just sit and hold his hand. I wouldn’t need words. That is all I would want.” Read the full article

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news

Facebook is a rotten company, rotten from the top down, its founder, board and top execs are sociopaths and monsters, committers of non-hyperbolic, no-fooling crimes against humanity. They lie, they cheat, they steal. They are some of history’s greatest villains. Because Facebook is a terrible company run by terrible people, it periodically erupts in ghastly scandal. Sometimes whistleblowers or reporters reveal historic crimes, including (but not limited to) deliberately helping to foment genocide.

Sometimes, the scandals are contemporary: either Facebook blithely announces it’s going to do something terrible, or we learn of some terrible thing underway from leaks or investigations.

Thanks to a history of anticompetitive mergers — Whatsapp, Instagram, Onavo and more — based on fraudulent promises to antitrust regulators, Facebook has grown to nearly three billion users — except FB doesn’t have users, really — it has hostages.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

As Facebook’s own internal memos show, the company doesn’t just buy up competitors so users have nowhere to flee to, it also engineers in high “switching costs” to make it more painful to leave the system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

For example, Facebook’s internal memos show that the manager for its photo products set out to seduce users into entrusting FB with their family photos, because that way quitting Facebook would mean abandoning your memories of your kids, departed grandparents, etc.

Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.

FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers — their true customers.

The polite term for what FB has is a “two-sided market” (selling advertisers to users and users to advertisers). The technical term is “a monopoly and a monoposony” (a monopsony is a market with a single buyer).

The colloquial term?

“A racket.”

A scam. A bezzle. A blight.

Facebook gouges advertisers on rate cards, then lies about the reach of its ads (like when it lied about the popularity of video, evincing a media-wide “pivot to video” that bankrupted dozens of news- and entertainment-sites).

Facebook didn’t set out to destroy journalism by price-fixing ads, lying to advertisers and media outlets.

FB set out to acquire a monopoly and extract monopoly rents from advertisers and publishers, with a pathological indifference to how these frauds would harm others.

Having shown a willingness to destroy journalists and media outlets to extract a few more billions for its shareholders, Facebook has attracted a lot of enemies in the media.

If you’re a whistleblower with a story to tell, there’s a journalist whose editor will allocate the resources to report your story out in depth. The combination of a rotten company and a lot of pissed off journalists produces a lot of bad ink for the company.

But the fact remains that FB has a vast pool of hostages, billions of them, and it gets to decide what they see, when and how. I used to joke with my human rights activist friends that the best use for Facebook was showing people why and how to leave Facebook.

FB’s response was predictable. As Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel write in the New York Times, FB’s Project Amplify is a Zuckerberg-led initiative to systematically promote positive coverage of FB and its founder — including articles that originate with FB itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html

That is, FB staffers are charged with writing puff pieces about how great the company is, and FB’s algorithm will push these ahead of reporting by actual journalists who present detailed, factual, multi-sourced accounts of the company’s fraudulent and depraved conduct.

Project Amplify marks a pivot from FB’s longstanding policy of issuing insincere apologies for its scandals. Company sources told the reporters that everyone figured out these don’t convince anyone, so the company turned to pushing happy-talk quackspeak instead.

One of the leaders of this project is Alex Schultz, “a 14-year company veteran who was named chief marketing officer last year,” but the major impetus comes from Zuck himself, one of the most hated men on the planet.

Amplify is just one of FB’s strategies for distorting the discourse about itself. In July, it neutered Crowdtangle, an widely used analytics tool that showed that FB’s top posts were unhinged far-right disinformation and conspiracies.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth

And Facebook has declared all-out legal warfare (accompanied by a disinformation campaign) to kill Adobserver, an NYU project that tracks paid political disinformation on the platform.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

By shutting down Crowdtangle and Adobserver, FB hopes to control the academic findings about the company’s role in disinformation, hate, and harassment. The company runs its own research portal where academics are expected to access data about the platform.

But as with the journalists who report on it, FB has heaped abuse on the academics who research it.

Its portal data was bad, leaving PhD and masters’ theses are at risk of retraction. Mid-dissertation researchers have been set back to square one.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#facebook-sent-flawed-data-to-misinformation-researchers

In retrospect, Facebook’s decision to game its own algorithm to push pro-company quackspeak seems inevitable. It’s not just that no one believes the company’s apologies anymore (if they ever did) — it’s that the company seems incapable of hiring competent spin doctors.

