#also. minor reason but this blog got too big in 2020 the more i think about it the more im like

[kingjasnah]

Hi kingjasnah, can I ask why you don't post cosmere stuff very often anymore?

ummm ok sure. tbh the big nebulous reason is that it's not always easy to be a person of color in this space. i don't take a lot of what people say online seriously and I never have (which is probably why ive been on this blog so long), like im secure enough in my offline life to tbh not worry about it and my experience of these books is solely personal. which i recommend to everyone. but sure the last few years have been a little grating like i think there's a reason most of the mutuals of color i had in 2020 (and before) have um moved tf on as they say. im not going to expand on this LOL if you were here you know what i mean

the slightly chiller reason is just very simply that none of the releases since ROW have captured my interest as much? the ssps were cute but whatever. im personally not an era 2 person but i love a lore dump so lost metal was fun for that reason. when the next stormlight preview season starts I plan to be fully back on my bullshit I will be posting I will be keeping up with things I will be theorizing but I'm not here to do that 24/7 in the off season anymore

[the-art-of-animated-gifs]

Interview with my friend A.L. Crego

I have not met A.L. Crego.  I have not spoken with him on the phone, in fact I do not even know what he looks like.  But I can confidently call him my friend.  Three years ago when I started this blog he immediately disagreed with me in the comments about things I was writing and I loved it.  As a person putting ideas out there, you treasure things like that....because you know someone cares.  We have had many back and forth discussions over the years....if we had lived in Paris in 1911 we would be having arguments at La Rotonde (not to compare either of us to Picasso).

A.L. Crego is a motion artist who does a wide variety of things.  He has now become a very visible and active figure in the NFT Movement.  He recently completed a large and very successful project in which he animated the work of a number of well know street artists on the building themselves, something he has done for years.  His Tumblr page is a good place to start to see his work, which is largely surrealist in nature -- another Spanish artist following in the footsteps of other great Spanish surrealist artists.

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

How long have you been creating gif art?

In a conscious and intentional way since 2014. Previously I haven't pay too much attention on one hand for its common use that was mostly ads and funny little videos, and on the other hand because it was a 'standard' format we accepted as something part of the web so I never stopped to analyze its potential. The key point for me was about 2010-2011 when the concept of 'Cinemagraph' was brought to life just giving it a name. It's format is .gif but its characteristics are different so I saw there the midpoint between photography and video, which gave born another format of art.

Art mutates when a new format appears. I was using and studying this format since then but it wasn't until 2014 that I decided to publish some of them.

What is your background?

In general terms, bachelor, 2 years of stone sculpting and two attempts of photography and audiovisual mediums. I say attempts because I gave up both of them as I was feeling that I was looking for something else more than studying all the previous history, style and isms, which is nice to understand where everything comes from and to be aware what are the key points on the history to use as reference, as a map. But in some way I felt limited as I was using digital tools since I had my first computer with 14 years, and I was being taught things I learnt by then. Even more in this times we are living where we are 21 century people, been taught by teachers from the 20 with 19 century methods.

A constant line that feeds my background is literature and music overall and later Street Art, next to more temporal interests as everything related with mythology, alchemy, history, psychology, neurology, biology, human condition in general... I don't have studies buy I'm a studying guy!

I always like to highlight that all these years that internet got strong and social networks appeared, I decided voluntary to be out of them. First reason was to keep my privacy safe in a growing world where it seemed that some "curtain" felt and everybody accepted that intimacy was now 'ex-timacy' and correct to show their private life, (this shocked me). Another reason was about the psychological effect that social networks were having on people I had around and everywhere in general. I started to notice patterns and "waves" about series, aesthetics, styles, and I was seeing clearly that if I go there, I will become permeable to all this "Amniotic Culture" I was trying to avoid.

This fact of being far (but study them closely) helped me a lot about researching and developing my own ideas and style, for the mere fact that I was using all this time and attention Social Networks require, on drinking from another sources. The B-side of this is that I was 'out of the radar' of mass people as this social networks are designed to live inside them. My idea of internet and spreading ideas is not in this way.

Where do you live and work?

In the north west of Spain, Galicia. Now due to Covid I travel less but before it, I was working and traveling many places as I only need a camera and a computer. This allows me move to work anywhere.

Do you think that animated gifs are a new art form?

I think so, despite the fact that the format existed since 1987. But as every new format of art it takes its time to be considered as art. The first photographs were not considered art until many years later. Same happened with film, same with CGI. Is nice to have in mind that gif format is the last strictly digital format of the three main ones on the web: picture, video and gif. Photography has about 200 years of history, video about 130, CGI about 60. Finally gif has 33, and used as art itself no more than 10-15. In the same way anybody takes a picture of anything does not convert it into art, is the same with gifs. One thing is the format, another is the 'art'. Everybody can take a picture, record a video or do a gif. The difference is on the how, the why, and from my point of view overall, the what.

Do you think that there is a difference between pure .gif files and the .mp4 files that people post on Instagram?

The first, big and obvious difference is the format. Is not the same a painting as a picture of a painting. Here happens the same. For example, if you treat a gif with Cinemagraph technique, you are converting in picture some parts of the image, so they still remain and with the texture and totally stillness of a picture. If you convert this gif into a mp4 this still parts, despite not having motion, will convert into a video texture (noise, subtle motion in pixels, etc) so the main characteristic, among the perfect loop, is lost. Another point is that you must play a video, a gif is always running. Waterfalls are always running and this characteristic is something that is inside our human nature, we react nice to "bucle" motions as waterfalls, fire, etc. We find pleasure on this. Of course if it's a video the perfect loop is lost and the visual mantra disappear. And another key point here is the soundtrack. In a video you can use sound to enhance or give another meaning to the piece that you can't with gifs. For me this is another characteristic that give meaning to gif. For me gif is silence, the sound is generated by the motion, the melody are the details and the beat the perfect loop. You can "hear" almost every gif.

The difference between a gif and a video is the same that between a waterfall and a hose (if this works).

What do you think are the characteristics of good gif art?

For me first and overall the perfect loop. Not using it is not using the only format that has this characteristics. Of course there can be gif art that is not perfect loop, but from my point of view and in my work is a must. It's a new way not only of creating but also of thinking. Imagine an still scene is easy, imagine an A-B point action is easy. For me the challenge is about thinking an idea that is perfect looped where all the elements interact and eventually come back to its initial point. Succeed doing this is where the perfect loop appears and you are not able to find where is the start point of the action. Like a visual mantra, that it's repetition leads you inside the piece. Gif art is nice to use the power of the hypnotic movements. Another point to have in mind for me is the flow of it, the frame rate I mean. Depending on the idea and the kind of animation this should vary; is not the same fps to achieve something with flow than if you want to achieve a more 'retro' old style. Another thing is about dithering and color palette. This second one is essential to understand as it affects the final file. When we work with photo and video we are using millions of colors but when rendered as gifs all the gradients, lights and even colors will change if there is a previous understood of this point.

As summary: If motion doesn't add, change of enhance the meaning of the piece, is expendable.

I'd would like to add that I'm not really supporter of this kind of gifs generated automatically that just move a still image itself. I understand that this 'technique' is used as a tool for certain motion (I use it) but not to move a whole image. I feel the same as if somebody hold a painting in front of me and moves it randomly. If the work was born still, it must remain still. A good example of 'inner motion', this means that the motion is implicit on the image despite not being in motion, are the photographs of Cartier Bresson for example. Giving motion to this pictures for example, will kill it because it will break the concept of 'perfect instant' .

'Instant' differs etymologically from 'moment' in the motion. So, still image (painting, photo, sculpture, etc) is an instant, videos are stories with a-b point, and gifs are moments, the mid point.

How would you describe your gif art?

I usually condense it as "Visual Mantras", as the technique and the aesthetic vary depending on the idea , but in all of them the perfect loop and the intention of hypnotizing is always present.

In another terms about aesthetics and themes I think ‘Industrial Nature’ can fit nice. I use a lot of industrial elements but I like to mix their mechanics with the biological natural ones.

How long have you been creating and selling NFTs?

I am selling NFTs since mid 2019, but it wasn't until October 2020 that I focused more on it and dug into the ecosystem to find new paths to focus my work.

Do you think that NFTs are a positive for gif artists?

For me, and the main reason I jumped into cryptoart and NFT, is that now I can certify my digital work as original. Even more to gif works as they were always understood as something banal and minor for the context of its born. Gif art was born prostituted, used mostly for ads and to claim our attention on the internet, next to the highest glamour of painting and traditional art, and 3d, photography and video these last decades. Even worst if we realize that gif format was the only visual format born by and for the internet.

NFTs are totally positive for gif artists because despite being a digital/online native format it never had its own ecosystem to live in. I feel that I was creating creatures for an ecosystem I was waiting to drop them there. Now with the blockchain, NFTs and cryptoart, I found the place where they can live, being watched by everybody and have the certify that is my work. Until some months ago my work was "free" on the web and I had no control over it at all. This was a huge problem I was suffering since my first month into gif art as people use it indiscriminately with no credit at all. It's ok, and I always defend that my work is to be seen, to be shared, but I was looking for the way to be able to have this link with my work without losing the option of being available for everybody. NFT totally changes this.

What do you think will happen in the future as NFTs get even more popular?

In general terms I think it will happen the same as when print got more popular. People will use it more, a lot of crazy and useless things will appear, tons more of different uses and useful purposes, (not only on art). This opens a new door a lot of people was waiting so the future is unpredictable but we can feel where things are going. NFT arrived to stay and the concept of decentralization is something that was always present on the internet since first days but born inside a centralized system. NFTs are being a way for people to understand the 'peer to peer' philosophy and this makes people think in different codes, so we can expect a lot of new horizons, in art, music, design...

What do you think of the environmental impact of NFTs?

This question can goes really deep but in general terms I think that is something that is being oversized due to the hype and the boiling point we are, and it's understandable because is not false that it has an environmental impact, as everything does. But on the other hand I have two main areas in mind. The first and the obvious from my point of view is that when something is new and developing is less efficient, in the way that it requires more effort to achieve the result. But at the same time, the more this technology is used the more is developed and all this issues are part of it. The first car was not electric.

The second point that usually reverberates in my mind and that it seems that 'hard critics' omit is that they are not having in mind that this NFTs we mint, give us a profit that can be used offline to do another things that can be useful to solve this problem, for example, investing part of this money on living on our own in a minimal and clean way (not working for huge multinational that their environmental impact is tons times more than NFTs and then being part of an ONG to feel clean) and on using part of this money on looking and researching new ways to mint and to keep this digital ecosystem more efficient and clean. Every development needs time.

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

If you have found this content valuable considering getting me a cup of coffee

[bills-pokedex]

Is using pokemon to steal from big stores a valid use of pokemon?

Before I begin, I’d like to apologize for the open discomfort in this response. This discomfort stems from three things, which I should also note:

1. I’m a public figure, so therefore, I literally cannot encourage or even condone theft of any kind for any reason, even if I am politically unconventional, as it were.

2. Even if I could, I’ve always been very open about my anti-Team Rocket policies, so I’m not entirely certain what you were expecting here, to be frank.

3. If you were doing this as a form of protest, then I have unfortunate news to tell you about quite a few products you’re likely benefiting from, including but not limited to the Leppa laptop you’re likely using to access GMail in order to run your ... well, literally every social media platform these days. While shopping at certain online retailers who must not be named.

That having been said, to answer you properly, allow me to do so by assuming this is a pokémon handling question more than ... anything else.

The short answer is no. The long answer is no ... because of consent. You see, the biggest concern with any activity you engage in is consent. It’s very easy to assume that our pokémon partners are just as intelligent as we are, given that they’re so integrated with our lives. The sad truth is that many of them don’t possess the advanced intellect we’re capable of, so having your pokémon help you steal would be a lot like having your four-year-old little brother help you pocket whatever they can. Certainly, it’s your four-year-old little brother, but at the same time, you wouldn’t ask your four-year-old little brother to commit what’s technically a crime, right? The same should be said of pokémon. If they can’t comprehend what they’re doing or the moral arguments behind it, then they can’t consent to you using their abilities. Ergo, no, it’s not a valid use of pokémon.

However, if you have a pokémon that can comprehend—say, kadabra or alakazam—then you can technically do whatever you’d like with them so long as: 1) they do indeed consent, and 2) the activity you wish to engage in isn’t morally reprehensible on an objective level (e.g., murder, assault, poképhilia, sexual misconduct of any other variety, corruption of minors—I could go on). So in that sense, if they understand and consent, you can’t technically say it’s wrong ... except, well, from a legal standpoint. Therein lies the debate, of course, and why I clarified that earlier statement to say “so long as you don’t do something objectively reprehensible.” That having been said, again, I can’t encourage or condone you to ask your pokémon to steal, but I can say that you can at least argue it’s not pokémon abuse if you’re not forcing a pokémon to do something it doesn’t understand.

Finally, if you’re a member of Team Rocket, the above still doesn’t apply because even if your pokémon does understand and consent, you’re asking it to steal for the subjugation of other pokémon, which is ... wrong. Don’t do that. Among other things that you shouldn’t also do.

{Important Mun Disclaimer is below the readmore and heavily political. Please skip to the next post if you don’t want to see Words.}

{Important Mun Disclaimer: I’ve been thinking about how best to address this because on the one hand, I realize this is meant to be a lighthearted funny haha joke ask sent to a normally uptight yet also lowkey anarchist character who happens to work alongside his world’s government. On the other ... I’ve always been uncomfortable with the lifting community that I know is prevalent both among leftists and on social media in general, and I feel like I need to talk about it because it’s not for the reason you might think.

See, I’ve read arguments on both sides about whether or not it’s morally okay for a leftist to steal from a big corporation. I’m aware of the arguments about workers (Do they get penalized? Don’t they? It seems to vary by store, and honestly, some workers support this behavior and shouldn’t be ignored.), and I’m aware of lifters’ insistence that it’s some form of protest against box stores (spoilers: they make enough bank and take out enough insurance that they don’t care about the handful of luxury items you’re stealing). So I hear all of you. F, yo, I was a teenager once too, and I hung out with textbook punks a lot. If your reason for stealing is because you’re an idiot kid who gets kicks from doing that, at least I understand because that’s what you do when you’re young and angry.

Nah, my reason for being super uncomfortable with lifting doesn’t really touch these arguments. It’s got everything to do with my need to write this disclaimer, though, and that reason is ... to let people know that’s an extremely white thing to do.

So to all the white people and white-passing people shoplifting because you’re lefties (really, because you like the adrenaline rush, lbr), I just want to talk about all the Black people who have to be followed around in stores because clerks think they’re lifting. I want to talk about how retail workers not too long ago (as I was before I started my career doing something else) were literally taught to follow “suspicious customers,” with the implication being “POCs.” And I want to talk about how there are folks who get arrested or worse for “stealing” things they actually bought or for “stealing” when they were literally just browsing.

Some of this might just be bad timing too, mind you. I’d read this article the other day, so maybe if this ask hadn’t come literally that day, I probably would have answered without all this talk. Maybe I could’ve deleted the ask and pretended it was one of the unanswerables. But anyway, I read it, and I’d like to share it for context with the rest of you because it’s also important: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/29/opinions/kyle-rittenhouse-bail-donations-race-leiba/index.html (tw btw, because a Black person describes what it’s like to be arrested in pretty intense detail) Anyway, point is, maybe it’s a good thing that I’d read this because, well, something needs to be said here. When you’re young and stupid and very likely white, stealing seems like fun because ACAB and all. But when you get older and really think critically about the world around you, you start to think critically about what you do too. Hopefully. In most cases. Some people are dead-on my age, and they still steal, citing leftism as their reasoning with absolutely zero self-awareness about how they can do that because they’re, well, white.

My point in bringing this up is not to harsh a buzz, and absolutely, it’s done with the complete understanding that this is a Pokémon ask blog, so of course not too many people are going to take it seriously. It’s more because I just didn’t feel right just answering this ask and not talking about this bit of politics. And that’s mostly because lifting is such a meme among progressive folks on social media, and it just ... tires me, in a way, that it’s never really discussed that this is a thing you can only really get away with 100% of the time if you’re white.

