#i dont like tina fey because i just dont

[professorsta]

I feel like to describe Steven's shows as him flaunting wealth and eating gold from the bussoms of royalty is quite a dishonest summarization and transparent way to not even try an understand what the fuck the show is. Its a show about sharing and partaking in different cultures lmao. Like, you know there are classes in college for that right? Literally just exposing you to different cuisines and culture's? Thats Steven's show and I don't see the ethical problem in budgeting money to do so, if you want to watch that sort of entertainment (i do! I do! I do. You don't that okay). He's always been about connecting with others and sharing life experiences. Yea he owns a Tesla, lame shit not gonna lie but I'm not a wimp and I'd say that to anyone with a Tesla, even Steven. So yeah fine whatever rip on him for that lmao. But to call a show wheres he's just touring to connect with others and share their food out of touch and classist? Pfffftttt. Wow how cruel and unethical. Criticize him all you want, but none of you are. Its all half ass accusations and weird fucking Vibe Checks where you deem him Not Right cus he didn't smile correctly or wide enough. You are not his friend but Also, not his life long enemy fool. You don't know him well enough to hate or love him accurately.

[hcbiebrown]

why do u dislike the mean girls musical? genuinely asking, i also dont like it v much

i don't like the music, it's very bland, uninspired, and doesn't flow well from track to track. the lyrics are very "i'm trying to hit a word count"-esque. just talking just to talk. i don't like to hear belting in every song. it's good for emotional shifts and peaks but so much of it is so unflattering to the ear.

"cautionary tale" makes me so mad because there's no reason for it to be in show, taking it out would do absolutely nothing to the plot

"whose house is this" is the worst song in the show and the most unappealing

i've never liked tina fey's humor (she LOVES race jokes). whenever regina isnt played by a white girl then suddenly the joke isn't about her hair, it's about her ancestry??? but even the jokes not about race still dont land

i have a strong disdain for shows that use projections as their sets instead of amplifying their sets. poor set design i think.

the costuming for janis and the plastics (specifically their pink wear) makes me gag. i can look past janis but they just threw a bunch of pinks together for the plastics 😭

and im sorry but whoever mixed the cast recording needs to get fired because the amount of songs where the vocals are drowned out by the instrumentals. there's a crazy amount of pitch correction on their voices (we KNOW these people can sing). and they didn't give much vocal direction either cause if i didn't already know the lyrics, i wouldn't know what they were saying.

[imeverywoman420]

Youre recieving the same kind of dumb one-goal criticism tina fey got for pointing out sexualized famous women in a book she wrote that basically got her cancled as racist for just not having enough white examples. But thats what should make all feminists extra angry? That rich woc are still expected to dance and dress in extra degrading ways? You can try to think of more white examples but they arent there because race and class are tied together in the anericas so you have subcultures where poor girls are expected to hurt and expose themselves more than rich (just like everywhere) but being poor is just extra racial via history and you cant escape it when you talk about sexism. Theres nothing in what you notice thats racist its just reality for where we are right now. Actually some of the only white girls taking themselves low are in bikini road side coffee shops and g string strip clubs. Cant think of any white pop starts like that. Ppl should be asking themselves why successful woc feel so obligated to do this if extremely poor white girls only do this on highways.

Honestly i just cant think of that many white celebrities that i keep up with lol. Like im a beyonce stan so i brought up bey as an example of a performer that wears leotards and little catsuits on stage same with cardi b and meg and dojer cat like i KNOW them.

I just talk about celebs that i Know. I honestly do not know shit about a dula peep, charli xcx (besides the iggy song), grimes, kim petra? Taylor swift umm i KNOW theres a girl named sabrina. But like nobody makes memes about them (besides like people online with green hair and gay twitter people when it comes to charli xcx) ive never heard their songs they dont have like. A presence. In my mind palace. I dont think about them lol i cant comment on celebrities i literally dont pay attention to.

[gokupowers]

troy and abed 10 years in the fuuuture! they pay taxes now

[witchvspatriarchy]

Feminism vs Female Empowerment vs Feminist Exemplification

In the past years this thread of labeling anything that’s female positive as feminist has really skyrocketed and it bothers me greatly. Great female representation and female empowerment does not make a thing feminist. Something that illustrates, explains or describes a feminist value or point of view does not make that thing feminist.

What defines something as sexist or empowering or feminist is the context and the message or objective that it wants to convey.

There are men in the industry who are progressive and works towards equality by hiring more women, and actively trying to give us better female representation. There are women who direct women in films about women and who try to maintain a crew or team of mostly women. In both cases, none of this makes their project or them feminists.

The majority of the entertainment industry responds and caters to The Male Gaze – it does so even if there are no men operatively involved in the project, because 99.9% of people in the industry do not make art, they are here to make money.

And although it is based on what we commonly call artistic careers, that does not mean that there is a really artistic background or objective in the things being made – it’s purely commercial in a vast majority.  The ultimate goal of the entertainment industry is to sell. Therefore, much of this "art" is not progressive, thought-provoking or subversive in any way, specially if the person in charge believes that this could cost them money. The main objective is to market to the consumers and they do so at the expense of everything - this includes quality, values, points of view, consciousness and self-awareness. And this is when two very interesting things happen: Faux Feminism & Female Exploitation.

Female Exploitation is when the person in charge believes that what sells is quiet, beautiful and sensual women – this is the main thing, and the character's story is secondary (so much that most end up being just eye candy or as a manic pixie dream girl). In this case they think of subversive and thought-provoking as something that can harm their income. So the actresses talent and creativity doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re pretty and sell.

Faux Feminism is when the person in charge believes that the money is in the feminist pov and they make films that could pass as feminist and with strong female characters that follow closely and/or represent the political climate and feminist discourse of today – but that does not make the product feminist, mainly because in most cases they do this in the most superficial way for a monetary gain. Keep in mind, in this cases they don’t explicitally use the word feminism in attachment to whatever their selling, but it’s very obvious.

And sometimes is neither of these, but instead Casual Feminism - when something could represent, stand for feminism but that wasn’t the intention at all. Feminists saw it and were like HECK YEAH.

Is feminist a project in which mostly or only women participate? Is feminist a project where the main roles are 99% female? Is feminist a project that addresses sexism? Is feminist a project that’s inclusive? Is feminist a project with independent and empowered women? Is feminist a project that criticizes the way in which society treats women? The answer to all this is NO.

What defines whether something is feminist or not, is first and foremost if whether its exhibitors/creators are feminists or if it was written to represent/stand for feminism explicitly and consciously. If I wear a shirt that says I am feminist, that does not make me feminist. Being a fan of Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Emma Watson or any other feminist does not make me a feminist. Reading one feminist book does not make me feminist (it’s the start, if so I decide). I'm just wearing something, following a person, consuming a product. And many artistic products are attributed the term feminist when they are not in the slightest. If you assume that it is feminist because it exemplifies feminism or is potentially empowering for women, that does not make it feminist. Talking about self-love, girl power, sorority and sexism does not make you a feminist - it makes you self-aware of your rights, strengths and weaknesses and that is excellent and encouraged, but it does not make you feminist.

Why? Because Feminism is a philosophical, social, political, economic and artistic current. What makes a feminist person a feminist, above all, is that they identify themselves as such, with all the awareness of what feminism is because they have studied it or are constantly studying it or have the intention of studying it.

We can long and dream for a feminist awakening in the entertainment industry, but precisely because of that we should not label just anything as sfeminist, because labeling something or someone as feminist when it is not is a disrespect to the person or product and misleading; and it is harmful to the people and products that are feminist and that are mostly ignored, criticized, received in a negative way and usually overshadowed by pseudo-feminist products with better marketing, plus it only helps to preserve the misinformation and misunderstanding of what feminism is and superficializes it. Not to mention it can perpetuate some misconceptions.

Something or someone not being feminist does not mean it is sexist and there IS feminism in the entertainment industry, but very little and it usually suffers from detractors from the industry itself; so what we find mostly is female empowerment, in an initial and often diluted facet.