Take the WSJ’s blockbuster “Facebook Files,” a series of reports detailing the company’s willingness to harm children, commit fraud, and allow millions of favored, powerful people to violate its rules with impunity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-09-16/facebook-s-promised-to-gain-the-public-s-trust

FB’s response was genuinely pathetic. In a perfunctory blog post, its top flack — the widely despised British politician Nick Clegg, paid millions to front FB on the global stage — vilified the WSJ’s reporting without producing any factual rebuttals.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong/

It’s the kind of ham-fisted policy advocacy that Facebook is (in)famous for. Who can forget the absolute shitshow in India over its Internet Basics program, when it bribed telcos to exempt FB and the services it hand-picked from their data-caps?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

This Net-Neutracidal maneuver, falsely billed as a way to bring the internet to poor people (something is absolutely does not do), was the subject of a consultation by India’s telco regulators.

FB pushed deceptive alerts to millions of its Indian users, tricking them into sending a flood of form-letters to the regulator urging it to leave Internet Basics intact.

But whoever drafted the form letter didn’t bother to check whether it addressed any of the questions the regulator was consulting on. That made these millions of letters non-responsive to the consultation, so the regulator ignored them.

FB lost! It’s almost as though people who are good at fighting policy battles don’t want to work for Facebook, and the only talent they can attract are the kinds of opportunistic blunderers that no one takes seriously and everyone hates.

Weird, that.

[sharkselfies]

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast Transcript - Episode 1

Since some folks requested it on Twitter, I’ve started transcribing The Minds Behind The Terror podcast episodes! Below the cut you’ll find episode 1, where showrunners Dave Kajganich and Soo Hugh talk to Dan Simmons, the author of the novel The Terror, about episodes 1-3 of the show. They discuss Simmons’s initial inspiration for writing the book, the decisions they made to adapt it into a television series, and the depictions of some of the characters such as the Tuunbaq, Hickey, and “Lady Silence.”

The Minds Behind The Terror Podcast - Episode 1 

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

Dave Kajganich: Hello! Welcome to Minds Behind The Terror podcast. I’m Dave Kajganich, I am a creator and one of the showrunners of the AMC show The Terror, and I’m here in the studio with executive producer and co-showrunner Soo Hugh.

Soo Hugh: Hello!

DK: And we welcome today the author of the sublime novel The Terror, on which our show is based, author Dan Simmons, calling in from Colorado. Welcome, Dan! Hi! 

Dan Simmons: Hi Dave, thank you. 

DK: So let’s start with the very beginning. This was a mystery from actual naval history that you decided to transform into a novel that was crossed with Gothic horror. Can you tell us a little bit about where you got the idea from this, how you went about preparing to write it, anything that can give us insight into how you blended all of these remarkable genres into this incredible book.

DS: I’ve known since I was a kid that I wanted to tell a story about either the North or South Pole. And the reason is in 1957, 58, when I was very young, actually I was just a fetus, they had the international geophysical year, and that really caught my imagination. Now the international geophysical year saw cooperation between American and Soviet scientists, it was the height of the Cold War, that’s the first time they submit(?) a permanent base at the South Pole, and I fell in love with Arctic stories. I had one book left on a book contract with a publisher I really liked, and we hadn’t decided what that book was, and I wanted to write a scary story about the Arctic, in this case the Northern Arctic, and that happened because I was doing a lot of research on Antarctica and just couldn’t figure out what the macabre, Gothic, scary part would be. I wanted to put it in, but I didn’t think they’d go for, you know, an eight foot tall vampire penguin. 

[laughter]

DK: You might be surprised! 

DS: There was a footnote on a book I was reading about the Franklin Expedition, which I had never heard of, and I decided that’s what I was gonna write about, and it had a tremendous amount of the unknown that I could fill in, that’s what novelists love. And so I told my editors excitedly that this was what I was gonna do, I would call it The Terror after the HMS Terror that went with the Erebus, got stuck in the ice, all the crew disappeared in history… And they said no. 

[laughter]

DS: ...it was the first time the publishers did that. I said, “Why not? I think it’s gonna be a pretty good novel.” And they said, “Look, nobody’s interested in a bunch of people that’ve been dead for 150 years.” 

SH: That sounds like some of our meetings.

[laughter]

DS: So I did what maybe you do, in such a meeting, I just thanked them, and I liked them all, and I had a good dinner(?) and I said goodbye, and bought back my last book on the contract and went out and wrote it on spec. 

SH: Well why don’t we take a step back, Dave, and why don’t you tell us about how you found Dan’s book and that experience?

