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leveloneandup · 2 months

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For Christen Press, the Joy is in the Journey

Progress isn’t perfect.

That’s been Christen Press’s motto over the 781 days since she last played in a soccer match—and not just when it comes to her recovery from the ACL tear she sustained in June, 2022, but also when thinking about life as a whole.

“You have to accept that things won’t go the way you think they will, but maybe they’ll go better,” she explains. “Progress isn’t linear. It’s up and down and back and forth. But in that movement there’s more than what you ever imagined. So the imperfection—the struggle, the setbacks—those are actually the greatest gifts as you get to learn about yourself and you have the chance to grow.”

Press has had more than her share of setbacks over the last two years, as an initial surgery turned into two, then three, and finally four.

“I think every single time that I was told I’d have to have surgery, from the first ACL reconstruction and the three scopes that I had, I always thought I would be on the quickest timeline possible,” said Press when she returned to Angel City training in June. “I think that's part of who I am. I'm just relentlessly optimistic. I'm naively positive, and just thinking that everything's going to work out for me—and I never want that to change, you know? And I got off course of all of those timelines so many times that I finally had to actually relinquish that expectation of myself.”

In her two years off the field, Press says she’s grown and healed in more ways than just physically, but the goal was always to return, even if that possibility felt far off at times.

“I never thought about giving up,” says Press, “but there were moments that I thought I’d have to accept that I wouldn’t make it—or that ‘making it’ might not look how I expected.”

One of the hardest things about this process has been accepting that the outcome was not fully under her control. “I’m able to do a lot of suffering for success, and I’ve been that way since I was a child,” she says. “The question I had to answer was how to accept and be open to things I cannot control.”

Press had access to the best medical and rehabilitation care in the business—first at the Meyer Institute of Sports, an El Segundo rehab and performance facility specializing in elite athletes, and then with Angel City’s training staff, including VP of Medical and Performance Sarah Smith, Head Athletic Trainer Manny De Alba, Head of Sports Science Dan Jones, Director of Rehabilitation Sarah Neal, Performance Coach Michael Roman, Assistant Athletic Trainer April Seymon, and Senior Physical Therapist Joscelyn Shumate Bourne.

Ultimately, bodies don’t always heal the way we hope they will. All she could do was show up every day and try her best.

“I had to make decisions that centered my well being and full personhood,” she says. “To start to find my inherent value outside of excellence in the pitch.”

In part, that meant finding joy in other areas of life. She worked on her business, re–Inc, including starting a podcast with (business and life) partner Tobin Heath, initially focusing on the 2023 World Cup, then branching out to cover women’s soccer more generally. She went to the beach. She spent time with family.

In some ways, this time away from the game Press loves has been freeing. “The last two years have been the first of my career that I wasn’t evaluated on my performance,” she says. “I showed up for PT every day with a smile on my face and gave max effort. That’s all I had to do.”

Press’s return comes at a perfect time for the club: they’ve begun to build momentum with two convincing Summer Cup wins, against Club América and Bay FC, as they look ahead to the back half of the regular season. Playoffs are still well within reach heading into this stretch, a fact that Press’s return can only make more tangible.

“Her quality is inevitable,” says First Assistant Coach Eleri Earnshaw. “Last week in training, she scored a couple of goals that we haven't seen anyone else do yet this season in training.”

Returning to play after such a long hiatus isn’t easy for anyone, but Earnshaw says there’s a point the coaching staff have emphasized both to Press and to other injured players eyeing a return to the field: “your ability doesn't change overnight,” she says. “There are some things that just stay with you. Her chance creation, her separation from defenders—you’ve got to be in the right physical and mental place to be able to perform those things, to be confident to do it, but she is building those things up every day.”

“If we can get that quality onto the pitch for any number of minutes, great,” she concludes.

As Press anticipates her return to what she calls “the real world of professional sports”—one “filled with stress and pressure and often angst,” as she puts it—she’s going in with a fresh perspective.

“I’m determined to enjoy it,” she says. “I know who I am as a player and person, and I see this opportunity as a chance to do what I love. I told my teammates today: football is a miracle. It’s a miracle we get to do the thing we love.”

#christen press #angel city fc #cp off sei #article

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redgoldsparks · 7 months

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I did a short interview for an alumni spotlight on the CCA website. You can click through but I'll also just copy my answers below the cut.

Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) is a nonbinary/queer/trans author and illustrator, a voracious reader, a k-pop fan, and a daydreamer. You can learn an astonishing number of intimate details about em in Gender Queer: A Memoir and in eir other short comics, published by The New Yorker, The Nib, The Washington Post and in many print anthologies. Gender Queer won a Stonewall Honor and an Alex Award from the American Library Association in 2020. It was also the most challenged book in the United States in 2021 and 2022.

Maia shares more about eir life as a full-time artist and activist, fighting to protect diverse literature and the freedom to access information.

1. What is your current practice/business?

I am a full time cartoonist. My job consists of days working at home writing and drawing mixed with days speaking out against book banning and censorship, and in support of the freedom to read, the freedom to teach, and the freedom to access information. I spend a lot of time talking with other authors, teachers, and librarians about protecting diverse and queer books from the current wave of conservative attacks. The first piece I drew for the comics journalism site The Nib was about the rise of fascism in the United States; my later writing about queer, trans, and nonbinary identities has led me into consistently political territory.

2. Why did you choose CCA?

I chose CCA because I was looking for a MFA Comics program, of which there are very few, and I wanted to stay in the Bay Area. Because I'm a local, I was able to meet the majority of the MFA Comics faculty before I applied and felt immediately welcomed into their community. The fact that a majority of my professors for the first year of the program were queer was a huge draw as well.

3. If you could share one piece of advice with current or future students, what would it be?

Every single person has a story only they could tell. No matter what media you are working in, do your best to tell the story which is uniquely yours. If you aren't ready to tell it yet, just keep making art until the time to share that story arrives. No time spent creating is ever wasted.

4. What's your secret to staying inspired and creative?

I realized fairly early in life that my very favorite way to spend the day was drawing while listening to music, a podcast, or an audiobook. I like making things! I would rather be making things than doing almost anything else. I created a life in which I can spend a lot of time creating things and even if I don't particularly know what I am making, I am happy.

5. What do you have coming up?

My second book, Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding, written with Dr Sarah Pietzmeier, is coming out in May 2024 from Dutton. It's a nonfiction comic about chest binding as an aspect of trans healthcare. I'm currently drawing my third book, Saachi's Stories, written with Lucky Srikumar; it's due out from Scholastic Graphix in 2026. I am also working on adapting Gender Queer: A Memoir into an audiobook.

#maia kobabe #gender queer a memoir #interview #comics #making art

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has announced a plan to transform the state’s oldest prison into a center for rehabilitation, education and training, modeled after Norwegian incarceration systems, which are much less restrictive than US facilities.

Newsom told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that his goal was “ending San Quentin [prison] as we know it” and working to “completely reimagine what prison means”. San Quentin, located on a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area and established in 1852, houses nearly 4,000 people, including hundreds on its infamous death row, the largest in the US, which is on track to be dismantled.

The Democratic governor said that by 2025, he plans to transition the massive penitentiary into a final stop of incarceration before individuals are released, with a focus on job training for trades, including plumbers, electricians or truck drivers, the LA Times reported. His recently released budget proposal includes $20m to start the effort.

“The ‘California Model’ the governor is implementing at San Quentin will incorporate programs and best practices from countries like Norway, which has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world – where approximately three in four formerly incarcerated people don’t return to a life of crime,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Thursday. The prison will be renamed the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.

Pictured: Instructor Douglas Arnwine hands back papers with comments to his students at San Quentin state prison in April 2022.

The transformation Newsom has described would, at least for San Quentin, mark a fundamental shift from the extremely punitive American system. The US has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world...

Although California is considered a leader in criminal justice reform, the state’s prison system continues to be overcrowded, with thousands of elderly people languishing behind bars and Black residents disproportionately imprisoned for decades due to harsh sentencing laws adopted in the 1990s.

Scandinavian models of incarceration that have garnered increasing attention from some US lawmakers are less focused on punishment and are meant to give imprisoned people support and a sense of normal life behind bars so that they are prepared to reintegrate into society. That can mean access to personal computers, televisions and showers, consistent classes and programming, fresh food, more freedom of movement and stronger connections with the outside world.

“Do you want them coming back with humanity and some normalcy, or do you want them coming back more bitter and more beaten down?” Newsom told the LA Times.

An overhaul of San Quentin would be a huge undertaking, and there are significant unanswered questions about what the transition would mean for its current residents as well as the tens of thousands of others located across the California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR). San Quentin has a long and recent history of scandals involving abuse, overcrowding, guard misconduct and medical neglect. It is also a prison that has significantly more programming than some of the remote and rural CDCR prisons, with a renowned podcast produced by incarcerated San Quentin journalists.