So no, we can't call it feminist but we can call it empowering since many women feel that spark of strength, they feel identified and reflected accurately, maybe they even feel understood - and that is something very valuable. We can also use them as an exemplification of feminism, there are many artistic projects that are not feminist but serve to explain, illustrate or describe a feminist point of view because they showed it excellently.

Let’s see some examples of what I’m talking about:

Mean Girls is a great example of a feminist movie. It represents and portrays feminist points of view and feminist values consciously and with the intention and awareness of doing it directly from a feminist stand. It has the feminist label very big and very visibly. It was written by a feminist (Tina Fey), inspired on the novel of another feminist (Rosalind Wiseman). The director is not a feminist, as far as we know, but that doesn’t take away from its value as a feminist piece of work in any manner.

Legally Blonde is another great example of a feminist film. The writers, Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith are both feminists, Kirsten notably being a Riot Grrrl. It is based on a novel written by a feminist (Amanda Brown). And just as Mean Girls, it represents and portrays feminist points of view and feminist values consciously and with the intention and awareness of doing it directly from a feminist stand. It has the feminist label very big and very visibly. Also, it is very female empowering.

Now let’s talk Harley Quinn, because is a very interesting one.

First, let’s talk about her in the comics. She wasn’t created by feminists. She isn’t coded as feminist. She is not written as a feminist character. She is not female empowering for most of her story. Nor she or her story are an exemplification of feminism. The character is not meant to represent or embody feminism in any way. So is she a feminist character? No.

Now, in the movie Birds of Prey. Again, she wasn’t created by feminists. Was the script written by a woman? Yes, but not a feminist woman. Is the movie directed by a woman? Yes, but again, not a feminist woman – the director even said in an interview that she didn’t want to “sound too much like a diehard bra-burning feminist”. The film had an all women crew. Again, Harley isn’t coded as feminist - she is not written as a feminist. The character is not meant to represent or embody feminism in any way. BUT is it female empowering? HELL YES. And the movie as a whole is a great exemplification of feminism, this is another quote from the director: “a harlequin’s role is to serve, they’re nothing without a master and so the movie is about Harley Quinn becoming her own master. And not just Harley, but the Birds of Prey as well. All these women go through something and they’re all trying to break free from their own chains”. So is the movie feminist? No, and so are not it’s characters. But we can and should embrace and celebrate Harley Quinn from a feminist point of view.

Is Hermione Granger a feminist character? No. But she is female empowering and an exemplification of feminism. The actress who plays her, Emma Watson, is a feminist but that doesn’t magically makes all the characters she portrays feminists or well written female characters.

On the other hand, Lisa Simpson IS a feminist. Is the voice-actress a feminist? I don’t know. Are the creators feminists? I dont know either - but it doesn’t matter because Lisa is a feminist and she is explicitly portrayed and written as such, she voices feminism and is meant to embody and represent a feminist (even if it’s an 8 year old one) – and she does so very well if I might add.

So stop calling everything “feminist” and stop telling people that if they believe in equality they are inherently feminists even if they dont want to use that label themselves, stop this specially towards people (I’ve seen this in comment sectons). In my experience, there are three types of women who refuse the feminist label:

1) The Closeted Feminist: a woman that’s not afraid to speak up about their opinions but doesn’t describe themselves or their povs with the word feminism even though their arguments and discourse has a feminist stand that is based on feminist theory to the point where it’s obvious this person has immersed themselves in feminist books, podcasts, films, documentaries, etc – this could be because labeling oneself as a feminist is dangerous. Either in their house, or in the society they’re a part of – and with this I mean that it could actually lead to abuse or active persecution. Not everyone has the same freedom, background and opportunity you do.

 2) The Double Agent: they say they don’t need feminism and they don’t believe in it but they still stand for equality and justice. Usually this person doesn’t really understand what feminism is because they have never cared to learn about it and yet they go round commenting on feminist blogs about “how feminists are wrong” – this person believes the patriarchy’s version of what feminism is. This person is aware of the injustice and inbalance but thinks feminism is sexism towards men, hatred of men and that is used for women as a women-victimizing campaign to get pity points and advantages. This are the people that said Taylor Swift played the victim for 13 years.

 3) The Free Woman: she doesn’t believe in feminism, she probably voices hate towards feminism and feminists and thinks very low of them because “she doesn’t need feminism” because she loves the men in her life and has “never suffered sexism” first hand so it doesn’t exist. The Free Woman and the Patriarchal Feminist have in common that they feel feminism victimizes women and is sexism towards men. The difference is one thinks inequality is a myth and the other one knows it’s still a thing.

If ya’ll read all of this KUDOS TO YOU and THANK YOU. I’ve been thinking about this for almost a year and it took me a long time and effort to write this and put my thoughts into words cause I’m really bad at expressing myself and lack communication skills. I’d like to write too about the difference between Feminist Icon – Feminist Woman – Iconic Women, just because I’m tired of that mess too.

[melodycallers]

I was tagged by @agoodafternoon to answer a few questions. Thank you ☺️

What was the last thing you read?

BossyPants by Tina Fey

Favorite movie?

From the top of my head Pride and Prejudice

Favorite book?

A book I really enjoyed this year was Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Dream Date?

I really enjoy listening to others so dinner or like a long walk would be nice

Do you have a crush?

Nope

Do you have any hobbies?

Listening to music and tv shows

What is your favorite time of the day?

Mornings

If you could look like anything, what would you look like?

I’m okay with how I look now I think

Are you romantic?

I like to think so.

What’s your favorite type of weather?

I sometimes complain about the cold but I love winter. Sweater weather baby!

What do you like talking about?

Everything. I know useless facts that come in handy from time to time 😂 but mainly music

What are your turn ons?

Someone who knows their stuff. Like when they’re very interest in their jobs or studies and know so much.

What are your turn offs?

People who think they’re better or above than anybody else.

If you got a tattoo what would it be and where would you get it?

I do want some but no concrete ideas yet 🤷🏻‍♀️

Do you have any pets?

My roommates have two cats which I love very much

Dream job?

Honestly anything that won’t feel like a drag

Dream place to live?

Anywhere but it has to be the countryside

Dream vacation?

I don’t know there are so many places!

Do you have any piercings?

My ears

If you had kids what would you name them?

I don’t think I’ll have them.

What are your best traits?

I’m very patient and I’ll try to help in any way I can

Worsts traits?

Overthinker baby!

What’s your worst fear?

Disappointing my loved ones

What do you want to eat right now?

Nachos

What’s your best vacation you’ve ever been on?

Haven’t really made long vacation trips

Favorite City?

I don’t really have one

Favorite social media platform?

I enjoy tumblr. Don’t know if reddit really counts as social media but some subreddits are helpful

Favorite article of clothing?

Right now? My corduroy jacket

Do you play sports?

Nope

Favorite meal of the day?

Dinner

What are you excited for?

Just that this year will finally be over

Not excited for?

Dont have much to do around the holidays and I get bored really fast

When was the last time you cried?

Literally two days ago

Dream House?

I just want a big house, with a really big kitchen 😂

What’s something you hate about the world?

People who are hateful just because they want to

What’s something you love about the world?

People who are selfless and kind

What scents do you like?

Pine trees and vanilla

What kind of sleeper are you?

Light sleeper. I have a hard time sometimes to fall asleep.

Are you a cat or dog person?

Dog

How long would you survive in the zombie apocalypse?

I think I’m resourceful. Not much tho

Are you trusting?

Nope. It takes a while

What fictional character do you identify with?

Currently Liz Lemon

What labels do you usually get?

Approachable? Idk but people do find me easy to talk to

What song would be your life anthem?

Oh I think Wetsuit by The Vaccines

What issues are you dealing with right now?

overthinking and distance

How can someone win you over?

Show me they care. Don’t need much

I tag: @you-will-be-found @stopmakingtheeyes

Feel free to join or ignore🤠

[hipsterfrankcastle]

ok i got tagged in this TWICE by the lovely @carry-the-sky and @heidiamalia so let’s goooo

1. how tall are you? 5′8

2. what color and style is your hair?

Currently like a weird.... gingery brown vibe.... the style is what i like to call “poorly box died”. but im like an anime protagonist my hair has been a lot of dumb colours

3. what color are your eyes?

hazel

4. do you wear glasses?

yep!