DK: Sure! Dan, you might remember some of these steps from your side of it, which is that originally this was auctioned by Universal as a feature, and I sort of tried to get the rights and was a bit too late, and tracked them down to the producers at Universal who were running the project and got myself hired as the screenwriter for a feature adaptation. By the time I was ready to start actually committing an outline to the paper, Universal had let the rights go because there was a competing project. It was interesting to sort of rack up reasons why people wanted to make it but didn’t feel that they could pull the trigger, and we were so grateful when AMC finally called us back and said, “Look, we’ve figured out a model where we can do this as a limited series,” it really felt like ten episodes was a great length for this, because we could blend genres in a way that, you know, we could unpack sort of slowly, more slowly than a lot of shows would’ve done, and drive the plot as much as we could, like the novel, with character choices and decisions as opposed to just horror kind of entering the frame and taking over for one set piece after another. So it was a long journey, getting this to AMC, but at the end of the day I think we found the right home for it.

DS: I can no longer imagine a two hour version, feature film version of this story, and I can’t imagine a second season of this story, I think it was just right.

SH: It does feel like we did a ten hour cinematic novel. 

[audio from the show]

Crozier: Only four of us at this table are Arctic veterans. There’ll be no melodramas here--just live men, or dead men. 

SH: Dan, Dave and I talk about how addictive the research gets for this when you start going down the rabbit hole, how did you approach the research?

DS: I think most novelists run into that, but since I write a lot of quasi-historical novels, at least set in history, I get totally addicted to going down the rabbit hole. Readers say, “Well, Simmons’ book is too long, and the descriptions of things are too exhausting,” but I watch your characters go on deck and there are all the things and views and everything that I tried so hard to describe and then people tell me, y’know, “talky, verbose,” and in print I have to do it that way, but you just pan the camera a little bit. 

DK: You have words, we have images! For every thousand of yours, we get one!

DS: Yeah.

SH: But I remember this passage in your book where it talks about all the different ices, and you vest it with so much psychological import. We talk about that passage a lot in the writers room, it was one of our highlights, of this is how you do great descriptive writing.

DK: And you made so many parallels between things like the environments of the ships and characters, you built a kind of code book for the show without realizing you were doing it, which is making visual metaphors out of a lot of these things that would normally just be exposition or historical detail.

SH: Well especially between Crozier and the ship, I mean when you hear about Crozier’s relationship with Terror, and you have so many amazing passages about, you know, the groan of the ship and how it, y’know, and you cut to a scene with Crozier and how you feel that the bones of Crozier is embedded in the ship, and we really took a lot from that. 

DS: Well I noticed that on one of the episodes where Lord Franklin [sic] is trying to get back in touch with Crozier, you know, trying to be friends with him again, I think it’s a brilliant episode you guys wrote.

[show audio]

Franklin: You’ve succeeded in avoiding Erebus most of the winter.

Crozier: I’m a captain. I’m--I’m peevish off my own ship. I leave it and I hear disaster knocking at its door, before I’m ten steps away.

DS: And that was beautifully written, that. You got so much of Crozier right there.

DK: It was a pleasure to write these characters on the backs of your writing of these characters, because you really--I mean, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, as you know, from having written, you know, a whole long string of historical books, is to make these people’s psychologies feel as modern as they must have felt in their day, while still being able to articulate some of the blind spots of being from the eras they were from. 

I’m curious from sort of a history nerd point of view, if people watch the series and like the series, and read the book and like the book, and want to know more about this expedition, what’s the first book about the Franklin Expedition you would point people to? What was most helpful or most interesting in your research? 

DS: I apologize, I can’t think of the name of it, but it’s a collection of stories about both the South and North Pole, and so it’s a short section on the Franklin Expedition, but it didn’t make mistakes, and most of the other books that I read, uh, keyed, and videos for that matter, like PBS did a story about the Franklin Expedition, but they keyed off a 1987 attempt by several doctors to figure out what happened to the crew, and they exhumed three crewmen’s bodies from the first island where they stayed the first winter, and those crewmen had only been on the ship a couple of months, but they decided because of a high lead content that the lead had poisoned them and then made them stupid, and made them paranoid and everything, but they didn’t compare that test of lead with any background people in London at the time, and later they did, so I didn’t believe the lead thing.

DK: Well that’s the fascinating thing about a mystery with this many parts and pieces, kind of in flux, is, you know, you can create all kinds of competing narratives about it, and what’s fascinating about writing a fictional version is you can’t have that kind of ambiguity, you have to make a decision. I think people will enjoy very much ways that the show and the book have a similar point of view, and also ways that they diverge in their points of view, because there are so many ways to tell this story--

SH: Well you know how much we invest responsibility in the audience as well, right?

DK: Sure.

SH: In terms of your book and our show as well, we’re not against interpretation, that there’s a responsibility on the audience’s part to put together--we’re not gonna hand feed them. There’ll be some people who put more of an onus on Franklin, and others who would say, “You know, if I was in that position, I probably would’ve made the same decision,” “Oh no, this definitely killed the men,” “No, this killed them!” and that dialogue is exciting, you know, when you read fans talk about your show and your books and really smart, insightful ways. 