The governor’s office noted research showing that every $1 spent on rehabilitation saves more than $4 on costs of re-incarceration; that people who enroll in education programs behind bars are 43% less likely to return to prison; and that crime survivor groups say victims prefer sentences that include programming designed to prevent recidivism...

Assemblymember Mia Bonta noted that California spends $14.5bn on prisons each year – $106,000 a person – but traditionally puts only about 3.4% toward rehabilitation: “It’s time for a significant paradigm shift.”

One of the reporters in attendance was Steve Brooks, an incarcerated journalist and editor of the San Quentin News paper, who asked the governor how the Scandinavian model would be adopted in a prison where residents remain concerned about overcrowding and the living conditions. Brooks also said people were concerned that those convicted of violent offenses would be excluded from programs under a new system. Newsom responded, “I’m not looking to cherry pick certain offenses. I’m for people who are committed, not passively interested, in changing themselves.”

-via The Guardian, 3/17/23

#california #united states #us politics #prison #prison industrial complex #prison reform #incarceration #san quentin #scandinavian #gavin newsom #good news #hope

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awwordnd · 4 months

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Hello, Kobold here!

With Episode 4 around the corner and it being Episode 5 overall, I figured now was a great time for an update on everything and a summary of the past few sessions.

To begin with - THANK YOU! The overall response to AWWOR has been so lovely and we are loving all of the art we've been seeing! That being said there's a couple things we should mention! ✨ We would love to hear your feedback but it would be best where we can see it! You can leave feedback on any of our socials, on the koboldkurios discord or here! We have our inbox open, including anonymous submissions for those who are a little shy. We would love to hear from you! (you can also ask us questions!) ✨ A reminder that if you do some art for the campaign and/or it's characters and would like to see it in the art reels at the end of each session - send them through, either here as a submission or to us via email! Make sure to let us know your social @ so we can credit you!

In amazingly exciting news, THE OFFICIAL AWWOR OST IS OUT ON SPOTIFY AND ITUNES!

Composed and created by the wonderfully talented @musicandtings, who has a plethora of additional music AND a podcast for you to check out, the AWWOR ost is a lively soundtrack and will be heard on streams each session! Go check the album out, give his other music a listen to and if you're inclined, consider commissioning him for some music of your own!

Onto some less exciting news, we do have to announce that Sponge who plays Corben will be stepping down. Sponge has some exciting life progressions that will be taking up a majority of their time that they had not expected when initially joining us. We wish Sponge all the best for the future and you may still see them in the stream chat or on the Koboldkurios discord from time to time so don't be afraid to say hi!

With Pride Month coming up, we would like to remind old and new viewers alike that AWWOR supports LGBT+ rights. With the crew being members of the queer community amongst other minority communities ourselves, we encourage a diverse, welcoming community. You are seen, you are loved. ♥

Finally, there is some discussion amongst the AWWOR discord regarding potentially moving to a weekly schedule. If this does indeed come to be, you will all be the first to know so stay tuned!

The past few sessions have been an absolute blast and we are all looking forward to seeing where this story takes us. We hope you enjoy the ride too. Until next time, and onto the summary!

SO FAR ON AWWOR...

The party convened, traveling to the docks of Yallasch to catch their ship. The party is bound for the small swamp village of Oparl which is currently under the effects of a severe illness. Dr Alligan Hue - newly cast out to experience the wider areas of the Border Kingdoms and Faerun by his college - has been assigned to aid the village and he is not alone, accompanied by Ateris, Saffy, Rhaya and Corben who join him for each their own reasons.

While boarding their ship, Ateris spies a ship she has been searching for for 33 years, a ship belonging to Fulgrim Shay - a past lover and father to her missing son. In an eager rush to hopefully see the man, she makes a run for the vessel while Alligan summons his familliar - a weasel named Yauna - to create a distraction by stealing their captain's coinpurse. With Rhaya aiding in the distraction they delay the ship just long enough for Ateris to find one of the crew and have him agree to pass on a message for Fulgrim. With that done, as her own vessel passes on it's way out of the bay, Ateris makes a daring leap and through some aid from the party, manages to land safely on deck.

Once in Dapplegate, the party picks up a horse and cart and a letter from Fulgrim before continuing onward toward Oparl.

The night before reaching the small village, the party sets camp in a sheltered outcropping out of the rain. The party chat a little and tension between Saffy and Alligan shows as the pair have a mild misunderstanding. Tired from travel, they almost miss the sound of being robbed as three kobolds scavenge through their boxes in the cart. The party proceeds to question, threaten and adequately intimidate the kobolds into returning the majority of the items taken, Saffy manages to charm the kobolds enough that they totally aren't making a cult based on the feline.

With the following rest, the party moves onward, travelling through the swamp. Rhaya and Saffy discover the polarising scent of citronella while the two humans in the cart attempt to avoid being eaten by mosquitos. Rhaya also discovers the magical properties of the dragonflies of the region - having adapted over time with the residual effects of the spellplague.

Hearing a scream from further into the swamp, the party jumps to action - coming to help a young person being accosted by a giant toad. Two giant toads, a saffy snack and some newly aquired frog meat later, the party continues on to the village. As they do they have a blunt but reasonably pleasant conversation with their rescued acquaintance, getting some more information on the recent events of the town.

Entering town, the party finds accomodation and board for their horse and cart. Here, Ateris catches up with the barkeep - familliar from her last journey through the region - and she and Saffy learn of a potential job for the party to take up during their time here. Meanwhile - Rhaya makes his way up to the rooms, avoiding the watchful gaze of a group of individuals who seem to recognise his pin. In an attempt to avoid coming eye-to-eye with them on his way back down he climbs out the window of his room to the roof - which he proceeds to fall off.

The party meet Thiddershins, a wood woad who runs the commissary in the village - though most of the residents seem unsure about his motives. The party proceeds to fall in love with him.

+1 favourite NPC

They then proceed to the village healer - a tiefling woman doing her best within the circumstances. They deliver supplies and Alligan offers to take a look at the patients - discovering that the illness is dire, a remnant of the spellplague and likely bought to the village from a previous adventuring party. While inspecting some of the patients, Ateris spies a glowing sigyl appear on Alligan's forehead before the skeleton of one of the patients tears itself from it's body and proceeds to attack the wizard.

once more the party leaps to action, still reasonably spent from their morning fighting toads. Some close calls later, they succeed but not without Alligan pushing his limited healing spell past it's usual daily use, taking a point of exhaustion.

Reeling from the battle and the resulting adrenaline, the party and healer step out of the healing tent where Alligan and Ateris explain to the rest of the party of a previous experience with what they believe to be an ancient black dracolich and it's potential connection to the skeletal attack.

The party continues to discuss matters with the healer and purchase some supplies from her that aren't needed for the ill as Ateris burns the body just outside town to prevent further spread of the illness, before they make their way back into the village, their destination being their accomodation. However as it happens, they make some stops at some of the businesses within the village.

Our absolutely-not-married-at-all housemates stop by what is essentially an op-shop in search of new travelling clothes for Alligan while the others make their way to the blacksmith, perusing the goods. Saffy additionally makes their way back to the store the ranger and wizard are perusing, striking up conversation with the storekeep and whisking off for some DM whispers in the backroom. Alligan finds some magic items, managing to slip a magical seed they found into the ranger's pocket and through the aid of their rescued aquaintence, they make a deal to pay partially and return with further payment after their job the following day.

The party then, makes their way to the commisary, intending to introduce Corben to their new favourite... person? sentient log. Alligan, curious to find out about the magical seed, asks the wood woad if they know what it is. As soon as Thiddershins touches the seed it glows before seeming to absorb it's very essence - splintering and tearing the wood woad apart.

-1 Favourite NPC

Panicking and not knowing what else to do, they place the seed in the wooden corpse, Ateris additionally placing a hand on the creature. As she does, a thorny branch pierces thoroughly through the hand, seemingly purifying and absorbing the blood it draws before retreating. With that and the magical seed, the body transforms into what appears to be some form of Eladrin-dryad woman, leaving a dumbfounded pair of housemates and shocked party.