Anyway, the actual disclaimer is that Bill’s politics don’t often reflect my own and vice-versa. Bill is played as a neutral good character, who believes he can fix the world and actually probably could, but at the same time, he’s, well, lowkey anarchist. I, meanwhile, am none of those things. Moreover, Bill’s world is a utopia where things like discrimination is an actual thing of the past and where humans live more or less in harmony, openly, as whoever they want to be, and that’s due to a combination of canon and me intentionally constructing a world where other people can imagine themselves being safe and not having to fight to be who they want to be. But the problem is that our world isn’t Bill’s, and sadly, sometimes, I have to acknowledge that.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant. Thanks for reading, and a second ask will be up shortly as a reward for putting up with this.}

[okayto]

Mini-Review: Inuyasha

15-year-old modern schoolgirl Kagome and grumpy half-demon Inuyasha reluctantly team up to recover the pieces of a magical jewel that were scattered when Kagome fell down a well into magic-filled feudal Japan. On their quest they team up with a monk, a demon slayer, and a young fox demon while trying to stay ahead of the large number of people who want one or all of them dead.

This counts as a classic now, right? I remember plenty of Inuyasha cosplays (including me as Kagome for Halloween once), fanart, and the rare anime merch in real stores while the original series aired in the early aughts. But despite that, I wasn’t a dedicated watcher at the time. Which ended up to my advantage, because now the entire series is easily available.

The premise is simple: Kagome falls down a well at her family’s shrine, and comes out the other side in feudal Japan. She’s attacked by a demon that wants to acquire the magical Shikon Jewel embedded in her body, awakens and is saved by the grumpy half-demon Inuyasha, the jewel shatters, and now they gotta go put it back together. Only, Kagome is the reincarnation of Inuyasha’s former girlfriend, the priestess Kikyo, and the two parted on bad terms each believing their lover had betrayed them. (It was a trick by series Big Bad Naraku, but still.)

And because nothing is ever simple, Kikyo gets brought back to life at one point for Reasons, then proceeds to spent a chunk of the series alternating between helping random peasants (because she’s got such a nice soul) and trying to kill Inuyasha and co (because breakups suck).

This is not an intellectual series, but it is a fun series. Mostly. There’s lot of action, lots of magic and demon-slaying, and the occasional respite/comedy break when Kagome heads home because she’s got a school exam, or needs to stock up on snacks, and say hi to a family who is super chill about their teenager just gallivanting around 500 years in the past, using her archery skills to avoid being eaten for dinner.

Yes. In this portal fantasy the portal remains open, allowing free crossing back and forth, which is convenient. I remain, however, mystified by how far the characters seem to travel while always remaining within a fairly easy trip back to their home base where the well is.

In general, you can’t think about it too hard. It won’t hold up, it’s not supposed to hold up. This is a feudal Japan where no one cares that Kagome is running around in a miniskirt, riding a bicycle and eating cup noodles and bags of chips.

On one hand, Inuyasha, like many action series, is great for the casual viewer: after a brief introduction at the beginning, you know the basic setting and the rest of the story in any given episode is easy to figure out (usually: this brightly-colored character wants to harm these other ones and/or steal their weapons). But what’s fun when viewed in short doses gets old if you’re trying to cram it. Not because it’s bad, but binging does make its flaws more obvious.

Its main flaw is that every single character needs to take a course in communicating.

To be clear, every main character has the emotional intelligence of a sleep-deprived sixth grader. Inuyasha isn’t alone in this, but the number of fights that compelled me to yell please work out your interpersonal drama later when demons are not actively trying to kill you was...a lot.

(Don’t worry, there’s plenty of arguing when they’re not dealing with murder attempts, too!)

Okay, so, why watch? I mean, sometimes you just wanna see cool magical people fighting other magical people in ridiculous ways? I mean look at these people!  You’re not going to mix any of them up with anyone else, huh? And the colors, nice and bright!

Also, initial-minor-antagonist-who-refuses-to-admit-he-would-ever-willingly-be-nice Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha’s older half-brother? He was popular eye candy back then, and he’s still pretty now.

Now, my roommate and I watched this over the course of many months, which is what I recommend. It’s a long series (193 episodes total, excluding movies), and why rush it? A plus to watching now is that the series is complete: the original anime ended before the manga, so 163 episodes in, it just...doesn’t resolve. But a few years later, Inuyasha: The Final Act was released and completed the story.

Even so, the show is long enough that unless you’re really enjoying it, you can go ahead and skip the filler episodes that were stuck in the original run. Just google “Inuyasha filler” and you’ll find multiple lists.

Verdict

English dub? Yes

Visuals: I mean, the first 167 episodes are from 2000-2004, so the aspect ratio is 4:3, but it’s held up OK. Character designs are colorful and distinctive. This isn’t going for anything close to realism, but it’s fun to look at.

Worth watching? Yeah, probably. Sometimes you just need a silly action show, and Inuyasha delivers in spades. It’s not perfect--monk Miroku’s lechery and groping is treated as a small character flaw and usually played for laughs, which gets old real quick. A lot of the side characters are legitimately fun as well, from Sesshoumaru’s little entourage Jaken and Rin (does he care about them? he’ll kill you before admitting it) to Kagome’s easygoing family to the recurring wolf demon allies.

Overall, I think I have to hold a long-running fantasy action show to a different standard of “is it good” than I do, say, something with 12-26 episodes. It’d have to get to the point quickly if it was shorter; even skipping the filler, this is the adaptation of a 56-volume manga so there’s just going to be a lot of adventures where the entire point is just “characters get [magical weapon/power-up/knowledge] and beat up some bad guys.” There’s something fun and also comforting in knowing it’s not going to get deep.

Where to watch (USA, as of November 2020): Hulu (sub and dub episodes 1-167, then 168-193 under the separate listing of Inuyasha The Final Act), Crunchyroll (sub and dub episodes 1-54), Netflix (sub and dub episodes 1-54), Viz.com (sub and dub episodes 1-193); multiple blu-ray and DVD sets

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

[thedenimdentist]

Flame Panda: worth the hype?

Introduction

For those of you who are pretty invested in handmade, hand welted, MTM boots, Flame Panda needs no introduction. In fact, if you aren’t already familiar with this small boot making family out of a small village in China, then maybe you aren’t actually the boot enthusiast you believe yourself to be. lol just kidding. But really, for anyone interested in high quality, beautifully built boots, Flame Panda is a brand worth looking into. Their main source of advertising and business is through their instagram @flamepanda11, which is run by their Peng. They're still a relatively small family owned business, but they’re following is growing exponentially (and for good reason). 

I would go more into the background of their business and what they have to offer, but nothing I could write would compare to the information covered by Jake @almostvintagestyle on his blog: his review of his beautiful chunky monkey boots and an interview with Peng himself. So, if you’d like more background information on what Peng and Flame Panda have to offer, head over to his blog. Otherwise, on with the unboxing/review!

Ordering Process

As with most boot brands out of Asia lately, Flame Panda boots can be ordered via DM through his Instagram @flamepanda11. Unfortunately, there is no website or catalog listing all the patterns, leathers, or customization options he has available. Luckily Peng is very helpful and open to discussion regarding your MTO boots. He takes an active role in creating you the best boots possible, giving constructive input and suggestions rather than just mindlessly giving you whatever you ask for. Peng knows his materials and abilities best, and has a solid grasp on how to combine the two to create a quality product that meets both yours and his satisfaction.

The following are the exact details I requested regarding these black boots:

Model: 6 inch boots

Last: 181 last

Upper leather: black Maryam horsebutt

Upper stitching: black

Hardware: 5 copper eyelets, 2 quick hooks, 1 eyelet

Toe design: brogued cap toe, unstructured

Welt construction: 270° 2 row stitchdown (beige)

Lining: kangaroo

Midsole: single leather midsole

Edge finish: natural edge

Sole: black Dr. Sole half sole/heel

Heel design: incline curved

Sizing

For those of you who haven’t read my reviews before, my feet are stricken with large bunions on the pinky sides of my feet. As a result, picking shoe sizes have always been extremely difficult. (See my previous reviews for details). Below I’ve listed my sizes for all the other boot brands I own.

Thursdays - 10.5

Onderhoud - 45E

Benzein - 45E

Red Wing, Iron Ranger - 9.5EE

Truman Boot Company - 11EE

Viberg (1035 last) - 10.5

In trying to determine what size I would be in his boots, I sent Peng all the following images/information:

As many helpful measurements I could think, with images of how I took those measurements.

I also informed him that I wear this thick, memory foam orthotic in all my footwear.

And lastly, I provided him with a photo and the dimensions of the removable insole of another pair of boots that fit perfectly (in this case, my Onderhoud derbies). I also took photo of how my orthotic relates to these insoles, as well as a photo with my ugly foot. (TMI? Possibly. But I’d rather provide too much information than not enough, and it definitely paid off.)

Now that I think about it, I don't even know what size Peng ended up making for me. Regardless, these boots ended up fitting perfectly. This goes to show that Peng really knows what he’s doing, and can size you appropriately if given enough information. 

Price & Shipping

For this particular boot in black Maryam horsebutt, Peng charged $685 USD including global shipping. I purchased these boots on 6/29/2020, and was quoted an unusually specific 95 day wait time. However, I didn't end up receiving these until 12/29/2020. While this is significantly longer than expected, Peng kept me up to date in his progress via Instagram DMs, so I never felt forgotten. (He told me that he and his family were moving locations during this time and production was running behind schedule. I didn’t mind, as I COVID was keeping me home majority of the time and didn’t have any reason to wear these boots anyway.) These days, I believe his wait time is closer to six months (which still really isn’t too bad for MTM boots).

Unboxing

Securely packaged, with tape as no object.

A box inside a box. A nice touch, actually. A lot of other boot companies simply ship the single boot box wrapped in butcher paper and tape, which often results in some minor box damage. In this case, the outer protective box took all the beating during transit, leaving the actual boot box in pristine condition. While this doesn’t have any affect on the quality of the boots themselves, it’s a good demonstration of the care and thought that Peng puts into all aspects of his products. He really holds himself to a higher standard, and I appreciate it.

Another reason to love Peng. He typically includes a small gift with every boot order! In this case, this nice little wallet. 

In addition to the complementary thinner, cheaper single boot bags that most boot companies provide, Peng also included a larger canvas drawstring boot bag with a screen printed logo.

These boots came with three sets of laces. They were pre-laced with some standard width, flat, waxed cotton laces. Included in the box were two additional sets of laces: a pair of wider flat waxed cotton laces, and some round waxed cotton laces. 

360 Degree View

Left boot:

Right boot:

Sole:

The Leather

The black Maryam horsebutt Peng used on these boots is absolutely gorgeous. The leather feels very substantial and hefty, and has a very nice sheen. The horsebutt also has a very subtle marbling and grain that shines through from certain angles. It’s a little difficult to capture in photos due to the deep black coloring of the leather, but you can take my word for it. These are incredible.

From what I’ve seen, I believe Peng is one of the best in the business when it comes to hide selection and clicking. He is extremely picky when determining what portions of each hide he actually uses on his boots. For instance, here is an example of him picking apart a hide, circling all the imperfections that he plans on excluding during clicking for boots.

This critical eye for detail increases Peng’s overhead considerably, as a significant portion of his leather is filtered out as unusable and unfit for boots. While this does increase the cost of his boots relative to other smaller boot brands coming out of Asia, it is also a big reason why the leather on his boots consistently break in and age so well. I have yet to see a pair of Flame Panda boots that have any unsightly creasing or loose grain, and I’m sure my pair will be no exception.

The 181 Last

Here’s a closer look at the tope shape of the 181 last. It’s got a nice almond toe shape without going overboard with pointy-ness. The outer sweep of the toe box has a more gradual, soft curve than the Onderhoud last, and even more so the Benzein Kujang last. It’s a clean and strong shape, with more of a sophisticated vibe than your typical work boot.

Outsole

Nice and clean outsole stitching by hand, with no overly wonky stitches.

The Liner

I chose to have this pair fully lined with a warm brown kangaroo leather. This makes the upper feel even more robust and structured (especially noticeable around the ankle/shaft of the boot), and gives them a bit more of a luxurious feel when on foot. (Also, note the half gusseted tongue. I highly prefer gusseted tongues over the standard floppy tongue. I specified during my order that I wanted a gusseted tongue, so I’m not 100% sure this tongue would come standard. Might be worth asking when/if you do order a pair for yourself.)

The Brogued Cap Toe

This is my first boot with a brogued cap toe. While I still think I prefer plain toes on my boots, I do like how this brogued cap looks here.

270 Degree Stitchdown Construction

Peng is probably most known for his 360° storm + embedded eversion welt. However, it is on the chunkier side, and I felt it would take away from the clean, sleeker look of this boot. Thus, I opted for double row stitchdown construction, which I think turned out quite nicely.

Peng’s welt stitching is very tight, parallel, and uniform, with a higher stitch count. Esthetically, I think it looks pretty similar to the 270° veldschoen stitching on my derbies from @renavgoodsco (seen at the 12 o’clock position below).

12 o’clock: Renav 270° veldschoen

2 o’clock: Truman 270° stitchdown

4 o’clock: Ostmo boots 270° custom welt stitching

6 o’clock: Benzein 270° veldschoen

8 o’clock: Role Club 270° flat welt

10 o’clock: Onderhoud 270° veldschoen

Inclined Curved Heel

If you haven’t been able to tell already, these are not the inclined curved heels (aka woodsman heels) that I had initially requested. While this is a pretty significant misstep on Peng’s end, I actually don’t mind too much. For low block heels, these appear to have been executed very cleanly, and it does complement the rest of the boot pattern quite nicely. If I had been dead set on having woodsman heels on these boots, I could see this being more of a dealbreaker. 

Upper Stitching

Overall, the stitching on the upper is clean and tight, with a very uniform stitch count. There are a few spots where there are a few mis-stitches, which I will point out later. For now, here are a few macro shots to appreciate Peng’s stitch work.

One area on the upper where the stitching isn’t exactly perfect is along the left cap toe. As you can see below, there is one spot in the broguing pattern where it gets a little too close to the double row of stitches, and the thread actually tore into the brogue hole. Functional issue? No. But just something small I noticed.

A second spot that might be considered less than perfect is this stitching on the right boot, where the quarters meet the vamp. It looks like there may be an extra stitch in the vertical line extending beyond the horizontal stitch. This is seen on both the inside and outside quarters, and only on the right boot. (I included a pic of the stitching on the left boot a few photos back, where you can see the stitch lines come to a perfect T.) Again, this is being extremely nit-picky, and has no real bearing on the durability or quality of the boot itself.

A third and possibly the (relatively) biggest stitching imperfection was this loose thread on the front corner of the inside right quarter. It appears as though the end of the thread came out of the stitch hole. I later trimmed the loose thread and singed it with a lighter to prevent it from progressing, but there is still an empty stitch hole in the leather where the thread once was.

While we’re on the topic of imperfections, there is also a little bit of what appears to be black polish smeared along the brown welt of the right boot. Not a big issue, nor is it even a stitching or construction issue. Again, just thought I’d point it out to be thorough.

On Foot

First off, I would just like to praise Peng for absolutely nailing the fit of these boots. My feet are ugly and stupid, and sizing any footwear has always been a nightmare. However, using just the measurements and information I provided above (since getting measured in person was not an option), he still managed to build a perfectly fitting boot for my imperfectly shaped feet. I’ve worn them a few times now, and I’ve had zero pain whatsoever.

That being said, these boots are by far some of the stiffest boots I’ve ever worn—in a good way. I can tell these will require a good amount of wear to really break them in and have them relax and shape to my foot, but I’m looking forward to it. (Note, I’m in no way saying that this extended break in period will be at all painful; rather, just that it’ll take some time for the upper leather and sole to soften up.) These boots feel like tanks, and lacing these up make my feet feel invincible. I felt like Steph Curry wearing double ankle braces when I first tried walking in these, but the shafts are slowly starting to break in and roll with wear. The soles were also initially very rigid (like I was walking on planks of wood), but are beginning to flex more as I continue to wear these. Also note that I had these built on single leather midsoles! I can’t even imagine how stiff these would be if they had 1.5 or double layer midsoles (which are a quite popular request, from what I’ve seen on Peng’s Instagram).