[show audio]

Franklin: Would it help if I said that I made a mistake? 

Crozier: You misunderstand me, Sir John, I--I only meant to describe why I brood, not that I judge.

DS: I don’t worry about who or what my reading audience is. People ask me about that and I don’t imagine a certain reader. But I’ve always tried to write for somebody who’s more intelligent than I am. My perfect reader would be just smart as hell, speak eight languages, you know, have fantastic world experiences, and I want to write something that will please that person, and I think your show does the same thing.

DK: Well we were--that was our motto! We wanted to be sort of the dumbest members of our collaboration and there’s a sort of horrifying moment when you realize that’s come true. 

[laughter]

[show background music]

DK: Tell us a little bit about why you made the decisions to tell the story in the order you told it, and whether you sort of felt like there was anything from the way you had told it that we were--or a missed opportunity. We’d love to know sort of what your experience of that was. 

DS: I don’t think there were any missed opportunities in terms of not adapting my way of telling it, and I can’t remember all the reasons for why I broke it down that way, some of them were just very localized to, you know, when I was writing that particular bit. But I do know that it gains a lot by being told chronologically the way you’re doing it, so for me that seems now the logical way to tell it again.

DK: Have you ever read the novel in chronological order? When we hired writers for the writers room, we gave them a list of what the chapters were like in chronological order, and I think we asked half the room to read it in your order and half the room to read it in chronological order so we could have a discussion, a meaningful discussion about whether there were things about telling it without being in chronological order that we wanted to embrace or not. It was a fantastic experience and I wonder if you’ve ever read your chapters in chronological order? ‘Cause it’s also a fantastic book!

[laughter]

DS: I haven’t read it that way, they were that way in my mind before I started getting fancy and breaking them up and moving them around in time and space, but I would love to have seen that experiment.

DK: The reason we can get away with it in the show is because there is a loved book out there that people trust, and you know, it is a classic in this genre, so I mean this is a perfect example of, you know, the amount of gratitude we owe the book, because we got away with a lot of things that maybe we wouldn’t have been able to get away with because you came before us. 

SH: And speaking of those rabid fans, Dan, it’s been really interesting reading audience reactions to the show from people who’ve loved the books and who just naturally will compare the two, and we’ve been heartened by just how supportive our fans have become--are of the show. There is this controversy, some people like our choice to give Lady Silence a voice and some people feel it was sacrilege to your book, where do you fall on that? DS: At first I was surprised. In fact when you were hunting for an actress for Lady Silence and I read about that, it said somebody who’s fluent in this Inuit language and this Inuit language, and I said, “What the hell?”

[show audio]

[Silna speaking Inuktitut to her dying father] 

DS: Having seen her with the tongue and heard her, and knowing the different reason they call her Lady Silence, it all works for me and I was also surprised when Captain Crozier could speak fairly fluent, you know, dialect, ‘cause I had him just not understanding a thing.

[show audio]

[Crozier speaking Inuktitut to Silna in the same scene as above]

DS: I love it when readers get rabid about not changing something from a book, and I have to talk to them sometimes, not ‘cause I have a lot of things adapted, this is the first one, but I love movies. They say “Aren’t you worried it will hurt your book?” and first I explain Richard Comden(?)’s idea that you can’t hurt a book anyway, except by not reading it, I mean the books are fine, no matter how bad some adaptation becomes. Books abide, and so I wasn’t concerned. With the changes that I see, I get sorta tickled, whereas some readers get upset, and they just have that set. So I think that the vast majority of viewers haven’t--well, I know the vast majority haven’t read the book, haven’t heard of the book, probably, they’re gonna keep watching because of the depth of the characters, and that’s based on the first two episodes, and I agree with them completely.

[show audio]

[Silna speaking Inuktitut]

Crozier: She said that if we don’t leave now, we’re going to “huk-kah-hoi.”

Blanky: Disappear. 

SH: We get asked a lot of questions about the supernatural element of the show and the way a monster does or does not figure in the narrative, and seeing our episodes, did it feel surprising or did it feel faithful to the way you imagined it as well to your book? 

DS: It was surprising to me at how well it was done, because it’s hard, I know, to show restraint in a series like this, and certainly in a movie, but it’s hard to show restraint at showing and explaining the monster. 

[show audio]

[ominous music, Tuunbaq roaring, men screaming]

DS: The way you did it in the first few episodes to me were just lovely, just, you know, a hint of a glance at something and then you see the results of this creature, so that’s what I tried to do in the novel, one of the reasons I moved around through space and time, part of what I wanted to do was not cheapen the story and not cheapen the reality of these poor men dying by just throwing in a monster, and so I tried to do it in a way that would not disrespect the true tale, and I believe you’re doing it the same way I tried. 