"DO YOU HAVE A CHILD NOW?!" - Saffy

#awwor #dnd #dnd liveplay #awwor updates #last time on awwor #Spotify

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bedwenchbash · 3 months

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"A Quiet Place Day One" #CVReview

YouTube finally took my channel down for my origibal audio takedown of this film. I haven't had a youtube channel taken down since 2020 when I dropped "The Lucephrase Tape". Back then medical misinformation was the charge, this time Alphabet Inc. claimed explicit sexual content was visible on my channel. Ironically, in reference to this film that I originally made my impromptu review on in particular for my "Bedwench Bash" podcast series - "A Quiet Place Day One" lacked any actual sexual content. Barely an innuendo with mild PDA. Still, Lupita N'yongo deserves to be bashed for her performance in "A Quiet Place Day One", specifically for signing off on subconscious nods to Black misandry. One of the biggest exhibits of such misandry is when N'yongo's character, Samira, finds a copy of infamous misandrist Octavia E. Butler's "Dawn", flips through the book and breathes in the pages of Black-male hate like an old lover. Samira keeps a cat with her, which just happens to be a calico. A calico feline is a predominantly white cat with spots of black. Also, a calico happens to be a derogatory term used to refer to ethnic mixed blacks in the same way synonymous of the terms "red bone", "yellow bone", and "mulatto".

This calico runs off to find Samira her male lead : Jospeh Quinn's "Eric", a goofy caucazoid who mugs the camera and expects the audience to feel endeared when he says he's "From the U.K." When all I heard, not only because this film was released days before the U.S.' so called indepdence from the Brits, was the voice of just another European oppressor with an accent more closely related to the original dialect of the 1800s Euro-migrants that invaded and conquered my country of origin. Now I know that Lupita was born in Mexico and spent her upbringing between Kenya and Mexico in her formative years. Given the white supremacist idealologies of Jose' Vasconcelos in Mexico and the current state of bedwenching and miscegenation from the raping of East Africa by Eurasia, I would not be surprised that after Lupita spent nearly the first twenty minutes of this film in white face (covered in soot from a car explosion that opens up the action sequences in the film) that her original gripes against Harvey Weinstein that spearheaded the Me-Too Movement might have been the wishy-washy sentiments of a bedwench for pay that wasn't given enough currency to keep her part in Weinstein's scandal(s) covered up.

What self-respecting black woman signs up for a film where she portrays a character who's name ("Samira") translates to "night-companion"? In Arabic, nonetheless! One only knows the atrocities of how Islam took over Africa in the same vein their Abrahamic Christian cousins pillaged the West. I honestly could not remember any role that N'yongo was in throughout her filmography other than in Jordan Peele's "Us". Well, apparently N'yongo portrayed Black Panther's love interest, Malice, who then later becomes the baby-mama of the fallen king in "Wakanda Forever". As if in mirroring the male-leads role in THAT script, N'yongo spends the majority of "Day One" living up to her characters name and taking a European colonizer all throughout Harlem so presumably he can see what best way to further gentrify it after the whole apocalypse scenario blows over.

Samira at various points in the film expresses that she wants pizza in Harlem. When she first expressed this, I wondered out loud "Why Not Brooklyn?". As a native to L.A., I first copped my N.Y. slice next to 4Kings Corner Store at Sheepshead Bay, strictly because Busta Rhymes used to slang drugs out there back when the building was known as Poncho's Deli. The film starts out it's apocalypse in an Asian area of Queens (Flushing I figure), so even though it's not Brooklyn , Harlem is yet another chocolate enclave within the five boroughs so I did not have a problem with the progression of the film moving up to Harlem. My problem was that "Eric", tagged-along his hood pass in a similar vein as the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent coat-tailed T'Challa in "Black Panther" around Wakanda so the Eric's of the world could appraise what they could pillage. My problem is that Samira is the 2024 Pocahontas of Harlem. My problem is that Samira, a cancer patient, had a father who also died of cancer - presumably of a FDA approved European diet, which involves plenty of lactose which is terrible for the digestion of melaninated people like Samira and her father. A N.Y. slice is unironically a lactose filled dish.

The life expectancy in the European nation of the U.S. for it's Black citizens are exceedingly low and food intake is one of the main causes of death for U.S. black citizens. Samira, already afflicted with cancer, spends her time in the apocalypse bedwenching and hunting for a cancer slice at a pizza palor that looks like the one straight out of Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing". Where photo evidence shows that her father was not a cook, not the owner, but an entertainer. A minstrel role for a European eatery. A pianist. And of course as Samira's fingers strokes the keys that her father used to play, one can not help but wonder why Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney's "Ebony and Ivory" wasn't inserted into the score of the scene, since Samira's present company is Eric, a colonist name that derives to "eternal king". This film's etymology makes it seem as if it must have been a throwaway script for "Dune". But no, this is just typical of European cinema : a constant tease of European males exerting subconcious power over Afrocentric females, and through that, Afrocentric culture as a whole. I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention that of course Samira's cat is named "Frodo", star of the "LOTR" franchise - a European-male empowerment fantasy series. When I first went to a New York comic book shop (Forbidden Planet NYC) I was disrespected by an Afropunk woman behind the counter while I was making my purchase. Typical of an afropunk woman of my ethnic makeup she treated me with misandry and felt that I was taking up space in an area where she chose to meet U.S. Euro-mutts to mate with.

After I paid my fare and left the store I went to a movie theater and talked to another Black-U.S. citizen from Brooklyn, who took the time to "warn me" about The City. She was a Butch with an effeminate frame. Whoever did the character study for "Day One" did their job, because I guarantee these two women I met in Manhattan would have been cooning just like Samira for Eric if the same "Day One" scenario occured in this reality. The day I went to see "Day One" in Arizona, with it's small Black population (so West Coast), I was verbally attacked by a homeless black woman who was a dopefiend. I offered her water. I saw her from across the street where I was waiting on a bus to get to the movie, and she walked away with a Euro dope boy, within five minutes coming from the back of a building high as a kite, as his "night companion" for the day. So when Eric goes to retrieve pain meds for Samira in "Day One", I couldn't help but think of how Europeans love to give indigenous women both poison and medicine like DiCaprio's character in "Killers Of The Flower Moon". And how these indigenous women love to play the patient if they are not getting paid to be the European's nurse. Anyways, by the time "Day One" dies down Samira draws the "Nine of Wands" indicating that her "struggle" (life) is almost over and she literally die-vest's by handing Eric the Colonizer her coat. Yes, this coon gave the colonizer the coat off her back. More than that, the coat was owned by her father. So essentially she gave her family legacy to a Caucazoid colonizer. Family memories, by walking Eric all throughout Harlem when she should have sent him to Manhattan the minute he started stalking her and now family heirlooms.

Eric takes Frodo to survive. At this point the Black Woman's life is less than not only her man but also her pet, and it's okay as long as they are (predominantly) pale. If Eric was black and expressed his fear for the apocalyptic scenario upon meeting Samira without a single change in the present script, Samira would have verbally assaulted him (maybe physically assaulted him) and would have rather died with her cat than have a black man accompany her to what once used to be New York's Black Mecca. And then the film ends with Samira committing suicide by singing some Nina Simone - a civil rights activist who went through hell living in the U.S. just to make her deathbed in one of those other red, white and blue European countries called France. I see why John Krasinski the creator of this film series, wanted to distance himself away from this entry. The first two "Quiet Place" films were Krasinski and his wife, Emily Blunt, with fictional children surviving the apocalypse. Nuclear family survival franchise turned miscegenal survivalist fantasy. This is most likely why Krasinski chose to place his name all over the advertisements for the children's film "IF" to expand his portfolio and sneak his name into the ending production credits, because Krasinski who got big off starring in the Scranton, PA based "The Office" obviously is not comfortable in public betting on black, but does not mind cleaning up on the back end of Hollywood's favorite coupling situation : a wolf in sheep's clothes European male engaged in usury of a willing Afrocentric female, who by the time the credits roll becomes yet another statistic of a dead Black U.S. citizen in the culling operation of a European country dedicated to the genocide of it's dwindling Afrocentric population. "Day One"? More like "Groundhog Day" - and Bill Murray can go ahead and keep Kelis !

C.V.R. The Bard

29th/Jun.2k24

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itsbowbi · 3 months

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tagged by @penglue

Are you named after anyone?

A saint I think. Or my parents just liked the name and came up with that reason after.

When was the last time you cried?

I cry a lot I think I cried watching the new Godzilla movie because I'm easy and a sucker. Like CRIED cried? I think my birthday but it was actually a pretty great night.

Do you have kids?

Hell no.

What sports do you play?

None. Too busy and tired. Been thinking about finding a baseball league or something to play in because I miss it. I was a terrible hitter tho. I'm in better shape now and I learned about my fucked up eyeballs so maybe I'd be better.

Do you use sarcasm?

I don't think so. I have a very cynical sense of humor but sarcasm to me just comes off as being mean. Pretty sure I avoid it almost always.

What’s the first thing you notice about someone?

Looks? I mean literally first thing I notice is what they look like. And yeah I usually decide if I think they're hot right then but that doesn't change much about how I treat them. Otherwise just general vibes I guess. Sense of humor, manners, etc. Ooh I guess I really notice if someone is being at all superior or condescending. I fucking hate that immediately.

Eye colour?

Baby blues.

Scary movies or happy endings?

