#but it kind of adds to the early 2010s period piece of it all

[zimms]

i love this comic with all my heart and usually you can't tell it started in 2013, but these two frames are Very telling

[anbroids]

as homestuck gets older and becomes more and more of a period piece i think it’s really interesting to see how continuations and fanworks take different approaches to maintaining that or not.

and i don’t want to outright say one is superior to the other. i think if you can find ways to introduce aspects of more contemporary pop culture or politics or technology into homestuck as a framework and still make it an interesting intentional choice then that’s a big achievement and not something to be scoffed at just by virtue of it being divergent from homestuck proper.

i think in a lot of ways it can keep it fresh and add a layer of relatability to the fans that grew up on it. after all, i think hussie was intending to make (or perhaps just coincidentally happened to make) homestuck relatable to his particular demographic of young adults on the internet in the late 2000s / early 2010s. i think rereading homestuck in my 20s really solidified this to me that homestuck was not intended to be a story about kids for kids but rather a story for adults about childhood and growing up. it’s funny that it wasn’t more obvious to me back then, or maybe i did pick up on it but i just didn’t really think about it all that much? because it’s so obvious. there’s so much 80s and 90s kid nostalgia in it and the tropes that the characters portray were already outdated or at least didn’t even really exist like they used to by 2009. and in many ways the characters themselves outgrow their own tropes and then later acknowledge it in the work itself both as time progresses and the narrative develops into something more complex and the characters become increasingly multi-dimensional.

i guess it’s just an interesting question to me. is having content in a story that will indefinitely age the work a “good” or “bad” choice? and several years down the line, will we be able to tell what choices were intentionally made so that it would one day be reflective of the state of technology / political landscape / pop culture at the time?

artists who set out to make their work as timeless as possible do kind of miss out on the opportunity to be a time capsule later on. or just generally representative of the climate it was created in, which is something that i think a lot of us can both appreciate but also find pretty unsavory about homestuck proper (cough dancestors cough) but then can i really say i wish those unsavory parts of homestuck didn’t exist? idk. they aren’t fun to read but i like that they make me think critically about the flaws of that particular part of internet history.

politics aside i think the fact that there’s a homestuck panel that incorporates vine is so cool. because it sort of inadvertently swallowed up a piece of internet history that would come to disappear into its already massive time capsule of media and pop culture and hussie didn’t even know. it’s just cool to me idk.

at the same time i think younger artists and writers that really prioritize keeping homestuck grounded in its era of internet and even going so far as to honor the nostalgia of an older generation is something i really admire and appreciate. and this is something that is becoming more common as homestuck ages (and becomes more of a period piece etc etc). i often find myself at a crossroads between exploring contemporary elements in my work and trying to emulate homestuck’s original tone and time period for the sake of preserving that integrity. like man. i could go on about this for such a long time because i feel like it’s just a really interesting discussion to see what we weigh as a meaningful divergence and refreshing change from homestuck proper vs what compromises the (for lack of better phrasing lol) “feels like homestuck” factor.

i think the discussions about sexuality and gender identity towards the end of comic and then further in the epilogues is an obvious example of this. hussie didn’t necessarily shy away from nuances of gender and sexuality but he didn’t really address them outright with labels either for the majority of homestuck proper until the end when other writers got involved. in early act 6 dirk is explicitly stated as gay (insert disney diversity win meme blah blah blah) but the character himself, which i feel like is an interesting reflection of hussie and homestuck’s general feelings about the topic of identity and labels (if i may speculate lmao), considers the act of labeling his sexuality as sort of this out of date, irrelevant thing in the grand scheme of things. whether that be in reference to who he is or what’s going on in the comic or a more metanarrative choice of hussie’s. some people interpret this to be a kind of admission of shame or maybe dirk just being pretentious but i personally interpret this as hussie kind of just being like. i don’t really want to spend too much time Talking about characters being gay i just want them to exist in the story and Be Gay. similarly to how the trolls don’t have a concept of sexuality in the same way the human characters do. it gives hussie an opportunity to have characters do Objectively gay things, from the reader’s perspective, without having to spell out their relationships to their own sexualities by real societal standards in the work itself when he was clearly more interested and comfortable talking about the trolls’ relationships to their fictional societal ones. and i think as a writer i find that pretty fair. (and yeah yeah i know another aspect of dirk’s whole deal is that he’s from the future so of course he would say that / the trolls are from another planet and all of this is in comedic foil to john i am not a homosexual egbert as the protagonist but i digress. idk i’m really only speculating here and maybe projecting lol)

bc tbh i also kind of shudder at the thought of writing gay characters who are always expected to spell out their identities to the audience when i’d rather just have them Do Actual Gay Things. (using gay as an umbrella term for lgbt+ yada yada). personally i’d rather have a scene where a character binds their chest to reveal an aspect of their gender presentation rather than feel obligated to spell out their relationship to their identity in words and explicit labels and also describe exactly how they Feel About All That. not because i want to cop out on representation and have their identities be totally open to interpretation necessarily, but more-so because i think it becomes exhausting sometimes as a gay person myself to have to keep acknowledging a character’s State of Differentness as obviously as possible every time i put a gay person in a piece of art.

not that i don’t find narratives that exclusively or heavily talk about and center themselves around identity and being in a State of Differentness in very outright ways important. to me that’s something very different and meaningful in completely different ways that can’t be accurately compared here. there are plenty of homestuck fanworks that make discussions of gender and identity a large priority that i think are extremely meaningful and one of the biggest reasons why i came back to homestuck after all these years and still really love the community of artists and writers that engage with it in this way. i think it’s an extremely wonderful thing, especially because with the homestuck community so niche, it really feels like a group of people spreading art that is, by a large majority, by gay people and for gay people. but in narratives that are not specifically centered around that, or has not centered themselves about that previously (like homestuck several acts into the comic) i can totally see how it comes across as off-putting. i think sometimes there’s a slippery slope with bigger projects with a large audience where the existence of gay characters in the work start to read as teaching tools for non-[insert identity here] or virtue signaling. i.e. it stops feeling like media that the reader can identity with as a gay person and more like media that is trying to represent gayness “accurately and positively” for a straight reader (or perhaps a gay reader who is completely new to their identity and appreciate this kind of easy-to-swallow and comfortable introduction). i find that in cases like this, the “representation” more often than not falls into the pitfall of being extremely generalized and sterilized or even stereotypical. which is a whole conversation in itself. bc when an identity is always easy to digest and understand, it risks reducing this character to the identity itself. water is wet i guess lol. idk it’s just a tricky balance. but definitely something i think about a lot when i’m engaging with contemporary homestuck fanwork.

long aside but. all of this to say. i just find it interesting to see how homestuck, as a kind of specific multimedia form of art and storytelling online that seemed to set a new precedent for the webcomic format at large, has taken on a genre of its own like any piece of art does that is unique and off the beaten path in its execution. idk it just makes me think of art history in general. like it’s fascinating to me to see something like homestuck which was once very new and fresh to me become a piece of art that has aged enough to open discussion about approaching the framework of homestuck in either a traditional or contemporary way. as a continuation or a fanwork or an homage. i guess the only point i’m trying to make here is that i don’t think one is better than the other and there’s something i appreciate about both.

i feel like i’m kind of avoiding the elephant in the room here which is that there’s a lot of discussion going on right now about maintaining consistency with homestuck proper in the current continuation with homestuck2 and that’s sort of a whole other can of worms i don’t really want to get into. but i would like to acknowledge how interesting it is that these discussions really obviously highlight how fast memes get “stale” nowadays in the current state of social media and everything seems to exist in a perpetual state of blink-and-you-miss-it virality. i really sympathize with the homestuck2 team who i’m sure are feeling a huge amount of pressure to strike a balance between making something refreshing / relatable to the current homestuck audience and also maintaining the “feels like homestuck” factor. all the while attempting to fulfill as many reader wishes as possible within reason. (not to mention the standard of “reason” being extremely subjective) it’s not an easy thing to do and definitely a hugely different creative process than the one hussie went through during early homestuck days. each with their own complicated hoops to jump through in terms of Making Art People Will Engage With.

[flufffysocks]

let's talk about andi mack's worldbuilding

sorry this took forever to make! i've been pretty busy with school stuff and i kind of lost my inspiration for a bit, but i ultimately really enjoyed writing it! i wish i could've included more pics (tumblr has a max of 10 per post), and it kinda turned from less of a mini analysis to more of an extremely long rant... but i hope it's still a fun read!

i've been rewatching the show over the past few weeks (thanks again to @disneymack for the link!), and i’ve been noticing a lot that i never did the first time around. this is really the first time i’ve watched the show from start to finish since it aired, and it honestly feels so different this time - probably a combination of the fact that i’m not as focused on plot and can appreciate the show as a whole, and also that the fandom is much, much smaller now, so there’s a lot less noise. so the way i’m consuming this show feels super different than it did the first time, but the show itself doesn’t - it’s just as warm and comforting to me as it was the first time around, if not more so.

i think a lot of that can be attributed to andi mack’s “worldbuilding”. i’m not quite sure that this is the right word in this context, to be honest, because i mostly see it used in reference to fantasy and sci-fi universes, but it just sort of feels right to me for andi mack, because you can really tell how much love and care went into constructing this universe. for clarity, worldbuilding is “the process of creating an imaginary world” in its simplest sense. there’s two main types: hard worldbuilding, which involves inventing entire universes, languages, people, cultures, places, foods, etc. from scratch (think “lord of the rings” or “dune”), and soft worldbuilding, in which the creators don’t explicitly state or explain much about the fictional universe, but rather let it’s nature reveal itself as the story progresses (think studio ghibli films). andi mack to me falls in the soft worldbuilding category. even though it takes place in a realistic fiction universe, there’s a lot of aspects to it that are inexplicably novel in really subtle ways.

so watching the show now, i’ve noticed that the worldbuilding comes primarily from two things - setting and props, and oftentimes the both of them in tandem (because a big part of setting in filmmaking does depend on the props placed in it!).

one of the most obvious examples is the spoon. it really is a sort of quintessential, tropic setting in that it's the main gang's "spot", which automatically gives it a warm and homey feel to it. and its set design only amplifies this:

the choice to make it a very traditional 50s-style diner creates a very nostalgic, retro feel to it, which is something that's really consistent throughout the show, as you'll see. from the round stools at the bar, to the booths, to the staff uniforms, this is very obvious. the thing that i found especially interesting about it though is the choice of color. the typical 50s diner is outfitted with metallic surfaces and red accented furnishings, but the spoon is very distinctly not this.

instead, it's dressed in vibrant teal and orange, giving it a very fresh and modern take on a classic look. so it still maintains that feeling of being funky and retro, but that doesn't retract from the fact that the show is set distinctly in modern times.

of course, this could just be a one-off quirky set piece, but this idea of modernizing and novelizing "retro" things is a really common motif throughout the show. take red rooster records. i mean, it's a record shop - need i say more? it's obviously a very prominent store in shadyside, at least for the main characters, but there's no apparent reason why it is (until season 2 when bowie starts working there, and jonah starts performing there). a lot of the time, though, it functions solely as a record shop. vinyl obviously isn't the most practical or convenient way of listening to music, but it's had its resurgence in pop culture even in the real world, mostly due to its aesthetic value, so it's safe to say that it serves the same purpose in the andi mack universe.

the fringe seems to be nostalgic of a different era, specifically the Y2K/early 2000s period (because it's meant to be bex's territory and symbolic of who she used to be, and its later transformation into cloud 10 is representative of her character arc, but that's beside the point). to be honest, exactly what this store was supposed to be always confused me. it was kind of a combination party store/clothing store/makeup store/beauty parlor? i think that's sort of the point of it though, it's supposed to feel very grunge-y and chaotic (within the confines of a relatively mellow-toned show, of course), and it's supposed to act as a sort of treasure chest of little curios that both make the place interesting and allow the characters to interact with it.

and, of course, there's andi shack. this is really the cherry on top of all of andi mack's sets, just because it's so distinctly andi. it serves such amazing narrative purpose for her (ex. the storyline where cece and ham were going to move - i really loved this because it highlights its place in the andi mack universe so well, and i'm a sucker for the paper cranes shot + i'm still salty that sadie's cranes didn't make it into the finale) and it's the perfect reflection of andi's character development because of how dynamic it is (the crafts and art supplies can get moved around or switched out, and there's always new creations visible).

going back to the nostalgia motif though, the "shack" aspect of it always struck me as very treehouse-like. personally, whenever i think of treehouses, there's this very golden sheen of childhood about it, if that makes sense. i've always seen treehouses in media as a sort of shelter for characters' youthful innocence and idealistic memories. for example, the episode "up a tree" from good luck charlie, the episode "treehouse" from modern family, and "to all the boys 2" all use a treehouse setting as a device to explore the character's desire to hold onto their perfect image of their childhood (side note: this exact theme is actually explored in andi mack in the episode "perfect day 2.0"!). andi shack is no exception to this, but it harnesses this childhood idealism in the same way that it captures the nostalgia of the 50s in the spoon, or the early 2000s in the fringe. it's not some image of a distant past being reflected through that setting; it's very present, and very alive, because it reflects andi as she is in the given moment.

some honorable mentions of more one-off settings include the ferris wheel (from "the snorpion"), the alley art gallery (from "a walker to remember"), SAVA, the color factory (from "it's a dilemna"), and my personal favorite, the cake shop (from "that syncing feeling").

[every time i watch this episode i want to eat those cakes so bad]

these settings have less of a distinctly nostalgic feel (especially the color factory, which is a very late 2010s, instagram era setting), but they all definitely have an aura of perfection about them. andi mack is all about bright, colorful visuals, and these settings really play to that, making the andi mack universe seem really fun and inviting, and frankly very instagrammable (literally so, when it comes to the color factory!).

props, on the other hand, are probably a much less obvious tool of worldbuilding. they definitely take up less space in the frame and are generally not as noticeable (i'm sure i'll have missed a bunch that will be great examples, but i'm kind of coming up with all of this off the top of my head), but they really tie everything together.

for example, bex's box, bex's polaroid, and the old tv at the mack apartment (the tv is usually only visible in the periphery of some shots, so you might not catch it at first glance) all complement that very retro aesthetic established through the settings (especially the polaroid and the tv, because there's really no good reason that the characters would otherwise be using these).

besides this, andi's artistic nature provides the perfect excuse for plenty of colorful, crafty props to amplify the visuals and the tone. obviously, as i discussed before, andi shack is the best example of this because it's filled with interesting props. but you also see bits of andi's (and other people's) crafts popping up throughout the show (ex. the tape on the fridge in the mack apartment, andi's and libby's headbands in "the new girls", walker's shoes, andi's phone case, and of course, the bracelet). not only does doing this really solidify this talent as an essential tenet of andi's character, but it also just makes the entirety of shadyside feel like an extension of andi shack. the whole town is a canvas for her crafts (or art, depending on how you want to look at it. i say it's both), and it immensely adds to shadyside's idealism. because who wouldn't want to live in a world made of andi mack's creations?

and, while it's not exactly a prop, the characters' wardrobe is undoubtedly a major influence on the show's worldbuilding. true to it's nature as a disney channel show, all of the characters are always dressed in exceptionally curated outfits of whatever the current trends are, making the show that much more visually appealing. i won't elaborate too much on this, because i could honestly write a whole other analysis on andi mack's fashion (my favorites are andi's and bex's outfits! and kudos to the costume designer(s) for creating such wonderful and in-character wardrobes!). but, i think it's a really really important aspect of how the show's universe is perceived, so it had to be touched upon.

