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allie1804-fan · 4 years

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The Middle of the Road (Chapter 16)

Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 , 9, 10, 11 , 12, 13 14 , 15

Warnings: None

September 2024 – Toronto Emily and Keanu flopped down on the bed in their room at the apartment they were renting in Toronto for the week of The Toronto International Film Festival. They had just arrived from LA and were travel weary. He had just had his 60th birthday and would be receiving a Tribute award at the festival, a great honour for any film maker but an especially treasured one for Keanu who had grown up in the city. He remembered when the festival used to take place in his neighbourhood of Yorkville in the late 70s so the whole event was very close to his heart.

The whole family had decamped from LA including their Nanny Maria which would enable them to attend the evening events as well as do some promotion. Keanu had done voice work in a film being premiered there which had a U certificate so they would all attend the afternoon screening. They were taking a bit of a risk with Hannah but Emily or the nanny would be able to take her or Johnny out if either of them got unsettled.

After they had rested up a bit, they all went out to a local Italian restaurant around the corner from the apartment and enjoyed a simple relatively quick meal before getting the babies back home to bed. The next morning found Keanu and Emily enjoying some free time looking around his old haunts – he’d shown her his home in Yorkville, his elementary school, ice hockey stadium, the Leah Poslun Theatre and the location of his first kiss!

“Right there?”? Emily was pointing with an aghast expression on her face at a dingy alley behind a bike rack at the back of an old Walgreens store.

“Yup – I know. I’ve got a bit classier in my old age I hope you agree.”

“And what was her name?”

“Angela”

“Now THAT is a 70s name if ever I heard one. I guess at least your name is just totally unique and not linked to an era like some”

“She was sweet – but not long lasting!” Anyway, I think that is the complete high, and low, lights for you. We better get back and get some lunch before this afternoon’s shenanigans” He was referring to the premiere of his film which was an afternoon affair so kids could attend. Some local children would attend as well as press and the stars and their families. Johnny and Hannah would be there – with the exit strategy of mum or nanny if it was too much. They had watched films at home and had quite good attention spans but Hannah had only been in a movie theatre once and so was a bit if an unknown quantity behaviour wise.

It was also to be their first red carpet as a family. They had kept the children well shielded so far but, accepting that complete privacy wasn’t realistic, they had decided to attend this premiere all together. They all dressed in smart casual clothes rather than the suits and ballgown style of Oscars and that was needed given they would have the kids next to them snacking on ice cream! The press and fans were enthralled with the kids, both dark haired and with big brown eyes strongly favouring Keanu but with the delicacy of Emily’s features. After letting her walk on wobbly legs for a little while, Keanu scooped Hannah up and carried her while Emily walked with Jonathan and Marie brought the buggy and a change bag just in case. Hannah loved waving at everyone and fans called her name which made her laugh. Johnny joined in with waving too, sensing that this was something special but not really at all clear what. It was going to be a while before they understood that their Dad wasn’t just special to them!

The kids enjoyed the film and made it through the whole hour and half without a melt down to everyone’s relief.

That evening Emily and Keanu appeared on a panel about a project they were working on together. There were inevitable questions about how husband and wife could work together which they fended off deftly - working together was after-all how they met and it felt easy compared to parenting and they were glad to keep the topic work focussed. In the next couple of days they each took part in other promo for their work and had a meal out, just the two of them. There they talked about the award show that would be the following night.

“You nervous?” Emily asked as she sipped her coffee.

“Am I ever!” He groaned. “All that intention is intense – I’m used to parts of it – the red carpet, the photos, being filmed in the audience, even being on stage handing out awards or receiving a less significant gong but such focus, and a speech – phew, it’s crazy”

“It’s what you deserve honey, you know that inside don’t you”

He shook his head,

“It’s an honour, such an honour but, no, I don’t know it – it just feels surreal”

“Well just try to enjoy it if you can, hun – OK?, Want to run through the speech back at the apartment?”

“Sure, that would be great to have a writer’s input”

The award day came and they passed as much of it as they could focussing on the kids, taking them to one of the lakeside beaches for playtime and a picnic but eventually time came for the ‘dressing up game’ as Keanu called it. Both of them would spend a few hours being “made beautiful” for the cameras with stylists primping and polishing their hair, clothes and make up to within an inch of their lives. They left the children with Maria and they would tune in later to see Mommy and Daddy on the TV walking the red carpet.