I like both, but I definitely watch horror movies more often. I think it's funny when movies get the super happy ending like Wayne's World, which seems to be happening more and more often in the movies I watch. I do think I've been avoiding dramas because they can be draining to watch and I don't feel like putting myself through that sitting here alone in my room. And bad horror movies are easily the best thing to watch with friends.

Any talents?

I'm very good at guessing people's middle name. Also I have insane memory when it comes to movies. You can name like one small detail about a movie you can't quite remember and I can probably name it. Good at trivia too.

Where were you born?

Bay Area. Zero memory of California since we left when I was a baby.

Hobbies?

Uuggghhh this is where I really start to feel like a nolife degen. Video games mostly. I'm decent at overwatch. Have a quitar but haven't had the energy or motivation to practice in a while. I really want to pick it up again. Just got an iPad with the stylus so that's been fun getting back into art. People say I can draw good so that's cool. Also I technically got my first commission since my buddy gave me $10 to recreate a doodle I made for him at work in a full piece because he loves it so much. Gotta get around to that soon.

Any pets?

My leopard gecko Heybaby! I love her. Also my mom has 2 cats that I still consider mine and I love visiting them. Yoyo and Mimi.

Height?

Favourite school subject?

I guess history. I think history has better stories in it than any fiction so I love reading about it and listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Chose that as my major in college since I didn't know what to do with my life and it was the one subject I was able to tolerate. That was a very bad decision and I honestly should've never gone to college or just gone to a community college while I figured out what to actually do. Still waiting on that last part.

Dream job?

I really don't have a realistic one. I have hated every job I've ever had and any work that was assigned to me in school or therapy or whatever instantly made me hate it. I have crazy fantasies about what I could still do with my life but most of them involve doing little to no actual work. Like being a streamer. But I guess I'll go with what I would've said 20 years ago and say baseball player or rock star.

GET TAGGED @conkedcrete @spylarman (or don't sorry to bother u)

#idk how to use tags #so i guess hey there thanks for reading this #and thanks for tagging me pen this was fun to think over

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elfdragon12 · 8 months

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Came across a post (that I don't want to boost) saying "if the Transformers were genderless, they wouldn't use he/him!"

My brother in Christ, both Bob Budiansky (OG creator of many original Transformers concepts, writer of most the US Marvel Transformers comics) and Simon Furman (OG UK Marvel Transformers comic writer) were writing the Transformers as genderless in the late 80s.

Bob Budiansky writing the US Marvel Transformers #53 in 1989 (panel features the Pretenders character Cloudburst and an alien woman):

I don't even have to find panels where Furman writes the Transformers as genderless because he's very loud about how much he hates female identifying Transformers because it "doesn't make sense for robots to have genders" (even though he actively knows that the Transformers are "boy" robots and, by his own logic, his vitriol towards female identifying robots is nonsensical because it's just as reasonable for robots to use she/her pronouns as it is for them to use he/him if they only adopt the concept of gender for their human associates. It's all honestly such a thinly veiled cover for the fact he hates women and has used his position writing for a male dominated franchise to write them as raging harpies whenever he can get away with it. If the Action Force/Transformers summary the TF University podcast gives in episode 109 is to be believed, he even pulls this with Scarlett of GI Joe/Action Force in UK Marvel Transformers #125, Action Force #24-27).

Aside from that, Bob Budiansky originally intended for Ratchet to be a female identifying character.

[This reads "Profile: Ratchet was known as the best tool-and-dye gal on Cybertron. In her work-area bay, she can fashion anything from a pin to a cruise missile and repair most of the Autobots and their specific parts, given the right materials. Her rough language and manners belies the stereotypes associated with her sex and prefers getting skunked on tainted 40-weight to all other leisure activities. "When does the party begin?" is her usual query after she's completed patching up her latest fallen comrade. She's more prone to giving her leader, Optimus Prime, a lot more backtalk than the other Autobots[.]"]

It's all made up and the points don't matter! If the robots do not have genitalia and do not sexually reproduce (which is typically the case, in canon), then they are actually sexless robots who only take on a sense of gender when dealing with other races. In which case, it's a free-for-all and the robots can use whatever pronouns they feel like and it does not matter what writers choose for them.

#Transformers

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fryingpan1234567 · 2 years

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Y’all. Guys. Oh no. I’ve done something bad.

Look, I may have just created the most chaotic Disney crossover idea in the history of time, but if this blows up like the Big 4, I want credit.

So. We’ve got Jack Jack, Lilo, Boo, Hiro, Miguel, Mei, Luca, Alberto, Riley. There are more, and I know that’s a lot, but bear with me.

College AU.

Look, Hiro’s done, but he wanted to stay and teach/ use the lab whenever. Jack Jack’s parents want him to get a good education. Miguel is on tour with his music. Lilo and Boo are best friends, bonding over their monster/ alien dudes. Mei’s after a brilliant education herself. Luca wanted to go to school and Alberto couldn’t say no to him. Riley lives in the area.

They end up at San Fran Sokyo Uni, in the same dorm hallway.

Now, they don’t get along great at first. Riley’s used to living in a compact space, Miguel is used to being surrounded by family = no boundaries, Jack Jack is ADHD as fuck and is also a superhero who keeps getting blood all over the carpets in the middle of the night when he gets home from patrol. Lilo feeds peanut butter sandwiches to fish, for void’s sake.

After some rearranging, though, they get settled. That’s how they all meet.

It’s indescribably chaotic. Mei and Riley live together, their dorm room nice and organized and perfect. For their trustworthiness, Jack Jack lives with them as well (he’s ace dw. Also, he doesn’t tell them he’s a hero at first. That was a shitshow). Their apartment is a mix of hockey and Asian culture. There’s a family shrine in Mei’s room, and there’s a mini goal set up in the corner of the living room. Jack Jack’s stuff is kind of everywhere, but he makes up for it by doing dishes every night XD.

Lilo and Boo live with Stitch and a baby monster that accidentally wandered through their door on a field trip to Monsters Inc. Their apartment is pretty aesthetic but also messy. Even though it’s freezing and frankly nasty, Lilo swims and sometimes surfs in the bay, but she drives out to an actual coast (later with the whole friend group) on weekends. Boo LOVES the aliens and is on Lilo’s deep space podcast, a tribute to Elvis.

Miguel, Hiro, Luca, and Alberto live in an apartment together. Because how bad can a bunch of gay/ bi idiots living in one place be? There’s dirty laundry everywhere. The dishes don’t get done unless Mei happens to come over and yells at them for it. Trash from the fish boys, half-finished projects and scraps from Hiro, and scribbly sheet music from Miguel are everywhere. Baymax makes them take care of themselves tho; it’s fiiine :DD

Extra headcanons (SOMEONE PLEASE ASK ME FOR MORE ON THIS AU I COULD TALK FOREVER):

Not a single one of them is straight

They all become at least some part of a hero team later on- once Hiro and Jack Jack tell them all what’s going on, they either join in or agree to help sometimes

(Mei is a super panda, Lilo and Boo take their warrior pets into battle, fish demons, etc)

Once they’re comfortable enough with each other, they start visiting each other’s homes because they’re so diverse

Hawaii was awesome!! Lilo taught everyone how to surf as Luca and Alberto meet the wildlife below. Nani loves them all, but David’s favorite is Jack Jack

Mei shows them all Chinese-Canadian culture, but mostly the Chinese part lol. They get to meet her gf, Miri, and she takes them to 4town. They hate it, but she seems happy

Riley takes them all skating on the pond in her old backyard. Miguel and the fish boys, who have never been anywhere cold in their lives, are miserable. Really the only one who’s fine is Mei lmao. They all try broccoli pizza, and Luca and Alberto actually like it

Jack Jack’s family make it their life goal while they’re visiting to be as embarrassing as possible. Helen and Bob BOTH have to DRIVE THEM everywhere, Dash doesn’t stop talking about Fortnite for a single fucking second, and Violet actively makes out with Tony on the living room couch. You know who they love? Auntie Edna. Edna gains many more nieces and nephews that trip- she takes a special liking to Hiro, although she does criticize the ineffectiveness of his armor

Italy is warm and full of freaking mermaids and Vespa’s and gelato and it’s fucking awesome. Everyone falls in love with the food (obviously). Giulia just… gets used to adopting strange losers by this point.

Mexico is GREAT. Their trip happened to fall near Día de los Muertos, so guess where Miguel took them!! Maybe it meant stealing from the ofrenda, but… in their defense, they put it back. (Before you ask, yes, Tadashi was there. It’s a personal belief of mine that there are different sections to the Land for different cultures’ afterlives. Like all the gateways go to the same realm, just different parts of it.) Stitch and Dante wrestled the entire time XD

Edit: GUYS OH NO I FORGOT TO ADD VANELLOPE BUT SHE’S INCLUDED

#Coco #big hero six #bh6 #luca #disney #pixar #crossover #lilo and stitch #The incredibles #incredibles #monsters inc #Turning red #inside out

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pbandjesse · 1 year

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Today was a great day. Did I take a 4 hour nap in the middle! Yes. But it was still really great.