[^ some of my favorite outfits from the show! i am so obsessed with andi's jacket in the finale, and i aspire to be at bex's level of being a leather jacket bisexual]

and lastly, phones. this is a bit of an interesting case (pun intended), because the way they're used fluctuates a bit throughout the show, but i definitely noticed that at least in the first season terri minsky tried to avoid using them altogether. these efforts at distancing from modern tech really grounds the show in it's idealist, nostalgia-heavy roots, so even when the characters start using their phones more later in the show, they don't alter the viewer's impression of the andi mack universe very much.

so, what does all of this have to do with worldbuilding? in andi mack's case, because it's set in a realistic universe and not a fantasy one, a lot of what sets it apart from the real world comes down to tone. because, as much as this world is based on our own, it really does feel separate from it, like an alternate reality that's just slightly more perfect than ours, which makes all the difference. it's the idealism in color and composition in andi mack's settings that makes it so unmistakably andi mack. even the weather is always sunny and perfect (which is incredibly ironic because the town is called shadyside - yes, i am very proud of that observation).

the andi mack universe resides somewhere in this perfect medium that makes it feel like a small town in the middle of nowhere (almost like hill valley in 1955 from "back to the future"), but at the same time like an enclave within a big city (because of its proximity to so many modern, unique, and honestly very classy looking establishments). it is, essentially, an unattainable dream land that tricks you into believing it is attainable because it's just real enough.

all this to say, andi mack does an amazing job of creating of polished, perfect world for its characters. this is pretty common among disney channel and nickelodeon shows, but because most other shows tend to be filmed in a studio with three-wall sets, andi mack is really set apart from them in that it automatically feels more real and tangible. it has its quintessential recurring locations, but it has far more of them (most disney/nick shows usually only have 3-4 recurring settings), and it has a lot more one-off locations. it's also a lot more considerate when it comes to its props, so rather than the show just looking garish and aggressively trendy, it has a distinctive style that's actually appropriate to the characters and the story. overall this creates the effect of expanding the universe, making shadyside feel like it really is a part of a wider world, rather than an artificial bubble. it's idealism is, first and foremost, grounded in reality, and that provides a basis for its brilliant, creative, and relatable storytelling.

tl;dr: andi mack's sets and props give it a very retro and nostalgic tone which makes its whole universe seem super perfect and i want to live there so bad!!

[thisguyatthemovies]

Why so quirky?

It took more than 14 years to get around to it, but the other night I watched the 2005 Cameron Crowe train wreck “Elizabethtown,” a film that sometimes shows up on Worst Movie Ever lists. It’s bad, but its “worst” status is more about disappointment, given the writer-director’s previous track record {“Say Anything…,” “Almost Famous,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”). Still, did I mention it’s bad? A ridiculous premise, plot lines that go nowhere, obvious and heavy-handed symbolism, multiple and sickeningly sweet (and annoying) “meet cutes” and quite possibly some of the worst casting in a major motion picture ever all add up to a movie that deserves much criticism.

“Elizabethtown” also is notorious for inspiring the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” (or MPDG). The phrase usually is credited to Nathan Rabin, who wrote a piece about the movie, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: ‘Elizabethtown,’” for AV/Film nearly 15 months after its release. In it, he describes Kirsten Dunst’s character, Claire, the inexplicably bubbly love interest of suicidal-but-handsome protagonist Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), as the embodiment of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Rabin describes the type as such:

“The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”

By that definition, applied retroactively, Dunst’s Claire isn’t the first MPDG in movie history (some include Katharine Hepburn’s early roles on MPDG lists), nor is she even the best example of one (think Natalie Portman in “Garden State,” or Zooey Deschanel in “Yes Man” or the TV show “New Girl”). And the term, which Rabin reportedly now regrets coining, has become better defined with attributes that don’t necessarily fit Claire, even though she will forever be considered the epitome of the trope.

In case you have not seen “Elizabethtown” (and you’ll probably be just fine never seeing it), Bloom plays a shoe designer who works for a company not unlike Nike. Somehow, he is saddled with all the blame for a shoe that is so bad that it is recalled and will cost the company (somehow) nearly a billion dollars. Bloom’s Drew Baylor is fired and decides to off himself, but a phone call about the unexpected death of his father interrupts him during his first attempt. Drew, a West Coaster, is enlisted by his family to travel to Elizabethtown, Ky., his father’s hometown and where the elder Baylor has passed away, to bring the body home for cremation. Relatives in Kentucky have other plans for his final resting place.

Drew takes a flight to Kentucky and – wouldn’t you know it? – is the only passenger on the plane. That’s where Claire comes in. She apparently is the lone stewardess, and she is a talkative one at that. She won’t leave Drew alone from the get-go, and she (somehow) senses Drew is troubled and needs help because, for a guy who had a relatively important position with an internationally known shoe maker, he has no idea how to live this thing we call life. She does what any upstanding MPDG would do – she makes the repair of his damaged soul her sole purpose in life.

Claire would seem to vary from the standard trope in that she has a life of her own, at least when she and Drew meet. Her career would afford her at least a modest independent existence. She seems to have a nice place. She even has a boyfriend, though it is not clear if the guy really exists or, if he does, he is all that into her. But Claire quickly becomes a genie let out of the bottle; Drew’s every wish is her command. She just happens to show up wherever Drew is so much that if the roles were reversed, Drew would be accused of stalking. She says all the right things, even as Drew continues to hint at ending his life. She even (somehow) has the availability to, within a brief period of time, piece together a scrapbook (including hand-drawn illustrations) that will help Drew navigate a soul-discovering solo cross-country road trip AND (this being a Cameron Crowe movie) has provided the soundtrack via mix CDs that are (somehow) timed perfectly to coincide with landmarks during Drew’s travels. So omnipresent, so magical is Dunst’s character that some have suggested she was written to be a guardian angel sent to save Drew’s life. That interpretation at least makes some of Claire’s story semi-plausible and almost tolerable.

Claire is selfless to a fault, and she certainly is strange, maybe unstable. But, if anything, Manic Pixie Dream Girls lost even more sense of self and picked up more strangeness as the stock character turned into a full-fledged trope. Think Deschanel as Allison in the 2008 Jim Carrey vehicle “Yes Man.” As is always the case in these things, Carrey is a cynical, disillusioned man looking for meaning in life. He happens upon Allison, who hits a lot of stock MPGD notes. She zips around town on a moped. She wears mismatched clothing from vintage stores. She performs avant garde (and awful) music. Her primary means of supporting herself (?) is by teaching a class that combines jogging and photography. She is everything Carrey’s Carl Allen is not, mostly carefree. They, of course, engage in romance, even though Carl is notably older than Allison (that’s the case in many films, not just MPDG movies).

In 2010’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” two characters combine for the role of MPDG. The titular character, played by Michael Cera, is a slacker musician a few years removed from high school. That doesn’t stop him from dating a high-schooler, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), whose sole purpose is as a superfan for Scott’s band. Then Scott meets the girl of his dreams (literally), Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who is at least older than Knives but still is quirky (she works delivering packages while on roller skates) and impulsive (she often changes her hair color) but is too aloof and serious to be a full-on MPDG. She does, however, end up being a sort-of trophy, to be won if Scott can defeat her seven evil exes. So, her existence still is minimalized.

Some movies have addressed the MPDG thing head-on. Though sometimes cited as a MPDG, Kate Winslet’s Clementine in 2004’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is actually the anti-MPDG. Sure, she wears orange hair and gloves with the fingertips cut off, and she’s impulsive. But she also is flawed, sometimes dark and independent (MPDGs typically don’t get any of those traits). And she says this, which seems like a direct response to the trope, even though the term didn’t yet exist, as written by Charlie Kaufman: “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fu**ed-up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind. Don’t assign me yours.”

Those are sentiments Claire in “Elizabethtown” never would have expressed, her focus being on a lost, sensitive young man and his happiness, not hers. Nor would she be allowed to even think such, given she and MPDGs like her are the products of writers and filmmakers who want to believe that this idealized version of young women is out there. That will probably be the case as long as men are writing movies, just as the male equivalent of the MPDG – the ridiculously handsome man with washboard abs who manages to accumulate much wealth despite always being around to tend to a woman’s needs and whisk her off to beaches on his private jet – will always exist as long as women are fantasizing about them and flocking to see them in rom-com-drams and reading about them in romance novels.

A little healthy fantasy is fine, but movie tropes and stereotypes are not, if we believe they can shape how we live in real life. Manic Pixie Drew Girls, though not totally a thing of the past (Joi, the A.I. girlfriend in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049,” comes to mind as an updated version), are becoming outdated as more and more females are having their voices heard in Hollywood. MPDGs are being replaced by independent women who are the focus of the story and don’t have to be bubbly if they don’t feel like it, who aren’t required to be quirky and can chase their own happiness. These characters, unlike Manic Pixie Dream Girls, are multidimensional. They give a movie depth, not just gloss.

Imagine if that’s the kind of character Dunst’s Claire could have been. “Elizabethtown” wouldn’t show up on so many Worst Movie Ever lists. And it wouldn’t have been forever linked to a tired movie trope and the terminology to describe it.

[feelingsinthedark]

Jem & Lunar New Year

it’s a little late but it’s still technically like the period of celebration for Chinese New Year so it’s fine whatever lol

PART TWO COMING SOON with qoaad spoilers :3 wanted to post these here first so i can screenshot it and post on instagram more easily lol

they’re kinda long and i figured out how to put a cut thing at least on a computer skdfsfdfkksk idk if they’re good but here ya go

and oh yeah disclaimer the timeline is messy but i tried ok here ya go i’ll shut up now lmao

The first twelve years of his life are perfect Chinese New Year celebrations

He helps his parents decorate the Institute with 福 signs everywhere and window hangings and all the things

He wakes up early with his parents the day of and makes dumplings with them that they feed the visiting relatives and random Shadowhunters

People come and go all day long to and from the Shanghai Institute

Older Shadowhunters give him 红包 (red envelopes) every year as well as his parents

1873 is the last of these

Chinese New Year in 1874 he spends in a state of delirium caused by yin fen

His father died not long before but he can still hear his mother crying out for him

新年快乐，儿子 he thinks he hears her say softly, exhaustedly, that day

A ridiculously ironic statement considering the situation they’re in

But it could be a hallucination brought on by the drug

He whispers 过年好 to his mother, though he doesn’t realize it in a surge of pain and delirium

His mother sobs at what were the first words she heard from her son in what seemed like years

Yanluo sneers at their interaction and deliberately gives Jem a larger dose of yin fen to torture him and his mother more

To take away from this day of fortune and happiness and prosperity

Not long after Chinese New Year of 1874, Jem’s mother is dead, and Yanluo has disappeared

Chinese New Year of 1875 is spent at the London Institute

Jem arrived a little more than half a year before

He remembers when he wakes up that morning, but he decides to keep it to himself

Especially considering how his last Chinese New Year went

And he doesn’t want to make Charlotte or anyone else feel like they need to do something for him

He’s sent out on a patrol with Will

He is quieter than usual and sort of draws into himself remembering past years

Will notices but doesn’t pry until Jem is giving him an iratze and it’s just kind of an awkward silence which never happens between them

So he quietly asks “Are you okay?”

Showing that gentle side of him that only Jem ever sees

Jem is silent for a little longer while he draws another iratze

Then he says “It’s the Lunar New Year today,” while drawing Will’s sleeve down over the rune

“Shouldn’t that be a happy thing?” Will asks

“It is,” Jem says as they head back to the Institute

And after another silence he says “my last one wasn’t”

Will puts the pieces together

Jem tries to add “it’s fine, I’ll be okay, I am okay”

Will ignores this and when they get back to the Institute he insists Jem train with him

He says he needs to brush up on his knife throwing

Even though he just dispatched a demon with a deathly accurate dagger to the head

The whole time he talks about nothing and helps to take Jem’s mind away from that

Later Jem has a bout of sickness and coughs blood

He makes a joke about the color red being the color of fortune

But he thinks he really is fortunate bc he has Will

Chinese New Year of 1876 had a little bit of celebration

He had told the inhabitants of the London Institute that year about some of his traditions when he lived in Shanghai

So that year they all try to make dumplings together

Really just Charlotte and Will, and Sophie and Agatha too

Jem is really the only one who makes them well but he tries to teach them

He takes over the kitchen which Agatha very much objects to

He still remembers how to make the dough, the filling, and how to roll out dumpling skins and wrap them

After a while Will’s given up and he sits there making sarcastic remarks

They start to make that a tradition in the London Institute every year

Just making dumplings which Jem insists is enough

Charlotte wants to do more to make Jem feel at home but they never get around to it

1877 and 1878 are like this

Chinese New Year of 1879 Jem spends in the Silent City

There is no celebrating, no dumplings, none of the music or decorating or family of his childhood

His emotions are still mostly there as he was only made a Silent Brother a few months before

But all he feels is a desperate loneliness knowing that he can’t be with the ones he loves most today

His days only get lonelier and lonelier as the years pass and he barely remembers what Chinese New Year meant to him

He asks Tessa to meet him on Blackfriars on Chinese New Year of 1890

He doesn’t set the date on purpose but afterward he realizes it is Chinese New Year

On the bridge he tells Tessa he wishes he could have gotten to experience a Chinese New Year with her

Tessa says maybe someday they’ll have a chance

They both know it’s impossible though

Every year he feels himself slipping away and Tessa feels him growing further from her and from humanity

And then

Chinese New Year of 2008 is spent with the love of his life

They are staying at Tessa’s flat in London

Jem had just come back a less than a month ago

Tessa wakes up and kisses Jem to wake him up

“新年快乐” she says quietly, smiling, “happy Lunar New Year, my love”

Jem asks her how she knew

After that meeting on the bridge in 1890 she started paying attention to the lunar calendar

“In case... in case there really was ever a day,” she explains

Jem smiles and kisses her

“Well, you were right”

Tessa asks what he wants to do to celebrate

He says just being with her is enough after so long in the darkness

And they have forever to celebrate Chinese New Years properly

They have a quiet, relaxed day in London

And it ends not so quietly

Chinese New Year of 2009 is spent with his fiancée

Tessa surprises Jem again

She had gone out a couple weeks ago and gotten decorations which she hung up that night

She also got ingredients for dumplings and she and Jem mess around with making them

Neither of them know exactly what they’re doing

Tessa’s never made dumplings from scratch and Jem hasn’t in over a century and certainly hasn’t had to even think about making dumplings

But they don’t look it up they just have fun with it and make things up as they go

They end up making a mess in the kitchen and all over themselves

The dumplings are okay and they eat them and make fun of each other accusing each other of making them taste bad

“You’re the one who made the filling, did you not add any soy sauce?”