5. do you wear braces?

not any more

6. what is your fashion style?

weird mix of incredibly formal workwear worn at casual occasions and like..... someone from an ivy park fashion shoot who can’t afford to buy actual ivy park. idk. athleisure shit. but mostly jeans and t-shirts these days seeing as i NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE

7. full name? not today, satan

8. when were you born? 1995

9. where are you from and where do you live now? i grew up in the southwest of england. still here....

10. what school do you go to?

uni of york

11. what kind of student are you?

oh man. i am the Most. v extra. i used to study too much. 

12. do you like school? uh Hell Yeah. i like structure, organised fun, being surrounded by my pals. i try not to nostalgise it tho because there were times i was very very stressed out. why do we put so much pressure on teenagers?? good lord. uni sucked ass but i liked the actual study side of it (masters im coming for you!!)

13. what are your favourite school subjects?

english lit (shocking no one), philosophy and ethics, drama (even tho i sucked ass), history

14. favorite TV shows? too many. the hour and in the flesh are all time faves. i looooove us sitcoms i’ve watched the office maybe 13 times through. maybe more, actually. parks and rec, brooklyn 99, 30 rock (great news was such a severely underappreciated tina fey classic). fleabag. broadchurch, black mirror, the handmaid’s tale blehhhh i could go on for hours.

15. favorite movies? im just going to put 2 because otherwise we will be here for days. the darjeeling limited and joe wright’s pride and prejudice. oh wait. no and the new world. and days of heaven. can’t miss my boy malick off there. 

16. favorite books? UHHH a little life (all time fave please read but maybe google some trigger warnings or ask me about it), my year of rest and relaxation, the english patient, the secret history (basic lol), stoner.... tHERE’S TOO MANY.

17. favorite pastime? i like walking my dogs. spending time with my dogs. taking photos of my dogs. other things that don’t include my dogs like watching movies (duh), writing, reading, recently gotten into film photography. im realising now this question didnt ask for a list oop moving on

18. do you have any regrets? yeah. my uni degree. quitting my job (one of those ones where you know it’s what was best for you at the time but now, looking back, it SUCKS). oh. yeah. deciding to lose two stone in the space of five minutes and developing an eating disorder and HAVING TO QUIT MY JOB. that’s a big one. not going to the editing lab with a guy the morning after we kissed. that one felt like a sliding doors situation. 

19. dream job? baker. book editor. pro dog walker.  im realising all of these are fairly achievable. 

20. would you like to get married someday? nope nope nope!! well. maybe. if i find someone REALLY good.

21. would you like to have kids someday? hahahahahahahah no.

23. do you like shopping? yes but im trying to less because capitalism is a scourge and im trying to unlearn its various teachings including how our shopping habits make us feel/how the fashion industry affects body image. plus it’s terrible for the environment. shout out to my therapist for teaching me all this shit.

24. what countries have you visited? a lot of europe (holland germany belgium spain france poland scotland italy greece that’s not a lot actually), USA, australia, new zealand. i wanna hit california next cause ive been to new york twice now.

25. what’s the scariest nightmare you’ve ever had? ermmmmm oh man. uhh. i have a lot of horrible nightmares bcos ---trauma lmao. cant think of one standout one.

26. do you have any enemies?

quentin tarantino. OH and this one girl on my film course at uni. she doesn’t know that we’re enemies. but we are. 

27. do you have an s/o?

hahahahahhahahahah

28. do you believe in miracles? uh. no? dont think so. im not very spiritual, but i do believe sometimes that the universe sends you signs (even if really it’s just your brain trying to tell you something your subconscious is trying to tell you by interpreting the world around you a certain way)

thank you so much for the tags. i love talking about myself as you can tell. i think everyone i know has been tagged so. if you’re reading this. you’re tagged!

also if anyone ever has any questions about any details of my personal life. ask me. i will tell you anything. like i said. loooove talking about myself. 

[positive-lesbian-vibes]

Hi! I was wondering, what are some examples of lesbian-coded characters in fiction? Whenever i've seen posts about gay-coded characters it's usually about male gay-coded characters, which is good! They deserve to be talked about! But I was wondering who some gay-coded female characters are.

generally speaking when people talk about “gay coded” characters in fiction its from older media during a time when it was actually illegal to show gay characters having happy endings. the bury your gays trope didnt just show up one day, it happened because for a period of time the only way producers were allowed to show gay characters was either if one or both of them died, they became heterosexual at the end, or they had otherwise unhappy endings in an attempt to discourage The Youths from being gay (side note here: making gay characters die doesnt mean fewer people irl are gay its just means they have no positive role models but uh i think we all know that here)

that meant that if directors or producers wanted to represnt gay people with happy endings, they would have to code the character as gay, but not explicitly say they were gay. most of the time this was done with whatever gay stereotypes pervaded at the time - in early hollywood that would be things like having the women smoke and work, the men would be more effeminate, etc. if that was too obvious, it would be “independent women” or men who werent interested in dating. 

as a result we dont necessarily get “gay coded” characters today like we used to, because censorship laws no longer prevent displaying gay characters in a positive light. if producers and writers want a gay character, they can just put in a gay character, and there are no rules about how that characters story has to end, although most writers and directors still choose to kill of the gay characters because theyre homophobes but thats a story for a different time

but “gay coding” hasnt necessarily gone away, either, because gay characters are still considered “mature” and cant really be shown in childrens tv shows, books, or movies without outrage from homophobes. so in a way, gay coding does still exist, just on a different level.

i dont really read or watch a lot of media from periods of time where gay characters were required to be portrayed negatively, so i cant really think of any off the top of my head. as far as characters that were gay coded in modern tv shows, janice ian from mean girls was gay coded (tina fey chose not to condemn lebophobic bullying by throwing janice into a shoehorned hetero romance at the end that makes no sense instead of letting janice be the lesbian she was born to be), i have never seen bend it like beckham but everyone talks about all the gay subtext in that, i think velma from scooby doo was actually going to be a lesbian but there was too much controversy over that so they made her straight but she was still gay coded imo, a lot of people see miss honey from matilda as gay coded

for the most part, i think most of the “gay coding” people talk about in modern media doesnt actually fit the technical definition of “gay coding” which was a system set up to defy to censorship laws by deliberately having characters flag as gay without forcing them to have unhappy endings. most of what we call “gay coding” today is not intentional by the writers (who will almost always adamantly defend the heterosexuality of their characters) but is instead an interpretation by the viewers, which doesnt necessarily decrease the value of the characters, but it does show authors true colors when they get very upset about their viewers interpreting the characters differently than the writers intended (im sure yall saw the supergirl debacle thing, it was all over my dash)

it does, to me, show an interesting disconnect between straight people and understanding the gay experience, however, for example, many lesbians see twilight and relate to bella heavily (bc shes a lesbian lol), mostly because bella’s experiences and emotions often match up very similarly to their own. while stephanie meyer will defend the Pure Heterosexuality of her precious characters, it doesnt change the fact that there are a lot of points in the twilight series that are very typical to lesbians experiencing lots of internalized lesbophobia: bella was never interested in dating until some Magical Unattainable boy came up, who then became Less Unattainable, who was Unlike Other Men, whose abusive behaviors she (unknowingly) misinterpretted for love, when in reality she confused her desire for male approval because of her father’s poor parenting that she got through edward as actual romantic love. the female characters she did connect to (alice, angelina, even rosalie if you look closely, wow im remembering more of these names than i thought i would) were all much healthier relationships, and in some ways closer than most friendships tend to be (if you interpret it that way) in the same way many lesbians confused romantic love for platonic love for their friends. when viewed through that lense, seeing bella as a lesbian who hasnt come to term with her lesbianism yet due to being abused as a child and having an abusive boyfriend, it makes a lot more sense than “she met a hot vampire dude who thinks shes great for some reason and now she wants to bone him.” but since stephanie is a shitty writer who doesnt understand the lesbian experience, she will refuse to see it that way and instead protest that no, it really is just a super elaborate love story, not that she doesnt know how to write romance and that she accidentally created a closeted lesbian character in an abusive relationship.

anyway wow sorry for this essay im supposed to be reading my physics textbook now which is why i psychoanalyzed twilight there for a hot second but anyway u didnt really ask for this but thats my hot take for the day

[takingbackourculture]

What is it with liberals thinking they can be racist and its ok because "oh im just down with black people/im not really racist"? bill maher, who is known for being an asshole towards muslims and women has said the n-word on tv and publications are rushing to his defense as to why its perfectly fine that he, a cis white rich male with his own show can use a word he has no right using. This is why i dont trust people who go on about being liberal (tho the alt right asses can fuck themselves too).