We stayed out on the deck until 11 last night hoping to maybe catch the northern lights. But it was just to cloudy. I really wanted James to see them, but they said it's okay. They were basically asleep the last 45 minutes. It was really cold. But I was having fun being out there. The sun didn't fully finish setting until midnight, it was just beautiful.

We got back to the room and fell asleep soon after that. And it was a pretty nice sleep. It was nice to have the ship rocking again.

I woke up and James had left me a message that they were hanging out in the bathroom so they wouldn't bother me. Which I thought was really silly. They would come out and I got dressed and I was ready to go see some glaciers.

We didn't leave the ship today, instead we cruised around glacier bay. And that was just so cool. They brought park rangers on board and they would be on the intercom giving commentary. It was awesome.

We never even went to the observation deck. Instead we went to breakfast. And watched the world from their windows. Surprisingly empty. There were still people but it wasn't as full as James said the observation deck had been when they walked through. Good, I didn't want to be in a mob of people.

After breakfast we decided to go to deck 8 again to the outside couches. This was such a good move. There was only a handful of people in the multiple we spent out there. It was great. The commentary was a little quiet but we could still hear it and it was so fun. James would go back inside to get our blanket and we had our (admittedly bad) binoculars and I was having so much fun. We even saw families of otters! We didn't see whales as much as I thought but the animals we did see were incredible.

Before we got all cuddled up under the awning though we did go to the bow because they had it opened for the first time this trip. It was rainy out, our good weather luck ran out, but we had good coats and layers and we were doing great. Trying to take pictures there didn't work as well and we were just scream laughing and having the best time.

We got back to our couch and kept watching the world. At one point I was leaning on the railing and someone said "oh shit" and dropped their coffee mug from their balcony right above me!! It shattered in the awning and a chip came down next to me!! That could have been really bad!! But I was safe.

Me and James would turn a few chairs to sit on closer to the rails and listened to our podcast while the ship just spun? For an hour we stayed in one spot but continuously turned so everyone could see both of the main glaciers. The one was 26 miles long!! Another was named for Johns Hopkins and is where the baby seals are born. We also learned that because the glaciers are melting under the water constantly sounds like bubbles popping. Which makes is so the whales can't hunt as well, and so the seals thrive in those areas because the whales can't echolocate. Super cool.

It was cold out there though. And once we started moving again in earnest the wind picked up and most people went inside. We lasted a little longer. But by 1045 I was ready to go in.

I realized breakfast was ending and that there is a break in the mela service while they get ready for lunch. And so that probably meant less people, and we could get s good table to post up at and get warm and also save a spot for lunch. This was a great move.

James found us an excellent table with great views. And I would get us some snacks before the food left. And we got drinks and it was perfect. We could hear the commentary better and we just chilled there for an hour. Watching some incredible nature. Learning we are as far from civilization as we have probably ever been in our lives. It was beautiful and dangerous and incredible. Words really can't describe it. Seeing the ice fall into the water, seeing the blue. It felt unreal, otherworldly, but it isnt. It's here and it's real and that's. Wild.

We did eat lunch. And decided to go back outside. But the glare made my eyes hurt and I was just a little tired. So I laid on the couch outside and absolutely fell asleep.

James woke me up after about a half hour and I was so dizzy and tired. I was not having fun for the first time in a week and I was super distressed. James was like that's okay we'll go back to the room. But then housekeeping was cleaning the room so we went to the pool deck to use the bathroom and I was just so dizzy and upset.

But soon we were able to get back in the room. And I slept hard for a few more hours.

I am slightly sad to miss when we left the rangers on the dock. I would have liked to wave at them. But it is okay. James figured out how to make the bridge cam full screen so we can more pretend we have a window. And once I woke up I just watched that for a while. We cuddled and it was nice.

We had some big laughs bumbling around the room getting used to the movement again. And then I got redressed and we came out into the world again.

We went to the game room. Where James did a cross word and I looked through the hunt-a-killer game but we can't online so we can't play that. Ah well. Still fun to read all the notes.

We would wander around the boat for a while. No luck on ducks but we are just enjoying looking. We found another arcade we didn't know existed. And it's just been fun being together. I feel a lot better now.

We are at dinner now. It's all grey out but it's still so beautiful. We had Asian food today, in addition to the grilled cheese, fries, and salad I have had with every meal. I will miss the unlimited grilled cheeses and Arnold palmer's I have been making.

The trip isn't over yet. Tomorrow we have the morning in Ketchikan. I don't know what else we will do. But I hope it's another beautiful day. I do miss home, and it will be a very long day by getting back there on Sunday. But for now I am calm and happy. I hope you all are too.

Goodnight my friends. Until next time.

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cozyaliensuperstar7 · 2 years

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#Repost @theraiderroom

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Recently NFL Network has spotlighted the Raiders President Sandra Douglas Morgan and contributions she’s made towards football in a short amount of time.

Here is what SDM has said about being a woman in the position she’s in.

"Being the first Black woman to lead an NFL franchise is incredibly humbling," Douglass Morgan said. "And just knowing that so many Black women have been involved in sports, and women in general have been involved in sports at different levels in leadership and management – to be able to now be more visible and hopefully giving women and girls more opportunity to think about different career paths they may have."

"I think the best is yet to come. And with this next generation. ... It's commonplace to them to know that women can be in all levels at any sports organization."

As a father of 2 little girls it is nice to see women getting more involved and holding positions of power in the world of sports. I want my daughters to live life knowing they can accomplish any and everything they put their mind to. Thank you @sdmraiders1 for being part of the change and being a great example of what hard work can do.

#WomensHistoryMonth

#Repost @wearepushblack

——

Contrary to popular belief, the Civil Rights movement wasn’t that long ago, and many of the people that fought for us are still alive. Now one of them is fighting to have her “criminal” record cleared.

#goodtrouble #claudettecolvin #rosaparks #PushBlack #BlackHistory

#Repost @eastbay_yesterday

——

Betty Reid Soskin is famous for being “America’s oldest national park ranger” (she retired last year at 100 years old!), but long before her career at @rosietheriveternps she co-founded the Bay Area’s first Black-owned record shop with her husband, Mel. In the 1940s, Reid’s Records was one of the only local sources for blues, jazz, and gospel music. In the post WW2 years, they played a pivotal role in bringing Black musicians to the Bay, including people like Rev. CL Franklin and his teenage daughter… Aretha! Over the years, the Reids faced many challenges -- from being denied bank loans to getting their building bombed by drug dealers! (You can hear those stories in episode 52 of the podcast). In 2019, the shop finally shut down after +75 years in business, but they left behind an amazing legacy… including this 1989 photo of Betty behind the counter, looking superfly in an Adidas track jacket. What a legend! Anyway, I just wanted to share that story, because I wrote an article about new East Bay record stores the other day (see my linktree) and the Betty story didn’t really fit into that piece, but I really want to acknowledge her amazing contributions to the local music scene. #queen #berkeley #womenshistorymonth #bayarea

#women's history 365 #black history 365

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dankusner · 12 days

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HOW JOE ROGAN REMADE AUSTIN

The podcaster and comedian has turned the city into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other “free thinkers” who happen to all think alike.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

It’s a Tuesday night in downtown Austin, and Joe Rogan is pretending to jerk off right in front of my face.

The strangest thing about this situation is that millions of straight American men would kill to switch places with me.

Centimillionaires generally pride themselves on their inaccessibility, but most weeks you can see Rogan live at the Comedy Mothership, which he owns, in exchange for $50 and a two-drink minimum.

About 250 tickets for each “Joe Rogan and Friends” show go on sale every Sunday at 2 p.m. central time, and disappear within seconds.

When you arrive at the Mothership, the staff locks your phone in a bag, which both ensures that you cannot leak footage online and makes you think you’re about to see some really forbidden shit.

You are not.

What you will see is four comedians, plus Rogan himself, with routines that might shock the Amish, the over-80 set, college students, Vox staffers, or John Oliver superfans—but not anyone who, say, went to a comedy club in the 1990s. Of the many recent failures of the American left, one of the greatest is making entry-level battle-of-the-sexes humor seem avant-garde.

(Did you know that women often run relationship decisions past their female friends? Bitches be crazy! That sort of thing.)

As Rogan himself says after he emerges in stonewashed jeans, clutching a glass of something amber on ice:

“Fox News called this an anti-woke comedy club. That’s just a comedy club!”

To underline the point that these jokes can survive outside the safe space of the Mothership, much of the material I saw Rogan perform ended up in his latest Netflix special, which was released in August.