“Well you made the skins so thick we had to boil them for so long that all the flavor leeched out. Just dip them in some sauce”

“That is an inconvenience for me, sir”

And they laugh a lot

The next day they watch the 春节晚会 together

Jem explains some of what’s going on to Tessa but she’s kept up learning some Chinese over the years so she knows a bit and can sort of keep up

Chinese New Year of 2010 is spent with his wife

They spend it by themselves in LA

*(Idk why they’re in LA sorry y’all make up a reason yourself lol Tessa has homes everywhere right so it makes sense right)

Jem sends 红包 for Emma and the Blackthorn kids to the LA Institute via a very grumpy Church

He and Tessa spend the weekend before Chinese New Year decorating and cleaning her house

(I’m like doubting if that’s an actual thing that Tessa has houses everywhere I feel like I just made that up but oh well they had to stay somewhere in LA in Lady Midnight right)

Jem had told Tessa about more traditions since coming back

She cuts his hair every year on Chinese New Year

And they go shopping for new clothes

Jem can’t remember everything he used to do as a child but they do everything he remembers

2011 and 2012 are pretty similar

2011 at Jem’s house in Devon and 2012 in LA

[thisisnotaboutarttoys]

Paraphrasing pop art from art toys movement

We think that Art Toys Movement has been built upon the “paraphrase of Pop Art”, although now the myths for designers and artists are others. And when we talk about others, we talk about characters like Mickey Mouse, an icon that is really known throughout the world. For whom many feel – and express- an authentic kind of personal passion and enthusiasm without limits making him the charismatic character he is nowadays.

A period of time, this, when the impact of contemporary technology and its influence in our perception and in the possibilities of paraphrasing the icons are even greater that in the late fifties in USA and early sixties in Europe when Pop Art was born as an artistic current.

Mickey Mouse ... charismatic character that almost everyone - literally - knows because have heard about him, or has seen and read about him and his adventures since 1928 when he was born as a protagonist of animation. And that today is considered an iconic character that again and again becomes a trend, or in truth, never ceases to be. In many and very different ways. And for different types of artists and professionals.

As for many artists and designers within the artistic Trend of the Art Toys, that with all their influences, from the most pop, urban, punk style to the most surreal, ethnic, fantasy, terror, gothic, kawaii, conceptual, naive, expressionist, figurative, realistic, subversive or lowbrow, and regardless of the age of the artists and their origin, one of their recurring themes have been, and are, usually, myths of their youth, like Mickey Mouse character, that as soon as you see his silhouette you recognize.

An artistic Movement where the artists "take" the character and impose their own sensibility, paraphrasing the character themselves. Or what is the same, starting from the consideration of what the creator wanted to tell, add new reflections, those of their own look. With the pretense that afterwards in time the public and the collectors when they have that artwork in their hands also have the possibility, if they want, to interact with them, creating their own scenarios and atmospheres. Because as we say: Art Toys: More than Dis(play).

And the artists paraphrase them in the sense that being very close to the original concepts, with their own hands, they create a new artwork by giving an obvious credit to the iconic work of art. Telling their own story. Talking about themselves and their influences. Engaging a unique connection with their target public, an audience to those who show themselves as they are…regardless of where these collectors live, where in the world they are.

Nevertheless, and as we have already told at other times, when this artistic Movement of the Art Toys began to "discover" itself, we speak of an era, in the mid-nineties of the last century, in which globalization is in full “boom”, the same as the consumer culture. Time in which there is a process of clear hybridization of cultures, between the West and the East, and in which there is a great mobility of cultural products because there are fewer limitations and borders, besides that we have Internet and Social Networks. And we easily reach to all kind of public. Collectors and other professionals with whom to work.

And we are talking about a Movement or artistic Trend that although it finds its roots in Tokyo and Hong Kong, today it is already part of something culturally much bigger globally. And also more diverse and heterogeneous than in its origins.

Society is increasingly multicultural, there is a great interrelation and interaction between different countries, and at a certain moment, it is when it seems that a new kind of cultural creation begins to arrive at the market thanks to the impulse of creative people, who create and promote an art form that refers to a new language and new form of communication and contemporary artistic-plastic expression. To new forms of design and of creation, a mixture of art and toys. And that the artists themselves promote by their own means and often with the help and support of other professionals who have the same cultural references as these artists, and who bet on their work and support them in their discovery possibilities...

Artists like Coté Escrivá.

Born in Valencia, Spain, on May 22, 1982. He is one of those artists, designer and illustrator, who over the years has been creating his own personal universe from an aesthetic influenced by popular culture. An artist that has managed to bring those comics and animation series that have accompanied us throughout our lives to his own imagination, adding other influences and references coming from Pop Art, oriental and underground culture, graffiti and Street art, the tattoo art or the lowbrow or pop surrealist style.

Resulting in disparate projects, a kind of drawings, illustrations within sinister and tender or friendly, as some people say; with an aesthetic that is also provocative and burlesque. Some of them from icons of pop culture assimilated by Coté Escivá, reinterpreted, giving rise to different hybrid creations, between artistic and commercial, with characters that are familiar to all of us. Characters that are born from sketches in paper and pencil, and then are worked digitally with a graphic tablet.. Exploring the popular culture through surprising "series of mashups" of mass-public visual icons that everyone knows.

Thereby, giving rise to a type of sculptures, Art Toys, like those that the Thunder Mates brand from Hong Kong is helping to give life since this past year 2017, working on some of Coté's most iconic characters.

A mix of art, graphic design and original toys, collectible and aimed at an adult audience as Woodrow Phoenix would say

"Plastic Culture" (2006). Pieces that combine a bit of tenderness but also a high degree of ambiguity or blackness as Paul Budnitz, founder of Kidrobot, wrote when referring to the Art Toys in "I am Plastic, too" (2010).

And in the case of Coté with his artworks, in addition, we see the interior of the artist in a non-subjective way. On the contrary, he shows himself starkly inside. And inside, what can we find but bones and other viscera and elements? It´s a forthright work, merciless in a certain sense ... Artists like Coté are as if they showed their deepest, intense and heartbreaking insights, but doing it without detours or subtleties. It's as if these artists said, “I'm going to split the toy with which I've grown, interacted, and you're going to see the inside of it”…

When an artist uses a toy as a creative platform he/she is an artist who does not want to shy away from childhood. We are what we have grown and lived, and what we have been taught. We are not born with the age we now have. We have been learning and when we are children, playing is learning. And if we say that we have studied one thing or another for a specific purpose, why are we going to leave behind those drawings with which we have learned many of our values, ways of showing ourselves and certain likes, and even the way of seeing the world? Things that make us what we are...

And in the Art Toys of Coté there is always a part in which the inside of the Art Toy can be seen. We all think that toys are hollow and yet there is a character who suffers, who lives, who has a skeleton and viscera. And Coté shows it to us.

People at our age, when they see a toy, see something inanimate, that only when a child plays with it can it come alive. But the artists who make Art Toys see  a part of themselves. And that's what Coté wants to show the spectator. Through that toy that twists he shows his interior. And his own inner self is loaded with images, memories, some more raw than others. Because toys are part of our memories. And we are all made up of memories that make us what we are. And the childhood of most of us is loaded with toys, comics, and all kinds of pots ... And artists like Coté what they do is bring that toy from their childhood but loaded with everything that is now as an adult. Of what he has lived.

People usually stay with the outer appearance of the toy. But look further! The toy is something else, it's life, the toy is what made you what you are. They are not something inert or silly or childish. That's why artists like Coté seek with their Art Toys that people see and discover that in reality we are that toy but with scars, with the spanks that life gives us. And in this task is Coté when he works with recognized brands such as Thunder Mates.

From a dynamic collaboration, with an open mind. Sign of our times. Where barriers do not exist, only those that we can put ourselves. And addressing a non-conformist type of collector, who does not like what is normally established. With a kind of close and not boring creations. Testubg the power of the cultural and social conventions of the spectator, demanding a reflective, mature look to the collector. Because otherwise, it would be just a Toy. And here we are talking about Art Toys. A type of work that "imitates" life, which is a reflection of the experiences of the artists and also of what surrounds them - from the cultural, social point of view...

 Art Toy Maison (Cristina A. del Chicca y Sergio Pampliega Campo)

www.behance.com/arttoymaison 

http://arttoystheoryandcriticism.tumblr.com/_

Co-Founder Members of international artistic Collective ART TOY GAMA

This text was originally written in Spanish and translated into English for us (although in this case the text is not exact), so that the text can have grammatical errors, so we apologize

[yet-another-voice]

Let It Snow

Author/s: John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson

My Rating: 4/5

My Thoughts:

I saw the movie adaptation of this book first and while I liked it (to the point of it becoming quintessential to my individual Christmas experience), reading the book after made me realise how much they changed the storyline! The movie plot was much less rich and swapped a lot of character roles/personalities. Despite this I can still enjoy them as separate pieces of media, but if I had to pick a favourite of the two I'd definitely say I prefer the book (the movie’s soundtrack and cast still hits right though).

Anyways back to the book! Every character is unique and feels like they could be a real human, which is kind of a given but some books don’t hit that mark somehow. Addie’s character growth within her third of the narrative was my favourite. The push and pull between her established selfishness and her conscious effort to correct her mindset made me as a reader both root for her and get frustrated with her simultaneously - a push and pull that I enjoy experiencing and reading!

I’d say there were good conclusions to each story, the third story’s end could’ve been a stronger in my opinion, but maybe the inclusion of an epilogue would’ve solved that for me. I just felt like all the characters’ paths converging should've felt more exciting than it did; don't get me wrong realising who knew who and how was interesting, but it didn't greatly quench my thirst for interlocking details like other books that have done the same thing.

Three romances all tying together in subtle ways though? Extremely satisfying! It almost made up for the lack of epilogue. There isn't a set year or time period to this book, but based on the 2008 publication year I have to assume it can be visualised as being within the late 2000s/early 2010s. The final reveal of all three couples knowing each other occurring in a Starbucks of all places definitely fits that era. That and applying a 2000s lens to this story adds an extra layer to the nostalgia built into stories set around Christmas (at least for me personally). My favourite couple has to be Jubilee and Stuart; John Green executed their story so tastefully and really had me especially invested in Stuart’s character, which I feel was amplified by the story being from Jubilee’s perspective. The worldbuliding of the suburban town setting in this story (and subsequently the rest of the book) was also particularly poignant, even now thinking back on the book overall I recall how isolating yet tranquil Green made the snowstorm foiling each character’s goals feel.

Final Thoughts:

Overall this book was a hopeless romantic’s festive dream: best friends to lovers, a meet cute, and a relationship reconciliation. Three romances, three intertwining happy endings; a solid read for the winter season in my eyes.

[shirlleycoyle]

Smart Devices Will Eventually Die, and the Internet Is to Blame

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Recently, I had a bizarre customer service experience involving a company that I have been critical of at many junctures over the years. That company was Apple, and the reason I was on the phone with them involved my wife’s smartphone of choice, the iPhone 5.

Sold to her in late 2012, the phone has somehow managed to avoid device upgrades for nearly eight years (despite my semi-frequent pleas that she upgrade to a new device). But when we had problems logging it into iCloud recently, I chose to call Apple, and shockingly found them not only willing to service this device over the phone, but work through a variety of solutions on the phone for many hours as we attempted to figure out why it wasn’t logging in.

It took a few calls and some in-depth diagnostic work, but we figured out the problem, and earlier this week I was able to get the phone working again, with Jesse’s help. We kept a vintage smartphone out of the waste bin for another day.

It was not what I was expecting—it flew in the face about what I know about Apple and upgrades. But the fact we’re seeing problems in the first place reflects something that has been on my mind a while: The lack of consideration towards the upgrade and decay cycle in modern tech, particularly in terms of consumer goods, is going to bite—hard—in a few years. And not every company will be as understanding as this Apple support tech person (his name is Jesse) that clearly deserves a raise.

It’s time to have a talk about the coming gadget apocalypse that we haven’t been preparing for. Strap in.

Moore’s Flaw: Part of the problem we’re seeing is a computing mindset brought to standard consumer electronics

Recently, the speaker company Sonos has been taking a beating in the press for revealing an inevitable, but likely avoidable fact: Its early devices won’t last forever.

Founded in 2002, Sonos is one of the first companies that found success taking a traditional piece of electronics, the speaker, and making it “smart.”

The company, in its efforts to encourage those customers to upgrade and discourage the use of old speakers or bridge devices on its cloud servers past the point of old age, effectively kneecapped them—they can’t be upgraded to next-generation software, and keeping them in your setup could prevent your other devices from getting upgrades, too.

Sound like a bum deal? Fortunately for their investors, they sell a replacement.

The company attempted to clear up its self-inflicted mess by pointing out the devices will still work even without updates, but even with the clarifications, it’s still sticking with the original plan—no updates after May.

In one sense, you can’t blame Sonos for not planning for a future like this. As a startup, how was it supposed to know that it would be supporting speakers that it sold more than a decade ago? The odds were even it was setting itself up for an acquisition, a long life, or a noble failure.

But on the other hand, we have different expectations for audio equipment than we do computing devices. Think about it this way: If you buy a 1960s-era Fender Stratocaster from a pawn shop and it’s still in relatively good condition, and plug it into an amplifier that was produced this year, that guitar is still going to work.

This Bose 901 speaker will continue to work decades from now. Image: Automotive Rhythms/Flickr

If you plug a pair of vintage Bose 901 speakers into a modern audio system, those speakers should work, because ultimately the principles on which Dr. Amar Bose built that equipment haven’t changed in 50 years. It’s what allows a MiniDisc player, a record player, and an iPod dock to live on the same bookshelf.