Emily was wearing a stunning sleeveless, full length taffeta gown in red and her birthday necklace to match her ruby engagement ring and Keanu was in the tux he’d worn to the 2020 Oscars. Emily’s palms were sweaty even before they left to go to the theatre. She’d attended public occasions before where there were paparazzi but only one awards show about 4 years ago so she was nervous of the attention, especially as the news of their marriage was still quite fresh.

As they climbed out of the car, Keanu whispered in her ear “Just imagine everyone naked” before they started to make their way up the red carpet, making her giggle and relax just a little.

“I feel like the wives in Apollo 13, if they ask me anything. I’ll just say “I’m proud, happy and thrilled”

“Are you likening me getting an award to going to the moon or a life-threatening mission?!”

“the former for you and maybe the latter for me!”

At first she held Keanu’s arm in a death grip but gradually she relaxed especially as she saw the smiling faces in the crowd and she saw Keanu relax too, signing photos, DVDs and books and posing for photos. Several fans encouraged her to pose alongside him, surprising her. It seemed some people were happy to see him happy with his marriage and kids and thus welcomed her with open arms.

There were a few reporters on the red carpet who stopped them for a few words. Keanu made her laugh, though she tried to hold it in, when he responded to the question of how he was feeling to be receiving the Tribute Award.

“Well I’m proud, happy and thrilled” he said, giving Emily a wink which made the laughter bubble to the surface. They moved on and at last made it into the auditorium and were shown to their seats.

There were several other awards before his but at last it was time for his big moment.

The presentation started with a show reel with clips from his most famous movies as well as some of his lesser known early ones which made him blush. He leaned over and whispered to Emily

“At least they’re not showing the Coke and cornflakes ads!”

After the reel, there were some video clips from some of his directors and co-stars praising – his work, his character and his work ethic. There was Chad Stahelski, Sandy Bullock, Carrie-Ann Moss and Lilly Wachowski. Then it was time for the award itself which Lana Wachowski presented. As he walked up to the stage, the whole auditorium stood, clapping and cheering. He was right, Emily thought, this was really overwhelming! She dabbed a tear away as he took his place at the podium and took a moment to let the applause fade.

“Firstly let me say a huge thank you for this great, great honour - to receive this in the city where I spent my formative years is really very special so thank you.”

More applause erupted then quickly subsided allowing him to continue.

“I owe this award to many other people - first and foremost, I’d like to pay tribute to my mom for believing in me all those years ago when I asked her one day, would it be ok if I was an actor and she simply said ‘whatever you want son’.

And thanks must also go of course to the teachers and directors at the schools where I did plays and at the Leah Posluns Theatre where I really began to learn my craft- thank you for lighting the fire.

Looking back, the reel you showed just now only served to remind me how much I love movies. And a key reason over the years for that love and indeed for much of my success has been the joy of collaboration when making them. Collaboration with many wonderful directors, actors, cinematographers, stunt coordinators, make-up artists, caterers, runners to name but a few is what I thrive on. And they have all made me look good. And I know sometimes I’ve made my fellow actors look good too by how bad I was! Special thanks to Winona and Gary in that regard!

And I can’t forget the writers, for one thing my wife would never forgive me if I didn’t give them a mention.”

Keanu looked over and caught Emily’s eye as she sat in the front row beaning with pride.

“Writers have gifted me some amazing, memorable characters, some of them coming back time and again like Ted, Neo and John Wick. And I think special thanks are due for all the Johns, Johnny’s and Jacks and the quarterback punks that have been a recurring theme for me and such fun to play.

So I love movies and I love the opportunity they give me to tell stories.

But this year, as I hit a big milestone birthday, I am in a new phase in my life and I’m planning on being focussed less on the stories in films and more on my own story. Over the years, my fellow actors and the crews have been like family to me, a band of brothers and sisters if you will. But 5 years ago I met and fell in love with a wonderful woman and she became my family. Then 2 years ago we became parents - and now there are 4 of us. And this year I also became a husband - in all these things as you can probably tell I was a late starter!