In Austin, the masturbation mimicry happens during a riff about concealing his porn consumption from his wife—“the best person I know,” he says, sweetly.

That routine captures the essence of the Joe Rogan brand:

He is bawdy around his fans, respectful of his wife, loyal to his friends, and indulgent with his golden retriever, who has 900,000 followers on Instagram.

He maintains a self-deprecating sense of humor that’s rare among men who could buy an island if they wanted one.

His politics defy easy categorization—he hates Democratic finger-wagging but supports gay marriage and abortion rights.

(“I’m so far away from being a Republican,” he said on a podcast in 2022.)

He voted for a third-party candidate in 2020, and in early August expressed his admiration for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former guest on The Joe Rogan Experience.

He also wonders if President Biden might have been replaced by a body double.

(Does he have any evidence? Sure, the guy looks taller now.)

He sees himself as an outsider, nontribal, just an average Joe.

The best way to think of him, one of my friends told me, is as if “Homer Simpson got swole.”

Another way to think of him: as perhaps the single most influential person in the United States.

His YouTube channel has 17 million subscribers.

His podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which launched in 2009, has held the top spot on the Spotify charts consistently for the past five years; he records two or three episodes a week, each running to several hours.

The former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, whose campaign for universal basic income went viral after a Rogan appearance five years ago, calls him “the male Oprah.”

Rogan now lives in Austin, which has recently become known for its transformation from chilled-out live-music paradise to a miniature version of the Bay Area—similarly full of tech workers, but with fewer IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE … signs.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the Texas capital saw the biggest net gain of remote employees of any major city in America; its downtown is now filled with cranes and new skyscrapers.

It is also the center of the Roganverse, an intellectual firmament of manosphere influencers, productivity optimizers, stand-ups, and male-wellness gurus.

Austin is at the nexus of a Venn diagram of “has culture,” “has gun ranges,” “has low taxes,” and “has kombucha.”

The science and technology writer Tim Urban, who runs the popular Wait but Why website, told me that he moved to Austin from New York City because “I would have the experience of talking to someone I respect—some writer friend of mine, or someone who’s in a similar kind of career—and I would think, Oh, you’re in Austin too.”

The city attracts people with a distinct set of political positions that don’t exactly line up with either main party.

They might be religious but are equally likely to be “spiritual.”

They shoot guns but worry about seed oils.

They are relaxed about gay people but often traditional about gender.

They dabble with psychedelic drugs but worry about drinking caffeine first thing in the morning.

Their numbers might be relatively small in electoral terms, but they transmit their values to the rest of America through podcasts, YouTube, and other platforms largely outside the view of mainstream media.

Go to a cocktail mixer, an ayahuasca party, or a Brazilian-jiu-jitsu gym here and you might run into Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek; or the podcasters Lex Fridman, Chris Williamson, Ryan Holiday, Michael Malice, or Aubrey Marcus.

Elon Musk is so keen to get people to move to Texas that he is planning an entire community outside Austin called Snailbrook for workers at his Tesla Gigafactory and the Boring Company.

(In case you’re wondering: Yes, every one of these men has been on Rogan’s podcast.)

“It’s amazing that the arrival of one person could change a whole town, but it does feel like Rogan did that,” the journalist Sarah Hepola, who started her career at The Austin Chronicle, told me.

“It’s a lot like the dot-com invasion of the ’90s, like something that happened to the town.”

Your guide to today's biggest stories, boldest ideas, and best in culture.

From the April 2024 issue: Is Kara Swisher tearing down tech billionaires—or burnishing their legends?

Rogan and his fans are often called “heterodox,” which is funny, because this group has converged on a set of shared opinions, creating what you might call a heterodox orthodoxy: Diversity-and-inclusion initiatives mean that identity counts more than merit; COVID rules were too strict; the pandemic probably started with a lab leak in China; the January 6 insurrection was not as bad as liberals claim; gender medicine for children is out of control; the legacy media are scolding and biased; and so on.

The heterodox sphere has low trust in institutions—the press, academia, the CDC—and prefers to listen to individuals.

The Roganverse neatly caters to this audience because it is, in essence, a giant talk-show circuit: Go on The Joe Rogan Experience, and you can book another half dozen appearances on other shows to talk about what you said there.

I wanted to ask Rogan about all this: about the world that has coalesced around him, about the intellectual culture that he is exporting from Austin, about what his appeal might mean for November’s election.

Past research by the marketing firm Morning Consult suggests that his fans are mostly male, predominantly white but a quarter Hispanic, and right-leaning but not locked in for Donald Trump.

In other words, he has a nationwide base that both major parties would be delighted to win over—and that Kennedy was clearly desperate to recruit.

But one does not interview Joe Rogan.

No human in history has needed publicity less, and he routinely turns down requests, including mine.

So that’s how I ended up in the front row at the Comedy Mothership, cheerfully observing the two-drink minimum with the $8 canned water Liquid Death, face-to-groin with the male Oprah.

In May 2020, a couple of months into the pandemic, Rogan—then living in Los Angeles—visited Austin.

“I went to a restaurant with my kids and they were like, ‘We don’t have to wear a mask?’ ” he recalled three years later. “Two months later, I lived here.”

He bought an eight-bedroom house for $14.4 million just to the east of the city, backing onto Lake Austin.

Barely half an hour from the congested traffic of downtown, Rogan’s house is set among scrubby hills, behind a gated driveway on a dead-end road.

Although Rogan’s ability to make headlines blew up during the pandemic, he has been famous for a long time.

He was in the cast of the ’90s sitcom NewsRadio and hosted NBC’s reality show Fear Factor, while building a parallel career as a mixed-martial-arts commentator.

Follow his Instagram, and his tastes soon become apparent: energy drinks, killing wild animals, badly lit steaks, migraine-inducing AI graphics, dad-rock playlists, and shooting the breeze with his buddies.

The last of these has been greatly helped by the opening of the Comedy Mothership, in March 2023.

The newest star here is Tony Hinchcliffe, who in April took part in Netflix’s gleefully offensive roast of Tom Brady and was featured on a Variety cover.

The latter was a sign of a mood shift, given that he has never apologized for using an anti-Chinese slur onstage in 2021 to describe a fellow comic.

Hinchcliffe hosts his own podcast, Kill Tony, which is now recorded at the Mothership, and he has helped set the tone for Austin’s new comedy scene.

“There is no victim mentality whatsoever in Texas,” Hinchcliffe told Variety, adding, “It’s a different little island that we’ve created.”

He was on the bill both nights I went to the Mothership, and wore a huge belt buckle with TONY HINCHCLIFFE written on it—presumably for situations in which he is both taking off his trousers and unable to remember who he is.

He has very white teeth and a predatory grin, and he throws out jokes that double as tests:

Can you handle this, wimp?

On the first night, Rogan was also accompanied by Shane Gillis, a puppy dog of a comedian.

In 2019, Gillis was hired as a Saturday Night Live cast member and then fired four days later, after it was reported that he’d previously used an anti-Asian slur in a bit on his podcast and once described the director Judd Apatow as “gayer than ISIS.”

Gillis apologized, lay low for a while, and built what is now the biggest podcast on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.

He then self-financed his own comedy special, Live in Austin, which has 30 million views on YouTube—and promoted it with an appearance on The JRE.

(Gillis has since been on Rogan’s show more than a dozen times.)

His continued appeal thus demonstrated, Gillis returned to SNL as a host in February.

Rogan’s support of Gillis demonstrates why members of his inner circle are so loyal to him.

Not only has Rogan personally boosted their careers on his podcast and in his club, but his popularity has forced the comedy industry to recalibrate its tolerance for offense.

The best marketing slogan in American history has to be “People don’t want you to hear this, but …” What fans love about Rogan is the same thing his critics hate: an untamable curiosity that makes him open to plainly marginal ideas.

One guest tells him that black holes are awesome.

A second tells him that the periodic table needs to be updated because carbon has a “bisexual tone.”

A third tells him that a deworming drug could wipe out COVID.

He approaches all of them—tenured professors, harmless crackpots, peddlers of pseudoscience—with the same stoner wonderment.

The liberal case against Rogan usually references one of two culture-war flash points: COVID and gender. Media Matters for America, a progressive journalism-watchdog organization, has accused Rogan and his guests of using his podcast to “promote conspiracy theorists and push anti-trans rhetoric.”

In March 2013, the mixed martial artist Fallon Fox knocked out an opponent in 39 seconds and afterward revealed that she had been born male. A few days later, in an eight-minute riff on The JRE, Rogan said he was happy to call Fox “her,” but didn’t think she should compete against biological females. “I say if you had a dick at one point in time, you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick,” he added. Rogan’s choice of language aside, this was a claim that most Americans would deem uncontroversial: In general, biological males are physically stronger and faster than biological females. His comments prompted a media backlash, because he had violated an emerging consensus on the institutional left that trans women could compete fairly in women’s sports and that sex differences were overstated.