The problem is, computers have never had these kinds of expectations around them. Sure, you can find some legacy ports on modern computing devices—this recent Vaio laptop has a VGA port, which made its first appearance on a computer in 1987 and still has use cases in boardrooms where old projector equipment lives—but for the most part computing equipment doesn’t work like that. It goes through generational phases.

Part of the reason for this is that computers move faster than other kinds of electronics. While some of the concepts, like soldered integrated circuits and processor sockets, mostly work the same generation after generation, the technology simply moves too fast to allow for hand-me-downs. If you were to reuse a desktop computer from 1996 and upgrade it to account for modern needs, basically the only thing you might be able to reuse is the case, which likely utilizes the ATX form factor.

Planned obsolescence has been built into the computer model since the beginning. In many ways, Moore’s Law, Gordon Moore’s observation that computing power would keep improving exponentially, detected the trend early and has at times enabled it.

Applying these standards to electronics that could once last generations creates a whole lot of discomfort. This can be seen, for example, in the case of the Apple Watch. Recently, Apple’s watch line, a somewhat minor part of its financial picture, outdid the entirety of the Swiss watch industry, which has been around for hundreds of years and has a completely different value proposition than your average laptop.

If you sell gadgets more often, it’s easier to print money. But it means that devices that were once built to last are now suddenly targets of planned obsolescence.

Look, technology moves fast. For decades, the world of computers surged past gate after gadgetary gate in search of the next new thing. The problem with Moore’s Law is not that it didn’t encourage more innovation, but it didn’t account for what we did with the old innovation.

Now, add the internet to the mix, and make it a defining element of its use case. And the problem becomes obvious. Companies don’t want to have to think about things they sold 20 years ago, but the smart device model, by default, requires that they do. Or, it should.

Let’s take another look at Sonos here. This is a company that leapt into a space where speakers could last generations, and decided that it couldn’t even let its devices survive for a single generation. Sure, it will still work, the CEO says, but the lack of updates clearly tips the scales in favor of a future upgrade. Computing power had advanced too much for those old workhorses to stay in use.

You can sell a 30-year-old car and it maintains some semblance of value, especially if it’s been well-maintained. Products like baseball cards and books still remain things people want to buy many years after they were first produced. But if a smart speaker company can’t promise that your internet-enabled device will be able to hook up to the internet eight years after you bought it, it’s useless.

Because, remember, a loss of updates doesn’t just mean you’ll get the fanciest new features—but it means you won’t get access to security updates that will keep the device alive for decades to come. Look at what I’ve already seen from my Mac Mini! Many consumer products have far higher standards for longevity than 15 years.

By allowing computers to infiltrate everything else—by adding things to our internet—we’ve decimated the long-term value of these products unnecessarily, all for someone else’s short-term gain.

And this is only the first wave of a problem that’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better.

Early-generation Roku devices, like the Roku XDS, recently lost access to Netflix. Image: Roku

The Sonos speaker saga is the first wave of what is likely going to be an entire generation of stuff broken by the internet

As I mentioned earlier, Sonos was early to this concept—not as early as, perhaps, The Clapper, but early enough that it might have been the first internet-connected smart device that most people might have encountered.

Another company that was early to this smart device model, Roku, also retired some of its early models recently, and Netflix stopped working on some of Roku’s early-gen devices, along with some smart TVs of the period made by other companies.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, it doesn’t feel quite as bad in the case of Roku, because they charge so little for their devices that buying a replacement box is trivial and worth the cost.

But the news about the early-gen smart TVs also getting the boot gives me pause. These sets, while no longer the latest and greatest and largely predating the recent 4K trend, are perfectly fine televisions. They should work for the next 20 years without a problem. But because Netflix arbitrarily raised its standards, it stopped supporting these sets, which is annoying.

While there is a way to work around losing Netflix on a smart TV set—easy, buy another set-top box that supports the device in some way—it just feels wasteful and cumbersome. The functionality is already in the set, after all! Instead of letting these sets slowly lose functionality, we should offer simple hardware upgrades that keep them up to date with modern standards while not limiting the other 95 percent of an otherwise perfectly fine TV. Put a slot in the back that upgrades the device’s brain. Easy.

These devices came out in 2010 and 2011 or so, and what worries me is what is to come.

In the decade between the release of the first smart TVs and now, the smart device trend really picked up in earnest, affecting things as varied as watches, drinking cups, thermostats, smoke detectors, toothbrushes, and even smart Gibson guitars (which didn’t work out for the guitar company).

Already, new signs are emerging. Just last week, word surfaced that Philips was going to stop updating early Hue Bridge devices, limiting their future connectivity and threatening their security.

Image: David Berkowitz/Flickr

According to a 2009 study from the National Association of Home Builders and Bank of America, the average thermostat is supposed to last 35 years. Can we trust that Google is going to support first-gen Nest thermostats for that long? It’s not like a smartphone.

Extend this to every device that you own that has a computer in its brain and a connection to the internet, that didn’t have those two things a decade ago, and you see the problem.

The microchip, in the long run, has turned things that were functionally fine (if “dumb”) into devices that may not make it into a second decade if they fail to get the ongoing support they need. Many of these devices were built by startups that have since left this world; others have become the victims of lacking warranties. Sure, in some of these cases, you can work around the faults of these things, but smart devices give the sheen of planned obsolescence to objects that could have lasted decades without continued internet access.

That awkward conversation Sonos just had with its customers about smart devices? Expect lots of other companies—including big ones—to have similar discussions in the coming years, with little to no path to repair in the future.

In the span of a single decade, we basically let a computer-centric mindset around planned obsolescence threaten to ruin the long-term usability of entire categories of products unnecessarily.

The solution here is not to fret or just drink water out of regular non-smart glasses, but to push electronics and gadget manufacturers to do better. If a device seems like something that should not stop working after eight or nine years, they need to guarantee upgrades more than a decade in the future. The design of these smart products, when applicable, should allow for user-replaceable hardware.

And for devices where their long-term use must be guaranteed, they need to offer dumb versions with the capability of getting smart upgrades. Let the user decide if they want a computer in their oven—and make that computer easy to plug in and replace, so that a decade down the road, they’re not stuck with a failed investment of a device.

We can’t bank on large devices being smart forever. We should have the ability to remove that functionality—or upgrade it as needed. That’s how we ensure hand-me-downs are worth handing down decades from now.

If they can’t promise that, don’t go smart.

Going back to my recent phone call with an Apple customer support rep, I think that the superhuman effort to attempt to get this phone working past its expiration date was super-noble.

But on the other hand, I wonder why it should have been super-noble. (No fault of Jesse!)

The base of the problem we’re seeing with this not-particularly-vintage gadget comes down to space and lack of upgrades. Apple has never offered a device with a MicroSD card, but for years sold devices with so little space that you would suddenly be out of storage with less-than-normal use. This is bad enough on its laptops, but in the case of its phones, it feels increasingly unforgivable over time, because it kneecaps these devices unnecessarily. I mean, this whole saga began because her 16-gigabyte phone runs out of space basically daily, and I tried to delete and redownload some apps for her to clear the phone’s cached space, and found what appeared to be aggressive bugs in iCloud in the process.

This phone is nearly eight years old and hasn’t received software updates from Apple for roughly three years. Image: Lucy Takakura/Flickr

I’ve been trying to figure out why Jesse cared so much about this phone when everything else about Apple’s actions has traditionally suggested that they would leave my wife’s phone high and dry. The best answer I have is that Apple, while I don’t think they’ve learned their lesson, is realizing this approach is not sustainable in the long term—at least not with these specific gadgets. Or at least some of their employees are.

I didn’t call and say, “My wife’s phone isn’t working.” I called and said, “My wife can’t log into her iCloud on her phone.” That may seem like a small difference, but I think it’s a significant one in terms of how Apple responded to this. It’s the difference between, “I’m having trouble with something you no longer support,” and, “This problem could cost you money now if you don’t fix.”

Technology is going to keep evolving and over time we are going to reach theoretical limits of devices. But if they’re talking to the cloud and people are paying money to access those cloud services, eventually those devices are going to matter less to our tech companies. The cloud is going to matter far more—and it’s going to be in their interest to keep these devices functional in the long haul because their profitability will continue to matter even as the device ages.

I can’t imagine that Netflix will unceremoniously kill another generation of smart TVs without thinking really hard about it—because killing the next gen of smart TVs will hurt a lot more than killing the last one. It will cost them money.

I hope the pendulum shifts in this way. Because that is how planned obsolescence will lose.

Smart Devices Will Eventually Die, and the Internet Is to Blame syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[bluegrasshole]

do all the get to know your author questions bc they're all good and i can't pick

ko…. you need to work on your decisiveness (but thank you)

1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

i mean.. not really. i had decided not to write any more fanfiction to focus on an original story i started but then… i wanted to get used to the setting, work through some personal stuff… kind of warm myself up while still writing the other one… so i’m writing a nurseydex lighthouse story like i said i would

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

my entire fanfiction.net account is bad. so so so bad. and surprisingly recent. also i HATE my early zimbits stuff, but of course one of them is like my second most popular piece so i can’t delete it. like really hate. and it’s frustrating because i have good stuff from that time period, so i don’t even fucking know what was going through my mind.

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

chronological but i tend to go back and add things obsessively. i like getting the skeleton down first just to get the basic plot and know where i’m going, then i go back to add in details – the meat of the skeleton if you will… and you know i like details

4) favorite character you’ve written

any dex is my favourite, but also specifically jack from samwell gentlemen’s hockey because he cracks me up, and i really loved writing parvati in that one parvender piece. 

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

camilla? in strange lovers i didn’t even know i was writing camilla until i realized like 3k in that my character who i’d named millie and was blonde was in fact… camilla. she snuck up on me

6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

oh… i do go back and fix things often (in strange lovers i went back to rewrite parts of ransom’s character and his role months after i originally posted it because i realized i had written some pretty shitty stuff regarding black men) but, meh, row upon row is always one i’d like… want to go back and fix, especially the rushed ending, but i can’t go back and change it now because it’s been read by too many people…

7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

super embarrassed. only my best friend knows because she’s also a writer but i still don’t feel super comfortable talking to her about it. we’re getting there with each other. she doesn’t write fanfiction ya feel though i think she’s read some

8) favorite genre to write

lmao idk i like writing comedy but plot is hard so i don’t often do it. character studies i guess, AUs, angst

9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

music, and listening to people tell stories about themselves or others, just being around people is inspiring to me. i recently went to a show that was a mix of folk music and storytelling about prince edward island? and it was incredible i left there feeling so invigorated

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

i do most of my writing in a café a minute from my apartment, with or without music depending on if my wireless headphones are dead or not, always w a blended matcha latté

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

oh man. i mean since i started writing in like, 2010? i mean, everything, obviously. but since 2015 – christ. still everything? well, definitely verb tenses/points of view/epithets/general structure and technique, definitely better at rhythm though that took some serious work and a couple stories focussed solely on rhythm and flow. i think i’m much better at nuance now – weaving different themes together to make at least a semi-coherent story… and general prose, i think. finding a balance between minimalism and appropriate imagery. i’m more comfortable playing around with grammar then i used to be. idk, i think my voice has just overall developed into something clearer and distinct from others.

12) your weaknesses as an author

plot and dialogue-heavy scenes. i like writing dialogue and i think the lines themselves are good usually, i just have a hard time, like finding the balance between dialogue, dialogue that has to accomplish something, and prose. and writing a neat point-a-to-point-b plot is a losing battle

13) your strengths as an author

i’ve been told setting, and i think that’s about right. i get obsessive about crafting like, a complete world where it feels like there are things that happen outside of the plot and the main characters. building fucking lore into the setting is the most fun for me. i think the details make the story.

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

heeeelll yeah

15) why did you start writing?

idk i spent a lot of time on the internet and all the quote unquote cool kids were doing it. i was in a RP where we were all pretty close friends (still follow them on all social media including fb) and we just like, wrote each other fic. i was pretty good at writing before then (for a kid) and even was runner-up for a national award or something in grade six? i barely remember what it was for but i do remember the piece was called “autumn’s opus” and it was comparing the seasons to an orchestra or a piece of music idk. it was pretty killer for an 11-yr-old if i do say so myself

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

oh i don’t know about haunt but i do get sad about jack and kent all the time

17) if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural (it probably doesn’t) and put dooooown the epithets. it’s lazy writing and you don’t need them. and reread reread reread reread. in different fonts, different colours, on differents days, out loud, by different people… reread!!

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

absolutely anything by fluorescentgrey but especially her historical AUs, familiar’s character designs and rawness, waspabi’s dialogue and humour, montparnasse’s prose and tenderness, misandrywitch’s everything, and this piece which inspired a tattoo and pushed me to start experimenting with my own writing a couple years ago… among many others

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

oh i usually just give up halfway through that’s how

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

usually i go to the café and sit for like 5 hours and if i get a few hundred words out of that i’m happy

21) what do you think when you read over your older work?

ugh it’s so bad and shitty and i hate it all

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

well, yeah. i don’t like writing about religion so i just… don’t, much. strange lovers had the most religion of anything i’ve ever written. and i’m cautious about writing about race though i’ve done it a few times… i don’t super like writing traditional coming-out stories because i just don’t care all that much so i’ll usually twist them around somehow if they’re necessary. 

23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

all of my life experiences inform my writing. that’s not me being facetious i just mean that i really like listening to people tell stories and telling stories myself and gossiping etc that i think it’s clear that i prioritize that in my writing

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

ah yes coal mining in 20th century nova scotia lmao

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

the very first paragraph from my nurseydex wip: 

There are days where you think you could lose yourself in the fog and there are days where you wouldn’t mind. When you wake and it’s there eating the world up, surrounding it all like a living thing, voracious, and it’s even hungrier at night, and the only thing that reminds you you belong to the earth and are tied to it like the oldest and most solid daybeacon in the harbour is the horn, loud and long and haunting and filling. And the light. The light, the light, always the light.

[judgesabo]

In Infinite Finality

So this is going to be my first non-Homestuck post here. I usually try to keep to that theme so people know what they’re getting and not get bogged down by politics or whatever else. But this is rather important to me personally, and we likely won’t get a better time to address it, so I’ll make the effort. This isn’t a theory post or anything though, it’s just a goodbye to a company I once knew.

For those not in the loop, or reading this after the fact, today Marc Laidlaw released his genderbent “fanfiction” of what he had planned Half Life 2: Episode 3, which can be read here. Marc Laidlaw was a lead writer for the entire Half Life series at Valve until he left the company last year in 2016, so this can essentially be taken as a leaked story for what they had planned back in 2007 when the last game came out.