So whilst I’m not retiring, going forward I can’t and I don’t want to be the man who is all work and no play. I want to be with my beautiful wife and my kids as they grow and play my part in guiding them in their lives, in their story.

And hopefully, I’ll bring the riches of that experience of being a parent and a husband to my future roles.

Thank you”

There was rapturous applause at this end to his speech and Emily found herself crying once again at his very public commitment to a more balanced life for them all going forward.

Keanu took his leave, heading back stage where there would be a few interviews to do before he could re-join Emily and head onto the after-party. There was a brief break in proceedings and Emily made her way back stage to meet up with him.

Keanu was just taking his leave from one of the news teams when he glimpsed Emily weaving her way between the throngs of stage hands, actors and publicists.

He headed in her direction and indicated a small alcove to the side to aim for. She reached it first and waited for him to join her, his progress being slowed by people stopping to congratulate him on his award and speech. When he finally got there, she threw he arms around his neck.

“That was, just, just”

“Wow have I actually rendered you speechless?” he laughed.

“You didn’t share THAT part of the speech!”

“You mean the bit about marrying a wonderful woman and sharing my story with her?”

“yes that part, you sneaky devil, you made me cry”

“Happy tears I hope?”

“Yes!” she smiled planting a kiss on his smiling lips.

@penwieldingdreamer @fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithkeanu @ladyreapermc @witty-wallflower @gatsbynouvel @bitchyslut99 @keanureevesisbae @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @kindainlovewithkeanu @paperplanesandwallflowers

#keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu #keanu reeves #keanu reeves ofc

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b34utiful-d1s4st3r-blog · 6 years

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Artificial Intelligence Philosophy – AI and Machine Learning

A student will gain an awareness, and discover to judge and also to produce arguments for and against major philosophical problems concerning AI, robotics as well as their relations to human cognition and behavior. A different type of effort at fixing AIs ethics issue is the proliferation of crowdsourced ethics projects, which have the commendable objective of a far more democratic method of science.

To illustrate DJ Patils Code of Ethics for Data Science, which invites the information-science community to lead ideas but doesn't develop in the decades of labor already made by philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. Then there's MITs Moral Machine project, which asks the general public to election on questions for example whether a self-driving vehicle with brake failure must go beyond five destitute people instead of one female physician.

Philosophers call these trolley problems and also have printed a large number of books and papers around the subject in the last half-century. Evaluating the views of professional AI philosophers with individuals of everyone could be eye-opening, as experimental philosophy has frequently proven, but merely ignoring professionals and going for an election rather is irresponsible. We live at a time in which the fundamental knowledge of what it really way to be human is altering. Social networking platforms still redefine our feeling of place and time.

We grapple using these changes once we attempt to define ourselves and our social relationships within an era of constant connectivity. A couple of decades ago, if a person claimed to possess supporters you’d assume they were beginning a cult. Now it’s an expression that 12 year olds use once they discuss Instagram and Twitter. Customers aren't the only ones who're increasingly more demanding, employees too. They would like to choose their professional future as well as their development.

That's the reason new talent management methodologies have started to emerge, as we will have below. Many counter-arguments happen to be made against unpredicted intelligence explosions, focused largely on technical limitations and logic. For instance, sci-fi author Ramez Naam stated within an essay for H+ magazine that a super intelligent mind would want some time and sources to invent humanity-destroying technologies it would need to have fun playing the human economy to acquire what it really needed (for instance, building faster chips requires not only new designs but complicated and costly nick fabrication foundries to construct them.)The determination that the system, just like an atom of polonium218, is or isn't a closed system, obviously, poses difficult epistemic problems, that are compounded within the situation of people, precisely since they're vastly more complicated causal systems.