Conclusions

I know it’s still early, but I can confidently say that these Flame Panda boots are one of the highest quality boots in my collection. They are definitely the most robust, and despite a few minor finishing issues, the level of cleanliness and finishing by Peng and his family is unmatched by the majority of boot makers worldwide (at least from what I’ve seen on Instagram). Other than maybe Goto-San of White Kloud (@show_goto), Peng is one of the best at not only sourcing beautiful leathers, but clicking as well. I have yet to see a pair of his boots with any unsightly creasing or grain, which gives me the confidence to recommend him to anyone who may be interested in purchasing a pair of these, or any of his other boot patterns. 

I apologize if this has started to sound like a sponsored or endorsed advertisement, but I genuinely love these boots, and I believe Peng is a great dude who deserves the recognition he has been receiving lately. He is super generous and genuine, easy to talk to (albeit sometimes slow to respond, with the sheer volume of DMs he now receives), and is constantly striving to improve his materials and skills. And with a personality and passion like that, how could anyone not want to support him? These may have been my first pair of Flame Pandas, but they definitely aren't the last. (In fact, they’re already not. lol)

Anyway, hit me up via Instagram if you have any questions about Peng, Flame Panda, or anything else denim/boots related. Also, follow along over there to see how these stunning black Maryam horsebutt boots age with wear. I’m excited to see how they break in, and so should you. Ttfn!

[inceptionbigbang]

It’s official folks: the Inception Big Bang 2020 is only a couple weeks away! Follow this blog to receive the latest news and keep an eye out for the sign-up post on April 26th.

First things first, what’s a Big Bang? A Big Bang is a fandom event where authors submit fic summaries / outlines / drafts and artists claim them and produce accompanying artwork. Here’s the link to the fanlore page, if you want to take a look.

If you’re signing up for the Inception Big Bang, welcome! Glad to have you on board. Here are the rules as well as some frequently asked questions. Anything else you want to know drop us a message!

If you were a part of the Inception Big Bang 2019, we recommend reading again or checking out our updates post. It has all of the changes that we’re making this time around.

For writers:

1. All ships are welcome!

2. Minimum of 1,500 words.

We love super short fics too, we promise. But we want to give our artists more to work with.

3. Fic needs to be created for the big bang.

No reposting of old works.

4. Works are secret until revel date.

So no posting excerpts online! Let’s keep up the surprise. Only share your writing with your artist and with a beta, if you want to have one.

5. Keep your artist updated.

It’s a collaboarative event! Remember to give your artist information about your fic, so they have material to work with.

Can it be a crossover?

Sure!

Can it be a continuation of an old work?

Why not?

Can it be OT3 / kink / crack?

Sure! Just keep in mind that the more specific your work is, the harder it may be for one of our artists to connect with it. This is true for anything you may come up with, crossovers, PWPs, squirmish themes, you name it. We encourage creativity! Go wild. But use the appropriate tags when you send us your summary and consider being flexible if our artists are having a hard time with that one.

My fic is 1,487 words and a half!! Is it okay?

Sure. Minimum word count is just a guideline to give our artists something to work with.

How much do I need to write before I sign up?

Just a summary works, don’t worry. The complete fic deadline is the end of July, some way to go. But the more you give our artists the better. You’ve got an outline? One specific scene written? Send them our way. What you send us is what we will put up for grabs for the artists, so make it easy to understand your story!

.

For artists:

1. Art needs to be created for the Big Bang.

No reposting of an old work.

2. Works are secret until reveal day.

So no posting drafts online! Let’s keep up the surprise.

3. One or two fics per artist.

The first round of fic claims is a ‘one fic per artist’ round, but we also have a second round! You guys are super welcome to claim fics on both. Just consider the time you can spare (don’t strain yourself!) and keep me updated. If you would like to claim more than that message me @ dreaminghigher. Consider signing up for pinch hitter!

What counts as art?

Art drawn or painted, including digital art,

Photo manips,

Moodboards and pic sets,

Gifsets (if you’re making them! don’t steal gifs),

Comics,

Fanvids of at least 1 minute,

Physical crafts like sculpture, knitting, embroidery, whatever talents you’re hiding from us! If it’s anything super crazy check with us first, but chances are you’re fine. As long as you can submit a picture within the deadline it’s fair game.

.

For betas:

This year potential betas will be compiled in a publicly available list. Instead of trying to pair up people (which didn't really work last time) we will instead make one big list with:

1. the person available as a beta, 

2. their prefered pairings, 

3. their no-gos and 

4. one of their social media contacts (like tumblr or discord).

Anyone who is looking for a beta can check out the list. So keep it mind when signing up as a beta!

.

For everyone:

Reply to the check-in emails.

There will be two of them and this year replying is mandatory. This is a collaborative event guys! That means someone will put in work to produce a piece for you. They deserve to get something back. If you need to drop out it’s okay, but we need the feedback. Reply and tell us what's up. It can be as short as "things are good," or "Hey, I have a question." Shoot. We're here to help. But no reply to the check-in emails this year means a drop out and we will contact pinch-hitters.

Speaking of which, save our email to the list of trusted contacts!

It’s inceptionbigbang@outlook.com, by the way. We will send updates over there.

Can I sign up as artist and author?

Sure!

Why am I being asked if I’m over 18?

It’s for adult content reasons. We will again allow both minors and NSFW pieces in the event, which means once again participants will be asked if they are over age when signing up. This information is just for the event organizers, to make sure minors aren't paired up with anyone wanting to produce porn. If you're an author and you think your fic could get explicit please properly tag it when sending in your summary.

Panic time, I won’t be able to make the deadline! What now?

Hey, it’s okay! Life happens, we get it. Just keep us updated. Send an email to inceptionbigbang@outlook.com or drop me a message @dreaminghigher and we can help. We can let your artist/author know to wait an extra couple of days, for example, or if you can’t complete your piece we can talk to pinch-hitters. No problem, but tell us what’s up.

[drama-and-tv]

First half of 2020 tv shows/dramas completed

SO apparently, my original blog “may contain sensitive media” (how my original blog contains them, I have no idea because I don’t think I have ever written nor posted anything that is inappropriate) so here I am, making a new one even though there are just so so many thoughts I poured in that blog since the beginning of 2018. 

I wish I could put all of the contents from there here. But since I don’t know how to do that, I shall only put up my thoughts on the things that I have completed watching this year (2020) that I have put up from there.

With that being said, here they go... most of them in the original words that I had typed/written from last time. My only change will be the rating (now I shall use the numerical rating since I have figured how to rate things properly in numbers now) :

Season 2 of Sex Education was such a delight to watch! While I do feel that it lacks some Otis and Maeve’s interactions (and wtf is that cliffhanger?), I feel that the other characters are given the opportunity to flesh out and have really good story lines. Definitely a step up to Season 1!

FINAL RATING: 9/10

Bad news: The third part/season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is the worst part of the show that I’ve watched so far. Good news: I still somewhat like it.

The main issue of this new-released part is how messy it is story wise. There are far too many things going on that it felt a little bit too chaotic - like there’s the Pagan storyline, there’s that Faustus storyline etc etc. It’s just too much.

What makes me still enjoy it is because of its characters. I am attached to the characters and I wanna see their journeys in this show. For instance, Ambrose and Prudence are probably the standouts in this season because they are just super badass here.

Overall, it’s okay. I would still watch this show when the new set of episodes are released.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Honestly, Chocolate would’ve been better or ranked higher if they cut down the number of episodes - from 16 to maybe just 8.

Despite its melodramatic tone and ridiculous story line, I actually really enjoyed the initial episodes. I mean okay, the time jumps are a bit too much but I was sold on the emotions and the characters. It’s a melodrama, for crying out loud - it’s not meant to be realistic.

But then, for some unknown reason, it got draggy around the second half of the drama. And it affected my love for the drama. It was like they put a brake on the main plot and save for it the last episode (which it did).

This does not mean that it’s not a good drama. For the most part, I actually enjoyed it and I was invested in the characters’ journeys.

Just that it could be better.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Honestly, Black Dog was not a drama I thought of watching. The posters and the plot did not make me feel compelled to watch it because for some reason, I thought this drama would be something like those corruption dramas or corporate dramas - while I can enjoy those kind of dramas, I do have to be in the ‘mood’ to watch them.

It was only when I started seeing some gifs/images over Tumblr that I started to consider it. And when more and more people raved about it, I knew that I just have to check it out.

And just like what these people said, it was good. A really good drama, actually! I think what I love about this drama is how realistic it really is. I like that I can actually relate to the world and the characters in the drama. While Haneul and I don’t share the same type of field, I can empathise with her struggles in obtaining/maintaining her employment and sitting for the certification exam. I can empathise with how she tries to navigate the world of school and teaching.

All I know is I have definitely cried or teared up in some of the episodes. (that’s really a feat cause the last time I cried like this in a tv show/drama is season 3 of Anne with an E and we all know how I feel about that show.)

I also love how there is a good balance between drama and comedy in this drama. While this is primarily a drama, I like that it doesn’t feel heavy. It makes it easier to watch multiple episodes in one sitting.

If there is one minor problem with this drama, it is that it feels like the main drama ends with 12 episodes and the remaining 4 episodes are the epilogue or extra episodes. While the remaining 4 episodes are still pretty good, it has somewhat cooled my love for this drama. However, I do appreciate it and it gives a good look at what happened after Haneul’s first year of teaching.

With that, I have contemplated on whether to give this drama the best rating I could give in the drama or the second best. Considering that there is barely any flaw in this drama, I shall give it...

FINAL RATING: 10/10

Season 2 of Kingdom did not disappoint. It maintained the same energy and intrigue that it brought in the previous season. There’s the excitement, there’s the high-quality production and there’s never really a chance for it to falter or drag. Its pacing remains consistent and I remain hooked to the end. I also like that this show does not end in an agonising cliffhanger - it wraps up the main plot that was introduced in the first season and at the same time, teases on what is to come in the possible season 3.

Overall, a really good season!

FINAL RATING: 9/10

I gotta admit, Crash Landing On You was a pretty nice watch! I initially had quite low expectations for this drama - I have hard time being truly engaged in big budget romcoms because they tend to be unrealistic and too fluffy (and I like my dramas pretty realistic).

But to my surprise, I actually really like it. The episodes (particularly the first half of the drama) were candies to the mind and to the eye! Yes, this drama is hella trope-y and there’s a lot of moments which are very unrealistic and are there to be flashy and amp up the romance. But you know, something about this drama just works.

Of course, like a lot of k-dramas, the second half of the drama is less addictive to watch. But it was still a pretty good watch. I mean, it got my mum really addicted and my brother to finally watch a k-drama beyond Kingdom after all these years.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

For someone who doesn’t know shiz about baseball, Stove League was still a very good drama to watch. It has that underdog story (in this drama, the under-performing baseball team for 2 years in a row, Dreams) that makes it easy to root for. It remained tight and consistent throughout its run. Its tone is very balanced - has good balance of serious and comic relief.

And most importantly, it’s not very hard to like the characters that matter.

Overall, very solid drama!

FINAL RATING: 9/10

When the Weather is Fine is really a good drama to watch at the moment, during the midst of this current pandemic. Even though initially (the first episode) it did not win me over due the drama’s slow pace, I gradually enjoy watching it regardless of its pace and eventually, I was hooked.

This drama has a very calming and “healing” aspect to it even though the subjects dealt can be serious. I like that even though there’s some serious issues here, the drama remains well-balanced and still has plenty of light-hearted scenes. Lim Hwi (the male lead’s younger sister) is definitely my favourite character in this drama as she brings a lot of sunshine to the table with her innocent teen self. Also, the comforting presence of the community (whether it being the Good Night Book Club member or the people/families in the neighbourhood etc) along with naturally serene setting make the drama feels warm.

With that, I recommend watching this drama, especially to anyone who wishes to seek comfort and feel warm.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Netflix’s Never Have I Ever was an unexpected treat for me. I did not know the existence of this show prior to its release. I did not see any of its promos/trailers etc. So there was no expectations whatsoever prior to watching it.

My brother and I only happened to stumble upon it when trying to find something to watch on Netflix. So you can say that this was a present that came out of nowhere because as soon as I just went into it (within the first few minutes), I already really like it!

This show was funny. It was relatable as someone who comes from an Asian background. And most importantly, it has plenty of hearts. Trust me, I was tearing up when watching the last two episodes of this season (I sincerely hope that the show will be renewed for the next season).

Definitely a really nice show to binge quickly as it only has 10 half-hour episodes.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

Find Me in Your Memory was a pretty decent watch. Yes, it is a very standard kdrama in the sense that the plot is very very generic and there are so so many obvious tropes here. However, its characters and the chemistry of the main leads still made it worth a look. This drama might not be the most unforgettable or unique drama out there, but it is very easy to watch and it makes a good addition to anyone’s watchlist if you want something straightforward and not complicated.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Man, A Piece of Your Mind could have easily been this perfect drama that I’ve ever watched this year had it only retained its original length. It is not to say that this drama is not good - it is as of now, actually one of the top dramas among the dramas I’ve watched this year.

This drama basically fits the type of drama I typically love: a realistic drama which examines more on its characters and focuses on emotions etc. Yes, I know people have complained that it is very slow but to me, that was part of its charm. I love slowly getting to know its characters and how they are feeling etc. I like being emotionally connected to them and follow on their journeys.

So I’m just sad the drama was cut from 16 episodes to 12 (reason being because of its low number of audiences). While the drama did its extreme best in making it work and it does not affect the main plot of the drama other than speeding things up nor does it really diminish my enjoyment for this drama, I’m just sad on what could’ve been if they were able to keep the extra 4 hours to the story. Like, we could’ve gotten better exploration on the characters etc (especially for instance that character who was played by the evil mother in law from Search: WWW and the Eunjoo’s Homestay residents and even frigging Hoon, Hawon’s colleague... like why was he even in the grandma’s house in the countryside?) . Things would’ve been more... organically unfold.

Despite all this, I still really enjoy watching this drama and I still remain invested in the characters’ journeys etc. Our main leads’ relationship feels warm and comforting. The vibe of this drama is just my kind of taste. And most importantly, I feel comforted watching it until the end.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

With that being said, those are some of the shows/dramas that I have completed up until now. Others that I have completed are season 2 of The Sinner (5/10), ITV’s Belgravia (6/10), Netflix’s The Circle France (soooo entertaining with plenty of drama and strategies, 8/10), season 18 of American Idol (8/10) and most recently, Netflix’s Extracurricular (I will eventually share my thoughts on it soon).

Stay tuned.

[lanaisnotwool]

413 How to Diversify Your Savings

http://moneyripples.com/2020/08/13/413-how-to-diversify-your-savings/

In times of high risk, people rush to diversify money.

But a financial advisor never really diversifies your portfolio.

Are there good ways to diversify your investments?

Tune in to find out ways to diversify, keep your money safe, AND still grow it!

Chris Miles, the "Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor," is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host that has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, Entrepreneur on Fire, and spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results. Listen to our Podcast:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/moneyripples/2020/07/01/413--good-way-to-diversify-your-savings

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

Hello my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey guys, I’m so excited to welcome you out to this show because this show is for you and it’s about you. Those of you that work so hard for your money, but you want that money to work harder for you. Now! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Today! Not 30 or 40 bazillion years from now, but right now. So you have that freedom to do what you love with those you love and do whenever the heck you feel like it.

But more than that, it’s more than just trying to, you know, have a wonderful lifestyle and flying airplanes and boats. Hopefully you’re not flying boats by the way, but who knows. But anyways, it’s not about just enjoying your life and just about yourself and selfishness. It’s about you, be able to give back. You’ll be able to bless more lives by creating a ripple effect as a Rippler and be able to bless the lives of those around you. And so guys, I’m proud to be one of those Ripplers with you because you guys are the reason I can create a bigger ripple effect in my life through what we offer this show today. So thank you so much for being a part of it.