If they like Lena Dunham or Tina Fey and ask me if I listened to the new Miley Cyrus trash, then they’re ugly, white liberalists

- Jess

[lazerhead1-blog]

Politics

When I think about how social media and the internet in general have impacted politics, my mind instantly thinks of the NSW State government. To be specific, Gladys Berejiklian and the Don’t Kill Live Music movement that has been a contentious talking point recently for Australian music lovers (myself most definitely included). It seems the NSW government have been quite successful in destroying Sydney’s raging nightlife culture and live music (which I would be happy to use this post to bitch and moan about, but that’s not this is about). Well, it seems they are now taking aim at music festivals and the safety of people that attend festivals, with Gladys Berejikilian heading the charge. I won’t go into the saga in depth. You can read about that here:

https://www.change.org/p/don-t-kill-live-music-41f9c8a6-9910-4df8-b2d1-a750e41ff877?use_react=false

https://musicfeeds.com.au/news/dont-kill-live-music-rally-announced-in-the-wake-of-nsw-governments-harsh-festival-laws/

https://www.facebook.com/DKLMAustralia/

Please sign the petition and show some support!

Basically, in the wake of some drug related (some not even drug related) deaths at music festvals in the last 12 months, shocking new festival regulations have been implemented that has resulted in the death of many music festivals. The liberal party has stuck its head in the sand in regards to harm minimisation strategies that have been backed by experts and have been proven to work outside Australia. In response to this an online petition attached with an open letter to “music and culture lovers of Australia” was started accompanied by an online social media campaign called Don’t Kill Live Music Australia which was followed by a rally in Sydney.

What is interesting to me is how social media became a platform for the movement to gain awareness and support and how politics and political issues are often influenced or dictated by these platforms and online publics. I am from Victoria and have been engaged and following the political saga surrounding the NSW state election because I have a keen interest in preserving Australia’s music scene. It’s obvious if you look at the number of people supporting the Don’t Kill Live Music Australia Facebook page and petition that the liberal party are an unpopular bunch, right? Then why was it a shock when they were re-elected recently in March? My best guess is that young people today are not engaged enough in politics. Just because you joined a Facebook group anti a particular government doesn’t mean shit unless you go out, get informed about a party that reflects you, and vote for them. In the same way that it was hard to take Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin seriously in politics after the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sketch on Saturday Night Live [watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSOLz1YBFG0], the countless memes and slogans attacking and making fun of Gladys Berekjiklian that surfaced on the Don’t Kill Live Music Australia Facebook page and elsewhere, made the whole thing seem like a big joke that would just blow over. It didn’t!

[survivor-iceland]

Tribal Council #2 - Melrakki

John, what’s the strategy going into this vote? Is it about activity like on Ulfur, or is the game actually afoot in round two?

 the strategy going into this vote is similar to the other tribe, where we’re looking at who’s not as active and trying to make our team as fortified as possible. but to say that the game isn’t afoot would be a naïve thing to say.

Keith, how do you feel about your tribemates? Does it seem like everyone is pulling their weight? Is there anyone who sticks out or have people been meshing well?

Well I hope it doesnt sound too Cheesy or Diplomatic. But the truth is that I feel amazing with this tribe. Inspite of having a little tough time adjusting to the time difference and all, I have tribemates that have been supportive through challenges and everything. I dont think anyone here isnt pulling their weight and everyone meshes well. I guess the only question tonight would be how much have you meshed with ur tribemate. Hopefully enough to keep you here after the votes are read.

Zoe, tell me about alliances. This is only round two, so is it even possible ot know who you trust and you can’t? How much do these early tribal connections matter into the late game?

 Despite it being the early game, it would be silly to think that alliances weren’t in play. There will always be connections between individuals and groups, though it’s hard to say definitively how long they will last. Trust will always be in play, because we as humans are behaviorally designed to trust in each other. I think the real question is about distrust: you have to keep an eye out for snakes, and trust yourself and your instincts more than anyone else. My hope is that no matter what happens tonight, we will be a stronger tribe tomorrow, and will grow and get to know each other even more.

Maynor, first off, how are your arms doing? You good? In the game, do you feel comfortable in your position? Why or why not? Who do you think should be targeted for the vote?

Answer- my arms are doing better now. The day after i had to do the truck unload and it was the big one. Sjdhhshs it was 2100 pieces. So lots of boxes and i was put in the home part so basically furniture. So that day i kinda died. I think im alright. Been talking to people. But that key on survivor though, dont feel comfortable. The vote has so many factors. Hard to say.

Cormac, explain to the viewers some of the not so winning strategy that went into immunity this round. Why did things go so south for you? Will you be able to swing back as a group next round?

Well I think we did the best we honestly could. It was a tricky game for sure. I don't think things went sour. It's just how the dice rolled. One world could have come into play for someone and I hope that tonight's vote gets rid of any extra baggage claim that might be trying to work against the team. Melrakki has to keep itself calm, cool and collected so we can crush it like Tina Fey and Babba the Hut

Stephen, talk to us about the idol hunt. Is idol paranoia already starting around camp, or is it too early to say?

Im sorry jay we arent allowed to discuss the idol hunt :P

Jack, how do you decide who to target so early in the game? Is this about threats or about tribe strength, or something else? How could someone convince you that they deserve to stay?

I think right now it's more about who you feel comfortable working with moving forward, rather than who is a target. Survivor is about making connections, and in the early game if you don't make those connections, your name gets brought up. As for convincing me you deserve to stay, again it's more about initial impressions and interactions, with both me the rest of the tribe.

Sierra, if there were a swap, would you be upset or excited? How does the One World element of the game affect who you feel close to and want to work with?

Well, Lord, I mean... Jeff... I mean... Jay...One World is super interesting because it puts everybody in the same place, at the same camp. It means that you’re not just with your tribe all the time, and that means that you can potentially build connections with anyone and everyone. That being said, this is still a tribal game. We have to focus on the people we’re on a tribe with and remember that it’s still a competition that’s ‘us versus them.’ I don’t want to spend too much time thinking about a swap, but the truth is, it’s a possibility. Even though it’s only the second round of the game, there’s still a chance that an early swap could happen… so tonight’s vote has consequences, and those consequences could kick in later or could affect us right away.

-----

If anybody has a hidden immunity idol and would like to play it, now would be the time to do so.

Nobody stands.

I’ll read the votes. Once the votes are read the decision is final and the person voted out will be asked to leave immediately.

------

First Vote: Jack

- im nervous. Im hoping it is you tonight.

Second Vote: Stephen

Read Receipts being off is sus af 

Third Vote: Jack

Tough to Vote a strong player this early. But knowing that your good at this game, it feels like the right vote. 

Fourth Vote: Jack

jack you are nice and I hope you return for other seasons it just wasnt your day

Fifth Vote: Jack

Sorry Jack you threw me off with your paranoia. We were going to work together as a group. You're just a hand me down Chaos Kass.

Sixth Vote, and the second player sent to EOE: Jack

I’m sorry, man, but this is the move for tonight.