DK: The way you incorporated the supernatural into the book, I mean, I was a fan of it when I first read it. It was jaw dropping the way that it fits so well on a level of plot, on a level of character, and on a level of theme. So when we got the green light to adapt it I was so confident that we were going to be able to do something with it that would be able to be nuanced because the bones of it are so organically terrific.

SH: It helped us know what we didn’t want to do. That formed so much of our conversation, of “this is what we do not want, this is what we do not want,” and slowly you whittled down to getting down to the essence of what this thing had to be.

[show audio]

[Tuunbaq growling]

DK: Another character from the book that really stands out for fans that they are wondering what in the world we’re doing with is Manson. [laughter] And I was curious what you made of the fact that he is pretty invisible in the first three episodes of the show, and that some of his plot beats have been given to a character called Gibson, who I don’t remember is--I don’t think he’s featured very much in the novel. And I wondered if that caught you off guard or if you sort of intuitively had a sense of what we were doing in making that change? 

DS: Any discussion of Manson to me leads to Hickey converting him to his future, his tribe, the tribe he wants to have, group of worshippers, that I think Hickey wants to have, but he does it by sex below decks. Hickey’s not gay at all, he’s a manipulator, to me, and he was manipulating Manson who was big and dumb, in my book, he’s manipulating him by this sexual encounter. But I was curious whether you were worried about showing that?

DK: Well, we weren’t worried about showing characters having same-sex affairs or relationships. We wanted to make room in Hickey’s character for actual affection, or if not affection then companionship, or some kind of connection.

[show audio]

Hickey: Lieutenant Irving! I was hoping we’d meet. 

Crewman: Mind the grease there, sir. 

Hickey: I wanted to... thank you… for your help. For your discretion, I mean. 

Irving: Call it anything but help, Mr. Hickey. Please. I exercised clemency for a man abused by a devious seducer.

DK: We wanted to make sure that Hickey had access to command in some way that a steward, an officer’s steward, would be able to provide him, that an able seaman wouldn’t be able to provide him, and that was really valuable to us in terms of charting out all of these character stories, was how does he know what he knows about how command is dissatisfied or where the fractures are if he can’t see them from where he’s sleeps in his cot in the forecastle. 

SH: I mean we know that there were relations between the same sex on ships, it just was part of this world. Not to belie that there was serious consequences for it, but you know, we have 129 characters, and we wanted them to feel fully fledged and rich, and, you know, passions do naturally develop and have no characters engaged in sexual relations would have felt just as odd and perhaps even more controversial, and when Irving discovers Gibson and Hickey, his shock is from such a subjective point of view of his moral center. It’s not the camera’s perspective, right? Our camera’s very neutral in that scene. It’s Irving, that character at that point in the show, that is infusing a sense of horror, that’s his horror moment.

DS: I’d like to add that it’s not the gay connection that would cause criticism, but I was flayed alive because the most openly quote “gay” unquote character, that is, Hickey, you know, maybe hunting for affection but definitely hunting for power, he’s the only one they said in reviews, and he’s a killer and a bad person, so I’m homophobic, but I was flayed alive for that. The word homophobic appeared in about 80 reviews. Nobody mentioned the purser, who uh--

DK: Right, Bridgens and Peglar.

DS: Yeah. I thought he was a fascinating character. I loved getting glimpses of him in the series because he’s super smart, he’s super wise, he’s probably wiser than any of the commanders, ahd he’s obviously in love with--who is it that he’s in love with in the show?

DK: Peglar. 

DS: Yes, that makes sense. And, uh, so Peglar says, you know, “Is this another Herodotus?” and, “No, I’m giving you Swift now,” he’s educating the man he cares for. 

[show audio]

Hickey: I understand you cleared up our “association” for Lieutenant Irving? Gibson: You spoke to him.

Hickey: Mhm.

Gibson: Directly?

(beat)

Christ, Cornelius, I’d reassured him.

Hickey: Cornelius Hickey is a “devious seducer.” That was your--that was your reassurance? You’ve got some face, you know that? 

DK: We wouldn’t have dramatized Hickey’s story if we weren’t also going to pull in Peglar and Bridgens’ story, because we knew that people, you know, are predisposed to sort of make that kind of quick assumption, and we just wanted to make sure that the show didn’t have that blind spot and reflected the book, which also doesn’t have that blind spot. 