Communication with Valve over the course of this period has been infamous. Episode 3 was originally planned to be released back in 2007 back when this entire process began, yet a decade later we have heard only two major bits of information on it, the first being a leak by an anonymous source of some out dated concept art back in 2012, and the second being this. From today. Valve doesn’t even seem to even recognize the existence of Half Life fans anymore, not even to simply confirm that it isn’t happening.

It’s painful to see what remains to this day as one of my favorite franchises lost and forgotten.

To really get this across though, I’d like to remember better days.

I distinctly recall as a kid watching my dad play the original Half Life. I think it was the first shooter I ever saw, and it astounded me. I didn’t really “get” the entire concept back then, nor did I remember the title, but the idea that there was a game where I could walk around as this person and save the world from an alien invasion stuck with me.

But by the time I was old enough to really play video games, new things had come out and I paid attention to those instead.

Then when Half Life 2 came out, I found my way into a physical copy of it. I didn’t know what this “Steam” thing was that it wanted me to download to play it, so I put it off. I still have it; it’s in my hands right now.

In the summer of 2008, this changed. While I was at camp, a friend told me about this cool game called Portal. He described it to me as being filled with action, puzzles, clever writing, unique gameplay, set in an interesting world... it hit all my checkmarks. While I couldn’t play it directly at the time, I could find the Flash version, and just like he said, it was mind bending. It reshaped how I had to think about space, to be “thinking with portals,” and the thought that there was something out there that was this but in 3D was astounding.

I eventually got Portal only to find it was everything he described to me and more. Not only was is superbly written, but the more I dug into it, the more I would uncover. Little secrets were hidden throughout the world, and if you were clever you could find this giant backstory to the series, about the mysterious Ratman or Cave Johnson, or find the history of this company as it tried desperately to get funding in competition against Black Mesa.

So naturally, hearing about this Black Mesa place, I needed to play Half Life, and my expectations were blown away yet again. Fast, fun gameplay, a story of epic proportions, and more mysterious forces seemingly beyond human comprehension. It made you feel like a hero.

Among this I found act fan communities creating whole new projects like Freeman’s Mind, which remains one of my favorite channels to this day. And then there were spin offs of that as well. I found fanart, music, and theories, and not to mention Black Mesa Source as a ground up remake of the original game simply created out of the love of the fanbase. Just like with Portal, the more I would dig the more I would uncover, revealing this elaborate and well constructed universe to explore. The more I would try out, the more impressed I’d be. Not to mention other games like Team Fortress 2 to start and just enjoy playing with friends. And to top it all off was Steam, a platform most famous for simply throwing these games at you with deals, not only for Valve’s own games with groupings like the Orange Box, but all games.

Valve, to me, was this cornucopia of creativity and excellent game design. In my eyes they could do no wrong, and while Valve Time was already infamous back then, there was so much to already explore, I could wait. Half Life 2 Episode 3 was in the works, Portal was a success beyond anything even Valve had planned for, and the future was bright. Left 4 Dead 2 released somewhere in there as well, but I didn’t pay it much mind.

My patience was rewarded in March 2010, less than two years later, when Portal quietly received an update adding radios to each level, providing clues that the community I had come to know was quickly unfolding into a whole new story, and a sequel was on its way. It was disheartening that we still hadn’t received any news on Episode 3, but my favorite game was getting a sequel! How could I not be happy? Besides, Portal had originally just been the tag along to apologize for Episode 2 being late. I knew that if we waited long enough, Valve would present us with a finely polished product which would surpass our expectations. They would regularly interact with their communities and clearly loved making the games just as much as we did playing them. Valve would count to 3 eventually.

Portal 2 faced some delays (more of that infamous Valve Time, haha), but it did eventually come out the next year and it was... good. It was a good game. It went through a lot of the old ground Portal had. Didn’t offer much new. The tone had changed. Things that had previous been in the background were brought to the foreground, and when I digged into it I found significantly less despite it being the bigger and more richly detailed game. Some parts didn’t really make sense. But it was alright, and had a lot of clever moments, and most people I talked to seemed to love it even more than the original, which frankly confused me. I’d like to talk about these differences in more detail in a separate post later, but for now Zero Punctuation hit a lot of the issues.

So I continued to wait, started watching E3 just for the chance that we would once again get news, that the dramatic cliffhanger we were left with would be addressed, or at least to get a sign that some more of that patented Valve creativity was still at work. People began to stop talking about Episode 3 and instead talked of Half Life 3 as the big title in the works. After all, the entire point of the episodic structure was for these short games to come out quickly. Valve had even suggested that they would be coming out on a monthly basis, but haha, classic Valve Time, it took years instead. We still had their promises to go off of.

I still remembered warnings from Doug Lombardi that Episode 3 would come out even later than Episode 2 did, Gabe Newell talking about how they might add a deaf character, about how the next Half Life would return to the darker roots missing in Portal 2, of bits of code in other minor releases by Valve making explicit reference to Episode 3 assets, Gabe Newell coming out to meet “protesters” hoping for some news, discussions of “Ricochet 2″ talked about openly, and Gabe shown working at a forge on a crowbar, saying how it took time. In 2012, like a breath of fresh air, some concept art apparently from back in 2008 was even leaked, showing that there was indeed actual work done by Valve showing that it wasn’t just all lies. A multitude of little pieces to let us know that it was still alive, that hope was not dead, the list of which has disappeared from Valve’s dead forums but can be found here on the wiki. Sure Valve seemed focused on that DOTA 2 game, but who really cared about that. Just another joke on them not being able to count to 3, haha.

Things became worse. Calls for Communication weren’t answered. Any kind of discussion by Valve at all became further and further apart, and what was there was abandoning what we were promised. Talk about abandoning single player games entirely were common, and Gabe even seemed dismissive of putting out more Half Life sequels and making bizarre claims like how Valve would be breaking new ground by focusing on multiplayer because there’d never been commercially successful multiplayer games before. Source 2 eventually came out (can’t count to 3, haha), but all the attention was focused on that DOTA 2 game which was still around and getting regular updates and news. Valve started focusing on hardware, trying to play catch up with their competition, making a big deal about releasing a normal controller, or working with other non-Valve groups to develop VR hardware.

The Know releases a video claiming that an anonymous inside source from Valve officially confirmed Half Life 3 as dead, with Valve too scared to release a new game to meet the insanely high expectations as well as some other problems, but Marc Laidlaw dismissed Valve ever being scared. Then old talent that had been with Valve from the beginning like Doug Lombardi and Marc began leaving, the few creative masterminds we still knew were there, gone.

Years pass in complete silence. The 10th anniversary of Episode 3′s announcement comes and goes in complete silence. And what we do hear isn’t much better. In AMA’s even as early as last January, and we still get the same line from Gaben, still joking about the number 3 and refusing to confirm or deny whether anything will come from the series, refusing to give closure one way or another, and even stating how Valve just loves to troll fans by making t-shirts and posters of Half Life 3.

Instead of the game we were promised or a new IP, Valve has now stooped to copying others, and we get a fucking card game for Dota 2, something not even fans of Dota 2 wanted.

And now, out of nowhere, we have this, a look into what might have been. And it doesn’t come from Valve, but from a man we once loved who’s moved on, and seems to despair at how things turned out.

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.

This is simultaneously the most news we’ve heard about Half Life 2 and also the most disheartening. It’s a stab at an old wound long scabbed over, a reminder that the talent we used to adore was real and not just the stuff of myth and legend.

The comparison I look around and see people making is one of death, that this is the final nail on the coffin, and this is the only burial that our good friends at Black Mesa and in the Resistance will ever receive. I’ve made that comparison myself already.

But now that I sit here and write this out, that I look over everything, I don’t think that’s the right answer.

Marc even followed up with a tweet pointing out that an old, unused script is not a sign that nothing will ever come out. And he’s right. Valve may indeed release something one day. Valve still lives and breathes, and is making tons of money through Steam.

Instead, the more apt analogy is that of someone suffering from Alzheimer's. A deeply loved relative has fallen ill and has slowly become a shadow of their former self, making occasional references to the glory days as we smile, nod, and pat their hand. What happened today was a brief moment of clarity breaking through their mind, and getting a chance to talk to them as they once were in their prime, and the moment quickly passes away again.

It’s a reminder of what was lost, and that no matter what they do now, the Valve I knew is gone forever. The talent behind what we knew and loved have left, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone to replace them. No matter what happens now, the cake was a lie. And I want to be wrong so very badly. Even now I can look around and see them walking around the corner, just like their old self, and going on some new adventure.

But here we are. And seeing how quickly the community latched onto this, onto anything proves that I’m not alone.

I wish Valve nothing but the best. Even for their stupid card game.

[punchlinesf]

Catching Up with Dan Cummins

Dan Cummins has a one hour Comedy Central special along with many other television appearances such as Conan, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Last Comic Standing and more. Those are hefty credits that yield some serious street cred. Credits that the majority of working stand up comics will never see in their lifetime. However, in the grand scheme of things, how much do these ultimately matter in the pursuit of your dreams? I got to chat with the hilarious and hardworking Dan Cummins about his lengthy career in comedy and his upcoming shows at Punch Line San Francisco. Ronn Vigh: We initially met in 2003 when we both competed in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition. That competition is considered a big milestone for up and coming comics. Do you remember anything significant about that week or period of time in your career? Dan Cummins: I remember the first night that the competition was in San Francisco pretty well. I’d never been in SF before but I knew about its comedic history. I felt so out of place and that I had so much to prove. I didn’t want to be seen as some hacky tavern comic from Spokane, Washington. I remember coming into the competition with a HUGE chip on my shoulder. RV: Wow. Well, I was a really green comic myself at the time but for what it’s worth, I remember you being really nice to me. So, how has your point of view or style of comedy evolved since then? DC: Life has changed so much for me since then. I was still a long ways from making a living as a comic back then. It was all still just a big, beautiful, chaotic experiment. Such a big gamble. Every show felt so important. Like my (hopefully future) career depended on it. Now, after having literally thousands of shows under my belt and after making a living in comedy for over 15 years, I’m a lot more at peace with it. I feel like I have less to prove and I think I’m funnier on stage because of that. Back then, I was a joke guy because I was too afraid to commit to a longer form story. I was too worried about bombing. Now, if I feel like it’s entertaining, I’ll tell a ten minute story. I also feel like I have a lot more to say now. I’ve lived a lot more life. I feel more confident in my opinions and perspective than I did in 2003 and confidence in what you’re saying is so important to good storytelling. I’d like to think I’ve come a long way since then and hopefully, I’ve also retained a decent amount of the childlike wonder for the world I had back when I was 26 years old.   RV: I've known many comics who set a list of goals to accomplish by a certain time in their careers. Were you one of those guys? DC: I did make a lot of specific goals. Most of them early on. “Get on this late show, get this type of comedy special, sell this kind of [TV] show!” I’ve been lucky -- I’ve hit most of them (never could sell a show though). The last five to ten years my goals have gotten more artistic. I just want to get more skilled at doing whatever you would call my style of comedy, and reach more and more people who enjoy it, and have those people come out to shows so I can keep doing what I’ve devoted my life too. That’s really my only stand-up goal at this point. RV: I was a flight attendant and in that field they always say being a flight attendant is a lifestyle, not a career. I feel even more that way about stand up, especially for those who do the road so often like yourself. Did you ever have a "Why am I doing this? I should just quit now” moment? DC: I totally get that. Yes -- this life is a long ways from your average nine-to-five job. You’re living in hotels and working clubs and bars all over the world. I’ve thought about quitting many times. I thought about quitting after tough road gigs early on where I had driven eight plus hours to perform for less than 20 people who all seemed to hate me, and I didn’t make enough money to even pay for the gas it took to the make it to the gig. I thought about quitting when my Comedy Central hour special came out in 2010 and no one in America seemed to give a fuck about it enough to buy tickets. I was performing in Grand Rapids, Michigan a week after it aired in front of 30 people who’d never heard of me. I thought about quitting back in 2016 when my album was number one on the iTunes Comedy chart for several weeks in a row, I’d just killed it on The Tonight Show, and I was performing, again, in front of 30 or so people who had never heard of me (this time in Kansas City). I thought, “This is the BEST I can do and it still doesn’t matter!” I’d put out five albums of my best stuff at that point and it just didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere.  

RV: The last time I saw you was a few years ago and you were thrilled about returning with your family to your home state of Idaho. Has this helped, hindered, or presented any unexpected challenges for you as a working comic? DC: Idaho has been really good to me. It’s a little harder to get places because of where I’m living but I’ no longer distracted by all the entertainment possibilities of Los Angeles. I’ve gone back to focusing more on stand-up than I was for a while. Also, a lot of exposure has come via Pandora and my podcast Timesuck. I’m actually selling the most tickets to shows of my career by far. I’m working the best clubs in the country and many of the shows are sold out. I never thought that would happen after moving back to Idaho. It’s been incredible! RV: Tell me more about your podcast. DC: Timesuck has been a wild ride! It’s a deep dive on one subject a week and episodes come out Monday at Noon, PST. Episodes can be about anything interesting: criminals, historical figures, cults, current events, social issues, conspiracies, cryptozoology, the paranormal, etc. You learn a lot about one subject a week (me and the team I now have research the hell out of this stuff) and you get to laugh while you learn. I work hard to add a lot of humor to the narratives. We also have an online community that has become pretty interesting as well. It’s grown out of people who are intensely curious about he world around them and willing to question their beliefs wanting to meet other people who feel the same way. Our private Facebook group has close to 10,000 members and many have become friends with one another. Romantic relationships have formed out of the group. There have been some engagements! RV: In early 2017, you were nice enough to give me a guest spot on your show in Arizona. In the green room you spoke passionately about Timesuck as it just started a few months prior. In what ways has the podcast evolved and exceeded your expectations? DC: The podcast has exceeded my expectations in every way. It has evolved into this interesting humanitarian group. Listeners send care packages to and raise money for other listeners in need. They send in emails saying listening to the show has strengthened relationships with their spouses, siblings, parents and more -- giving them inside jokes to share and subjects to talk about. This past week we had an email from someone who found the courage to leave an actual cult they’d been in for years after listening to various episodes about cults I’ve done (Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, Scientology, Order of the Solar Temple, The Branch Davidians, etc) We’ve had listeners write and say that Timesuck literally saved their life -- that they were suicidal but then became hopeful towards humanity again listening to the podcast. I never expected any of that. Not in a million years. I’m so excited to see where it goes from here! And you can always have a guest spot. You’re a funny guy! RV: Thanks. That’s all I needed to hear. Interview is over. So, does anything you uncover in the podcast wind up working it's way into your stand up?