[jess-oh]

Reflection

hey journal,

i finally got an e-mail back today from jeremy about the internship and turns out, i got it! im not surprised and idk what i was expecting but i am kind of sad. and im not entirely sure why. leading up to this reveal, i was debating on just going home for the majority of the summer or even just july and august and it was weird bc i was so excited to go home for the entire thing before but now all i felt was fear. it was a fear of returning to Sa-Rang bc i knew that i would feel so ostracized again and so afraid and i didnt want to go back to that. yes, i always feel such a strong connection with God back home bc thats a part of the culture but i also always felt so out of place. especially as an out of stater. there are so many people that i dont know and so many things theyve done that i was absent for. and our personalities just never really clicked. but then i started thinking, is it actually my fault? how is it that nothing has changed? really? is it really all on them or is it partially on me too? and i think it is. i think a big reason why i dont click with them is bc im always too afraid to be myself around them and try to just fit in instead to what everyone else is doing and saying instead of being my own person and i think it’s rubbed some people the wrong way. but i also have been unapologetically me in the past and i think my aggressive personality and boldness just turned some people off. but i do think me just constantly trying to fit in is a huge reason why i feel so awkward and find it so hard to maintain conversations with the people there. at least the problem isnt unsolvable at least.so i was right to some extent. i do need to keep working on myself and im not at a place yet where i am so firm in my identity in Christ that I can comfortably go home and just freely be me. That’s something that I need to work out. But now that I recognize it, I can continue to be aware of it and move forward from here.

I want to talk to someone but I’m not sure who to turn to. But it is pretty somber and upsetting. I would really like to go home but it does make more logical sense to stay here. To gain work experience, money, manage myself, and not have my parents worry about me. It’s great and I’m happy that I’m not being an extra burden on their shoulders on top of everything that they’re already focusing on. 

sidenote: im actually incredibly pessimistic and make things a lot worse in my head than they actually are in reality. im not optimistic at all. thats a huge fallacy. im super pessimistic. ive verbally expressed how im the only sophomore and brought a lot of attention to that and yes, david and grace have been more active recently but were pretty MIA for the majority of the year. but even though david has been more present recently, i have still continued with this statement. and i wasnt the only freshman/newcomer. There was Michael, Yen, Grace, Jason, and Johnathan. Yes, Jason and Johnathan came later but I wasn’t alone for the whole year. If anyone, it was Grace that was alone bc I never came out to Sundays. I was only there on Fridays. I’ve been so blind and bitter in my ways and have only focused on all the negative aspects and feeling bad about myself and just assuming the worst in people instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt and seeing the world from a positive outlook. Yes, this past year has sucked and a lot happened. But it is nothing in comparison to the weight and pain my dad must have felt through it all. Everything has been indirectly hitting me and I just have to accept that there’s not much I can do about it. But my family actually has a direct responsibility to do something about it and are well and able to do so. And it hasn’t hit anyone harder than my dad. Both of his parents are or have been sick for years, he lost his nephew, his car broke down, he got laid off multiple times, he took ownership of the leaky pipes. i cant even imagine how much he took on in total and somehow, he’s still standing. he’s still serving and still trying so incredibly hard. ive been so consumed and obsessed with how everything has been affecting me that i never stopped and thought about how it’s impacted him. i’ve made things seem worse than they really are. i really am so grateful for my dad and so honored to call him my father. i just wrote him a long message via kakao expressing my gratitude and i hope he responds well. it came from a very genuine place in my heart.

theres still a lot that i need to figure out in my life but im slowly getting there. 

ive been hanging out with my d&d crew a lot more recently—or at least just jordan and tykira and i feel so free when im with them and i think a big reason is bc my personality and beliefs and sense of humor arent super conservative. that isnt to say that they go against the Bible or God or anything. I would never do that. But the things I enjoy exploring are usually considered “taboo” within the church so it’s hard for me to find common ground without delving deep into certain issues. I really like Bo Burnham and Tina Fey bc they deal with real world issues in the form of comedy and I respond well to it. But not everyone does and are even turned off at the mention of these topics. Like rape, abortion, millennials, entitlement, shelter, protection, and more. 

I’ve been so quick to label and judge other people, especially people in the OC, for how sheltered and spoiled and easy their life is compared to areas outside of there but ive failed to look at myself in the mirror and realize my own sheltered and spoiled tendencies. The only reason why I have to worry about food for the next day is because I’m not good at managing my money. I’m not that much better than people. Yes, I’m doing a lot at my age but others have been doing it for much longer. I am proud of how far I’ve been able to do and accomplish and it is mind boggling to me that there are people that have not even entered this sphere yet but I’m sure that other people view me in the same way when it comes to other issues. We’re all learning and slowly figuring ourselves and the world out and it takes time and everyone gets there at different moments. It has nothing to do with age and location but everything to do with experience. Not a lot of people have witnessed so many deaths but I’m sure others have battled with depression and suicide on much deeper levels than myself. And I just need to accept people as they come at whatever life stage they’re at instead of judging them and comparing them to me. I should just let them come as they are and accept them for who they are because that’s how the Father sees us. And I want to see the world in that way too. I don’t want to be afraid to speak up just bc it’s the unpopular opinion. I want to bring light and a new perspective to issues and topics no one seems to want to address and hopefully start a conversation as a result. What Anthony said a while ago still rings in my head. If I want to avoid pity, I need to stop pitying myself and viewing what I do and who I am as something to be pitied. I am me. And I am learning and growing and moving forward. And I want God to be an integral part of my life along the way. I have definitely been drowning myself in media recently and it’s honestly made me feel pretty gross. But I don’t want to live that way anymore. I want to keep going and move forward from here on out.

[nwar101010-blog]

Watching Mean Girls for the first time

Time for a live blog Oh hey it's the dad from The Middle She was homeschooled like me! She is??? Just like me actually Also traveled a lot I feel like that school bus will be relevant later !!! Tina Fey! I SEE A ROMANCE COMIN definitely a romance I'm feelin it And people mispronounce her name????? Me as hell Just assuming everyone black is African???? OKAY SUSPICIOUS I really relate to her like a LOT I was roommate's with The Plastics Regina seems nice, I like her maybe Ok also suspicious I know these girls tho I know this trap they're setting Ok these """"friends"""" seem really cruel also? Like is it supposed to be better because they're cruel upfront??? I feel her so much on this crush thing This is me w Spanish Crush Guy I feel like this is only working out for her because she's thin and attractive? My homeschooled ass would not be able to manage this Ok Regina may be mean but that was smart AF Me w all the rich people I know Ok but she still has Avril Lavigne posters so she is still going to look back on these years w cringe face "I DONT STEAL" I RELATE TO HER SO MUCH Tina Fey is wonderful I really feel Kady's upstanding morals I also feel her flirting techniques AND HER THINKING HE WAS WRONG WHILE ASKING HIS ADVICE I also feel her dedication to authentic costuming I once embarrassed the hell out of myself being a very accurate Gene Wilder Willy Wonka once OOOH BACK FUCKIN FIRED BITCH this is the worst scene in any movie ever SHE KISSED HIM I feel like this a bit of a misunderstanding and they're overreacting This movie is quite sexist and racist? I'd like to point it out? Okay she is homeschooled not a literal animal thanks stop dehumanizing homeschooled kids YAAAAS BITCH ANYTHING YOU DO WITH CONFIDENCE AND YOU WILL SUCCEED FOR SURE I am really feeling her style today it is super cute I love the ribbon and cardigan Okay yeah for sure the """"good"""" people are not actually good people they're being assholes? I hate the "don't tell her I told you" shit more than anything else in the world Fuck it up Kevin G Get it Janis WHAT WHAT THIS IS WHAT GOES ON IN PUBLIC SCHHOOL HAHAHHAHA STEREO IN DA FACE that's it Kady improvise I like your style I feel this for lit class lol this is exactly what lit class is like I WAS DEFINITELY ROOMMATES WITH REGINA GEORGE "I could hate her and still want her to like me" honey that's abuse I feel that She's changing her speech patterns to mimic them btw She's pretending to be dumb? No please no YAS THE KISSSSSS I FEEL THE WORD VOMIT THING TOO "It's like I have ESPN or something" OKAY SHE DID NOT LOSE HER "hot" BODY AMANDA SEYFRIED I'm sorry I've just been trying to remember that the whole movie Oh my god so they just set out to destroy Regina's whole life? Okay these "good" people are fucking evil and disgusting You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain Is she going for the 60s gogo dancer look? SHOTS KADY????? Go to parties don't host them Regina is me rollin up to the party in a puffy jacket and already suspicious NOT THE PLASTIC GIRL I FELL IN LOVE WITH I FELL IN LOEV WITH A CHILD ON AN ELEPHANT she's gotta be a virgin right? Yes definitely she is I said actual vomit just when she said actual vomit lol I AM DAMIAN "Janis I cannot stop this car I have a curfew" Oh wow that's a cool painting Ooh a hate girls that scream like that I saw that coming for sure OH SHE IS SMART Regina is very smart I will give her that The "oooh" sound that public schoolers make when something happens I recall that from my one year of charter school I love Karen so much Okay she is going to regret getting rid of so many posters in one place Nevermind I guess she had enough posters "Made out with a hot dog? That was one time!" Me as hell I really do love Karen Good use of thematic African music ME Public schoolers will literally kill each other over nothing this is actual fact Regina: Chaotic evil Yeah this is definitely quite a racist movie? I've never seen any public schoolers actual enthusiastic about a prom I relate to Tina Fey too It is a self esteem problem, none of them feel good enough and they need to tear girls down it's a classic internalized sexism resort Definitely a racist movie This feels really personal for a school function? I LOVE KAREN SO MYCH What the hell is this? I really like Gretchen's style Oh Karen! *cheery tune* who else but Karen?! She gets hit by a bus here right? I recognize the shirt Yup I knew it High school is full of rumors That's a plot hole; the only damage of that entire house party is that the cases are under the sink? Does she just not talk to her parents or what? I can't imagine my parents not knowing I'm failing Wow good job w the full circle thing "What are marijuana tablets" lmao And full circle with "thanks" to him saying nerd I FUCKING LOVE KAREN SO MUCH God fucking khakis Kady really pls no That's my parents since I've never been grounded lmao Yeah it's sexist You are also snaggletoothed young Lindsey Lohan Oh so that's where "the limit does not exist" thing comes from I feel you principle "And winner of two gift certificates to the walker brothers pancake house" lmao Aww that must feel so good for her parents tho bc homeschool parents always worry they're not making normal kids That's a lot of pieces of tiara Why do you still want to be friends with Janis what The ever loving fuck?????? She's evil????? AND LOVE FOR TINA FEY TOO I screamed wtf when Janis and Damian kissed lmao Karen is my spirit animal I want "girl world at peace" What the fuck is up with this movie THATS THE END WHAT THE FUCK