Furthermore, probabilistic systems need to be distinguished from (what exactly are known as) chaotic systems, that are deterministic systems with acute sensitivity to initial conditions, in which the smallest switch to individuals conditions can result in formerly unpredicted effects. A small improvement in thousands and thousands of lines of code controlling an area probe, for instance, composed of the appearance of just one wrong character, just one misplaced comma, caused Mariner 1, the very first US interplanetary spacecraft, to veer off target after which need to be destroyed. A minimum of some versions of artificial intelligence are attempts not just to model human intelligence, but to create computers and robots that exhibit it: which have ideas, use language, as well as have freedom. Performs this seem sensible? What can it show us about human thinking and awareness? Join John and Ken because they identify the philosophical issues elevated by artificial intelligence. However the nerd-sighted geniuses in our day result in the same mistake. Should you ask a coder what ought to be done to make certain AI does no evil, you are prone to get 1 of 2 solutions, neither being reassuring. Answer No. 1: It is not my problem. I simply construct it, as exemplified lately with a Harvard computer researcher who stated, I’m just an engineer when requested the way a predictive policing tool he developed might be misused. Answer No. 2: Believe me. I’m smart enough to have it right. AI researchers really are a smart bunch, but there is a terrible history of staying away from ethical blunders.

A few of the better-known goof-ups include Google images tagging black people as gorillas, chat bots that become Nazis and racist soap dispensers. The effects can be more serious when biased algorithms are responsible for deciding who ought to be approved for any financial loan, who to employ or admit to college or if to kill a suspect inside a police chase. I can tell how that's already happening. We have pretty efficient satnav systems, which generally take us right places.

Those who have developed with this type of system have grown to be incredibly dependent on navigation by machine. In the event that begins to fail at any time, Id imagine some those who have lately passed their test as motorists would a very find it difficult to use road signs, or memorized routes, or perhaps a conventional map as a means of having in one spot to another. Another recent article within the New You are able to Occasions claimed that academics happen to be asleep in the wheel, departing policy makers who're battling to learn how to regulate AI subject to industry lobbyists.

The content trigger a Twitter storm of replies from philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, angry their decades of underfunded jobs are again being overlooked and erased. Such as the Who’s lower in Whoville, they cried in fear, we’re here! We're here! We're here! We're here!

If policy makers and funding sources listen carefully to individuals’ voices, there are answers on offer. The content concludes that people urgently require an academic institute centered on algorithmic accountability. On Twitter, the articles author, Cathy ONeil, was adamant, there must be several more tenure lines dedicated to it. Individuals both seem like solid ideas. Objection II: A minimum of it might be figured that since current computers (objective evidence suggests) do lack feelings until Data 2. Does arrive (when) we're titled, given computers' insufficient feelings, to deny the low-level and piecemeal high-level intelligent behavior of computers bespeak genuine subjectivity or intelligence. AI lent many concepts without delivering thanks, like ontology, theory of mind, agent based architecture, object oriented design, archetypes and many more. Algorithms tracking our each step and key stroke expose us to dangers more dangerous than impulsively buying anti-wrinkle cream. More and more polarized and radicalized political movements, leaked health data and also the manipulation of elections using harvested Facebook profiles are some of the documented connection between the mass deployments of AI. Something as apparently innocent as discussing your jogging routes online can reveal military secrets.

These cases are simply the beginning. Even our beloved Canadian Tire cash is being repurposed like a surveillance tool for any machine-learning team. Singer didn't think about a. I. s, but his argument shows that the escalator of reason leads societies to greater benevolence no matter species origin. A. I. s will need to strike the escalator of reason must have, simply because they will have to bargain for goods inside a human-dominated economy and they'll face human potential to deal with inappropriate behavior.

The philosopher John Smart argues, if morality and immunity are developmental processes, when they arise inevitably in most intelligent collectives as a kind of positive-sum game, they have to also grow in pressure and extent as each civilizations computational capacity grows.

#ai #artificial intelligence #mit #machine learning #philosophy

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zacharyleishmanfilmstudent · 4 years

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FILM 303 Creative Professional Conclusions: Crowdfunding and Sourcing Deep Dive – Lecture Notes and Thoughts:

This session featured a deep dive look into the many resources available to secure and utilise crowdfunding in for our grad film projects, or for use in future projects across our practice. The session was designed to discuss the many options available to us to secure funding, and then use this research to begin planning how we may utilise these resources.

Crowdfunding as a concept in itself is fairly simple. In all productions, producers are required to develop a budget that covers all below and above line costs from cast to shooting and development processes. This budget is typically financed by a studio but frequently in independent endeavours media makers have to find means to finance themselves.

The most common form of funding independent filmmakers can gain is found through crowdfunding. Taking the place of the involvement of friendly investors, this is where strangers who have been convinced to donate to the project contribute to the budget with their own money, in an effort to support the project/creator.