As a reminder, check out our website, MoneyRipples.com Not only can you download Beyond Rice & Beans, Seven Secrets To Free Up Cash Today, to find more money, but you can also watch other of these videos. If not on YouTube, you can watch them on the site. Videos of this very show, as well as other topics that are on there in the blog section. So guys check that out!

Alright today. So I really want to get into about diversifying, right? Because I’m hearing this word a lot. Like I’m getting so many people talking to me and saying, yeah, Chris, like, I really feel like I need to diversify my money. Chris, I feel like you need to diversify my money. And why does this come up? It comes up every time there’s uncertainty, right? And rightfully so, because if you have your money at risk, if it’s feeling uncertain, you’re going to say, I can’t all have all my eggs in this basket. What if this basket falls flat? What if I drop this basket and crush all my eggs? I need to get more baskets. Right? So, and there’s some merit to that because the more you try to take higher risks, the more you have to diversify. And it’s not because you have to diversify necessarily. But if you’re going to take high risks with this, right.

Especially if you do things that are out of your control, you’re essentially kind of guessing, you know, you really are. And that’s why financial advisors are telling you for years, you have to diversify all your money, right? You had to diversify in these different areas. The truth is that a financial advisor never diversifies you. They actually put you in the same exact asset class of paper assets every time, but they might say, great, well, some of this might go into the stock market. Some of this might go into the bond market or treasuries, or am I going to international stocks versus US equities and all this kind of stuff. Right? But the truth is, you’re really not that diversified. And so what most people do is they hold onto it in cash and savings or money markets. Where they might get like an annuity or something like that.

But they’re trying to do other certain things. And so I get a lot of people saying to me, Chris, like, I feel like I need to diversify my money. Now, you just go along with diversification before we talk about how to diversify your savings. Cause there are good ways of doing it. One thing that people say is Chris, well, if you do real estate so much, how do you diversify?

Here’s my thing. Here’s how I diversify. Well, one, I personally love to buy and own properties, even including yes, single family homes. I actually like them. It doesn’t mean I always want to do single family homes. I don’t mind doing multifamily. I don’t mind syndications. I got money in those two. But I really do love having a home, like having an actual properties that I own and control. I actually feel like I can, I don’t have to diversify as much because I have control what happens.

There’s not somebody else managing. Well, okay. I have property managers, right? But it’s not like somebody else is owning the property for me. And I’m just putting a little money into it. You know, in those kind of cases, you do need to diversify. If you’re in a lot of syndications or funds. Yeah. You need to not put all your money in those baskets because there’s a degree of separation between you and the person doing the investing. And as a result, you lose control and that increases your risk. And therefore you do need to be diversified more. For those of us who buy more real estate. How do we do that? You know, if we have more control, one, we don’t worry about diversification because as you know, Mark Cuban would say, diversification’s for idiots. Has a Warren Buffet would say more tactfully. He would say that diversification is admission of ignorance.

Basically. You don’t know what you’re doing. So you diversify in all these little places. It’s throwing spaghetti on the wall, hoping something works. That’s not what we’re talking about doing here. When I do real estate diversifying, we might diversify in different locations, right? So even though I buy the same kind of properties, I might say, well, Hey, I want to be in different markets. You know? Sure. Maybe we’ll have Memphis, but maybe we’ll have North Carolina. Maybe we have Indiana or Pennsylvania or Virginia or Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, you know, whatever. Right? Like finding these different pockets, these different markets to be in. That is how you diversify within real estate without having to own lots of different types of real estate.

Now, granted again, I still don’t mind doing syndications where we put money into like, you know, big apartment complexes and things like that. That’s fine too. I put the minority of my assets into those kinds of investments. But I personally like to do real estate. Now, when you have your savings, right? Now, switching back to this topic, you have enough savings. How do you diversify it? Well, the truth is that if you’ve got money working in different places, you do want money in savings. First and foremost, you’ve got to make sure you have an emergency savings. Right? Now. When I look at savings, of course, if it’s not emergency savings or if it doesn’t have a purpose short term, it’s usually out doing something. It’s usually in being invested in something like real estate. Right? So how I diversify my “Savings”? Is often it goes out into other investments that cash flow. Again, I like regular stable cashflow. That’s my goal. That’s the goal I try to, you know, really try to present to my clients is that’s the real key to freedom, right?

The real key to feeling secure is knowing you have regular stable cash flow coming in from multiple streams of income. And yes, they can be from some of the same assets. But, how about the money that’s just emergency savings? What about the money that’s just sitting there doing nothing? Right? That is the key. Now I’m going to tell you about what I do. This doesn’t mean that’s, this is what you have to do, but this is just kind of strategy that my wife and I have adopted ourselves because you know, the truth is, is that we want money liquid available too, just in case, you know, we never know what happens. Even though I have multiple streams of income coming in from multiple sources. My wife told me the other day, she said, Chris, I think we need to increase our emergency savings. I just feel like we need to have more cash on hand just in case.

And I said, all right, well, how much? She said, we need to have at least $200,000. Now think of it in my world. I’m thinking that is a lot of money to just have, do nothing. You know, we had, you know, well, well over a hundred thousand before, but she’s like, no, we need 200,000 in savings. So I’m thinking there’s an opportunity cost of this money. What if this money could be out invested? But I also understand the importance of, you know, she happy me happy, right? I’m sure you guys understand that. And I also understood too. I’m like, well, you know, she could be right. Sometimes she has amazing intuition that sometimes she could be right about that. And so I said, all right, let’s do that. But let’s diversify our savings. And she said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, we keep a lot of it.

We have a lot in the bank. We have some in our insurance savings. She’s like, I keep forgetting about the insurance savings. I’m like, yep. That’s there. We can use that. I said, let’s do this. Let’s have two thirds earmarked from the insurance savings to be part of this money. So if it’s 200,000 that she wants, like great, let’s make sure 130,000 125,000 or so of it is there as emergency. As emergency fund, right? Inside the life insurance. Inside my infinite banking policy, right? As you guys have heard it before mentioned. This is money I’m not investing with. This is money that I’m keeping as a baseline. So that means that anything above 130,000 140,000 that’s in the life insurance, anything about that? Great, that can be out investing in double-dipping. As you’ve heard me talk about, you know, making money twice where I’m making money in insurance and making money on my real estate and other investments at the same time, perfect.

That can still work, but earmarked money that we don’t touch, that we let stay in there that earns, you know, that’s 140,000 or whatever. Right? Now, the other 60,000, we split up between online savings accounts that paid better than what the bank will pay locally, but we still keep money in the bank in case we need to get money today. So it’s a three phase thing. There’s money in the bank that money we can access today, you know, to keep about a good 20,000 give or take. We probably have more than that even, but that’s the kind of money earmarked for those emergency savings, right? Then beyond that there’s emergency savings in the online banking. That’s like the other 40,000 plus. That money is there primarily, just so we can, you know, we know it can be transferred within a day or two to the local bank anyways.

So it’s that next wave. So first wave is if I need money today, you go walk into the bank, ATM, whatever, pull money out. Oh, by the way, we keep cash on hand as well. For money in case the ATM is, are broken down or power goes out EMP who knows catastrophic stuff, right? Earthquakes, whatever. We have cash too, but obviously we can walk into the bank. We can walk in and pull cash out.

Second phase, online banking. You know, there’s an online banking sources. I’ll email you guys about it, if you’re on my email list, you’ll actually get that. There’s at least 1% paying out. Even though the rates have dropped like a rock. There are still online savings accounts that pay like around 1%. So we have that as well. And that is paying a certain ammount too. And then of course the rest, it’s the life insurance. Now do the math of me a little bit, right? If I just had say we had $200,000 earning 0.1% a year in the local bank, right? I mean, do they do the math here? That’s 200 bucks a year. Not a month. A year of $200,000. 200 bucks a year.

I just got done doing an episode last time where we talked about having someone to invest in 200,000 to make almost 2000 a month, right? So, to go from 2000 a month, to 200 a year is not impressive. This is why people are like going stir crazy. I get clients sometimes I’ll have a half million sitting in their bank or their checking account. They’re like, this money could be working for me. It’s doing nothing. Well, okay. Well instead of 200 bucks a year. Can we do better than that? Well, here’s how I break it down. That 200,000, right? That he said 20,000 with a local bank, right. That 20,000 makes 0.1%. It makes a whopping, what does that? 20 bucks a year instead? So 20 bucks a year, right? So that 10% of that it’s making 20 bucks a year. So there’s 20. Then we’ve got the 40,000 earning about 1% a year. So that 40,000 earning 1% means is there any 400. That’s 420 total with this 60,000, that’s already better than 200,000 at 0.1%. Right? So there we go, 420.

Now the other 140,000 is in life insurance. Now, even those of you that might be older than me, or maybe don’t have quite the same health. Usually you can at least net a 4% return on your money. Usually it’s at least four to five or more depending on your age and health. But let’s just say it’s 4% a year, right? You go conservative here. And that 4% that 160,000 or sorry, 140,000 earning 4%. That’s making me about 5,600 a year. So 5,600 plus the 420, it means we’re making about 6,000 a year instead of 200 a year. That’s 30 times better. Right? That’s kind of like how we do that. So, you know, I had, you really explained like, Hey, the money’s still liquid. I can get to my life insurance money by the way, within a week to week and a half max.

So I know I can get to that money quickly anyways. So for emergencies, it’s amazing. By the way, it’s amazing to where I’ve seen a lot of people last few months have been reach out to me about that very strategy to say, you know, Chris, I don’t even care about leveraging it and using it to invest like you’ve taught. I just need to have money sitting around just in case. I needed something for peace of mind, but I wasn’t earning better money. Oh, here’s the other thing too, in that first example, $200,000, right? You’re only earning 200 bucks a year. Realize you have to pay taxes on that stupid 200 bucks a year. So you don’t get 200 bucks a year. Cause you have to pay taxes on it, right? Income tax on that interest, you know, with the money in the life insurance, I don’t pay any taxes on that.

The only thing I had to pay, I was on that 420, the other 5,600. I paid nothing. There’s no tax on it. It’s like a Roth IRA, no tax money at all. So now I’m keeping more money, not to mention I’m making 30 times more, but now keeping more of that money. So it’s more than 30 times as a result. And so that’s the thing that I’m trying to point out here is like, guys, you can be more efficient and that’s why some people are doing, they’re saying, you know what? Heck, this could be supplemental retirement. I’m getting a pension from the airline or whatever I worked for or from this company. Or I got this or I got this other real estate too. Honestly, I don’t even need to use this money to invest and create cash flow from it. Cool. It gives you options.

You can diversify it. You can use it however you want. I use it, whether it’s for emergency savings and I use it for investing, right? So it’s an ability to, for me to be able to use that appropriately. So using my life insurance man, some people poop all over it, but the truth is that those of us that know how to use it, realize it’s brilliant. And I’ve had many clients realize the same thing they say, man, why doesn’t everybody know about it? The truth is because most time, even there are people teaching about it. They teach you in a crappy way of, it’s someday. It’s like a 401k. You’ll lock it up and someday they’ll touch it, but they never tell you, Hey, if you design it the right way, which most don’t even know how to do it the right way.

If you designed it the right way, you can have access to cash from the first month that you set it up. You’ve got money available right away. So that’s my point guys, is that you can design it. You can diversify your savings, but you got to do it the right way and do in a way that again can create some real, some real growth, some real money, you know? So not only can you keep money safe, but at least it’s doing something for you versus doing nothing. And you’re losing it because you’re not only earning no interest, there’s opportunity costs. But now you get taxed on earning hardly any interest. So that’s my point for you guys want to diversify your savings, but for different ways to put it. But again, diversifying investments, whole another story, and it doesn’t have to look the traditional way. In fact, it could be better with less risk depending on how you do it. And you can do it well and you can make amazing returns and you can create cash flow now, which is the key.

We want that life today. Look at that. Sign on my board right here. I’m trying to get my finger on it. I’m trying to do this in reverse. There! There it is! Live your life now not tomorrow, right? This is about living that dream life today. Doesn’t mean you just go and blow it. This means you create the life now. That is the purpose of this podcast. Guys. Hope all of you make a wonderful and prosperous week. And we’ll see you later.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 24 Mar 2020 (Nebula Awards move online, Make America Well Again stamps, Data is the new toxic waste, Stock Jump, Grandparents Optional Party, Quarantine Book Club, the Party of Death, financial stability vs economic stability, quarantine vs workforce automation, bailouts and moral hazard, MIT's open source ventilator)

Today's links

This year's Nebula Awards will be held online: It's $150, and raising funds to bail out corona-shattered writers.

Make America Well Again stamps: from the artist who brought you the Trump Zero Cents stamp.

Data is the new toxic waste: It never was the "new oil" (my latest podcast).

Stock Jump: A ski-game that lets you play the stock charts of cratered businesses.

Murdering 20% of elderly Americans is bad strategy for the GOP: Terrified old people are the turkeys who vote for plutes' Christmas every four years.

Join me on the Quarantine Book Club: April 1, 3PM Pacific.

The Party of Death: It's a good time to buy exterminism futures.

Financial stability vs economic stability: Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid.

Quarantine reveals the falsity of the automation crisis: Augmentation isn't replacement.

Bailouts and moral hazard: If we never teach big business, it won't ever learn.

MIT's ingenious manual/automatic open source ventilator: Now in FDA testing.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

This year's Nebula Awards will be held online (permalink)

This year's Nebula Awards weekend is moving online, thanks to decisive action from SFWA and Mary Robinette Kowal.

https://www.sfwa.org/2020/03/22/announcing-the-transformation-of-the-2020-nebula-conference-and-covid19-relief/

It'll include "panels, solo presentations, conference mentorships, workshops, forums, chats, and virtual room parties (including a dance party hosted by John Scalzi)." Part of the proceeds will go to relief for sf writers who are in covid-related financial distress.

It runs May 29-31, including a livestream of the Nebula Awards banquet. Registration is $150 and comes with a year of access to archived materials and the SFWA Bulletin.

Make America Well Again stamps (permalink)

I bought some of Ben Hannam's Trump No Cents stamps in 2017 and never looked back. I still put 'em on letters.

Now he's got a Make America Well Again stamp, which you can lick (if you dare) and stick for the duration. Remember, USPS is profitable and unsubsidized and Trump's swamp-dwellers want to shut it down and replace it with donors like Fedex and UPS!

Data is the new toxic waste (permalink)

My latest podcast is a reading of "Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill?" — a column arguing that data was never "the new oil" – instead, it was always the new toxic waste: "pluripotent, immortal – and impossible to contain."

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/secure-futures-magazine/data-new-toxic-waste/34184/

Data breaches are inevitable (any data you collect will probably leak; any data you retain will definitely leak) and cumulative (your company's data breach can be combined with each subsequent attack to revictimize your customers).

Identity thieves benefit enormously from cheap storage, and they collect, store and recombine every scrap of leaked data. Merging multiple data sets allows for reidentification of "anonymized" data, and it's impossible to predict which sets will leak in the future.

These nondeterministic harms have so far protected data-collectors from liability, but that can't last. Toxic waste also has nondeterministic harms (we never know which bit of effluent will kill which person), but we still punish firms that leak it.

Waiting until the laws change to purge your data is a bad bet – by then, it may be too late. All the data your company collects and retains represents an unquantifiable, potentially unlimited source of downstream liability.

What's more, you probably aren't doing anything useful with it. The companies that make the most grandiose claims about data analytics are either selling analytics or data (or both). These claims are sales literature, not peer-reviewed citations to empirical research.

Data is cheap to collect and store – if you don't have to pay for the chaos it sows when it leaks. And some day, we will make data-hoarders pay.

Here's the podcast:

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/23/data-the-new-oil-or-potential-for-a-toxic-oil-spill/

Here's the MP3:

https://ia801406.us.archive.org/9/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_334/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_334_-Data-_the_new_oil_or_potential_for_a_toxic_oil_spill.mp3

And here's the link to subscribe to the podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Stock Jump

Stock Jump (permalink)

Last week, those of us lucky enough to have retirement savings joined the rest of the world, because our 401(k)s all cratered and all the promising stocks (teleconferencing, guillotines) are all way, way overpriced thanks to panic buying by Republican Senators.