[tuthillscopes-blog]

Genius by numbers: why Hollywood maths movies don't add up

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/genius-by-numbers-why-hollywood-maths-movies-dont-add-up/

Genius by numbers: why Hollywood maths movies don't add up

From The Beautiful Mind towards the Theory of all things anf the husband Who Understood Infinity, Hollywood loves a math wizzard. Why cant it get past the fevered prodigy scribbling equations on home windows?

In the Tina Fey sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, wealthy Manhattanite Jacqueline Vorhees wails to her assistant that they cant manage to get divorced. Despite the fact that shed get $1m for each year of her marriage.

I spend 100 grand per month. Ill be broke in ten years, she wails. No, thats wrong, counters Kimmy (Ellie Kemper), who scribbles some sums having a marker on Mrs Vorheess window. So $100,000 occasions 12 several weeks. Thats $1.2m annually. Divide that into $12m, you will find, youd be broke in ten years. However if you simply invest a lot of it, presuming a 7% rate of return, while using compound interest formula, your hard earned money would almost double.

Kimmy turns round triumphantly: Mrs Voorhees, I mathed, and you may get divorced! Mrs Vorhees eyes Kimmy narrowly. Individuals aren’t, she complains, erasable markers. What she doesnt mention is the fact that math isnt a verb. Not.

The scene is, amongst other things, Feys satire from the Hollywood cliche of genius squiggling on glass. In A Beautiful Mind (2001), for example, Russell Crowe, playing troubled maths star John Forbes Nash Jr, writes formulae on his dorm window. This scene is echoed in The Social Network (2010), where Andrew Garfield sets the equations for Facebooks business design on the Harvard window while Jesse Eisenbergs Mark Zuckerberg looks on. Within the opening scene of excellent Will Hunting (1997), janitor prodigy Matt Damon writes equations on the bathroom mirror.

So why do a lot of Hollywood maths whizzes forego paper? Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin explains. Depicting a math wizzard scribbling formulas on the piece of paper is much more accurate, however it certainly doesnt convey the look of the person amorously involved with mathematics, along with seeing someone write individuals formulas in steam on the mirror or perhaps in wax on the window, neither is it as being cinematographically dramatic.

Good point. Whenever we see a Beautiful Mind and appear with the window at our Russ, Hollywoods most built math wizzard (counterexamples on postcards, please show your workings), we pass beyond incomprehensive equations and convince ourselves were seeing Genius at the office. Even when, as some critics have complained uncharitably, Russs pi glyphs, greater-than and fewer-than symbols and the like dont seem sensible.

But theres one other way maths movies can confound the Monotony Equation, namely by departing a black hole in which the maths ought to be. The Man Who Knew Infinity, the brand new film starring Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons concerning the great Indian math wizzard Srinivasa Ramanujan, is intriguing in this way. Although we have seen Ramanujan doing maths, mostly the show has an interest in other activities how he falls deeply in love with his wife, the discomfort of separation as he travels from Madras to review at Cambridge, the racism he suffers in England and, most stirringly, the narrative arc from lowly clerk to globally recognised math wizzard.

IMG 2 TT

Hollywoods most built mathematician Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Photograph: Universal Studios

That said, the film has its charming moments. When Hardy visits Ramanujan in a nursing home, he complains about the boring number of the cab that brought him there. Ramanujan begs to differ: 1,729 is the smallest that is expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Today 1,729 is known as the Hardy-Ramanujan number. How does that work, you may be wondering? Like this: 1729 = 13 + 123 = 93 + 103.

Ramanujans mentor GH Hardy (Irons) is an atheist and rationalist, exasperated that this Indian prodigy cannot produce proofs for his work and, worse, is doubtful that proofs can explain the inexplicable. You wanted to know how I get my ideas, says Ramanujan. God speaks to me. But while the film may sketch two different mathematical philosophies, we leave the cinema with a warm glow that comes from anything but hard thinking.

If you want to learn some more about Ramanujans contribution to mathematics, rent High School Musical. Freeze-frame it at the moment brainy Gabriella Montez challenges her teacher. On the board are two of the equations of the inverse of the constant pi (1/) that Ramanujan offered in his first paper published in England. Shouldnt the second equation read 16 over pi? asks Gabriella. Of course it should.

Cinema often struggles with dramatising difficult ideas, particularly if they are abstract. One way of overcoming that problem is by metaphorical explanation. For instance, in Nicholas Roegs Insignificance (1985), a Marilyn Monroe-like character demonstrates relativity using toy trains and flashing lights. In The Theory of Everything, Jane Hawking uses a pea and a potato to explain the difference between quantum theory and general relativity, while her husbands friends explain Hawking Radiation with beers and crisps.

Movie explanations of difficult stuff, though, may obscure rather than enlighten. Whats more, some directors know this and have fun pointing out the shortcomings of their medium and those of their audiences. In Adam McKays The Big Short (2016), for example, Margot Robbie sits inside a tub sipping champagne and describing how sub-prime loans work. Her explanation is doubtless coherent, however when Im searching in a beautiful lady inside a bubble bath, I am not considering credit default swaps. So sue me. Later within the film, chef Anthony Bourdain chops fish in the kitchen while describing how collateralised debt obligations work. Finally, Selena Gomez plays roulette as one example of the thought of gambling on other bands gambles.

Each scene works as a parody of explanation. They are members of a movie that mocks you, you poor jerk, as well as your intellectual aspirations. You are not ever likely to know how difficult stuff works from watching movies, however much youd prefer to.

Sometimes, though, cinema can provide a genuine understanding of the intellectual process. In Agora (2009), Rachel Weisz as ancient philosopher Hypatia does a test on the shipped to test relative motion. If, she hypothesises, you drop huge sack in the mast as the ship is continuing to move forward, it’ll fall around the deck several ft behind the mast. The sack is dropped and falls much nearer to the mast than she predicted. Hypatia claps her hands in delight. However, you were wrong! states the ships captain. Yes, but it’s definitive proof! The sack behaves as though the boat were stationary.

What am i saying?