Crowdfunding can come in three different forms. All take place usually on social media the forms consisting of, equity crowdfunding, where investors receive a return on their payment, rewards crowdfunding where non-financial incentives are offered for donations and finally simple donation crowdfunding which is just simply charity.

Rewards crowdfunding is the most popular and the method I have the most experience with and would personally offer. It is the less risky option should your production run into issues and you find yourself unable to return funds to your investor and is ultimately a good show of gratitude in any small form to your backers.

Rewards crowdfunding involves the artist offering specific rewards once certain milestones are achieved in your push to gain funding. An example of this could be offering concept art, a copy of the script, pieces of your soundtrack or early test screenings. It assures the donor of the feasibility of your project, that actual work is going towards it, whilst also maintaining interest in the project, possibly helping develop communities around it, if enough people want to work to access all of your available rewards. It is effective in being in its own way, supplementary content creation but does also pose the risk of fitting into the gig economy, you are putting all of your eggs in one basket and there is zero guarantee of success.

The overall benefits do though greatly outweigh the risks. It generates a maintained social media presence for your work, doesn’t come across as corporate, allows you to directly appeal and pander to niche audiences and you can sometimes be lucky enough to gain extra funds even after the donation period has ended.

There are several platforms on which artists can crowdfund but possibly the two platforms that bare the most use and benefit to my practice are Kickstarter and Patreon. Kickstarter is effectively the epitome of the rewards crowdfunding system previously discussed. A site specifically designed to creators to pitch projects and find support it operates on a reward system utilised to draw up attention but is reliant on the project reaching its total funding goal to access any of the funds you’ve gained during the process.

Patreon in contrast to this differs in that it is a support network for artists not their projects. Here artists can offer rewards in return for directly funding their livelihood. Used particularly by YouTubers they offer rewards such as exclusive content or direct communication in return for money they use when ad revenue is not available. There are no direct downsides to Patreon but there is a very tricky formula to maintaining audience interest and does require you to be producing regular and quality content if not quality rewards to make the donation seem worthwhile.

Both have been used to scam and cheat certain audiences and like any social media there are adverts for even the most useless and inane of the causes. However, both platforms can be used to really provide positive support to creatives and really help make or break their art in a time where it is increasingly difficult for artist to gain the likes of major studio support or just have their platform on which they operate, treat them fairly.

After having discussed the styles and functionality of these platforms we were tasked individually with researching the successful instances artists have found on these platforms and then determine how we might create our own campaign or programme on these platforms.

An extremely successful Kickstarter campaign that I have previously researched at great lengths due to the sheer impressiveness of its success, is the Kickstarter campaign for the Indie hit game, ‘Shovel Knight’. Through Kickstarter, indie development team Yacht Club games were able to launch their 8-bit homemade platformer into one of the industry’s most beloved and well-known titles.

The success of Shovel Knight was born out of the game not just being a legitimately fantastic product but through the approach Yacht Club took when trying to fundraise for the project. Setting the bare minimum target for their total goal their approach focused on acquiring what was necessary, it made the project seem trustworthy. The team wasn’t seemingly asking for any more than they needed just what they needed to make the game and survive financially. The honesty present was a huge reason to place trust in this team, when the platform had previously been used to take excessive amounts of money from fans and not committing it to the actual listed project, as seen in the case of the now industry hated ‘Mighty Number 9’.

Gaining publicity for the game was something Yacht Club was able to quickly get their hands on, sending early test models of the game’s beginning stages to streamers focused on retro game content, attracting both their fans and support. It signalled this was a project that was meant for the fans and was a love letter to the fans who missed this era of games as well as to the era itself.

The real killer of this Kickstarter however were the reward tiers. The make-or-break factor of many a Kickstarter, Yacht Club promised new character campaigns that would be released as full DLC once the stretch goals for the main game had been reached. Effectively saddling themselves with even more work, work that they didn’t finish until years after the full game’s eventual release in 2014, the team once again sold donors on Shovel Knight as a product. This was not a one and done hit, this was a product that would be supported and would become a long-time investment to the fans good enough to believe in the product.

A larger risk had the game failed, but one that they were ultimately able to pull off, the main lessons I would take from this campaign is the importance of getting your name out amongst the fans and giving them decent incentives to back you that are actually valuable.