SH: We had those same questions with Lady Silence, and I’m sure you did as well. When we meet her, she’s a frightened young woman who’s about to lose her father, and that’s a universal character moment that anyone can relate to, and the otherness is sort of--is secondary, but then once--in the end scene of 1.02, when she’s sitting there grieving her father and then you have that language barrier with everyone else, we worked with Nive on this because we wanted to make sure the language itself was as accurate as possible, so when you say disappear making sure that the disappear in our language means the same thing as disappear in her language. I think whenever you have characters that feel othered in most media and you’re bringing them into your show, Dave and I also just wanted to make sure we weren’t swaying on the pendulum on the other side and being almost too careful about touching them, and with Nive I think when you have an actor of that talent, she was strong, she was representing a voice that she felt very confident in, and that was very reassuring for us.

DS: And it works well, and when her father’s dying, she throws herself on his chest and says “I’m not ready, it’s too soon, I’m not ready,” and I love that in the show because if she’s gonna become a Shaman he’s dying you know it’s not reached that point of education yet where she feels secure and later on you know beyond what we’re discussing today she becomes to me in the show I see her as more and more majestic.

SH: I do love the word majestic ‘cause I think it describes pretty much all of our characters. I agree, I do think there is something very sublime about who they have become at the end because when you go through that much trials and tribulations, it’s this beautiful human spirit to endure. 

DS: I think that’s one of the central themes of the story that you’ve brought out so clearly. In most post-apocalypse, you know, terrible situation movies and shows, everybody turns nasty as hell, they start shooting each other, it’s just like WWIII when they should be helping each other survive, and I found even though there was controversy, even though there was opposition in this story, people opposing against each other, still that they rose to the occasion. And that is so rare I think in much media these days or even books where the characters are themselves and they do the best they can, and when things get bad they rise to the occasion.

DK: The first conversation you and I had about the book, you know, I was basically pitching you sort of what I thought thematically the book was about, and I talked a lot about, that in a disaster like this, a kind of moral emergency, that we would get a chance to unpack what is sort of best and worst in these characters’ souls.

DS: I confuse readers often when I was on book tour for this book, and it was a long time ago, I’ve written a few million words since then, but I confused people by saying that if you want a theme for the survival story of The Terror, it’s love. It’s love between the men. And just unstinting love. And this came out in a piece of dialogue, in the first two episodes.

[audio from the show]

Franklin: I’ll not have you speak of him uncharitably, James. He is my second. If something were to happen to me, you would be his second. You should cherish that man. 

Fitzjames: Sometimes I think you love your men more than even God loves them, Sir John. 

Franklin: For all your sakes, let’s hope you’re wrong. 

DS: That to me was right the theme I was working with, and with Crozier who shows it a different way, with Fitzjames who’s struggling to show leadership, and between the men despite their hierarchy and the British hierarchy, the rank and lieutenants and so forth, eventually they come down to loving the men they try to save. And I found that lovely. 

[The Terror opening theme music plays]

DK: Thank you so much for listening to The Minds Behind The Terror, join us in our next edition when we talk about episodes 4-6 with the additional guest Adam Nagaitis phoning in from London. We will see you soon!

[preview snippet from the next episode plays]

DS: I’ll confess something else to Adam, the first time I watched it, I thought your character was a good guy because he jumped down in that grave to put the lid back on.

[laughter]

[ledenews]

Letter to Editor: 'I Wish the Best for the (Wheeling University) Students'