But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla.

Enter Stock Jump, a ski-jump game whose courses are procedurally generated by the stock charts of shares from around the world.

It's really fun! If you can see through the tears.

http://stockjump.sos.gd/

Murdering 20% of elderly Americans is bad strategy for the GOP (permalink)

A thread by Patrick Nielsen Hayden on Making Light crystallized a thought that literally had me tossing and turning all night, about Trump's decision to risk the lives of ~20% of elderly Americans to goose the stock market.

https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016643.html#4402672

The thing I find baffling is how short-term this thinking is.

Not for Trump, of course, who is legendary for his view of life as a game of running across a river hopping from the back of one alligator to another before he can get his leg bitten off.

But for the right-wing establishment, whose whole schtick is "rationality" and "long-term thinking" and "self-control" (think of the gleeful repetition of the discredited Marshmellow Test and the rhetoric about the "poor life choices" that lead to single parenthood, addiction, and inadequate retirement savings or health insurance).

How is it that these self-congratulatory long-game-players can't see that murdering one in five American seniors is a self-limiting move when frightened old white people are the primary source of turkeys who can be counted upon to vote for Christmas every four years?

The right has an antimajoritarian, elitist agenda. Right-wing thought is essentially the belief that some people are destined to rule, and others are destined to be ruled over by their betters, and the world is best when the right people are atop the pyramid. Splits in the right are about who should rule: Dominionists want Christian men in charge; libertarians want bosses in charge, imperialists want America in charge, racists want white people in charge, etc.

Antimajoritarian projects struggle in democracies, for obvious reasons. When your platform is "only 1% of us should be making decisions" it's hard to win 51% of the vote. That's why the right focuses so hard on gerrymandering and voter suppression, and why the otherwise untenable coalitions — finaciers and young-Earth Creationists, say — persist.

But the biggest source of ballots in support of rule by elites is frightened people, especially frightened bigots who think that the elites will promote their interests ahead of the disfavored minorities (think: Dixiecrats).

So murdering 20% of the most reliable source of votes for elite rule is a farcically shortsighted thing to do.

I am terrified of a Biden candidacy not merely because I think his policies are poor, but because I think he is really bad at being a candidate, and will struggle to win.

But Trump murdering 20% of his base might just be enough to make him lose. It may be that while he could murder someone in the middle of 5th Ave and get away with it, he can't sentence 20% of US pensioners to gruesome deaths and get away with it.

I'm not gleeful at this prospect. I am totally aghast. I barely slept last night, waking up dozens of times with this genocide playing out in my imagination.

But I am incredibly surprised. How does the self-declared Party of the Long View not see that this is going to destroy it?

The stock market is circling the drain and obviously this is very distressing for the donor class, but almost no Americans own any significant stocks, because most Americans have NO savings. The idea that rescuing share prices by killing the elderly will get the turkeys out to vote for Christmas is clearly wrong.

For more on antimajoritarianism and the right, read Corey Robin's outstanding book, "The Reactionary Mind."

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1234117673316782082

Join me on the Quarantine Book Club (permalink)

I'm going participate in a session of the Quarantine Book Club on April 1 at 3PM Pacific, where we're discussing my book Radicalized. Tickets here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quarantine-book-club-cory-doctorow-tickets-100931360416

If $5 is a burden for you, you can get in free with the code ALLAREWELCOME.

Hope to see you!

The Party of Death (permalink)

In his 2017 book Four Futures, Peter Frase uses science fiction to sketch out four ways our society could go as capitalism ruptures, from communism to exterminism, this being the expression of bosses' fear and dependence on workers.

https://boingboing.net/2017/01/06/four-futures-using-science-fi.html

Frase posits a possible mass-automation event that makes workers superfluous (I'm skeptical of this: climate change guarantees 2-3 centuries of full employment, e.g., relocating every coastal city).

But in light of the Current Situation, he imagines a different form of exterminism.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/coronavirus-economy-public-health-exterminism/

It's not just the GOP's willingness to murder 20% of seniors in the hopes of rescuing the Dow.

Plutes and their bootlickers have been calling for mass-deaths as a preferable alternative since the crisis first manifested, as when Tea Party founder Rick Santelli suggested "Maybe we'd be just better off if we gave it to everybody."

And of course, there was Boris Johnson and Dominick Cummings' plan to infect all of the UK to create "herd immunity." As Cummings said, "if that means some pensioners die, too bad."

Now Trump wants to potentially murder 20% of American seniors to rescue share prices, and the GOP is going along with him.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1242444277264740353

The Republicans have become the Party of Death, with establishment figures like Thomas Friedman providing ideological cover (""let many of us get the coronavirus, recover and get back to work").

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/coronavirus-economy.html

Frase: "The ghoulishness of this strategy will become apparent when it is too late, when the hospitals fill and the health care system and the economy both collapse."

"Those in power will be held blameless, and those with wealth will sadly lament the foolishness of the lesser orders."

"Socialists have always insisted that human needs should take precedence over profit, that the stock market is not the economy, and that we need to utterly transform an economy that is immiserating working people and destroying the planet. That message will only become more urgent as our opponents across different parts of the ruling class come to the conclusion — mournfully for some, gleefully for others — that in the contest between loss of profit and loss of life, they choose death."

Financial stability vs economic stability (permalink)

Michael Hudson is a fascinating thinker, an expert in the history of debt and debt-forgiveness. See, e.g., this:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/23/tacocat-vs-dog-prostates/#jubilee

In a new interview, Hudson delves into that history: interest-bearing debt was invented in the third millennium BCE, and quickly kings learned that they had to have periodic debt forgiveness, or compound interest would render all debts unpayable.

https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/debt-and-power-with-michael-hudson/

Greeks and Romans did away with the practice, and so had to live with six centuries of debt-revolts, as ever-larger fractions of their populace ended up in a form of debt slavery.

Greek Democracy was created to allow commoners to serve in government and so vote to cancel debts. Roman emperors conquered Greece and did away with debt-cancellation, creating an increasingly unstable oligarchy.

That's not far off from where we are today. 90% of debts are held by the richest 10%, and these oligarchs own the political process and refuse to countenance debt-cancellation.

Obama promised to write down mortgages, but instead he bailed out finance, who kicked us all out and bought our houses out from under us, and then rented back to us. Since then, the Fed "has created $4.5 trillion of credit to support prices for real estate."

"The aim has been to make housing more expensive, enabling the banks to collect on their mortgages and not go under. Credit keeps the debt overhead in place, thereby keeping the financial system afloat instead of facing the reality that debt needs to be written down."

Trump's gonna do it again, giving $50b to airlines/Boeing. Since 2008, Boeing has spent $45b on buybacks. Trump's message: "Spend 92-95% of your income to buy your own hares, and the government will print money so you can do it again, because our priority is stock prices."

"Financial stability" is incompatible with "economic stability." Financial stability means never writing down debts so that the bad loans oligarchs made never turn into bad debts. Economic stability requires debt write-downs so that people can be productive.

Obama's bailouts increased big banks' Too Big to Fail status. That's why since 2008, "GDP per 95 percent of the American population is actually shrunk. All the growth in America's GDP has occurred only to the wealthiest 5% of the population."

Today, plutes "hope to use the crisis not to revive the economy, but to just pound it into debt deflation, leaving the debts in place while bailing out the banks and the landlord class."

Here's what "financial stability" looks like: "you have to pay this exponential growth in debt, [and] have less and less to buy goods and services."

Quarantine reveals the falsity of the automation crisis (permalink)

Automation-based unemployment has always been overhyped. Any work that robots take over merely frees up human workers for the 2-300 year project of climate remediation, including relocating every coastal city in the world.

But automation is also vastly overhyped. Take the oft-repeated claim that "truck driver" is the most common job in America, and first in line to be automated. It's just wrong.

First, because the BLS "truck driver" category includes long-haul truckers, delivery drivers, couriers, and dozens of other subprofessions, most of which are far, far away from being automatable.

https://hbr.org/2019/09/automation-isnt-about-to-make-truckers-obsolete

(More importantly, though: the most automatable category is long-haul driver, and an automated long-haul truck in its own dedicated lane is just a shitty train).

The overhyped nature of technological displacement is on perfect display during the pandemic quarantine. As many "low skilled" (which is to say, "low waged") workers withdraw from the workforce, the economy has ground to a halt.

So much so that the right is now prepared to throw 20+% of seniors into the volcano to appease the market gods.

The category error committed by automation-fretters is to confuse "automating a job" with "augmenting a worker."

"We know that robots are great at repetitive work. they can do that forever. What's not so great is anything with a human-centered context, a cultural context." -Julie Carpenter

https://www.wired.com/story/robot-jobs-coronavirus/

Bailouts and moral hazard (permalink)

It's been barely a decade since the USG bailed out big businesses and the fact that we're here again reveals some of the glaring failures in the last bailout. Any new bailout should correct those errors by putting restrictions on bailed-out companies.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#peoples-bailout

There have been some good proposals on these lines, like those from AOC and Stephanie Kelton:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/21/most-dangerous-ghost/#peoples-bailout

(whenever I write about this in public, I'm inundated with angry tweets from sociopaths with "investor" in their bios)

We're running out of time to get this right. DC is so filled with money-hungry lobbyists that they can't practice adequate social distancing, and they're collectively seeking trillions in string-free public money for their paymaster.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/rule-number-1-for-government-bailouts-of-companies-make-sure-voters-and-taxpayers-share-in-the-upside

At a minimum, any bailouts should come in exchange for convertible corporate bonds that let the USG take an ownership stake in any business that fails to repay its public debts. That's a minimum, as is a ban on stock buybacks for bailed out companies.

We need very strict limits on lobbying by bailed out firms: "If we are not to finance our own bamboozlement, any company receiving bailouts must be required each month to file full reports on political contributions and lobbying expenditures to candidates and parties."

This goes for dark money contributions, including 527 funds, and corporate/exec contributions to trade associations and other lobbying fronts, think-tanks, and other political influence vehicles.

"Unlike last time, when Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, and Ben Bernanke failed to give the public a serious share of the upside, the bailed out firms should be compelled to issue convertible bonds to the government."

"Those bonds should make the government the senior creditor to the firm for the value of the principal as long as the debt is unpaid…As firms and the economy recover, the shares can be sold on the open market, yielding a handsome return to the Treasury."

The right likes to harp about "moral hazard" as an excuse for cutting aid, to, say, single mothers ("It only encourages them"). But what about businesses that needed trillions in 2008 and now need trillions more? What lesson are we teaching them?

(Image: Alex Proimos, CC BY)

MIT's ingenious manual/automatic open source ventilator (permalink)

At the end of last week, a crowdsourced design for an open-source hardware ventilator entered testing with the Irish regulator, a week after work began on the project.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/20/pluralistic-20-mar-2020/#oshw-breathing

Now, hot on its heels, an MIT open source hardware ventilator team has submitted its design to the FDA for testing and approval, under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) authority.

https://e-vent.mit.edu/

It eliminates many possible sources of failure by replacing an electric pump with a manual one, which can, in turn, be operated by a separate, very simple, Arduino-controlled system (which can be readily swapped out for a human hand if it fails).

As Hackaday points out, "Almost as interesting as the device itself is the comments people are leaving about the design."

https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/mit-ventilator-designed-with-common-manual-resuscitator-submitted-for-fda-testing/

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Record sales up, P2P sales up — RIAA's story doesn't add up https://web.archive.org/web/20050822053404/http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5631698.html

#15yrsago Octopuses dressed up as sea coconuts sneaking on two legs https://www.nature.com/news/2005/050321/full/050321-14.html

#10yrsago Pooh vs Alien: Webcomics realize their full potential at last http://godxiliary.com/alienvspooh/

#10yrsago Airport worker caught photographing screen as female worker passed through naked scanner https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/mar/24/airport-worker-warned-body-scanner

#10yrsago UK record lobby: democracy is a waste of time https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/corporate-lobbyists-no-need-for-democracy

#5yrsago How medical abortion works https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/medical-abortion/

#5yrsago ACLU sues TSA to make it explain junk science "behavioral detection" program https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/nyclu-and-aclu-sue-tsa-records-discredited-behavior-detection-program

#5yrsago Randomized dystopia generator that goes beyond the Bill of Rights https://www.harihareswara.net/dystopia/

#1yrago Man stole $122m from Facebook and Google by sending them random bills, which the companies dutifully paid https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/lithuanian-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-100-million-from-google-facebook/

#1yrago Chelsea Manning is being held in prolonged solitary confinement, a form of torture https://xychelsea.is/?page_id=28

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Tor.com (https://tor.com), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/).

Currently writing: I'm getting geared up to start work my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill? https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/23/data-the-new-oil-or-potential-for-a-toxic-oil-spill/

Upcoming appearances:

Quarantine Book Club, April 1, 3PM Pacific https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quarantine-book-club-cory-doctorow-tickets-100931360416

Museums and the Web, April 2, 12PM-3PM Pacific https://mw20.museweb.net/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

[sage-nebula]

Game Review — Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The first new game I played in 2020 was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and like many people, this game took up a huge chunk of my playtime this year, and in fact continues to take up a chunk of it each day. With all that said, it’s only natural that this is the game these reviews start on.

So let’s get started.

Overall Score: 9/10

I feel like it would be disingenuous to give a game that I’ve thus far clocked 545+ hours into anything less than a 9/10. (The actual playtime is probably longer due to a two Switches fiasco, but that’s another story for another time.) I’ve been a fan of the Animal Crossing series since the very first one released on Gamecube, and New Horizons met all my expectations and then some. While I know this game is divisive among some members of the fandom (though I don’t know too many details since I tend to stay away from the negative people), I personally feel like this is the best Animal Crossing yet, and I’m eager to see what the fall update is. With that said, let’s go into a bit more detail with some pros and cons. (Note: I recommend reading this in full on my blog, since bullet point lists now look atrocious on the dashboard.)

The Pros:

Obviously, there is so much to do. You’re essentially building the town from the ground up this time, meaning that there’s literally nothing on the island when you first arrive and you have to do everything to create a functioning society. (Even though it was supposed to be a temporary vacation . . . but that part of the plot is forgotten almost immediately.) While that may seem like a monumental task, what it really means is that a.) you have full control over your experience on the island, and b.) you have hours and hours and hours of playtime ahead of you. Particularly since a nasty pandemic in real life has made game development and release slow, New Horizons was perfect in this aspect.

The in-game tutorials don’t really feel like tutorials. Of course this means that you might have a bit of fumbling as you figure out how to use this or that new feature, but you really feel like you’re a newcomer to an island figuring things out rather than being slowly walked through a step-by-step guide on how to play the game. It made the experience feel more natural and immersive, which I really liked.

You are no longer punished if you don’t play the game for a while. This is a big one, mostly in the sense that although you do still have to deal with cockroaches and the like, never again do you have to deal with your favorite villager spontaneously packing up and leaving because you had to take some time off the game to study instead. While all this does lessen the “the game plays even when you aren’t” feeling a bit, I remember losing all will to play New Leaf when Freya up and left, on top of the Beautiful Town Ordinance making it boring since I never had to worry about weeds or anything like that again. The fact that villagers have to have permission to leave now really takes a load off your mind, especially if you took FOREVER to get your favorite (rather than using an Amiibo or villager trade to get them in).

You can place furniture outside! You can move buildings around! You can terraform! I touched on this a bit in the first bullet, but the fact that you can completely control what the island looks like through various tools is honestly the best thing Nintendo could have given us. I still remember how, in New Leaf, Paula plonked her house down RIGHT where I wanted to build a bridge, and so I had to wait for her stupid, ugly face to get out of my town before I could build it. And it took THREE MONTHS to do that. Now if something like that happened, I could just tell the villager to move their house and they’d do it, no sweat. On top of this, being able to place furniture outside makes the island look so much more natural, since it’s normal for people to decorate patios and the like, and being able to terraform means you can really have fun with the design of your island. It’s great, I love it.