I do not know. However the identical principle could be relevant to our planet. It may be getting around the sun’s rays without us realising.

Hypatia, in other words, infers an innovative heliocentric cosmology from her falsified hypothesis. The show thus generously provides for us what we should are effectively denied in Good Will Hunting or perhaps a Beautiful Mind the news about how someone clever is considering an issue. Furthermore, its an antidote to Hollywoods vision of genius. It shows that getting stuff wrong reaches least as vital within the story of human intellectual progress to be right constantly.

Maths is frequently reduced to simply a MacGuffin. In Rushmore (1998), for example, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is studying the newspaper while his teacher informs his class that around the blackboard may be the hardest geometry equation on the planet. What credits would anybody solving it get, asks one student. Well, thinking about Ive never witnessed anybody understand it properly, including my mentor Dr Leaky at Durch, I suppose if anybody here can solve this problem, Id ensure that none individuals have to spread out another math book again throughout your lives.

Thus enticed, Fischer folds his paper and would go to the blackboard, and squiggles his solution while nonchalantly sipping espresso. The show at this time is not to declare but Fischers genius. Will we really believe Jason Schwartzmann can compute the region of the ellipse? Sure. Whatever.

Genius squiggling can there be once more just to assist Hollywood tell the sentimental story it never tires of: namely the storyline of somebody usually borderline demented by definition insufficiently recognised sticking it towards the establishment.

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Genius squiggling Rushmore

None of this should suggest we cant learn maths from movies. In Tina Feys Mean Girls (2004), for example, Lindsay Lohan plays a finalist in the Illinois high school mathletes state championship. Will her Northern Coast High team place it to individuals prep school toffs opposite? Heres the initial question: Two times the bigger of two figures is three greater than five occasions the smaller sized, and the sum of the four occasions the bigger and three occasions the smaller sized is 71. Do you know the figures? First got it yet? 14 and 5. Within the finish, Lohans team end up being the new condition champs because she wins the sudden dying tie-break. Exactly what does the scene prove? That individuals individuals who thought She no longer can do maths should certainly talk to her.

Possibly probably the most resonant maths scene in Hollywood cinema, though, comes in an exceedingly old comedy. Within the Abbott and Costello movie Within the Navy (1941), Lou is really a ships prepare. Hes baked 28 doughnuts, which he reckons is just enough to give 13 to each of his seven officers. But seven adopts 28 four occasions, objects Lous straight man. Not too, states Lou, who procedes to prove it around the blackboard inside a masterclass of cheating and illusion. The scene demonstrates an over-all truth, namely that whenever Hollywood does maths, it doesnt always accumulate.

The Man Who Knew Infinity is released on 8 April.

Find out more: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/06/mathematics-movies-the-man-who-knew-infinity

[viralhottopics]

Tim Ferriss: Im a coyote, a merry prankster, a go-between

With a new book of tips from billionaires and world-class performers out now, the American self-help guru opens up about what motivates him

Tim Ferriss is one of our ages most influential self-help gurus. The 39-year-olds debut was the 2007 life-hacking bible, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, which was initially rejected by more than 20 publishers. He followed that with The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef and his new book is another bestseller, Tools of Titans. In it, Ferriss distills the wisdom of 200 interviews with world-class performers such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Foxx and Malcolm Gladwell that were originally conducted for his podcast (now at more than 100 million downloads). Away from books, he has made a fortune as an angel investor in tech startups and holds a world record in tango.

Why do you think your approach to self-help has caught the imagination of so many people? Well, Id say its because Ive been more of an experimenter and human guinea pig than a writer. So Im positioning myself as someone who is doing all of the heavy lifting in the messy reality of the real world to bring back the CliffsNotes of what actually works for my readers. Im not the only person in the world whos ever done this, of course you have people such as Ben Franklin and more recently George Plimpton but usually in writing and journalism its for comedic effect. Im doing it because I want tactics and approaches that I can use. If I can find perhaps a non-obvious or less-known approach that saves people hundreds or thousands of hours then thats my drug of choice.

The guinea-pig description is a good one: you have ended up in hospital with your self-experimentation and for a long time you weighed your own faeces. Are you open to anything that could improve yourself? Just about, just about. Im very often described as a risk-taker and extreme, and there are a few examples of that, certainly in the physical experimentation. But for the most part Ive always viewed myself as a risk-mitigator first and foremost. Even if its, say, investing in early-stage technology and startups, which is really my main financial career or was for 10 years, with Uber and Facebook and Twitter and about 50 other companies. People view that as very dangerous and speculative, but Im always thinking about capping the downside. So I will consider everything but not do everything.

As an investor, you seem to have had phenomenal success predicting which companies were going to go huge. Why stop? Ive had a very good stretch with startup investing and I think its very important to know when to hold your chips. As poker players would say: I dont make my money by playing my hand, I make my money by sitting. Also right now its very challenging, because theres a surplus of fair-weather entrepreneurs and fair-weather investors, many of whom dont really know how to play the game well. To be effective in that environment, Id have had to effectively hire people to help or have become full time as a venture capitalist and that would have necessitated stopping doing other things such as writing.

You are now investing heavily in academic research into psychedelics. What do you hope to come out of that? One of these studies looks at how psilocybin can be used to treat depression that has not responded to any conventional treatment. And, for instance, I had latent anger issues for decades that affected a lot of parts of my life. After a two-day, medically supervised experience with, in this case, ayahuasca, 90% of those issues just disappeared and have not returned even three years later. The best analogy is having a software program debugged. I cant really describe it any other way.

If someone was looking for a quick, straightforward way to improve their life, what would you advise? Id recommend some type of very short meditation or mindfulness practice neither term of which Im in love with on a daily basis. And the daily is more important than the duration. That came up repeatedly in the interviews for the podcast, across more than 80% of these world-class performers, whether its someone such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or an elite athlete or otherwise. Youre helping to train yourself when it doesnt matter (ie, sitting on your couch or in bed in the morning for five to 20 minutes) to be less emotionally reactive. Throughout the day that helps you make better decisions or to respond with less anxiety or to be more effective when it does matter. When youre in the middle of, say, a negotiation or a debate or an uncomfortable conversation.

Where would you start with it? There are different ways you can do it: you could use an app such as Headspace, or a guided meditation such as the 2010 Smile Meditation by Tara Brach; that specific audio came up a few times.

Sleep is also a recurring feature of the interviews. What would you suggest for improving that? For sleep, I keep it pretty simple. Seth Roberts, who was a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, recommended a cocktail before bed that is incredibly effective for about eight out of 10 people. I had insomnia my whole life and this is one of the things that helped fix it. Two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, one tablespoon of raw honey and hot water, thats it. About 15 minutes before you go to bed.

You mention in the book that, despite your outward success, you suffered from depression in 2013. Why did you want to discuss that? Thats very important. Weve been talking about all these highlights and you guys have read my bio on the back of the book and it all sounds like rainbows and kittens 24/7 and high-fives riding unicorns. But lets talk about what a bad day really looks like, or a bad week or a bad month, because its not all just a trailer for a Disney movie. Theres a stigma very often with discussing these things and people feel unsuccessful or they think they will be unsuccessful or they will always be depressed and unhappy because its not discussed openly.

You made your name with The 4-Hour Workweek, but everyone says you work incredibly hard. Was that just an eye-catching title? The objective is not to have everyone in the world work four hours a week. Of course I get my balls busted endlessly for the title of the book and rightly so it sounds like an infomercial product that would be on at 3am but the objective is to maximise your hourly output. Then if you do that you have quite a few options on the table. You can work four hours a week and get 40 hours of results. Or for many people, they simply want a huge competitive advantage, where they can continue to work 80 hours a week but now theyre getting 800 hours of output per week versus their competition. And they can just lay waste to all of their competitors who are stopping to eat their lunch.

Who would be a dream guest on the podcast? Donald Trump? Sure, Id have Donald on the podcast. But there are other people Id say that immediately come to mind: Neil Gaiman, Oprah Winfrey and Tina Fey would be high on the list.