Editor: Thank you for forwarding the Open Letter to the administration of Wheeling College. I would join in those sentiments. Fifty-five years ago, I left the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D. C., to attend the small, Jesuit, co-educational, liberal arts college on the Banks of The Ohio River.  I think the best statement about my attending Wheeling was from my mother, when she was asked by her church-lady friends, ‘what is it like to have Billy with the Jesuits in West Virginia?’ Her response was this: “I am not sure what is worse. He has learned how to think, speak, and drink.” Without the Jesuits and a full liberal arts curriculum, I am not sure what is going on out there now. Amongst my small group of alumni friends, I am unaware of anyone who believes or financially supports the current mission. In fact, I am not sure I am aware of the current mission for the institution is without an alumni publication. I believe they are operating without an alumni director.  I know that the last edition of the alumni directory is dated 2008. That illustrates a lack of ‘connectivity’ with what should be your loyal support base. Without any hesitation, I agree that technical knowledge and proficiency of performance of the allied medical arts is important. In addition, those entrusted with our care also need to have the ability to discern the circumstances and to clearly express, in both the oral and written word. the care and procedures needed for our recovery. But most of all, those individuals must be educated, not just trained, to have a sincere and genuine empathy for the human condition. It is the Jesuit liberal arts education that instills this quality within the mind, heart, and soul of the individual.  It is so much more than just allied medical training. I fear that the emphasis on athletic endeavors (I hear there is talk of the institution of a women’s wrestling team) has become a priority over the educational mission of the institution. Support for a quality university athletic program goes without question. However, such a dedication of resources should not be at the total loss of a Jesuit liberal arts education. With the declaration of a ‘fiscal exigency’ in March 2019 and the jettison of the Jesuits shortly thereafter, it seems that financial mismanagement and a breach of fiduciary duty occurred. From this vantage point, there is a lack of transparency as to any effort to return to the foundational principles of what was the youngest Jesuit college in the United States. I understand that Wheeling was the only Jesuit college to be founded as a co-educational institution. That uniqueness is worthy of preservation. Maybe God wants the current president to be there. However, this alum does not. Weekly updates about the condition of the elevators, slip and slide kickball, the arrival of a pool table and a vending machine to the campus and athletic scores in weekly e-mail epistles from the President of the University is beneath the dignity of the Office.  Leave those topics to your facilities director and sports information director. I would rather hear of meaningful efforts to return the Jesuits to the campus. The good news should be about the acquisitions to the university’s library collection, the benevolence of corporations, philanthropic organizations, and alumni to further the foundational mission of the college, the restoration of a comprehensive and quality liberal arts curriculum and of those students who have matriculated to graduate and/or professional schools to educate our children, care for our elderly parents and to minister to those of us who are sinners. A very powerful illustration of this objective was noticed in June 2023 when Father James O’Brien, S. J., a veteran of 50 years at Wheeling, was inducted into the City’s Hall of Fame.  At his introduction and at the conclusion of his remarks, he was the only inductee that I observed to receive a standing ovation. The comment from the Master of Ceremonies for the event says it best: ‘This is why we need the Jesuits back at Wheeling.’ I am disheartened with the loss of the Jesuit presence, tradition, and values from Wheeling.  I still have a sense of that ‘Wheeling Feeling.’ Alma mater refers to the college or university one attended.  It also refers to our nourishing mother.  This is no longer the case for Wheeling College. What is there now is just a shadow of its once-statured position of pride and educational excellence of the individual for a lifetime of service to others. I wish the best for the students.  Every now and then I may send a small donation to a coach for their team.  I do know that the entire educational experience would be so much better with the Jesuits back on campus.  Having been named and baptized for one of the founders of the Order, I shall be forever thankful for the blessings of the Jesuit education that I received at Wheeling College.  It is so sad that others will not have the same blessing. Be well and here is to your continued success, William Francis Xavier Becker William (Billy) Francis Xavier Becker Wheeling (When It Was A Jesuit) College, 1972 https://ledenews.com/an-open-letter-to-wheeling-universitys-administration/ https://ledenews.com/wheeling-university-placed-on-probation/ Read the full article

[mashymilkiesinc]

Here’s a mess of items I am unearthing from the three seasons I directed on Duckman.  They are presented in no particular order.  And there will be more dumps in the future   (”Future Dumps” should be the name of my memoirs).

Some items of note:

2nd down from top:  A sample month of the post-production schedule for Duckman, or for any other animated TV series (then done on film). Each number (17, 18, etc.) represents an individual episode.  Each episode would arrive from the Korean animation studio as a “1-light” print (meaning is wasn’t color timed yet, just printed at one exposure.  The director would call his retakes from the 1-light and then sit with the film editor at a flat-bed editing console and edit the show by hand.  This was painfully time-consuming, especially if the note was something like speeding up animation from “twos” to “on ones”  which meant the editor had to hand-cut every other frame out and tape splice the remaining frames back together.  Film retakes would slowly trickle in from the Korean studio and edited in over time.  Once all the retakes and notes were addressed the film would be declared “LOCKED” (and you didn’t dare make changes afterwards or you’d screw up all the following processes).  Subsequently, a myriad of steps could proceed at once, activating a legion of technicians. 

The negative was cut and put through TELECINE (transferring it to video) and then ON-LINE (color correction, effects and credits added to build the final video product (all pre-digital, mind you).  These are processes that are nearly extinct now, due to digital media. 

Meanwhile, FOLEY (recording footsteps and such), sound effects (culled from the amassed libraries of post sound facilities ) and dialog tracks  are cleaned up in preparation for the mix.   Music cues were spotted with the composers and they went off to compose and record music (We also briefly had carte-blanche from the Zappa family to use “needle-drops” from any Frank Zappa tune we desired, because he was such a fan of Klasky-Csupo). 

Once all the audio elements were ready, we did a final mix which would last 4 DAYS FOR ONLY A 21 MINUTE SHOW!  That was a tense time when the Executive Producers would lay down the law on any of my fancy plans and wishes, damn them!  Finally all elements were reunited in the LAYBACK (the mating of final picture and final mix) onto videotape and sent to the network (in this case, USA); again, a pre-digital dinosaur process. 

Sometimes we delivered the layback to the network same day; hours away from airtime.