We’re getting a steady stream of updates and events. Holidays are update-locked now, meaning that you can’t time travel ahead to experience holiday events and therefore ruin the game for yourself. Instead, Nintendo is surprising us with new content and updates, which I feel makes the game last longer and keeps it exciting. As I mentioned above, I’m excited to see what they have planned for fall. A Halloween event? Maybe a certain coffee shop opening in time for pumpkin spice season?! I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out.

The day-by-day nature of it also makes it a game that I feel like I can always have on the side, rather than one I complete and then never touch again. When I first got it I played it constantly, and then (due to a pandemic-induced game drought) I immediately did play by time traveling day by day, doing things, and then going back to the present to start the process over the next day. But now that there are other games out to play and I have a 5-star island, instead I play it as the first game of the day to do dailies, and then I save and put it aside. I pluck any weeds, water any flowers I’m growing, hit rocks, dig up fossils, talk to my neighbors, check which vendor we have, and then I save and end for the day. It takes me about 30 minutes to do my dailies, but it’s a nice little thing to do in the morning when I’m still in the process of waking up. One weekend morning I sat on my porch, drinking a cinnamon latte, doing my ACNH dailies. It was so peaceful and nice. ACNH is a great daily game, just a quick little thing to do before you move about the rest of your day.

The Cons:

There are definitely quality of life improvements that I feel should be in the game, but aren’t, even after players have been mentioning wanting them online every month since the game’s release. These features include, but are not limited to:

Being able to craft in your house without needing to remove materials from storage.

Being able to buy multiples of an item by putting in the number you want to buy, rather than having to buy them in groups of five.

Golden tools NOT BREAKING, especially since they NEVER USED TO. (Granted, normal tools didn’t break at all in previous games save for the ax, but the Golden Ax never broke. That was the entire point of getting it. What the hell, Nintendo.)

Being able to group like items, such as manila clams, fish, or bugs in your inventory.

Having Isabelle announce which daily vendor is on the island in her morning announcements.

Being able to buy different color variations of the same item at once at the Able Sisters’ shop.

Being able to switch between crafting and customizing without leaving the bench completely and then going back into it. (So like, you craft an item, and then you can immediately customize it if you want.)

Being able to call villagers to find out where they are on the island so you can easily find them if you have to return an item to them, or want to give them something, etc. Why have a NookPhone if you can’t actually use it as a phone?

Letting you lay down paths with terraforming more than one tile at a time. Like let you choose how many tiles you want to lay down in a row at the start, and then immediately place them.

Similarly, make it so you can’t scuff away custom paths, and also let custom paths keep the shoes-on-brick or tile sound if you have brick or tile beneath them. And so on. Little tweaks that aren’t necessary, but would make the game more enjoyable if they were implemented.

Some of the updates are coming too slow. In particular, I’m thinking about how it’s only possible to upgrade Nook’s Cranny once at present. I have put well over 500 hours into the game; by now I should reasonably have a Nookington’s (or whatever Timmy and Tommy will call it), but I don’t. I could understand if it was one shop upgrade per season, but that hasn’t been the case and I don’t know what the hold up is. It’s a bit disappointing.

That’s about all I can think of in terms of cons, at least at present. Most of my gripes are with minor quality of life implements that they could reasonably do, but aren’t doing for some reason. Otherwise, I think it’s a fantastic game that I still get daily enjoyment out of. If you like slice of life games and are looking for something new and warm to pick up, I highly recommend Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

[purplesurveys]

1063

survey by pinkchocolate

Have you done any of the same things as me this year? (2020 edition)

Planned a shopping spree with a friend?

Visited a shopping centre/mall? Malls are extremely commonplace here and honestly they already serve as the main tourist attractions if you find yourself in Manila, which is why Manila has never been a popular tourist destination itself (foreign tourists usually head to neighboring provinces, which is smart on their end). I’ve been to malls at least 20-30 times this year, but that’s only because of the pandemic. I probably go close to 50-70 times in a normal year.

Had lunch with a friend? Yeah I caught lunch with Angela a couple times at the start of the year. I had a one-photo-a-day gimmick on Instagram, and I’m pretty sure I have a photo of her in there during one of our lunch dates.

Ordered pizza at a restaurant? Again, at the start of the year. Gab and I loved Italian restaurants so we definitely ordered pizza several times.

Been in a department store? I needed to briefly enter one a couple of weeks ago to look for gift wrappers.

Bought pretty new lingerie?

Had coffee with a friend? Yeah Gab and I had study dates at coffee shops every single week. Now, obviously, I just take myself.

Bought DVDs?

Had a cold?

Bought toiletries as a gift for someone else?

Had dinner in a restaurant with your family? Yeah I’m fairly certain we did this at least a couple of times between January and early March. The last time I dined in anywhere was a month ago, but I was only with my parents and my siblings didn’t come along.

Had one of your kitchen appliances break? Our plumbing is a little fucked in general and sometimes we’ll have minor leaks on the floor. My dad’s knives have also gotten a bit dull, so I got him a new knife set for Christmas. But no damage to appliances.

Watched a movie at the cinema?

Struggled for food when the panic buying began? We struggled in that it was a bitch to enter the groceries at first. My dad did the grocieries for us during that time and that was back when they strictly enforced the number of people allowed in the supermarket at one time; and no matter how early he queued, there was always already a line that got there before him. He’d wait around three hours and once he was finally let in, a bunch of alleys or sections in the grocery would already be empty or at least close to becoming empty. We never went hungry or had to skip meals or anything like that, but I do remember having to make do with lesser-known brands we never used before because sometimes those would be the only options left at the grocery.

Wanted to hug a friend, but didn't because you had to social distance? I hugged Angela when I saw her a couple of days ago, and I also hugged Gab when we were still together. 

Felt afraid of Covid? My fears over it have tamed over the year, to be honest; but I’m still wary, of course. I hate it when people stand near me and I follow the safety protocols everywhere I go.

Felt afraid to leave the house? Only during the peak of the virus, from March to around May or June. Nowadays I kinda have to go out every now and then for the sake of my sanity.

Deliberately avoided watching the news because it made you feel upset? I mean I took up journ lol so I always watch the news, no matter how upsetting it can get. The one and only time I remember asking my sister to switch the channel was when there was a report on animal abuse.

Had to cancel plans for your birthday? I didn’t have plans for it in the first place, or at least I didn’t have the chance to make them yet, so I’m glad there was nothing to cancel.

Spent your birthday at home? This was the only choice I had. My birthday fell on the most serious and strictest phase of the quarantine, and this was back when nothing was open yet.

Collected a parcel from your doorstep? Online shopping is a norm for me now, lol. I used to not trust it, but now I probably buy at least one item a week.

Eaten an entire box of chocolates in one day? I don’t even like chocolate that much. That sounds so uncomfortably sweet.

Drank fruit flavoured cider?

Eaten birthday cake? Sure, we had cake for my mom’s, my aunt’s, and my cousin’s/godson’s birthdays.

Had a grandparent move into long-term care? My remaining grandparents are all fortunately still very healthy.

Kept a journal of your thoughts and feelings during lockdown? This is technically it, whether’s there’s a lockdown or not. I tried starting a journal after my breakup, but I couldn’t keep it up because my wrist strains easily from handwriting now, hahaha. I find that doing surveys suffice.

Had distressing dreams/nightmares related to the pandemic? No, but about other pressing events in my life.

Felt concerned about your financial situation? Not mine but my family’s.

Returned to a social platform that you took a break from? I left Facebook for a few months after the breakup. I’m back on it again because I had missed the memes, but I also want to permanently delete that account for good, open a new one, and just add the people I want to keep having in my circle. Like I love Gabie’s family to death but I don’t see the point in being Facebook friends with them still, and it actually feels kinda awkward now still seeing them on my list. Idk. We’ll see. I might keep my account or start a new one altogether.

Missed a past hobby or interest? I mean I missed going to malls and bars and going out with my friends, if that counts as an interest. I had to do much less of that this year.

Started a new hobby? I started doing embroidery about a month ago, and a few days ago I started working out. My body is as sore as all fuck, but at least it makes me feel good about myself. For the new year, I also plan on starting a skincare routine after 22 years of not doing anything with my face lol and maybeeee start experimenting with coffee and buy different kinds of beans just because?? Idk, I have a lot of cute hobbies planned out for next year haha I’m excited to see how it goes.

Joined some new Facebook groups? Both for work and personal purposes, yep.

Made some new friends online? I definitely like that I’ve become closer and more familiar with the survey community here. I feel like I barely interacted with anyone pre-Covid, when real life was still a bit more hectic and when it was more difficult to find time to relax and sit down and read everyone’s answers. I also became friends with Justine, Angel, and Bianca when I started as an intern at my workplace.

Felt annoyed because you saw someone without a mask? Everyone wears a mask in public, and there are always people assigned to monitor and lightly scold those stubborn enough to take their masks off. So this isn’t the case, but what I do find annoying is when people stand or walk too close to you. Just last week at the grocery this lady was close enough to be breathing down my neck when I was lining up at the cashier; being non-confrontational for the most part, it felt like being in the deepest pit of hell.

Felt like people were staring at you when you wore a mask? I feel like people are more likely to stare at people who DON’T have a mask. 

Bought new stationery? My sister has tons of stationery in her room for whatever reason; when I need one to write short notes or letters, I just ask for some from her. 

Video-called your extended family and friends? For sure. We did this a lot especially during the earlier parts of the year.

Written a letter to someone you missed?

Disagreed with the behaviour of a friend?

Felt surprised when someone wanted to be your friend? No one directly said it to me; but as an intern on my first day of the job, it was a really pleasant surprise to find that the co-interns I was going to be with weren’t boring, unemotional cogs who just aimed to do work. They were HILARIOUS from the get-go, was confused as fuck about work, and I could see they just wanted to make our tiny intern family a close-knit and happy group, to which I gladly agreed and went along with.

Bought a new pair of shoes? I got new shoes meant for my first job interview, but I haven’t gotten any brand new sneakers in a while :(

Replaced some toiletries that you ran out of during lockdown? I guess? Toiletries are necessities, so.

Bought some new books? I read new ones, but I didn’t buy them. Some I saw copies of on the internet; one was given as a gift to me.

Bought new cosmetics? I don’t use those.

Received a belated birthday present?

Received a present from a friend overseas?

Discovered a new author that you liked?

Felt like you were drifting away from people you were once close to? *A person. Yeah, well.

Found out that someone you knew had contracted Covid?  She’s a mutual friend from my high school days. We aren’t close but we’ve kept in touch by still following each other on social media. She wrote about her experience with Covid on a blog entry.

Realised you had formed a deep connection with someone? I got a lot closer with Andi both because we had to work together for our thesis and because they were there for me, unconditionally and untiringly, when I was coping with my breakup and was in rough shape.

Worried about the financial situation of someone close to you? Of my family, like I said, yes. We had to sell the Vitara because the money that pours into the household monthly isn’t enough to keep paying for it. To be fair, that car was a very big impulse buy by my dad, so we didn’t and don’t feel too bad about losing it hahaha. 

Let your guard down to someone? I don’t think so. I was on red alert this year since Gab increasingly broke my trust.

Had an issue with something on social media? Yeah, but I don’t want to get into it. That was such a long time ago and is so irrelevant now.

Felt disconnected from others? I deliberately did so three months ago, so much so that I had acquaintances I barely talked to since graduating talk to Andi and ask where I’ve been.

Changed your internet provider? We’ve had the same one for like 8-9 years now. It works pretty okay for five people who stream videos all day, so we haven’t felt the need to switch.

Felt fortunate/thankful? I mean I’m here, scar-less, and happy with myself on December 31, 2020, right?

Tried some new foods that you enjoyed? Baked sushi is so fucking good.

Re-read a book that you loved? Crazy Is My Superpower by AJ Mendez (aka my favorite girl wrestler, AJ Lee) is always a good read to come back to.

[doof-doofblog]

"Small Price To Pay For Your Freedom!"

Tuesday 15th December 2020

Hello again folks! So even more news has been revealed on what we can expect in the episodes taking place around New Year. Mick has been battling with the knowledge that he was sexually abused in his childhood years by his so-called childhood friend, Katy. Since Katy's arrival on the Square, Mick has behaviour towards his family and friends has been ruined, he's pushed everyone he loves away. Mainly I think because he can't bring him himself to accept the facts, and if he can't accept it - how can he possibly tell his family? He doesn't seem to think they'd understand, so instead of talking he's pushed everyone away, his Mum, his sister and now his wife. Devastatingly things are only going to get worse for Mick as the New Year comes, he contemplates taking his own life as his mental health and emotional feelings get worse and he feels there's no one he can turn to. I feel that this New Year is going to be an upsetting one for the Carter family.

Wow! So there's quite a bit to cover from this episode, the main two things I'll leave till the end. I'll start this blog by talking about Denise and Kim. Of course having her son with her for his first Christmas on Walford would mean a lot to Denise, however she seems to be wary of what his traditions with his adoptive family was like. She comes up with the decision to make this year a traditional Christmas for Raymond, which could might mean that they'd have to go to church. Now as the episode continued, Denise is seen chatting with the pastor from Raymond's church and he voices that he's expecting to see Raymond on Christmas Day. Only Denise isn't too sure as herself and her family are not religious, but maybe to give Raymond some familiarity, she may consider going to the church. However, something is telling me that she may come to regret her decision. We know her ex-husband, Lucas, is returning to the Square on Christmas Day, what if he just so happens to appear at the church that she takes Raymond to?!

From the recent Christmas trailer that has dropped, we see Denise look in absolute fear as she comes face-to-face with Lucas, however he doesn't seem as happy to see her, as I'm sure we see him clench his fist! What brings him back to Walford?! Could he end up ruining Denise and Raymond's Christmas?! Although, before she can start her plans for a traditional Christmas, she needs to bring her family round to the idea. At first, Kim announces that she's not a church person (maybe it'll take something more to bring Kim around to the idea)? but Patrick! Ahhhhh Patrick! How good is it to see him back on the Square?! For those of you who weren't aware, during the lockdown, Patrick had caught Covid-19 and was in intensive care, he has not been seen since the soap come back on air. This is the first time we've seen him in months! Clearly both Denise and Kim are thrilled to see him looking so healthy. Before their family reunion, Kim does as she was asks and attends the Prince Albert, for what she thinks, is her first day on the job. However, there appears to be another young girl waiting for Kathy also, named Mila. It looks as if Kim has got the wrong end of the stick and comes to realise that she'll have to fight for her position at the Prince Albert. They find that Kathy has left them a list of cocktails to make, they both appear to be making the cocktails with ease, only when they both reach for the vodka bottle, Kim yanks it from her and sends the bottle flying across the room and smashing all over the floor, just as Kathy walks in. I love how Kim is playing the sympathy card in an attempt to win Kathy over. Mila however tells the truth and admits fighting with Kim for the bottle and how she got a little competitive, interestingly, Kathy decides to give Mila the job, leaving Kim in absolute shock! I don't know whether anyone else was questioning who Mila is, or was it just me?! Could she have simply been an extra? Or will she have some unknown connection to the Fox family? Will she have anything to do with Lucas's return? Who knows, I am simply guessing and I certainly could be wrong - but it's nice to guess, right?!

Another minor thing which happened in the episode involved Tina, Gray and Shirley. Earlier in the episode, we can see Gray's frustration at the mess Tina continues to leave around his house. He informs Shirley that he's wanting his children back and if Tina can't keep things tidy then it's going to cause problems for the household, maybe Gray won't get his children back?! Shirley pleads to him to give her another chance as everything is up in the air at the moment, everyone seems to be walking on eggshells around Mick and after Tina being arrested for being a suspect in the case against Ian, it's clear that Tina's head is all over the place, she tries to fight her sister's corner, even stating that if Tina leaves, then so will she, and it's clear that Gray wouldn't want Shirley to leave as she's been the support he's needed in recent weeks. He softly agrees to let Tina stay, however later on in the episode, Tina questions her sister as to why Gray is so on edge when it comes to the mess. Tina can see that her sister is hiding something and she questions whether Gray has anything on his sister which is making her stay. But Shirley reassures her sister and warns her that if she tells her the truth, it goes no further! It's then she takes the brave decision in informing Tina about the night she found Gray threatening to blaze the house with him and the children inside. Tina can't believe what she's hearing, she fears that she could be living with a potential killer (She's not wrong there - Oooh if only she knew!) Oh!!! That could be the big question now couldn't it?! - We know that Luisa Bradshaw-White will be leaving her role as Tina, what if she comes to realise that Gray is incredibly dangerous? What if she confronts him about what Shirley told her and she becomes the target of his anger? Could Tina be Gray's second victim?!