DC: That’s just started to happen! I told a random story about having a sexual experience with a banana in high school. Yup, a banana. Fans went nuts laughing about it and teasing me. So I decided to tell the whole story on stage (after fans brought bananas to some shows and people started showing up wearing banana shirts) and now it’s one of my favorite new standup pieces. It is RIDICULOUS! RV: Can you give us a sneak peek of what topic you will be covering when you do the podcast live from the Punch Line? DC: Yes! I’ll be telling the tale of the Ant Hill Kids. A French Canadian cult mainly based in Quebec between 1977 and 1989, led by a psychopath named Roch Theriault. He was BRUTAL. It’s amazing what cult members endured at his hands and still chose to follow him. It’s a fascinating study in manipulation and I tell some of the darkest jokes I’ve ever written during this tale. It’s not for the squeamish! RV: What is your most favorite and least favorite thing about San Francisco? DC: My favorite thing about San Francisco is how smart the crowds are. They want good, intelligent comedy. They don’t need to be spoon fed. My least favorite is that San Francisco crowds can be REALLY sensitive. Too sensitive. They can take the social justice warrior ethos -- which is great -- and become a little too serious for their own good. It’s a comedy show, not a protest. Lighten the fuck up and laugh. Life’s too short to be pissed all the time...and this is coming from a pretty angry comic! RV: Well said! It’s always great to see you back at the Punch Line!

DC: I’m looking forward to some Punch Line shows! I truly do love coming to San Francisco. I have so many great memories of shows there over the years. It’s a home away from home and I look forward to it every year. Dan Cummins: The Happy Murder Tour at Punch Line San Francisco, May 1 - 4. Prices and show times vary. TimeSuck Live Podcast w/ Dan Cummins, May 4, 4PM. Tickets are $20 in advance. Tickets can be purchased at punchlinecomedyclub.com

[criticalsuperbeast-blog]

Creation Stories

A reflection on Creation: The First Three Chapters by Sylvia Nickerson. An exhibition at Casino Artspace, Hamilton, ON, January 2017 and a limited-edition zine, published by Nickerson, Hamilton, ON, 2017.

By Amanda Jernigan

Cover image from the comic zine Creation. Image credit: Sylvia Nickerson, 2017

I have just unpacked, from a box unopened since I moved to Hamilton in 2010, exhuming them amid a rain of packing peanuts, some small sculptures by Sylvia Nickerson. They have travelled with me since I was an undergraduate. Each sculpture comprises a piece or several pieces of sanded but unfinished softwood, to which a wax figure is affixed — sometimes several figures — with a simple configuration of copper wire. The figures are small, less than two inches high, and abstract — androgynous, their features undefined. Their attitudes vary. In one sculpture, a figure and its pendent double stand poised at the intersection of two crossing wires, funambulists at a point of decision. In another, six wax figures are poised at regular intervals along a wire arc, in a Muybridge-like representation of a leap. There’s another from the series — this one not in my collection — in which two figures face each other to either side of a wall, like the prisoners in Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace: Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. … Every separation is a link.

There was a long period when a small sculpture garden of Nickerson’s wax people adorned a mantle or bookshelf in my husband and my various successive abodes. The sculptures — small meditations on situation and relationship — came to constitute a kind of vocabulary, for me, a language of positional and orientational metaphor. They helped me to think about where I was in life, and who was there with me. Then we packed the figures away for one more move, and this time — because of space or time or work or children — they did not get unpacked. Until now.

I have been thinking about Nickerson’s wax people because a few months ago I went to see her exhibition Creation, at Casino Artspace: a 3-D installation of material from and related to her graphic-novel-in-process of the same title. The story of the graphic novel is intensely personal: the speaker moves to Hamilton, makes art, marries, becomes pregnant, gives birth, and haunts the grimy precincts of her downtown neighbourhood in the somnambulant but sometimes visionary trance of new motherhood. Wiped clean by sleep deprivation, existentially disoriented, she becomes a kind of tabula rasa for the often difficult stories she sees unfolding around her: poverty, violence, the displacements of gentrification. I used to know things, she says. Things I learned from books. Things I read in school. / Now what I know are our bodies, and these streets.

Sample page from chapter three of Creation. Image credit: Sylvia Nickerson, 2017

This is a narrative that I know to be autobiographical, if transmuted here by art. Yet most of the figures in the graphic novel, including the figure of the speaker, are grey-filled, animate outlines: archetypal figures, like the little wax sculptures. They are images of negative capability: emptied-out, but also open for the reader’s or viewer’s inhabitation.

When we were students together at Mount Allison University in the late nineties and early two thousands, I knew Nickerson primarily as a sculptor — though she worked in other media as well — one of the bright lights of the fine arts department. Her sculptures were weird biomorphic assemblages: she used pink dental moulding material to make casts of body parts, and her apartment was strewn at any given time with plaster or bronze torsos, noses, ears, all waiting to be gathered up by art. The visceral nature of her sculptures, their piercing intimacy, was counterpointed by a classical sense of composition and proportion. She studied mathematics alongside fine art, and her works would often put the inorganic forms of that discipline into conversation with the bodily or vegetal forms she had cast or sculpted. When she moved to Ontario, in 2005, Nickerson traded fine art for the history of science, in her academic life; in her studio life she traded sculpture for painting and drawing, eventually performing a quiet takeover of North American illustration venues from her Hamilton studio.

I honour the democratic impulse that led Nickerson away from the more rarefied genre of fine art to the more popular genre of illustration: she once told me that she’s never been comfortable making art for a coterie. Yet I have to say I have missed Nickerson the sculptor. When I walked into Casino Artspace, then, I experienced a joyful flash of recognition. The first piece in the show was a sculpture, a life-sized, life-like wax hand. It was as if the wax people of our mantlepiece sculpture-garden had grown up and gotten personal. Held in this wax hand was a drawing of an infant. The old medium cradled the new, here, just as mother cradled child. At the same time, mother cradled artist, and artist mother. A multiply resonant icon, it made me catch my breath.

Entering the gallery space, I was greeted by works on paper — the original ink-wash drawings for the first three chapters of Nickerson’s graphic novel, neatly alligator-clipped and hanging in staggered rows, on the walls. But the images were constantly escaping their two dimensions: spilling out into sculptural installations in the middle of the room and along one window sill, and onto the ceiling. In the window-sill installation, by Nickerson’s son, Colin Neary, the images escaped their artist, too: here, the infant whose birth is at the centre of Nickerson’s creation story became, before my very eyes, a child, a boy, an artist, his colourful, painted monster-figures overtaking his mother’s monochrome city. It was a literal relinquishing of control on Nickerson’s part, and as such a brilliant enactment of her exhibition’s themes: the loss of control that comes with new parenthood; the new, raw entry into the fray of life and mortality that one makes when one participates in creation in this way.

Cloud figures from installation of Creation: The First Three Chapters, at Casino Artspace. Image Credit: Cathy Coward, The Hamilton Spectator

Nickerson gave me a copy of the limited edition zine she produced to accompany the exhibition. It is to some extent a prototype, a promissory note that suggests something of what this work might be in an eventual, elaborated, printed form. I don’t want to judge it as a finished work, then, but I do want to reflect briefly on some of what is lost and found in the translation between the page and the gallery.

The printed version, which one must experience page by page rather than in the immersive simultaneity of an installation, introduces an element of elapsing time that adds to one’s experience of the story. It has a book’s intimacy and privacy. I go back and forth on the question of how much this serves the story. Certainly, it suits the private mind-space of the work, which takes us very much inside the speaker’s head; yet this is also a work about public spaces, and experiencing it in the public space of the gallery reminded me of that. The zine is artfully designed, making canny use of enlargement, reduction, repetition, and juxtaposition of the drawings, in order to tell its story. But reading it now I miss the deep blacks of the originals on display in Nickerson’s installation; I miss her son’s exuberant intervention (which is also her intervention, as she invited him into the space); and I miss that arresting, physical sense of the words and images escaping their bounds.

I am not a frequent reader of graphic novels: it’s a genre that is for the most part unknown to me. Perhaps Nickerson’s powerful installation work will ultimately be a bridge that can bring a viewer like me into the genre — and into other, future, printed versions of Creation. (The installation “ends”, if we can say that of an installation, with the words “to be continued.”) On the other hand, perhaps Nickerson has moved through the genre of the graphic novel into something new (and this not necessarily to the exclusion of the graphic novel) — a hybrid form that fuses artist and illustrator, printed page and three-dimensional space. I think of the crucible from which I once watched Nickerson pour molten bronze, when we were students. It reappears in the opening pages of Creation, with all of downtown Hamilton pouring into it or possibly out of it: a metaphor for destruction, metamorphosis, and rebirth.

There’s one further thing that I want to say about Creation. For all that motherhood is an archetypally creative experience, and although it’s written about and illustrated to exhaustion in parenting books and blogs, and on all our scattered Mistagram and Chitter feeds, the space of new motherhood, in its averbal intensity, is still a great mystery. I feel a shock of astonishment and welling gratitude, then, when I see art like Nickerson’s that has somehow emerged, an authentic expression, from that space. 

Like Sylvia Nickerson, Amanda Jernigan grew up in Ontario, went to school in New Brunswick, then moved to Hamilton, made art, married, and had children. She is a poet, essayist, and editor.

[mcjoelcain]

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020

I understand why being a day trader sounds sexy.

No office, no 9 to 5 job, no more yelling bosses, and no commute. Beat the market with nothing but your wits.

And all the EASY money.

Right?

I’ve been tempted to try day trading too. Then I did my research and it turns out that day trading is one of the most difficult ways to earn a living. The odds of making money through day trading are lower than those of winning by gambling at a casino.

What is Day Trading

Day Trading, by definition, is buying and selling stocks on the same day.

In day trading, you try to make a profit from the changes in prices of stocks over the course of the trading day. You could stay in the trade for a few hours, minutes, or even a few seconds. But you exit the position you take during that day.

As a day trader, you’ll be moving in and out of positions all day long.

This is the complete opposite of a buy-and-hold investor who buys a stock, holds onto it for a decade, then sells. This is a long-term approach to investments.

Day traders care about making money right now.

Just like stocks, you can day-trade commodities, currencies, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and other assets.

Most People Fail Miserably at Day Trading

A study conducted for a fourteen-year period found that less than 1% of day traders consistently make a profit.

You read that right. Not even 1% of day traders are successful.

According to the same research, you have higher chances of making money by playing roulette at a casino.

Day trading seems simple. You sit around all day, enter a trade for a few minutes and make lots of money from it.

While the actual trade lasts for a short time, the analysis behind making that trade takes the entire day. It’s not surprising that all successful day traders treat it like a full-time job.

As a thumb rule, the odds of succeeding with investment increase with time. Investing in the stock market for one year might lose money. Investing over a 30 year period virtually guarantees that you’ll make a healthy return.

Investing over hours or days is even worse. In the short term, prices can get really choppy for all sorts of crazy reasons. Much of it is completely random. Day traders have to deal with this uncertainty. That’s why most people who try out day trading fail miserably at it.

You also have to remember that trading stocks is probably the only field in the world where you are competing with the BEST PLAYERS right from Day 1. Just imagine how much time and effort the top 1% have put in to reach that level and compare it against your expertise and knowledge when you are starting.

Think about what would happen if you are in a tennis match against Roger Federer when you only play at your local tennis club on weekends. The odds are not in your favor. 

The Risks of Day Trading

Apart from the random fluctuations in the stock price in the short term, day traders have to handle other risks.

1. Costs and Taxes

When you’re day trading, you will enter and exit positions every day. In the past, you had to pay a fee for every trade that ate directly into your profits. This has begiun to change, mange brokerages now offer free trades. But you still have to pay taxes every time you sell at profit.

While the capital gains tax isn’t as high as normal income tax, it seriously drags down the profits of day trading. Not only do long-term investors pay a lower rate for holding an investment for at least a year, they won’t have to pay taxes on their appreciation for years, maybe even decades. That’s a lot more time for compounding growth to work its magic.

2. Stress

Day trading is a risky business. Stock prices move fast. Your profits and losses will increase and decrease quickly.

If you’re on the right side of the trade and making a profit, you will start to wonder when you should exit. If you’re in a losing trade, your stress levels go upon seeing the mounting losses.

By seeing the value of your portfolio change every second,you’ll be on edge every second of the work day.

3. Large Losses and Large Profits

If you use leverage or borrowed money to enter a trade, your profits and losses are magnified.

A few bad bets can drain out your account before you know it. Taxes and costs add up too. So even when you make a profit, the amount you can actually take home is far less than you expected.

Even if you win, it can lead to your future downfall.

Let’s say you start day trading and make a huge profit. You’ll think that you “cracked day trading” and can repeat the success. So you day-trade again. Then the losses kick in. But you know what winning feels like and assume the losses are bad luck. Then you go deeper. Before you know it, you’re completely out of cash.

The exact same thing happens to gamblers. Many compulsive gamblers had a major win early in their careers and they spend their entire life chasing that one win. They end up losing far more than they won in the first place.

How NOT to Get Sucked Into Day Trading

Day trading is extremely appealing because people believe it is an easy way to make money.

But ALWAYS remember the odds of success in day trading. LESS than 1% succeed.

Gambling can be a ton of fun. It can also be enjoyed responsibly.

Day trading can be approached the exact same way.

I never walk into a casino expecting to make money. I have a maximum amount of money that I can spend that evening. It’s for entertainment and I’m going to live it up. Once I’m out, I’m out. I pack it in and go back to my hotel room.

There’s a few key critical pieces of my mindset when gambling:

I treat it as an expense, not an investment. I never expect to make money from it.

I cap my losses. This limits the expense to a level that I can live with.

My only goal is to have fun. This makes the whole experience better since I’m not stressing about anything. The casino gets my money, I get a great night of fun, it’s a fair trade.

I treat day trading the same way. It’s entertainment and I don’t expect to make money. As long as you cap your losses and stop day trading once you hit that limit, it can be done responsibly.

A common rule for speculative investments is to only put 10% of your portfolio at risk. As long as you’re not taking heavy losses regularly, this works really well. Even if you lose the whole 10%, nothing will change about your financial future. Just make sure not to keep taking another 10% after losing it several times. Before you know it, you’ll be down 50%, or more, in total.

How to Tell if You Are Special and Should Try Day Trading

There’s still a chance that you are special and can consistently make money through day trading.

You would be wondering…how do I find out if I should day trade?

Before jumping in, go through these steps: 

1.     Trading System

It all starts with a trading system. All the successful traders have one.

Think of a trading system like a guide that tells you when you should enter and exit a trade based on your logical reasoning. It’s like counting cards in blackjack, the system tells you when to bet and when to hold.