You ask your interviewees to name their spirit animal. Whats yours? Yeah, it was such a ludicrous conversation to have with everybody, but I got some great answers. My spirit animal is the coyote. If you take a look at trickster mythology, Native American traditions, the coyote is a merry prankster who is a go-between between worlds. That is grossly simplified, but I feel in a lot of respects that is my job. The coyote creates a lot of things, but he also makes mistakes and gets caught in traps. With all of my physical experimentation and adventures and misadventures thats a pretty accurate portrayal of what Im up to a lot of the time.

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss is published by Vermillion (14.99). To order a copy for 12.74 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

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What we learned from the Golden Globes: Meryl Streep always wins and Ryan Gosling never fails

The curtain has fallen on this years ceremony and heres our key takeaways, including the best anti-Trump speech, the wittiest mention of syphilis and what it all means for next months Oscars

Theres no stopping La La Land, the post-truth underdog

Right from the start, which saw Jimmy Fallons opening skit entirely devoted to a spoof of La La Land, it was obvious Damien Chazelles hymn to Hollywood had converted the 90-odd members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association men and women who had left their homelands to travel to La La Land and pen their own hymns to Hollywood.

But just how faithful the converts proved couldnt quite be predicted: the film took seven gongs over the evening (best song, best score, best director, best screenplay, best actor, best actress, best comedy or musical), beating the likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to make new record.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone with their awards. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/NBC/(Credit too long, see caption)

So how did they do it? Especially when some of the awards (such as screenplay) were felt by some to be a bit optimistic? Well, that opening sequence was also significant, because it showed that La La Land is a lot easier to parody than, say, Moonlight (black gay man in Miami struggles with sexuality and addict mother) and Manchester by the Sea (gloomy janitor returns home after the death of his brother to grapple with previous family tragedy) and may end up with a lot more cultural currency, even significance, as a result.

That the Globes split their categories (drama and comedy or musical) naturally favours movies such as Chazelles, but, as Benjamin Lee pointed out in his liveblog, every La La acceptance speech also pushed the notion of the movie as an underdog a crazy mad idea and a wild punt for the studio to back.

But remember: this is a romance starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, directed by a man whose most recent movie won three Oscars, and which like Argo and The Artist strokes that hand that feeds it. But, whatever works.

Unless its the actual underdog

La La Lands main rival, Barry Jenkinss Moonlight, went into the race with nearly the same number of nominations, and came away with just one win. But what a win: best drama. The fact it was robbed in the supporting actor category (where Mahershala Ali lost out to Aaron Taylor-Johnson) may even help its chances going forward for what we now have is a genuine underdog (albeit one thats so far picked up 120 awards) with a little outraged momentum behind it (thought #JusticeForMoonlight felt a bit of a trending punt). The last movie to take just best drama at the Globes? Best picture Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave

Congratulations can still come with a bouquet of barbed wire

Despite significant wins for actors of colour actors this year, there were slightly fewer than expected (see Ali), and efforts to forget the #OscarsSoWhite controversy were undermined by not one, but two, people (George Bushs daughter, Michael Keaton) conflating the names of the two big nominated movies featuring black actors. Fences are still visible; perhaps Figures still arent, quite.

Meryl 2020

Meryl Streep attacks Donald Trump in Golden Globes speech

Can a blonde white woman in her late 60s defeat Donald Trump? If anyone can, Meryl can. Her speech picking up the Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement award was easily the runaway moment of the night: impassioned, funny, fearless and picking up perhaps the prize dreadful moment in the president-elects campaign: his mocking of a disabled reporter on the campaign trail.

It kind of broke my heart, and I saw it, and I still cant get it out of my head because it wasnt in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate when its modelled by someone in the public platform by someone powerful, it filters down into everybodys life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.

Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use definition to bully others, we all lose.

Trump duly responded, not on Twitter, but by telling the New York Times he hadnt watched the show but was not surprised that the liberal movie people ridiculed him. Sad!

Hugh Laurie for VP

A shock choice for supporting actor in a drama series over favourite John Lithgow for that other great statesman, Churchill but Laurie made up for it with a pitch-perfect address, which preceded Streeps and lamented that this was likely the last Globes ceremony. Accepting the prize on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere, Laurie said:

I dont mean to be gloomy, its just that it has the words Hollywood, Foreign and Press in the title. I just dont know I also think to some Republicans, even the word association is slightly sketchy.

Viola Davis for secretary of state

A controversial one this, not because she aced the supporting actress performance for which she won her prize, nor for her great speech, nor even her composed anti-Trump rant backstage:

Viola Davis makes powerful anti-Trump speech backstage at Golden Globes

But for allowing us all to get a glimpse of the real Streep, sharing a strange food-shaming incident in her introduction to the great woman.

Streep: Whatd you do last night, Viola?

Davis: Oh, I cooked an apple pie.

Streep: Did you use Pippin apples?

Davis: Pippin apples, What the hell is Pippin apples? I used Granny Smith apples.

Streep: Did you make your own crust?

Davis: No, I used store-bought crust. Thats what I did.

Streep: Then you didnt make an apple pie, Viola.

Davis: Well, thats because I spent all my time making collard greens! I make the best collard greens. I use smoked turkey, chicken stock and my special BBQ sauce.

Streep: Well, they dont taste right unless you use ham hocks. If you dont use ham hocks, it doesnt taste the same.

Accidents can happen, thank God

In what looked like one of the most locked-down ceremonies in years, a couple of bona fide surprises leapt out. The first with the HFPAs love for Paul Verhoevens hot-potato rape revenge comedy Elle a movie previously deemed too controversial for major acclaim. But it took not just best foreign language film (over the more politically safe Toni Erdmann) but also best actress for Isabelle Huppert: now a major Oscar contender, leaving both previous frontrunners (Natalie Portman and Emma Stone), fretting into their frocks.

The second shocker also showcased the Globess more offbeat taste: two big wins (best comedy series, best actor for Donald Glover) for Atlanta, about the citys rap scene. The Globes can be notoriously wacky this time round, in a good way.

We need to pin our hopes on the other Jimmy

Fallon had a lot to live up to. In part because Amy Poehler and Tina Fey set such a high benchmark for this gig a couple of years back; also because Fallon patsied to Trump on his chatshow a couple of months back. But despite a few early digs at the president-elect, he failed to deliver. Most glaring was his inability to competently wing it when the teleprompter broke. All such issues were highlighted by the brilliance of some of the presenters, in particular Kristen Wiig, who having stolen the showin 2013 with her Will Ferrell double act, repeated the trick this time with Steve Carell. Can fellow talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel top it at the Oscars next month? Probably.

Heartthrobs are called heartthrobs for a reason

Ryan Goslings best actor speech saw peak metrosexual pin-up this year: losing nominees Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Garfield shared a snog, while Gosling further confirmed his dreaminess at the podium. He ended his speech by paying tribute to his lady Eva Mendes for looking after their daughter and her brother (who had cancer, and to whose memory he dedicated the prize) while she was pregnant with their second child and he was off twinkling his toes on La La Land. So, sweetheart, thank you.

Tom Hiddleston, meanwhile, went full humanitarian, closing with a story about a recent trip to South Sudan with the UN Childrens Fund and dedicating his prize to aid workers everywhere. The weird cuts to Christian Slater and the kids from Stranger Things didnt help, but it was still stirring stuff.

The Brits are coming! But so is Netflix

Hiddleston won for The Night Manager, the Beebs big hit of the night gongs also for Laurie and Olivia Colman but the series-which-should-have-been-made-by-the-BBC-but-wasnt took best TV series (drama) and best actress (for Claire Foy). After the anti-climatic hoohah around Netflixs first big film production, Beasts of No Nation, the streaming service finally made good. Lucky, given The Crown still has five very expensive series still to fund and run.

Real actors are never off

Lithgow backstage with Claire Foy and Peter Morgan. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Greatest ad-lib of the night? Probably John Lithgow, who channelled Churchill with aplomb in the press room. Being told his fly was undone, Lithgow quoted back the great cigar-chomper: Its not a problem. A dead bird never leaves its nest. The runners-up prize goes to Hugh Grant, wrongly leaked as the winner of best actor (comedy or musical), who describes the plot of Florence Foster Jenkins as, accurately enough, about a woman slowly dying of syphilis.

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