Now focusing on one of the main aspects of the episode, involving Rainie and Stuart. Earlier on in the episode, Stuart approaches his wife with the news that he's made an appointment for them to go a surrogacy clinic, however Rainie seems pretty unsettling when he delivers the news. She questions what they'd have to do during their appointment, only when he mentions they'd have to take a blood test, Rainie freaks out and lashes out at her husband, claiming that it was a stupid idea and stating that neither of them are destined to be parents, this leaves Stuart looking really confused - together, they want a child more than anything. So why would she lash out in this way? Honestly, it becomes very obvious to the viewer before anyone has to mention anything - the only reason why Rainie would lash out after having being told she'd need a blood test, is because she's been taking drugs and she'd fear that what they'd find in her blood would ruin their chance of becoming parents. Eventually she does come clean to husband - it's then we see the flashback of her night, during the time Ian was attack - after being insulted by Ian, Rainie was clearly feeling devastated - especially after Tiffany and Keegan changing their minds on being their surrogates earlier in the day - Ian just topped everything off for he, didn't he? She went down an alleyway and scored some drugs. Which explains her disappearing for a number of days, maybe she feared what people would say if they found out?! The moment she reveals everything to her husband is so touching, she feels as if she's become a failure again - but no matter her flaws, Stuart informs her that he still loves her, regardless of her knockback. But suddenly, with Rainie giving her version of events of her night, she questions what her husband was doing on the night Ian was attack. Now this, I didn't see coming! Stuart had gotten himself worked up for losing their surrogate, plus having to cope with the fact that his brother is struggling. We then see a flashback of Stuart's night - he was in fact stood in an alleyway, waiting to confront DI Thompson! Initially he only wanted to scare him, trying to defend his younger brother - but things got a little out of hand as Stuart punched Thompson and he ended up knocking him to the floor. It's then we come to realise that Stuart had (accidentally) killed DI Thompson, however when Rainie questions where the man is now, Stuart confesses that he's in the fridges in their undertakers. Honestly, I'm glad DI Thompson is now out of the way but I do worry if the police start searching for their colleague? His disappearance is going to be talk amongst the police, and with Callum being at the forefront of his threats, what will it mean for Callum? Does this mean that the police will stop looking for Phil and Ben? Or something much more darker?! Who knows, either way I think that revelation is the most mind-blowing of all!!

Finally, coming to Ben, Ian and Suki! At the very beginning of the episode, Ben confronts his brother after being released from the police. Ian is visibly shaken to his brother out on the Square, after he reported him to the police. Ben toys with his brother, teasing him, making him quiver in a sense by informing him that even though the police tried their best to find evidence, the only thing they found were a few of Ben's prints from a tyre iron, but to Ian's surprise, the prints didn't match to Ian's scene of attack. It's then that Ben informs his brother that after everything he's done to his family - stealing from their Mum, grassing up his own brother, Ian is now dead to Ben! The only thing I've noticed through out this scene is that Suki has been stood behind Ian, listening to their conversation the whole time. Is that just a ploy maybe?! Trying to get more information possibly to stop the attention being drawn to herself? As Ben walks away, Suki points out to Ian a letter which is hanging beside the Vic addressed to him. As Ian opens it, all that's inside is a small simple bullet. Is this some kind of warning? Will his attacker come back to finish the job? Funnily enough, Ben and Suki come into contact again at the very end of the episode, she just happens to mention to Ben that her shop has had graffiti sprayed all across it in recent weeks and she's been trying to find the culprit, Ben is polite as they share this brief conversation, but suddenly Suki takes the story on another direction, by informing that her shop has CCTV, but even though she hasn't found the culprit who keeps spray painting her shop, what she has found is footage of Ben leaving the Queen Vic on the night Ian was attacked. Ben instantly realises that he needs to find a way to keep her quiet, instantly he simply just asks her out straight how much it would cost for her to keep quiet and not show the CCTV to the police. She demands £10,000 for her silence!!!

Now what will Ben do? Will he give her the money? Do we actually think he's the guilty one who attacked Ian? I, personally, am not so sure. I'd like to say it wasn't him. I feel the ones we can rule out now are Bobby, Tina, Rainie and Stuart. I still think there could be a chance it was Max, Peter, Sharon or Kheerat. I'd like to think it's not Ben, I hope it's not him! What do you guys think? Do you have a theory of who Ian's attacker could be?! Please feel free to leave me and thoughts, comments or theories you may have, I'd love to hear them! Thank you all again for reading, I really do appreciate it! Love you all xXx

[amplesalty]

Halloween 2020 - Day 1 - The Stand (1994) - Episode 1 The Plague

Gee, an epic post-apocalyptic story about an out of control pandemic. Never heard that one before.

Much as we like to tie the Halloween season to the Christmas one by opening up with a festive horror movie, why not link back to the TV binging that provided some content to this blog earlier in the year by partaking in this mini series? We’re only covering part one here today as this is like four feature length episodes. In a worst case scenario, the rest will serve as backups that I can plug in if I’m having an off day so to help me from falling behind. But ideally they’ll go up once a week on the same day as a standard movie post. You manage to go back to actually doing 31 entries for the first time in donkeys years and it all goes to your head and you suddenly think you can do 34!

This has actually been on my list for quite a while now, we do love a good (or bad) Stephen King adaptation around here and I have a distinct memory of seeing this on TV when I was a kid. I’m guessing it must have played over a few nights over here at some point or maybe over a bank holiday or something? Not that I really remember much in the way of details, just the cornfields and a creepy face which we’ll get on to.

It’s something that’s stuck with me over all these years, I actually got a copy of the book at one point in what must have been the early to mid 2000’s. Still have it actually, I dug it out for the sake of this entry. Seems it’s a version from 1980 from it’s first run as a paperback in the UK. Seems to have a page or two missing near the start in amongst all the copywright business but otherwise it’s in okay shape.

Even has some writing on the first page that I can only make out in parts, one section seems to read ‘an old man beats a mule’. Or perhaps, more pertinently to this story, a mute...

Cover seems a bit dull and non descript compared to the various other ones that have come out over the years. There’s something interesting to this original version with the two figures fighting, very much a literal take on the good versus evil nature of the story with one figure dressed in light colours and the other dark. The dark figure is wielding a scythe which is obviously closely associated with the Grim Reaper. Seems to have some form of beak sticking out of its hood too and the robes and shoes seem to be almost harlequin or jester type clothes?

I wasn’t really expecting much going into it, especially based on the 1990 mini-series of It. I think because of the nature of It being partly set in the 60’s, as well the contemporary portion which just looks very 80’s, gives it this image in my head of being very dated. Outside of a few actors like Tim Curry, John Ritter and Seth Green, there’s not really any notable stars in it either and even though, Green’s notably arguably came much later on. The Stand though? This thing has some names, even if the bigger ones are just small cameos. Amongst the main cast you’ve got Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe. Obviously Ringwald isn’t a massive star or anything and is only really known for that string of John Hughes movies in the 80’s but around this time was peak Sinise. He’s not long removed from starring in Of Mice and Men (...and men....and men...) and would have roles in Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Ransom in the following years. Plus that big stretch in CSI:NY in the 00’s. But then you’ve got people like Ed Harris and Kathy Bates showing up, albeit briefly but these guys have some clout. I mean, Bates had just won the Academy Award a few years prior for her role in Misery so maybe she felt compelled to do more work under the King umbrella. Even the more minor roles seem like a roll call of ‘hey, it’s you!’ with Ken Jenkins (AKA Bob Kelso from Scrubs), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the proprietor of Joe Bob’s Drive In, Joe Bob Briggs.

The landscape of TV feels very different today with actors much more willing to work in the field as it’s taken on much more artistic integrity. The greater availability of shows after they’ve aired, be it through DVR, home media or streaming, has enabled people to watch in far greater numbers. There was a time when the big break was deemed to be making it to Hollywood and starring in motion picture epics but it seems more and more that story tellers are moving away from the relatively cramped 2 hour-ish format of the silver screen to having their vision play out over a long form story and the big name actors are following suit. I feel like things would have been very different back in the early 90’s so to have these names attached.

Seems for a long time there were plans to turn this into a movie, it’s even referred to during a ‘making of’ feature on the blu-ray (pretty much the only feature on there I might add) as a ‘motion picture epic’ but this must have been done way into production so either they were confused or trying to mislead viewers for some reason? Apparently in the early 80’s the idea was for the success of Creepshow to finance production of The Stand but took until the early 90’s for everyone to finally settle on the miniseries.

Very much a big budget affair too for a TV Show, $6m per episode. And it’s needed given the scale of the story, taking place in all these different locations, the special effetcs and with so many characters involved with over 125 speaking roles across the series. It’s definitely a jump up from It, even though that had the two different time periods, it only had a budget of $12m across its two parts compared to the $24m here across four parts.

But to finally address the massive elephant in the room, this story centers around an outbreak of a strain of influenza seemingly created in some shadowy government facility. After something goes awry in the lab, a doomed insider pleads with the guy watching the main gate to seal the facility but he instead piss bolts for his nearby house and hurriedly bundles his wife and child into their car as they make their escape. Everyone else is not nearly as fortunate though as the camera pans the facility, lifeless corpses strewn throughout that have seemingly dropped dead in the middle of their everyday activities, there’s even one guy doubled over on a ping pong table. All of this is set to the sounds of BOC’s Don’t Fear the Reaper and culminates with the image of a crow picking at a doll dropped by the child in the rush out of the front gate. The crow features prominently on the front cover of the blu-ray I have, perched atop of a skull. Though, I know they’re going for the whole post-apocalyptic vibe but what about the superflu is causing the road to burn up and crack like that? The bird also shows up a fair bit throughout the episode, I was going to talk about it being a raven and how such birds are linked with ill omen and death but it’s a crow apparently. Who knew? Not me, I’m no ornithologist. It also seems to be very closely linked with a mysterious figure that is alluded to throughout, a ‘dark man’ or monster.

When the original carrier of the disease makes his way into Arnette, Texas, and crashes into the gas station that Sinise’s character Stu Redman is working at, his dying words are of his efforts to escape from a dark man that was chasing him and that no one can out run him. Maybe in that moment you’d think this is just a state of delirium and he’s speaking oddly poetically about trying to outrun Death himself but as the show goes on, more and more people speak of this dark man, almost as if everyone in the grip of this disease comes to share this vision.

And speaking of visions, we can’t forget Mother Abigail and her cornfields. Both Lowe and Sinise’s characters are whisked away in their dreams to the middle of nowhere where a centurion on her porch warns of them of an ominous future. Think Mama Murphy from Fallout 4 only with much less chem addiction. The only thing Mama Abigail needs is her bread. What is it with King and fields anyway? You’ve got In the Tall Grass, plus the corn fields here and in Children of the Corn. There’s probably more I’m forgetting too. It’s either cornfields, writers in distress or killer ‘whatever I can see in front of me whilst I’m pitching this story’ with this guy.

In a way though it’s good that the show takes this supernatural turn because otherwise this would be a little too on the nose to be watching in this current climate. It’s very eerie to see such similar events play out on screen, starting with the widespread rumours and misinformation. It starts out innocently enough with talk of this so called superflu being downplayed, covered up by the government as an anthrax attack or outbreak of swineflu. I remember back to those more innocent times at the start of the year when COVID was naively dismissed as little more than another flavour of the month disease like the swineflu, sars or ebola that would be here today and gone tomorrow. But then you’ve got things like the sense of paranoia suddenly surrounding a simple cough or sneeze, talks of quarantines, social distancing, the implementation of masks (which one reporter describes as not being able to stop a flu germ with a hangover) to the more disturbing scene of lethal force being used against a TV news crew who refuse to surrender footage they’ve shot of army troops disposing of bodies. Granted, we never got anywhere near that level, I think the worst we had was that guy from CNN getting arrested or that Aussie reporter being pushed over.

They even managed to mirror how universal a pandemic like this is, from the common man to the height of celebrity. One of the characters we’re introduced to is a singer who, whilst he seems to be one of the few lucky to have some immunity, still sees his mother succumb to the virus. Just like we saw with the likes of BoJo or Tom Hanks, it really is a great leveller and, as a wise man once said, ‘You might be a King or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper!’. I guess we can take solice that we haven’t quite had the societal collapse that this show manages to pull off in less than a week, with Times Square on fire and a guy running around shooting people like he’s in Falling Down. That’s not to say we wont get there, we seem to be hovering more around general civil disobedience right now with the growing frustration of lockdown and PPE spilling out into protests.

It makes for compelling viewing to see how quickly things break down from simply a man having the sniffles to people being rounded up from their homes and ushered into army vehicles. There’s a lot to take in as the show has to establish the events taking place and introducing it’s multitude of characters so there’s not really much room to breathe. Hopefully episode 2 can relax a little now and give the cast some time to grow. There’s still some standout performances though such as Redman’s growing frustration at being cooped up in a test facility, lashing out at the doctors and nurses coming in in their hazmat suits, prodding and poking him. It would have been nice to see more scenes with him and Dr. Dietz. They have one argument where they nearly come to blows before having a big showdown by the end, with the Doc being one of the last staff members left alive, seemingly crazed by their inability to find any answers in Redman’s tests and he threatens to take his frustrations out on Redman by shooting him. He might be immune to the virus but I bet he’s not immune to a bullet. Dietz starts out with this complete lack of empathy, almost to the point of having a rather cheery deposition considering the circumstances, as he finds some fascination in the speed at which the virus causes death. But he becomes more and more short tempered and threatening as the days wear on and it would have been good to see a more gradual descent.

The aforementioned Ed Harris plays General Starkey overseeing the initial bioweapon project and the fallout of it’s outbreak, perhaps overseeing to a fault as it becomes pretty clear from his ever increasing five o’clock shadow, dishevelled clothing and massive bags under his eyes that he’s slept very sparingly since the initial breach in containment. I think for the entire time we see him, his screen never changes from a shot of one of the cooks at the base of the initial outbreak slumped over, face down in the meal he was preparing. It makes a bit of a change to go from the quite verbal exchanges of Redman and Dietz to Starkey’s physical appearance and facial expressions putting across his mood.

[okayto]

Mini-Review: Ghost Hunt

High schooler Mai Taniyama accepts a job offer from the Shibuya Psychic Research Center as an assistant to its leader, enigmatic 17-year-old Kazuya “Naru” Shibuya. The firm investigates various strange phenomena at the behest of its clients, joined by a spirit medium, a shrine maiden, an exorcist, and a monk.

Look, this is my shit. A combination of mystery and the supernatural, creepy but rarely reaching horror levels, my biggest problem with this series is that it has 25 episodes and I WANT MORE.

You’ve got your everygirl protagonist: Mai Taniyami. Roped into helping when the assistant to the guy called in to investigate a possible haunting at her school gets injured, she proves to have a talent for sussing things out, and accepts a job offer.

Mai? Is great. She can be impulsive and might yell at her boss for not doing the right thing (in a moral sense), but in a way that felt fairly realistic to me. Plunge into danger to save someone? Sure, I can believe that! Ask questions that people seem to be ignoring? Also reasonable! She is our proxy, hoping for the best and caring for people when the Experts (particularly her boss) seem to be callous.

THIS ASSHOLE ON THE OTHER HAND

To be clear, Naru’s whole thing is that he’s stuck-up. He gets the nickname “Naru” because Mai thinks he’s narcissistic. He’s 17 and the head of a paranormal research agency, blunt and rude, and clearly hiding some secrets. He’s not so bad that you (probably) hate him, but he’s Mai’s opposite.