4rd down from top:  A full page color ad in Rolling Stone, April 6, 1995.

5th down from top:  A friend working on The Sacramento Bee sent me TV guide listing that renames the show in an inciteful way, March 26-April 1, 1995.

6th down from top:  A storyboard sketch for an unknown Duckman episode.  I think the artist is Director, Paul Demeyer.  But I’m not sure.

7th, 8th & 9th down from top: Items saved from my first Emmy Nomination for my Duckman Episode “TV or Not To Be.”  This was an eye-opening experience for me in more ways then one.  Animation does not get to be part of the actual, Prime-Time Emmys ceremony.  Those took place upstairs in the palatial theater of the Pasadena Civic on a different day.  Ours is a separate  “Technical Arts Emmys” ceremony carried on downstairs in the basement (I’m not kidding).  Duckman lost to a one-off PBS special called “The Roman City” that only had a few talky, static animated segments in an otherwise live-action documentary;  technically not even eligible for the category it won in.  My takeaway was that the winner, Bob Kurtz, a decent and talented animation veteran, was being honored for his career; a hidden calculus that determines the winner, rather than the actual nominated shows in competition.  So goes my education in show-business politics. 

Also included is a crib sheet one of the Executive Producers, Ron Osborn had ready just in case we won.  I think he started to tear it up and I took it from him.  Little did I know in 1994 that I could post it online in 2021!

Bottom image:  Something I drew, I assume for one of my shows, but it is very typical of the subversive imagery I loved to indulge in back then.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Editor's Note: The document that follows is the first and last written report made by Doctor John Carver Randall — the inventor of the aetheric oscillation detector, and father of modern multiverse theory — during his 1927 expedition to explore the multiverse. It is also the last confirmed communication of any type to originate from his party, having been written on the eve of their disappearance.

Although this report is largely a summary of a larger, comprehensive report that was never produced, the data it contains helped lay the foundations of multiversal cartography, in the form of the Randall Catalogue — the first systematic documentation and description of other universes within our multiverse. My intent in producing this edited and annotated version is to make this groundbreaking work more accessible to the modern reader, while preserving its historical and scientific worth. — L. Rowe

The aether field. John Carver Randall described it as a "strange force pervading the whole space about us, not having a source or direction that we could appreciate within our perception," but he was sure that it existed in a deep sense. Like many men with a philosophical bent of mind, he wanted to explain what he was doing in those terms before doing it. For Randall, his aetheric detectors were just that. He didn't want people to use them to get away with stuff he didn't like, so he chose something else, something that sounded more sensible.

"Doctor," said the captain, "on all systems, the sensors indicate a uniform negative impact. We're going to crash."

"Negative impact?" Randall turned to his friend in puzzlement. "Are they making fun of us?"

"They're asking us to make a fool of ourselves again," Carver answered. "For the past few minutes, everyone's been watching us, hunkering down for another blow like the last forty-seven seconds."

"It's really going to happen, isn't it?" Randall was aghast.

"We can only hope." The captain was a stocky, taciturn man in his late forties. He was a veteran of a dozen combat missions and had never been knocked down until now. He looked to Randall like some sort of humanoid stone, unperturbed by explosions and bullets.

"You know, sometimes I think I've changed a lot since I got here," Randall said, watching the planet slowly twist below them through its pass. The ship bounced and staggered against the spin.

"It's possible," Carver said. "I suppose you've discovered a lot since flying out of the atmosphere."

"To be honest, I think I figured out the aetheric field when we were both still children." Randall nodded at his friend. "Doctor, I don't have to take this stuff. I'm going to stop worrying about it."

"Good luck," Carver said.

Expose

The ship was jolted and shook. The force of impact threw Randall from his seat, and he was slammed onto the floor with such force that he went flat on his face.

He could see, now, that there was nothing to hit, and a moment later his senses adjusted and he could determine what had happened. "That's not … right," he realized. "We crashed into the planet. There must be something there to reflect our energy, but … "

***

"Shut up," the captain said harshly. He was not accustomed to people talking below him.

"Just tell me what to do," Randall said, feeling foolish. "The ship can't hurt us, and it should as little as possible."

"Which is why you aren't doing anything," the captain said. Randall could not see him, but he could hear his voice.

The ship bumped slightly against the rocky surface, but then it stopped. The captain was a man of his word.

"All units standing by," he said into his comm. "We have a change of plans."

"The captain's going to kill us?"

"As long as we're not in orbit of the planet, we're not going down."

…

This is the first time I've seen someone treat the aetheric field like it's real, as a thing with physical (or imagined) existence. That it isn't just another convenient convenient thing you can suspend your moral instincts about.

In all my years of sci-fi writing, I never imagined someone like this would become a sci-fi staple, yet here we are.