If you don’t have a system, you’re basically entering and exiting trades randomly. While you may make some profit using this strategy, it’ll be based purely from luck. That won’t be sustainable.

Apart from entry and exit points, a trading system should also have an effective money management plan (a fancy word for how much money you would risk for every trade).

2.     Back Test Your System

The beauty of backtesting your system is you’ll see how it would have performed over a period of time without having risked any money. You can backtest a system manually or use special websites/software meant to backtest trading systems.

If your backtest shows profitability for 10 years, then you have a chance. I recommend going back further and testing your system in a range of market environments. If you only tested 2010-2020, your entire system would depend on a bull market with really low interest rates. Test multiple recessions, bull markets, high inflation/low inflation, high interest rates/low interest rates, and so forth.

Don’t forget to factor in costs and taxes while backtesting as they can eat up your profit.

Lastly, try to account for your own psychology. Everything can look beautiful and logical in a spreadsheet but living the trades day-to-day is a completely different experience. Few people have the stomach to follow their system perfectly, especially through hard times. 

3.     Trading Psychology

Each person has a different trading mindset. Psychology is a critical aspect of day trading.

In fact, I believe your psychology is 90% of the game. The rest is your system.

If your profitable trading strategy doesn’t match your psychology, it simply will not work in the long run.

Let’s say that according to your trading strategy, you stay an average of four hours in a trade every day. But you are the kind of person who starts worrying only a few seconds into the trade if you start incurring a loss. In such a situation, you panic and hastily exit the trade even if your system has not asked you to exit.

When your system doesn’t match your psychology, you would not be able to follow your system. Which means you are randomly entering and exiting trades. In turn, that leads to losses.

This is why I prefer long-term buy and hold strategies. Once I buy something, I have zero problems holding onto it forever. So I buy extremely carefully and assume that I’ll never sell.

You only have a successful trading system when your trading system matches your personality.

4.     Live Market Test

Once you have a successful trading system in place, try it out and test it in the live market.

Even if you have backtested, putting your hard-earned money in a trade is an entirely different game.

Here are some issues that may come up when you take your system to the market:

All your emotions will go CRAZY. It’s tough to keep them in check when real money is involved. They may hamper your ability to accurately carry out your trading system.

You may also face practical problems like not being able to buy/sell at the price you want.

There will be slippages, which may increase/reduce your profits.

At times, your order may get partially fulfilled or remain unfulfilled.

If you’ve cleared all the points above and are consistently making a profit, then you know you are special. You are among the top 1%. In that case, you can go ahead and try day trading.

Alternatives to Day Trading

If you want to invest in stocks, the best way is to buy index funds.

By picking a lazy portfolio of a few index funds, investing consistently every month, and never selling, you’ll reap these rewards:

The lowest fees in the industry, maximizing your profit.

Better overall returns than anyone trying to do it themselves.

Zero stress and effort. You’ll make a ton of money and never even have to check your account.

Even in a taxable brokerage account, the taxes are really low compared to other strategies.

It’s simple enough that you can get the whole thing in place within one afternoon.

More money, less stress, and simple enough for anyone to do it.

This is what I do. And I recommend you take this approach with at least 90% of your portfolio.

Only day trade if you’re comfortable swimming with sharks.

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020 is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Money https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/day-trading/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[samuelfields]

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020

I understand why being a day trader sounds sexy.

No office, no 9 to 5 job, no more yelling bosses, and no commute. Beat the market with nothing but your wits.

And all the EASY money.

Right?

I’ve been tempted to try day trading too. Then I did my research and it turns out that day trading is one of the most difficult ways to earn a living. The odds of making money through day trading are lower than those of winning by gambling at a casino.

What is Day Trading

Day Trading, by definition, is buying and selling stocks on the same day.

In day trading, you try to make a profit from the changes in prices of stocks over the course of the trading day. You could stay in the trade for a few hours, minutes, or even a few seconds. But you exit the position you take during that day.

As a day trader, you’ll be moving in and out of positions all day long.

This is the complete opposite of a buy-and-hold investor who buys a stock, holds onto it for a decade, then sells. This is a long-term approach to investments.

Day traders care about making money right now.

Just like stocks, you can day-trade commodities, currencies, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and other assets.

Most People Fail Miserably at Day Trading

A study conducted for a fourteen-year period found that less than 1% of day traders consistently make a profit.

You read that right. Not even 1% of day traders are successful.

According to the same research, you have higher chances of making money by playing roulette at a casino.

Day trading seems simple. You sit around all day, enter a trade for a few minutes and make lots of money from it.

While the actual trade lasts for a short time, the analysis behind making that trade takes the entire day. It’s not surprising that all successful day traders treat it like a full-time job.

As a thumb rule, the odds of succeeding with investment increase with time. Investing in the stock market for one year might lose money. Investing over a 30 year period virtually guarantees that you’ll make a healthy return.

Investing over hours or days is even worse. In the short term, prices can get really choppy for all sorts of crazy reasons. Much of it is completely random. Day traders have to deal with this uncertainty. That’s why most people who try out day trading fail miserably at it.

You also have to remember that trading stocks is probably the only field in the world where you are competing with the BEST PLAYERS right from Day 1. Just imagine how much time and effort the top 1% have put in to reach that level and compare it against your expertise and knowledge when you are starting.

Think about what would happen if you are in a tennis match against Roger Federer when you only play at your local tennis club on weekends. The odds are not in your favor. 

The Risks of Day Trading

Apart from the random fluctuations in the stock price in the short term, day traders have to handle other risks.

1. Costs and Taxes

When you’re day trading, you will enter and exit positions every day. In the past, you had to pay a fee for every trade that ate directly into your profits. This has begiun to change, mange brokerages now offer free trades. But you still have to pay taxes every time you sell at profit.

While the capital gains tax isn’t as high as normal income tax, it seriously drags down the profits of day trading. Not only do long-term investors pay a lower rate for holding an investment for at least a year, they won’t have to pay taxes on their appreciation for years, maybe even decades. That’s a lot more time for compounding growth to work its magic.

2. Stress

Day trading is a risky business. Stock prices move fast. Your profits and losses will increase and decrease quickly.

If you’re on the right side of the trade and making a profit, you will start to wonder when you should exit. If you’re in a losing trade, your stress levels go upon seeing the mounting losses.

By seeing the value of your portfolio change every second,you’ll be on edge every second of the work day.

3. Large Losses and Large Profits

If you use leverage or borrowed money to enter a trade, your profits and losses are magnified.

A few bad bets can drain out your account before you know it. Taxes and costs add up too. So even when you make a profit, the amount you can actually take home is far less than you expected.

Even if you win, it can lead to your future downfall.

Let’s say you start day trading and make a huge profit. You’ll think that you “cracked day trading” and can repeat the success. So you day-trade again. Then the losses kick in. But you know what winning feels like and assume the losses are bad luck. Then you go deeper. Before you know it, you’re completely out of cash.

The exact same thing happens to gamblers. Many compulsive gamblers had a major win early in their careers and they spend their entire life chasing that one win. They end up losing far more than they won in the first place.

How NOT to Get Sucked Into Day Trading

Day trading is extremely appealing because people believe it is an easy way to make money.

But ALWAYS remember the odds of success in day trading. LESS than 1% succeed.

Gambling can be a ton of fun. It can also be enjoyed responsibly.

Day trading can be approached the exact same way.

I never walk into a casino expecting to make money. I have a maximum amount of money that I can spend that evening. It’s for entertainment and I’m going to live it up. Once I’m out, I’m out. I pack it in and go back to my hotel room.

There’s a few key critical pieces of my mindset when gambling:

I treat it as an expense, not an investment. I never expect to make money from it.

I cap my losses. This limits the expense to a level that I can live with.

My only goal is to have fun. This makes the whole experience better since I’m not stressing about anything. The casino gets my money, I get a great night of fun, it’s a fair trade.

I treat day trading the same way. It’s entertainment and I don’t expect to make money. As long as you cap your losses and stop day trading once you hit that limit, it can be done responsibly.

A common rule for speculative investments is to only put 10% of your portfolio at risk. As long as you’re not taking heavy losses regularly, this works really well. Even if you lose the whole 10%, nothing will change about your financial future. Just make sure not to keep taking another 10% after losing it several times. Before you know it, you’ll be down 50%, or more, in total.

How to Tell if You Are Special and Should Try Day Trading

There’s still a chance that you are special and can consistently make money through day trading.

You would be wondering…how do I find out if I should day trade?

Before jumping in, go through these steps: 

1.     Trading System

It all starts with a trading system. All the successful traders have one.

Think of a trading system like a guide that tells you when you should enter and exit a trade based on your logical reasoning. It’s like counting cards in blackjack, the system tells you when to bet and when to hold.

If you don’t have a system, you’re basically entering and exiting trades randomly. While you may make some profit using this strategy, it’ll be based purely from luck. That won’t be sustainable.

Apart from entry and exit points, a trading system should also have an effective money management plan (a fancy word for how much money you would risk for every trade).

2.     Back Test Your System

The beauty of backtesting your system is you’ll see how it would have performed over a period of time without having risked any money. You can backtest a system manually or use special websites/software meant to backtest trading systems.

If your backtest shows profitability for 10 years, then you have a chance. I recommend going back further and testing your system in a range of market environments. If you only tested 2010-2020, your entire system would depend on a bull market with really low interest rates. Test multiple recessions, bull markets, high inflation/low inflation, high interest rates/low interest rates, and so forth.

Don’t forget to factor in costs and taxes while backtesting as they can eat up your profit.

Lastly, try to account for your own psychology. Everything can look beautiful and logical in a spreadsheet but living the trades day-to-day is a completely different experience. Few people have the stomach to follow their system perfectly, especially through hard times. 

3.     Trading Psychology

Each person has a different trading mindset. Psychology is a critical aspect of day trading.

In fact, I believe your psychology is 90% of the game. The rest is your system.

If your profitable trading strategy doesn’t match your psychology, it simply will not work in the long run.

Let’s say that according to your trading strategy, you stay an average of four hours in a trade every day. But you are the kind of person who starts worrying only a few seconds into the trade if you start incurring a loss. In such a situation, you panic and hastily exit the trade even if your system has not asked you to exit.

When your system doesn’t match your psychology, you would not be able to follow your system. Which means you are randomly entering and exiting trades. In turn, that leads to losses.

This is why I prefer long-term buy and hold strategies. Once I buy something, I have zero problems holding onto it forever. So I buy extremely carefully and assume that I’ll never sell.

You only have a successful trading system when your trading system matches your personality.

4.     Live Market Test

Once you have a successful trading system in place, try it out and test it in the live market.

Even if you have backtested, putting your hard-earned money in a trade is an entirely different game.

Here are some issues that may come up when you take your system to the market:

All your emotions will go CRAZY. It’s tough to keep them in check when real money is involved. They may hamper your ability to accurately carry out your trading system.

You may also face practical problems like not being able to buy/sell at the price you want.

There will be slippages, which may increase/reduce your profits.

At times, your order may get partially fulfilled or remain unfulfilled.

If you’ve cleared all the points above and are consistently making a profit, then you know you are special. You are among the top 1%. In that case, you can go ahead and try day trading.

Alternatives to Day Trading

If you want to invest in stocks, the best way is to buy index funds.

By picking a lazy portfolio of a few index funds, investing consistently every month, and never selling, you’ll reap these rewards:

The lowest fees in the industry, maximizing your profit.

Better overall returns than anyone trying to do it themselves.

Zero stress and effort. You’ll make a ton of money and never even have to check your account.

Even in a taxable brokerage account, the taxes are really low compared to other strategies.

It’s simple enough that you can get the whole thing in place within one afternoon.

More money, less stress, and simple enough for anyone to do it.

This is what I do. And I recommend you take this approach with at least 90% of your portfolio.

Only day trade if you’re comfortable swimming with sharks.

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020 is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/day-trading/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[kennethherrerablog]

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020

I understand why being a day trader sounds sexy.

No office, no 9 to 5 job, no more yelling bosses, and no commute. Beat the market with nothing but your wits.

And all the EASY money.

Right?

I’ve been tempted to try day trading too. Then I did my research and it turns out that day trading is one of the most difficult ways to earn a living. The odds of making money through day trading are lower than those of winning by gambling at a casino.

What is Day Trading

Day Trading, by definition, is buying and selling stocks on the same day.

In day trading, you try to make a profit from the changes in prices of stocks over the course of the trading day. You could stay in the trade for a few hours, minutes, or even a few seconds. But you exit the position you take during that day.

As a day trader, you’ll be moving in and out of positions all day long.

This is the complete opposite of a buy-and-hold investor who buys a stock, holds onto it for a decade, then sells. This is a long-term approach to investments.

Day traders care about making money right now.

Just like stocks, you can day-trade commodities, currencies, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and other assets.

Most People Fail Miserably at Day Trading

A study conducted for a fourteen-year period found that less than 1% of day traders consistently make a profit.

You read that right. Not even 1% of day traders are successful.

According to the same research, you have higher chances of making money by playing roulette at a casino.

Day trading seems simple. You sit around all day, enter a trade for a few minutes and make lots of money from it.

While the actual trade lasts for a short time, the analysis behind making that trade takes the entire day. It’s not surprising that all successful day traders treat it like a full-time job.

As a thumb rule, the odds of succeeding with investment increase with time. Investing in the stock market for one year might lose money. Investing over a 30 year period virtually guarantees that you’ll make a healthy return.

Investing over hours or days is even worse. In the short term, prices can get really choppy for all sorts of crazy reasons. Much of it is completely random. Day traders have to deal with this uncertainty. That’s why most people who try out day trading fail miserably at it.

You also have to remember that trading stocks is probably the only field in the world where you are competing with the BEST PLAYERS right from Day 1. Just imagine how much time and effort the top 1% have put in to reach that level and compare it against your expertise and knowledge when you are starting.

Think about what would happen if you are in a tennis match against Roger Federer when you only play at your local tennis club on weekends. The odds are not in your favor. 

The Risks of Day Trading

Apart from the random fluctuations in the stock price in the short term, day traders have to handle other risks.

1. Costs and Taxes

When you’re day trading, you will enter and exit positions every day. In the past, you had to pay a fee for every trade that ate directly into your profits. This has begiun to change, mange brokerages now offer free trades. But you still have to pay taxes every time you sell at profit.

While the capital gains tax isn’t as high as normal income tax, it seriously drags down the profits of day trading. Not only do long-term investors pay a lower rate for holding an investment for at least a year, they won’t have to pay taxes on their appreciation for years, maybe even decades. That’s a lot more time for compounding growth to work its magic.