Read: Helen Lewis on Trump’s red-pill podcast tour “Free health care—yes!” Rogan tells his audiences these days onstage in Austin, riffing on the political demands of the left. “Education for all—right on! … Men can get pregnant—fuck! I didn’t realize it was a package deal.”

During the pandemic, The JRE also drew audience members who were frustrated with the limits of acceptable discussion, at a time when Facebook and YouTube were banning or restricting what they labeled misinformation. Rogan didn’t accept the proposition that Americans should shut up and listen to mainstream experts, and that led to him hosting vaccine denialists and conspiracists, and promoting an unproven deworming drug as a treatment for COVID. True, he has a fact-checker—his producer Jamie Vernon, known to fans as Young Jamie, or “Pull That Up, Jamie,” after Rogan’s frequent instruction to him. But correcting what Rogan and his guests say about multiple conflicting studies during a live podcast is impossible. And to give you an idea of Vernon’s place in the hierarchy, he also makes Rogan coffee.

During the pandemic, the decision to host cranks such as Robert Malone—a researcher who claimed to have invented mRNA technology but sought to cast doubt on vaccines that employ it—resulted in a critical open letter signed by hundreds of health experts, a warning label from Spotify, and a gentle rebuke from the White House press secretary. However, Rogan also gave voice to those who felt that some COVID policies, such as outdoor masking and long-running school closures, were unsupported by evidence. A phrase that you will find throughout the right-wing and heterodox media ecosystems is noble lie. This refers to the fact that Anthony Fauci initially told regular people not to wear masks in part because he was worried about supply shortages for doctors and nurses, but it has come to stand in for the wider accusation that public-health experts did not trust Americans with complex data during the pandemic, and instead simply told them what to do.

You don’t have to look far in Austin to find the caucus of disaffected liberals that Rogan represents. On my second night at the Mothership, the ushers parked me next to Stephan, a house renovator whose business was booming thanks to all the rich newcomers to the city. He had left San Diego during the pandemic, he told me, because “they caution-taped the whole coastline.” A few days earlier, I had met another of these “leftugees,” as one transplant jokingly nicknamed them, over coffee at Russell’s Bakery. The writer Alana Joblin Ain is a rabbi’s wife and a lifelong Democrat who before the pandemic lived happily in New York City and then San Francisco. In the summer of 2020, though, her children’s public school announced that it would remain closed into a second academic year, making her worry about the effect on their social skills and academic progress. She moved her son and daughter to a private school nearby—but on the penultimate day of the summer term in 2021, the head of school announced plans to convert its main bathrooms to gender-neutral ones, in part to help “kindergartners who [are] non-binary” and “kindergartners who are trans.”

When Ain questioned the policy—suggesting instead that some gender-neutral bathrooms should be provided alongside the existing girls’ and boys’ bathrooms—she was ostracized, she said. One father told her that her “wanting a space I feel more comfortable in, that’s a female space, reminded him of segregationists.” The dispute reminded her of other ways she’d felt alienated from the left. While helping her husband tend to his congregation, she had seen marital strife, substance abuse, suicide attempts, and other harms that she attributed to prolonged lockdowns.

And so she made the same journey that Rogan did, leaving California for Texas in 2022. She now runs an off-the-record discussion group called Moontower Verses, which meets in person to discuss culture-war topics. She doesn’t know how she will vote in November. Her experience echoes that of other Rogan fans on the coasts, for whom the pandemic brought the realization that their values differed from those around them; at the time, the persistence of masking was a visible symbol of that difference. “It’s the Democrats’ MAGA hat,” Rogan told a guest in November 2022. “They’re letting you know, I’m on the good team.” Move to Texas, went the promise, and you won’t have to see that anymore.

Read: Joe Rogan’s show may be dumb. But is it actually deadly? A sense of left-wing overreach also drove the creation of the new University of Austin, or UATX. (The school’s website once boasted about Austin, “If it’s good enough for Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, it’s good enough for us.”) The announcement of the university’s launch in 2021 attracted immediate mockery, with The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones describing it as “Trump University at Austin,” after the former president’s scam-bucket operation.

That was unfair: UATX is run by serious academics, and has raised enough money to give free tuition to its entire founding class of 100. It has, however, leaned into the Roganite philosophy that people must tolerate wacko ideas in order to hear intriguingly heretical ones. In 2022, UATX offered a first taste of its politics when it ran a summer school, called Forbidden Courses, in Dallas. The speakers included UATX co-founder Bari Weiss (canceled by haters on Slack and Twitter), Peter Boghossian (canceled by Portland State University), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (canceled by a literal fatwa), Kathleen Stock (canceled by the University of Sussex), and my fellow Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton Williams (inexplicably not canceled). When I visited the UATX offices, in an Art Deco building in downtown Austin, the provost, Jacob Howland, told me that he wanted “to get the politics out of the classroom,” and that faculty members will have succeeded if the students can’t guess how they vote from what they say in class.

Just as in Rogan’s comedy club, smartphones are banned in class—“so that students can’t be distracted by them, or, for example, record other students and tell the world, ‘Oh, you know, this student had this opinion, and it’s unacceptable, and I’m putting it out there on TikTok.’ ”

Many on the left, however, suspect that heterodox just means “right-wing and in denial.” An attendee at last year’s Forbidden Courses sent me a slide showing survey results about the students’ political leanings: Out of 29 respondents, 19 identified as conservative. One major UATX donor is Harlan Crow, the billionaire who has bankrolled Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s lifestyle for years; he sat in the back of some 2023 summer-school lectures. Another is the Austin-based venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel and others. He recently gave $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.

“We really are open to all comers,” Howland told me. He wondered whether some people on the left simply didn’t want to hear any debate.

The Joe Rogan coalition may indeed represent a real strand in American intellectual and political life—a normie suspicion of both MAGA hats and eternal masking, mixed with tolerance for kooky ideas. But it is fracturing.

“Anti-wokeness” once encompassed everyone who could agree that Drew Barrymore’s talk show was annoying, that some left-wing activists on TikTok were out of control, and that corporations were largely banging on about diversity to sell more products rather than out of a genuine commitment to human flourishing. Underneath those headline beliefs, however, were two distinct groups: disaffected liberals and actual conservatives, bound together by a common enemy. “Some of the people who seemed like my comrades on Twitter a while back,” Tim Urban told me, “I start to see some of them say stuff like ‘See, you start with gay marriage, and now you’ve got drag queens in this kindergarten class.’ And, well, hold on a second.”

Today, fractures are obvious across the wider anti-woke movement—and they must be serious, because people have started podcasting about them. Watching Rogan’s stand-up set, I realized that much of his culture-war material was now three or four years old; his podcast is one of the only places I still hear COVID mentioned, as Rogan relitigates the criticism he received during the pandemic. There’s a real tension in the Roganverse between the stated desire to escape polarization and the appeal of living in an endless 2020, when the sharp definition of the opposing sides yielded growing audiences and made unlikely political alliances possible.

Those contradictory impulses are evident in Austin. Jon Stokes, a co-founder of the AI company Symbolic, described the city to me as the “DMZ of the culture wars,” while the podcaster David Perell put it like this: “Moving to Austin is the geographical equivalent of saying ‘I don’t read the news anymore.’ ”

Helen Lewis: What’s genuinely weird about the online right But national politics inevitably intrude. In front of the Texas capitol one sunny day, I found myself surrounded by a sea of pink and blue—a Christian rally against the “grooming” of children by LGBTQ activists through sex education in schools. A speaker was telling the crowd about a concealed, well-funded agenda centered on “the dismemberment of the heart and soul of your children.”

These are not Rogan’s politics. But relentless criticism from the left has pushed him and his fellow travelers closer to people who talk like this. Look at Elon Musk, who has developed an obsession with defeating the “woke mind virus” and an addiction to posting about his grievances.

At its worst, The Joe Rogan Experience is one of America’s top venues for rich and powerful people to complain about being publicly contradicted, and Rogan’s own feelings of kinship with the canceled mean that he has repeatedly hosted guests whose views are recklessly extreme.

This unwise loyalty is most evident in his friendship with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In 2022, the Infowars founder was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting; his speculation that they were actors had led to a massive harassment campaign against them. At the trial, one father told the court that conspiracy theorists emboldened by Jones had claimed to have urinated on his 7-year-old son’s grave and threatened to dig up his body.

During his stand-up set, Rogan said that Jones was right about the existence of “false flags”—events staged by the government or provocateurs to discredit a cause. Then he whispered to himself that Jones had gotten “one thing wrong.” He had gotten a lot of things right too, Rogan said at normal volume. Then his voice dropped again: “It was a pretty big thing, though.”