He ALSO has a communication problem, and we all know how much I want to reach into my screen and strangle people who don’t communicate. The problem is along the lines of “I let you think this thing we’d do would hurt people and so you got very upset and yelled at me in front of everyone, but it turns out we’re doing the thing in a way that WON’T hurt people!” but still, it’s an asshole move because I can’t think of a single instance where he couldn’t at least have said “I don’t have time to explain, but we’re being careful.”

The side characters are what really make the show great. You’ve got your Catholic exorcist, a young priest with a disposition as sunny as his hair...

...a teenage spirit medium who dresses in traditional kimono and has a crush on Naru, a shrine maiden unattached to a shrine (Ayako gets the short stick as far as character development and doesn’t get a chance to shine until the last case of the series, I am bitter), and a monk-on-hiatus who’s part of a rock band.

Monk is one of the best parts of the series: besides being just a fun (and competent!!!) character, he also takes the role of big brother/uncle to Mai, and they have a very sweet relationship.

While the characters are the heart of the show, we do actually have stories: the things they’re called in to deal with. These range from “minor nuisance in the park” to “evil entity actively murdering people.”

The story spends time with them, too! I think there was only one case in the entire series that was wrapped up in one episode. Everything else ranges from 2-4 episodes, so it can really take its time focusing on their investigations and drama. Most stories are what you’d expect from ghost stories: spirits, dark and creepy atmosphere, etc, but one 4-episode arc near the end of the series did feature an old hospital and murders and shots of blood (though no shots of actively bleeding people or bodies).

(This happened to the be arc in which my roommate joined me, so I was like it usually isn’t like this I swear please don’t leave I don’t want to watch this bit alone)

The manga it’s based on was never fully released in the USA (11/12 volumes came out before its publisher imploded, and it was never picked up again by anyone else) and is now out of print, so the anime is really your only chance to legally enjoy it in any form.

Verdict

English dub? Yes, and Mai’s English voice is one of my favorites--she actually sounds like a teenage girl! Tonally, in her indignation, everything! Everyone else is fine: Ayako the shrine maiden’s voice almost perfectly matches her Japanese one, and both capture that slightly-snobby-lady vibe. Catholic exorcist John’s given an Australian accent (I think in the original he speaks Japanese with a Kansai accent, so this is trying to convey the “different dialect” idea); older assistant Lin sounds exactly like a serious man in his twenties, and Monk sounds not just realistic, but perfectly captures his ability to switch from casual to serious, joking to caring.

Naru’s voice stands out the most as someone trying to match the Japanese voice, because his has elements of trying to lower the voice (not trying to make it deep, but...if you’ve watched a lot of anime dubs, you know what I mean--sometimes male characters in Japanese have a low-pitched, semi-softness quality that we really don’t hear in American English voices, so it’s always obvious to me when someone is trying to do that in a dub.)

Visuals: I mean, it’s from 2006 so it’s not going to blow you away, but it’s not ugly.

Worth watching? YES. PLEASE. I’ve watched the entire thing through twice now.

I mean, there are flaws. Often the female characters are relegated to watching and guarding while the males actively attack or defend. Naru should be nicer to the teenager he employs. The anime came out while the manga was still being produced, so we don’t get to delve into characters’ backstories, but the series does at least end happily.

Where to watch (USA, as of June 2020): Funimation (sub and dub)

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

[recaffeine]

If you get this, answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not! Let's get to know the person behind the blog 💖 (answer only if you wish to! n_n)

I AM HONORED CHI.

OK. So I have 3 facts or stories to give.

1. Alright so Tumblr origin story. Started around 2011ish. So it's been about 10 years. Wow. I started to use Tumblr as a poetry blog, then it started to blend and become my fandom and romantic outlet too. Still is really. Originally named thecoffeeprince, then tommythepanda, and now tahsang.  I have about 3000 posts as of 2020. 5000 followers from my past tumblr days. My highest noted post was about a Snorlax pillowpet that got around 100k notes. Pretty proud of that.

2.  Earlier this month I happened to peruse my archives to see the progression of 2011 me to now. There are themes from 2011 to 2014 of pure black coffee bitter sadness. Then 2015 to 2017 of finding bright hope along with said pure black coffee bitter sadness.  And finally 2018 and onward of sparse moments of said sadness and more about things I love. So I want to say it's been an upward journey overall with minor and major bumps along the way. The constants of my Tumblr throughout the decade though has been anime, romance, Asian culture, and pure nerdiness and there is comfort in seeing parts of me that didn't change and other parts that did.

3. Now final story.

I remember writing about just being feeling depressed and and experiencing the morbid feeling of death after finishing high school. I was at a loss you know? I didn't really expect to make it to the age of 18.  I’m such a loom and doom type of person. I've always been a major thinker. The type to play out dozens of scenarios of things going wrong. The worst kind of overthinking. I was experiencing a turbulence of emotions and younger me just didn't know how to handle it. I wrote about living in books, running away from life and setting the stage of :the world vs. tahsang.  

Looking back at everything once more, I realized it was really wasn’t the world vs. me. It  really just me fighting against myself the entire time. The world isn’t wrong. It just is. All the years of sadness, anger, and desperation was just a battle against myself. 

I had this singular notion that I wanted to be happy. Happiness was my promised land and that was where I dreamed to be at. I imagined hope as the brightest of lights and felt that if I could reach happiness I could reach feeling complete. I would no longer be a broken hallelujah. I wanted the strength to able to withstand life's hardships without any staggering.

Well, it's 2020 now. It's been almost ten years since I've started my tumblr. I’m still staggering. lol. I’m still getting sad from time to time. I’ve stepped out of a 4 year relationship and for the first time in a long time I’m by myself, alone. There is no one to define me but me. In the last few months I've been coming to grips with all these changes and that lead me to ask. Who is tahsang?

 Going back through my Tumblr posts from the beginning, it feels like past tahsang was trying so hard to deflect my sadness. He was just soaking in the rain, trying so hard to paint the world as the reason for my shortcomings. 

But it's been such a journey. I'm going to be 27 in a month. I have better tools when it comes to reflecting on my sadness now. Even in my darkest of moments, I still want to see the good in the world and honestly that’s enough for me. Just the attempt to try to see the good in the universe is enough for me even if some days I still feel the world is cruel and dark. Honestly, I'm still the sad emotional boy I knew in high school. I'm still the fervent ink spiller from my college years. But I’m also that wishful guy trying to achieve  seeing the good in humanity, life and myself when I was in pharmacy school. I have erred so much in these last ten years, but even so, I do not believe it was all for naught.

I’m starting to realize that maybe having hope isn't just wishing for sunshine and blue skies. Maybe having hope is truly a mixture of sadness and happiness. Accepting the grey skies and stormy nights to experience the sunshine and blue skies. Having the strength to carve a brighter future, yet being able to accept the mistakes of the past and future mistakes of what lies ahead. 

It's still a constant battle. On days I feel optimistic, my goals slowly being achieved day by day. I still want to get my mom a house. I still want to be a great pharmacist. I still want to be there for all my friends. I want to be able to love myself. I want to be able to find someone who can love me for me. But others days are filled with the same doubts and negative thoughts from all the way back in 2011. I'm afraid of not being good enough. I'm afraid of failing. I'm afraid of not amounting to anything. But.. I think that’s okay though. All these feelings are part of me, and I don’t feel the need to run away from them anymore. I’m not afraid to hurt anymore. I will struggle, beautifully against all odds. I wish I could see my 17 year old self and tell him that everything will be okay. I want to tell him that I’m no longer writing about what is wrong with the world and myself, and that I’ve been writing about the things I love and cherish and that I’m on the road towards cherishing myself even.  Maybe.. no definitely, it will give him some comfort on what lies ahead in the future.

All in all, I feel like 2019 me pushed me off the edge of a cliff for the start of 2020. He knew i could handle this great loss in my life. To me, 2019 was the best version of myself. Positive. At peace. Courageous. I trust him. He made me take a big leap of faith for 2020, believing I'd have the strength to rise up and move forward with my life even with this great loss. He knew that even with these changes that I would prosper still.

I’m not sure if I’ve landed just yet. I’m beginning to grasp this newfound hope though, the complete hope that I was looking for all along. I think that’s enough for now. It’s truly empowering and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead in my future because of it. I’m hopeful.

It’s really late and I just felt like typing. I’m not sure if any of this made any sense but ty for listening to my tedtalk.

[valiancyvulnerability]

Body Image and Young People

This is a big topic that has so many layers to it. I have been trying to collect my thoughts the past few days in order to try to cover as much as I could, so I am going to do my best.

I want to begin by going into detail about my battle with my own body over the years, in detail, in order to create a clear image about what goes through someone’s brain that is struggling with severe confidence issues.

I never was a skinny kid, necessarily, but sports were never truly my scene. Throughout my last few years of elementary school and middle school, I was pudgier than most of the kids in my grade, but I was not an unhealthy weight by any means. That being said, as I mentioned, I didn’t play sports, so I was already a target for people that felt superior to me as someone who wasn’t athletic and was “heavier”. This was the stem of my self-confidence issues, but it didn’t get to its worst until I was in high school.

I became accustomed to swimming fully clothed at pool parties, wearing clothes that were oversized in order to cover any lines or bumps that I felt like were flaws on my frame. If that meant wearing sweaters and sweatpants in the summer, then that’s what I needed to do. 

When I turned sixteen, I wanted to change my whole image into someone I wasn’t (see past blog posts) and started working out excessively and cut my eating almost entirely in order to lose weight, and in my head, get people to like me. I got results both physically and socially and ended up losing about twenty-five pounds, so I persisted. I was so focused on how I was viewed by people, that I failed to acknowledge the issue at hand until February of 2020.

My anxiety was at its peak and when Covid-19 hit, I found myself alone and focusing on nothing else but what I was eating, what I looked like, and what number the scale flashed back at me. I substituted all my meals with a powder drink that satisfied me for a few hours, and then I would repeat. I lost about twenty pounds in a month. 

The way this situation is different, though, is that I wasn’t attempting weight loss in order to please others, it was a competition with myself, and it wasn’t a friendly one. I didn’t view it as what it truly was until I started passing out. One afternoon, I got ready to take prom pictures with my friends with a local photographer in my town. I went to go pick up my friends and got out of the car and they started speaking to me, but I could hear nothing--I blacked. I started sweating and couldn’t form my sentences properly. I would get up and walk to my bedroom when I felt it coming, and I would just wipe out completely. I knew it was an issue, but it was not enough to get me to stop what I had already started, because I wanted results. Anytime we would get carry-out or I would eat an actual meal, I would return to my room and tremble, thinking about every bite of food I had just consumed.

Although I am on a more nourishing and healthy track now, it is still a daily occurrence where I want to slap myself across the face for eating breakfast, for going out to dinner with my family, or for having a snack now and then. I have spent many a night, alone, driving around screaming and crying at nothing simply for feeling the way I do. It’s almost an addictive behavior that I didn’t want to acquire, but the truth is that I did, and I am doing my best to overcome the obsession that gets in the way of my everyday routine, and we are getting somewhere.

Enough about me, though. The reason I am writing this in the first place is because I have so much to say as it’s something I know I am still personally dealing with, and I know the majority of people my age are. If we are being honest, we all would change something about our body if we could. Whether it be that we want to lose weight, or gain it, we all have our personal battles. In today’s day and age, though, it’s a more toxic world regarding body image and perception. Here is why.

SOCIAL MEDIA

As of 2019, teenagers often spent up to nine hours on social media on a daily basis. The most toxic platforms for young people struggling with their body, in my opinion, would be Instagram and TikTok. Because most social media apps are programmed to spit out information and content that interests the user, the posts that are viewed are specific to each individual. 

With Instagram, especially, everyone aspires to be an “influencer”. They are skinny, tan, have clear skin, travel, eat power foods, and young people love that. The reality is, is that most of us don’t live perfect lives like that, but we truly wish we did, so we want to get as close as we can.

With this, diet culture is a very popular concept among those wanting to bring a change to their bodies. Although this has been something that has been advertised for years now, mainly for adults, the new wave of diets for adolescents is scary. Most of them are malnourishing and can do more damage than one would think. Often times, though, they are bizarre or unheard of, but seem simple enough for someone who wants fast results. Because of this, once again, it’s easy for both myself and people my age to get reeled in quickly into that idea.

(I don’t want parents reading this to think that this necessarily entails that social media needs to be taken from their teenagers, but it is something to be aware of. Social media is a great way to stay connected (especially now) and gives us a voice to do good and bring change, as well.)

THE SOCIAL FACTOR

Because this is an issue that most of the youth deals with, whether it be minor or major, it can become a competition without intending it to be. If my friends are losing weight, why aren’t I? If they’re doing this diet, then I need to. They feel better about themselves than I do. What am I doing wrong? 

If you find yourself feeling like this too often, and it gets to a point where it gets in the way of your relationships, then it’s a conversation to be had. You shouldn’t have to feel like you are competing with those you hold close to you, but you also shouldn’t feel like you have to walk on eggshells every time you are with them to not say the wrong thing. Find some common ground, and support each other at times of insecurity.

High school can be a terrible atmosphere for someone who feels like their weight isn’t ideal. Teenagers are quick to make mindless comments and insults about people’s appearance. Whether it comes from a place of low self-esteem themselves or not, it doesn’t justify it, and this can be a direct and harsh cause of body image problems.

THE MENTAL FACTOR

If someone struggles with general anxiety, depression, or another mental condition, having your body as an enemy can sometimes heighten the severity of the issue as a whole. It truly goes hand in hand. For me, my anxiety was at its worst when my eating habits were at its worst. I was focused on what I was eating, focused on what the scale read back to me, and in the rare moments I wasn’t fixed on that, it was worrying about other things happening in my life. Everything was just raised to a higher degree.

The two words I have been trying to avoid so far, “eating disorder”, is something that I would love to say is just a false or dramatic phrase, but the reality is is that it’s a demon, and a real one. With the world of social media, again, they’re often glorified to be an artsy aesthetic to be achieved. Eating disorders does not mean “just not eating”. It can be anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, body dysmorphia, and because there are so many forms, it’s not always going to be apparent just looking at a person. Often times it isn’t. That is something to keep in mind, because one of the most damaging things for someone struggling with an ED is making them feel like their issues aren’t valid because it’s not physically obvious to you, or that someone else is worse off in your eyes.

HEALING

The first step that has helped me, personally, is just becoming comfortable. I need to become comfortable with myself in the way I am now for me to appreciate any way my body looks in the future. If I’m unhappy with myself now, when am I ever going to be happy, regardless of the supposed improvements I’m making? It’s been a tricky thing for me to figure out, but I force myself to go to pool parties, I hang out around the house sometimes just wearing underwear, so I can become familiar and comfortable with seeing myself and my body so I can reach a point to where that’s normal. 

The next thing is to follow the steps that you know are going to be beneficial and healthy for you. If that means working out to gain muscle, to lose weight, or dieting, then do it, BUT do it in such a way that is going to be, again, beneficial. Don’t go to the extremes for quicker results, because you will end up falling down a hole that will be hard to climb out of.

Lastly, if you see fit, go to therapy! There’s a large stigma around therapy as it makes people think that those who go are insane or can’t function on their own, which is far from the truth. Think of it as more of a helping hand from someone who has a different view and has solutions that may be overall helpful. Reading this blog is simply just how I see things, and that goes for any post I make. I am not a professional. I am not an expert. I am an eighteen year-old that just wants to share his experiences in order to bring awareness. There are many great therapists out there, and there are several websites you can visit to find one that meets your needs specifically.

I am overjoyed to see that the modeling industry, for example, is heading in a more positive direction as far as inclusivity goes. Plus-size models, LGBTQ+, and people of color are booking shows, spreads, and can be seen on billboards. This is just the start, and the rest lies within everyone as people to stop shaming others for their appearance, because if we didn’t from the beginning, there would be no reason for anyone to feel uncomfortable in their own skin to begin with. Imagine a world free of judgment for a moment. Imagine how differently every single person on the planet would be living. It’s something to think about.

I want to reiterate--don’t be afraid to ask for help! It is a direct demonstration of strength, rather than weakness, to admit that you need an outside source to help you get through whatever battle you may be experiencing.

And as always, be kind to one another and stay safe out there!