2. Stress

Day trading is a risky business. Stock prices move fast. Your profits and losses will increase and decrease quickly.

If you’re on the right side of the trade and making a profit, you will start to wonder when you should exit. If you’re in a losing trade, your stress levels go upon seeing the mounting losses.

By seeing the value of your portfolio change every second,you’ll be on edge every second of the work day.

3. Large Losses and Large Profits

If you use leverage or borrowed money to enter a trade, your profits and losses are magnified.

A few bad bets can drain out your account before you know it. Taxes and costs add up too. So even when you make a profit, the amount you can actually take home is far less than you expected.

Even if you win, it can lead to your future downfall.

Let’s say you start day trading and make a huge profit. You’ll think that you “cracked day trading” and can repeat the success. So you day-trade again. Then the losses kick in. But you know what winning feels like and assume the losses are bad luck. Then you go deeper. Before you know it, you’re completely out of cash.

The exact same thing happens to gamblers. Many compulsive gamblers had a major win early in their careers and they spend their entire life chasing that one win. They end up losing far more than they won in the first place.

How NOT to Get Sucked Into Day Trading

Day trading is extremely appealing because people believe it is an easy way to make money.

But ALWAYS remember the odds of success in day trading. LESS than 1% succeed.

Gambling can be a ton of fun. It can also be enjoyed responsibly.

Day trading can be approached the exact same way.

I never walk into a casino expecting to make money. I have a maximum amount of money that I can spend that evening. It’s for entertainment and I’m going to live it up. Once I’m out, I’m out. I pack it in and go back to my hotel room.

There’s a few key critical pieces of my mindset when gambling:

I treat it as an expense, not an investment. I never expect to make money from it.

I cap my losses. This limits the expense to a level that I can live with.

My only goal is to have fun. This makes the whole experience better since I’m not stressing about anything. The casino gets my money, I get a great night of fun, it’s a fair trade.

I treat day trading the same way. It’s entertainment and I don’t expect to make money. As long as you cap your losses and stop day trading once you hit that limit, it can be done responsibly.

A common rule for speculative investments is to only put 10% of your portfolio at risk. As long as you’re not taking heavy losses regularly, this works really well. Even if you lose the whole 10%, nothing will change about your financial future. Just make sure not to keep taking another 10% after losing it several times. Before you know it, you’ll be down 50%, or more, in total.

How to Tell if You Are Special and Should Try Day Trading

There’s still a chance that you are special and can consistently make money through day trading.

You would be wondering…how do I find out if I should day trade?

Before jumping in, go through these steps: 

1.     Trading System

It all starts with a trading system. All the successful traders have one.

Think of a trading system like a guide that tells you when you should enter and exit a trade based on your logical reasoning. It’s like counting cards in blackjack, the system tells you when to bet and when to hold.

If you don’t have a system, you’re basically entering and exiting trades randomly. While you may make some profit using this strategy, it’ll be based purely from luck. That won’t be sustainable.

Apart from entry and exit points, a trading system should also have an effective money management plan (a fancy word for how much money you would risk for every trade).

2.     Back Test Your System

The beauty of backtesting your system is you’ll see how it would have performed over a period of time without having risked any money. You can backtest a system manually or use special websites/software meant to backtest trading systems.

If your backtest shows profitability for 10 years, then you have a chance. I recommend going back further and testing your system in a range of market environments. If you only tested 2010-2020, your entire system would depend on a bull market with really low interest rates. Test multiple recessions, bull markets, high inflation/low inflation, high interest rates/low interest rates, and so forth.

Don’t forget to factor in costs and taxes while backtesting as they can eat up your profit.

Lastly, try to account for your own psychology. Everything can look beautiful and logical in a spreadsheet but living the trades day-to-day is a completely different experience. Few people have the stomach to follow their system perfectly, especially through hard times. 

3.     Trading Psychology

Each person has a different trading mindset. Psychology is a critical aspect of day trading.

In fact, I believe your psychology is 90% of the game. The rest is your system.

If your profitable trading strategy doesn’t match your psychology, it simply will not work in the long run.

Let’s say that according to your trading strategy, you stay an average of four hours in a trade every day. But you are the kind of person who starts worrying only a few seconds into the trade if you start incurring a loss. In such a situation, you panic and hastily exit the trade even if your system has not asked you to exit.

When your system doesn’t match your psychology, you would not be able to follow your system. Which means you are randomly entering and exiting trades. In turn, that leads to losses.

This is why I prefer long-term buy and hold strategies. Once I buy something, I have zero problems holding onto it forever. So I buy extremely carefully and assume that I’ll never sell.

You only have a successful trading system when your trading system matches your personality.

4.     Live Market Test

Once you have a successful trading system in place, try it out and test it in the live market.

Even if you have backtested, putting your hard-earned money in a trade is an entirely different game.

Here are some issues that may come up when you take your system to the market:

All your emotions will go CRAZY. It’s tough to keep them in check when real money is involved. They may hamper your ability to accurately carry out your trading system.

You may also face practical problems like not being able to buy/sell at the price you want.

There will be slippages, which may increase/reduce your profits.

At times, your order may get partially fulfilled or remain unfulfilled.

If you’ve cleared all the points above and are consistently making a profit, then you know you are special. You are among the top 1%. In that case, you can go ahead and try day trading.

Alternatives to Day Trading

If you want to invest in stocks, the best way is to buy index funds.

By picking a lazy portfolio of a few index funds, investing consistently every month, and never selling, you’ll reap these rewards:

The lowest fees in the industry, maximizing your profit.

Better overall returns than anyone trying to do it themselves.

Zero stress and effort. You’ll make a ton of money and never even have to check your account.

Even in a taxable brokerage account, the taxes are really low compared to other strategies.

It’s simple enough that you can get the whole thing in place within one afternoon.

More money, less stress, and simple enough for anyone to do it.

This is what I do. And I recommend you take this approach with at least 90% of your portfolio.

Only day trade if you’re comfortable swimming with sharks.

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020 is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020 published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[andrewdburton]

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020

I understand why being a day trader sounds sexy.

No office, no 9 to 5 job, no more yelling bosses, and no commute. Beat the market with nothing but your wits.

And all the EASY money.

Right?

I’ve been tempted to try day trading too. Then I did my research and it turns out that day trading is one of the most difficult ways to earn a living. The odds of making money through day trading are lower than those of winning by gambling at a casino.

What is Day Trading

Day Trading, by definition, is buying and selling stocks on the same day.

In day trading, you try to make a profit from the changes in prices of stocks over the course of the trading day. You could stay in the trade for a few hours, minutes, or even a few seconds. But you exit the position you take during that day.

As a day trader, you’ll be moving in and out of positions all day long.

This is the complete opposite of a buy-and-hold investor who buys a stock, holds onto it for a decade, then sells. This is a long-term approach to investments.

Day traders care about making money right now.

Just like stocks, you can day-trade commodities, currencies, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and other assets.

Most People Fail Miserably at Day Trading

A study conducted for a fourteen-year period found that less than 1% of day traders consistently make a profit.

You read that right. Not even 1% of day traders are successful.

According to the same research, you have higher chances of making money by playing roulette at a casino.

Day trading seems simple. You sit around all day, enter a trade for a few minutes and make lots of money from it.

While the actual trade lasts for a short time, the analysis behind making that trade takes the entire day. It’s not surprising that all successful day traders treat it like a full-time job.

As a thumb rule, the odds of succeeding with investment increase with time. Investing in the stock market for one year might lose money. Investing over a 30 year period virtually guarantees that you’ll make a healthy return.

Investing over hours or days is even worse. In the short term, prices can get really choppy for all sorts of crazy reasons. Much of it is completely random. Day traders have to deal with this uncertainty. That’s why most people who try out day trading fail miserably at it.

You also have to remember that trading stocks is probably the only field in the world where you are competing with the BEST PLAYERS right from Day 1. Just imagine how much time and effort the top 1% have put in to reach that level and compare it against your expertise and knowledge when you are starting.

Think about what would happen if you are in a tennis match against Roger Federer when you only play at your local tennis club on weekends. The odds are not in your favor. 

The Risks of Day Trading

Apart from the random fluctuations in the stock price in the short term, day traders have to handle other risks.

1. Costs and Taxes

When you’re day trading, you will enter and exit positions every day. In the past, you had to pay a fee for every trade that ate directly into your profits. This has begiun to change, mange brokerages now offer free trades. But you still have to pay taxes every time you sell at profit.

While the capital gains tax isn’t as high as normal income tax, it seriously drags down the profits of day trading. Not only do long-term investors pay a lower rate for holding an investment for at least a year, they won’t have to pay taxes on their appreciation for years, maybe even decades. That’s a lot more time for compounding growth to work its magic.

2. Stress

Day trading is a risky business. Stock prices move fast. Your profits and losses will increase and decrease quickly.

If you’re on the right side of the trade and making a profit, you will start to wonder when you should exit. If you’re in a losing trade, your stress levels go upon seeing the mounting losses.

By seeing the value of your portfolio change every second,you’ll be on edge every second of the work day.

3. Large Losses and Large Profits

If you use leverage or borrowed money to enter a trade, your profits and losses are magnified.

A few bad bets can drain out your account before you know it. Taxes and costs add up too. So even when you make a profit, the amount you can actually take home is far less than you expected.

Even if you win, it can lead to your future downfall.

Let’s say you start day trading and make a huge profit. You’ll think that you “cracked day trading” and can repeat the success. So you day-trade again. Then the losses kick in. But you know what winning feels like and assume the losses are bad luck. Then you go deeper. Before you know it, you’re completely out of cash.

The exact same thing happens to gamblers. Many compulsive gamblers had a major win early in their careers and they spend their entire life chasing that one win. They end up losing far more than they won in the first place.

How NOT to Get Sucked Into Day Trading

Day trading is extremely appealing because people believe it is an easy way to make money.

But ALWAYS remember the odds of success in day trading. LESS than 1% succeed.

Gambling can be a ton of fun. It can also be enjoyed responsibly.

Day trading can be approached the exact same way.

I never walk into a casino expecting to make money. I have a maximum amount of money that I can spend that evening. It’s for entertainment and I’m going to live it up. Once I’m out, I’m out. I pack it in and go back to my hotel room.

There’s a few key critical pieces of my mindset when gambling:

I treat it as an expense, not an investment. I never expect to make money from it.

I cap my losses. This limits the expense to a level that I can live with.

My only goal is to have fun. This makes the whole experience better since I’m not stressing about anything. The casino gets my money, I get a great night of fun, it’s a fair trade.

I treat day trading the same way. It’s entertainment and I don’t expect to make money. As long as you cap your losses and stop day trading once you hit that limit, it can be done responsibly.

A common rule for speculative investments is to only put 10% of your portfolio at risk. As long as you’re not taking heavy losses regularly, this works really well. Even if you lose the whole 10%, nothing will change about your financial future. Just make sure not to keep taking another 10% after losing it several times. Before you know it, you’ll be down 50%, or more, in total.

How to Tell if You Are Special and Should Try Day Trading

There’s still a chance that you are special and can consistently make money through day trading.

You would be wondering…how do I find out if I should day trade?

Before jumping in, go through these steps: 

1.     Trading System

It all starts with a trading system. All the successful traders have one.

Think of a trading system like a guide that tells you when you should enter and exit a trade based on your logical reasoning. It’s like counting cards in blackjack, the system tells you when to bet and when to hold.

If you don’t have a system, you’re basically entering and exiting trades randomly. While you may make some profit using this strategy, it’ll be based purely from luck. That won’t be sustainable.

Apart from entry and exit points, a trading system should also have an effective money management plan (a fancy word for how much money you would risk for every trade).

2.     Back Test Your System

The beauty of backtesting your system is you’ll see how it would have performed over a period of time without having risked any money. You can backtest a system manually or use special websites/software meant to backtest trading systems.

If your backtest shows profitability for 10 years, then you have a chance. I recommend going back further and testing your system in a range of market environments. If you only tested 2010-2020, your entire system would depend on a bull market with really low interest rates. Test multiple recessions, bull markets, high inflation/low inflation, high interest rates/low interest rates, and so forth.

Don’t forget to factor in costs and taxes while backtesting as they can eat up your profit.

Lastly, try to account for your own psychology. Everything can look beautiful and logical in a spreadsheet but living the trades day-to-day is a completely different experience. Few people have the stomach to follow their system perfectly, especially through hard times. 

3.     Trading Psychology

Each person has a different trading mindset. Psychology is a critical aspect of day trading.

In fact, I believe your psychology is 90% of the game. The rest is your system.

If your profitable trading strategy doesn’t match your psychology, it simply will not work in the long run.

Let’s say that according to your trading strategy, you stay an average of four hours in a trade every day. But you are the kind of person who starts worrying only a few seconds into the trade if you start incurring a loss. In such a situation, you panic and hastily exit the trade even if your system has not asked you to exit.

When your system doesn’t match your psychology, you would not be able to follow your system. Which means you are randomly entering and exiting trades. In turn, that leads to losses.

This is why I prefer long-term buy and hold strategies. Once I buy something, I have zero problems holding onto it forever. So I buy extremely carefully and assume that I’ll never sell.

You only have a successful trading system when your trading system matches your personality.

4.     Live Market Test

Once you have a successful trading system in place, try it out and test it in the live market.

Even if you have backtested, putting your hard-earned money in a trade is an entirely different game.

Here are some issues that may come up when you take your system to the market:

All your emotions will go CRAZY. It’s tough to keep them in check when real money is involved. They may hamper your ability to accurately carry out your trading system.

You may also face practical problems like not being able to buy/sell at the price you want.

There will be slippages, which may increase/reduce your profits.

At times, your order may get partially fulfilled or remain unfulfilled.

If you’ve cleared all the points above and are consistently making a profit, then you know you are special. You are among the top 1%. In that case, you can go ahead and try day trading.

Alternatives to Day Trading

If you want to invest in stocks, the best way is to buy index funds.

By picking a lazy portfolio of a few index funds, investing consistently every month, and never selling, you’ll reap these rewards:

The lowest fees in the industry, maximizing your profit.

Better overall returns than anyone trying to do it themselves.

Zero stress and effort. You’ll make a ton of money and never even have to check your account.

Even in a taxable brokerage account, the taxes are really low compared to other strategies.

It’s simple enough that you can get the whole thing in place within one afternoon.

More money, less stress, and simple enough for anyone to do it.

This is what I do. And I recommend you take this approach with at least 90% of your portfolio.

Only day trade if you’re comfortable swimming with sharks.

Here’s Our Take on Day Trading in 2020 is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/day-trading/ via http://www.rssmix.com/