Rogan’s sympathetic treatment of his friend demonstrates why power is better mediated through institutions than wielded by individuals: It’s too easy to be sympathetic to a man sitting in front of you, whom you know as a complete person, rather than to his distant, unseen victims. Also, it’s good to be open-minded, but not so much that your brain falls out.

If Rogan is the male Oprah, he is also the human embodiment of America’s vexed relationship with free speech: a complex tangle of arguments and conspiracy theories all boiled down into one short, swole man who likes to wear a fanny pack. Rogan is a guy who started a podcast in 2009 to smoke weed with his fellow comics and talk about martial arts—and who, like many Americans, has taken part in a great geographical sorting, moving to be closer to people whose values he shares. He speaks to people who feel silenced, both elite and normie, even as he’s turned the very idea that opinions like his are being “silenced” into a joke in itself. As I walked into the Comedy Mothership, I saw a sign on the wall. It read HECKLERS WILL BE ALIENATED.

This article appears in the October 2024 print edition with the headline “You Think You’re So Heterodox.”

It has been updated to reflect that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his 2024 presidential campaign after the issue went to press.

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pooma-un-women · 30 days

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INNOVATE! INNOVATION IS THE KEY TO CHANGE THE WORLD!!

What exactly does it mean to innovate in education? Innovation is described as "the process of making changes to something established by introducing something new." It's applicable to "…radical or incremental changes to products, processes or services." Over time, numerous changes have occurred in the way education is structured and delivered in various parts of the world. What is the significance of innovation in education and development?

Innovation is described as "the process of making changes to something established by introducing something new." This includes "…radical or incremental changes to products, processes or services." Over time, numerous changes have occurred in the way education is structured and delivered in various parts of the world.

Today, technology is the main driver of change and sometimes plays a key role in innovation in design and delivery of knowledge. With the advancement of today's technology and the implementation of new educational programs, there are many opportunities for extensive and comprehensive changes. The challenge is to ensure that innovation plays a role in improving educational opportunities for the billions of unemployed people in the rapidly developing world..

The next scenario is to show the impact of technology on education. This situation may not reflect the best use of innovation and technology. However, this shows the relationship between technology and innovation in education:.

How can innovation and technology offset the barriers of access and mobility that has been a deterrent to education in many parts of the developing world?

With the advent of smart phones, e-readers, podcasts and vocoders, the Internet and affordable computers, as well as solar energy, cell phone access and other technologies, there is an opportunity to provide education to help individuals and communities. in areas where traditional educational institutions have not done much. Technologies and other innovations enable the design and delivery of instruction to adapt to the needs and environment of students engaged in open and distance learning (ODL) and traditional education programs. Therefore, technology can also help programs to change to a "student" approach to education..

A new school (renovation of an existing school or a new school) is a public school in the area that can be established by many applicants, can increase independence and flexibility to six sections (curriculum, budget, program and calendar) . , staff, professional development and local....

A new school (renovation of an existing school or a new school) is a public school in the area that can be established by many applicants, can increase independence and flexibility to six areas (curriculum, budget, program and calendar. , personnel, professional development and local policies) are approved by the local school committee..

In exchange for increased ownership, power and authority to build and operate the Reform School, qualified entities will be held accountable for improving student learning and performance. school on measurable goals. The two goals of establishing these schools are to promote state innovation and increase student access to the best educational opportunities.

(Dr. Jemi Sudhakar, Principal, Velammal Vidhyashram, Somangalam)

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ear-worthy · 2 months

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Great Pods: A Valuable Resource For Podcast Recommendations

This article is about one of the best podcast recommendation sites available to podcast fans. Now, Ear Worthy is a podcast review and recommendation publication? Why would I write an article about a competitor?

This article recommends Great Pods — a podcast recommendation site. You can read it on Substack and become a subscriber or bookmark its website.

Great Pods explains its business case as follows: “Finding podcast recommendations can be difficult. Great Pods is making it easier with one Critic review at a time.”

Great Pods features weekly podcast recommendations from:

Critic Reviews and Ratings

Occasional Top Lists from various publications

Our journey as a podcast resource startup

Podcasts w/ reviews that were just added to the site

Coming Soon trailers

Captain Ron, the owner/manager of Great Pods, notes: “We are a team with over ten years of experience in the audio/podcast industry. Our ecosystem includes this newsletter and greatpods.co (if you don’t want to wait for the newsletter recs!)! We encourage you to take a look. Send us feedback and suggestions.”

He explains: “It’s a call back to the 1992 eponymous movie — Captain Ron — with Kurt Russell. Funny enough, I finally watched the cult classic in 2023 for my birthday. It’s been my karaoke name for a while.”

We asked Captain Ron about his earliest involvement in podcasts.

“It all started with KROQ radio in L.A., which created the Kevin & Bean morning shows into podcasts. I was excited that I could be anywhere and not have to be in LA to get the show. Around 2010, I went hands-on with my Bollywood and Bhangra college radio show at KUCI (UC Irvine) and started podcasting my live show for later consumption on MixCloud.”

Captain Ron continues: “Thus, the journey began. Regardless of how many books, podcasts, articles, or people you get educated with along the way, when you finally jump on the startup entrepreneurial journey, it is scary, exciting, and unknown territory for your heart and mind.”

When I asked Captain Ron about his background, he responded: “I was born and raised in LA County, went to USC (University of Southern of California) for undergrad. I was always interested and passionate about the intersection of entertainment, media, and tech.”

“During my college radio stint at KUCI, I landed a job at TuneIn Radio in the Bay Area in the early 2010s. I got a chance to be an early employee, saw the infectious nature of a startup, and learned all things media tech. I spent eight years there before working at Himalaya Podcasts for a short time. Because the pandemic started, I eventually moved back home to LA and started Great Pods, which I continue to work on.”

He explains: “I had this itch to scratch. I wanted to do new, innovative things in my later years at TuneIn. It seemed like some part of the startup was lost, and so I went to Himalaya podcasts. During my break between TuneIn and Himalaya, it was my engineering friend who started asking questions about problems I was having that got ME to ask more questions about the problems.”

“Those questions finally led to: Why was it hard to decide and discover what podcasts to listen to? Not only me, but others were feeling the pain point of ‘What should I listen to?’ Then there was the question of what other industries I like currently do. Well, I like TV and movie reviews. I like Rotten Tomatoes as a media reviews aggregator. Did the Siskel & Ebert’s of the movie industry exist in the podcast space? That’s when I went looking for answers and ultimately looked to solve my own problem and make it a solution for all.”

Podcast discoverability is difficult by avid listeners for two basic reasons. First, there are thousands of podcasts to discover that remain unknown. Second, the sheer number of podcasts precludes any shared repository, although the Apple ecosystem may come closest to a unified and organized roadmap. That’s why services such as Great Pods, Bingeworthy, Into The Podverse, and EarBuds Podcast Collective offer free GPS settings to the best podcasts in each genre and some categories you may have never heard of. Did you know there is a podcast by a comedian who interviews people about the worst gifts they’ve ever received? What genre is that? Comedy? Regifting?

When I asked Captain Ron, his personal favorite genre categories of podcasts, he answered: “True Crime Scams, Fiction (Sci-Fi to Drama), Comedy from Comedians (They are more seasoned for microphone entertainment), Business-Tech (since I’m building this website), and emotional podcasts. The emo podcasts surprise me with how well they are made. It’s happy-sad emotional deep dives like Dying For Sex, Where are you going? Bitter/Sweet that just feels raw and real. However, I jump around a lot since I am listening to a wide variety of podcasts each week for curation.”

Then I asked Captain Ron my most cliché question, and he hit it out of the park. “If you were going to be trapped on a desert island for one year, what three podcasts would you take with you to listen?”

Captain Ron: “This may change next year, but at the moment of writing this:”

Network: Tosh Show (Comedy) https://greatpods.co/podcast/tosh-show

Wiser Than Me w/ Julia Louis Dreyfus (Insightful elders) https://greatpods.co/podcast/wiser-than-me-with-julia-louis-dreyfus

And give me any journalist, Alex Monstrous investigation true-crime podcasts from Tortoise Media like Sweet Bobby https://greatpods.co/podcast/sweet-bobby

Honorable mention: TBOY (The Best One Yet) Daily business news podcasts that are full of energy. https://greatpods.co/podcast/the-best-one-yet

Indie: Bitter/Sweet (Food-Society) https://greatpods.co/podcast/bitter-sweet

Podcast But Outside (Comedy) https://greatpods.co/podcast/podcast-but-outside

Culture Kids Podcast (Kids & Family) https://greatpods.co/podcast/culture-kids-podcast

Check out Great Pods to find ear-worthy and eye-catching podcasts. The Society of Podcasting Neurologists has classified Great Pods as an emotional support website and a brain-boosting website.

#podcast #podcasting #reviews

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