A Kickstarter campaign is not something I intend to start for my grad project film ‘Eulogy’ given the film has already been self-financed and doesn’t likely require further funds. However, I still believe that the project could possess a strong campaign that offered a variety of rewards to those who chose to donate. The budget I would hypothetically want to reach would range between £200-£300 and whilst lacking the funds or manpower of Yacht Club to produce the same quantity of rewards or the scale they possessed I would still attempt to produce a quality and modest set of rewards.

£1 Patrons = Name in credits and a signed copy of the script

£5 Patrons = Name in credits, signed copy of the script and behind the scenes featurettes and commentary videos

£10 Patrons = Name in credits, signed copy of the script, BTS videos and original limited print of the artwork featured in the film.

£20 Patrons = All of the above and early access screening of both work in progress and final cuts of the film.

These rewards I would envision to be a decent incentive for donors to consider donating and given the low rate of the budget and rewards available at every tier, it seems likely that even if the majority of donations were on the lowest tiers, I may still be able to finance the film and the donors will be thanked for their contribution.

A platform I do greatly intend to make use of in my future though is Patreon. Whether my practice continues to focus on filmmaking or not a great hope that I have is that I will be able to commit to the creation of video essay material on YouTube analysing media I have a knowledge and affinity for. Ad revenue is famously a poor means of supporting oneself through YouTube so if in some reality I could attract a following, I would offer a Patreon through which they could support me.

My Patreon model would be based on a current Patreon I currently donate to, the patreon for the ‘Let’s Fight a Boss’ podcast. An Irish podcast the trio discuss the media they’re consuming and offer livestreams of obscure video game series, their playthrough of ‘Shenmue’ being possibly their most famous content. Their Patreon model is quite modest, there not being many rewards, they can offer in a Podcast format but still being worthwhile enough in themselves. The rewards I have been able to access by donating, is access to their private discord for fellow patrons, shout outs for actual patrons during episodes of the podcast and access to exclusive episodes not featured on their channel.

Any rewards I would offer on Patreon would follow a similar model, I myself wanting to produce some similar digital rewards that also focuses on thanking and involving fans in my work to show gratitude for their charity. Whilst there’s no guarantee this plan will ever actually take shape, this is the hypothetical rewards system I have long planned to offer.

£1 Patrons = Name in the credits of videos and access to channel discord.

£5 Patrons = Name in credits, access to channel discord, a verbal shoutout at the end of the video and access to behind the scenes editing commentary videos.

£10 Patrons = All of the above with early access to videos, access to private vote to determine topic of videos and access to four Patreon exclusive videos not featured on YouTube.

This is model I think I could feasibly create and that ultimately isn’t greedy. I doubt I will commit to YouTube full time, but this is enough of a rate where I could consider it a viable side project/earning if I can hopefully develop enough of a following, and I believe this reward programme is quite generous in that regard and wouldn’t lead to burn out.

The many benefits and pitfalls of crowdfunding have been apparent to me even before I considered entering this industry myself. My desire to utilise crowdfunding within my current practice is undeniably minimal as I do not have the confidence to consider asking for money for an amateur project. However when my practice does eventually alternate to this new video essay focus, considering crowdfunding on Patreon will be completely necessary if it is media I want to make viable.

#Creative Professional Conclusions FILM 303 PCA FILM BLOG POST

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dipulb3 · 4 years

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Biden grapples with balancing optimism and tough talk on pandemic's outlook

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/biden-grapples-with-balancing-optimism-and-tough-talk-on-pandemics-outlook/

Biden grapples with balancing optimism and tough talk on pandemic's outlook

Biden has opted for a more measured approach than his predecessor, showing up to promote vaccine announcements and appearing at a vaccine site or a laboratory, but mainly saving the hard questions for his closed-door daily briefing on the pandemic.

That has left a gap in the messaging about how and when America might pull out of the crisis — and glosses over the challenge and exhortation that a president can uniquely deliver in times of national calamity.

Even one senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be more candid, acknowledged in an interview with Appradab that the public may not yet understand that the variants will require “more public involvement and sacrifice than people probably have registered in their own mind.”

Experts are also noticing missed opportunities for Biden to help the country rise to the challenge.

“This country’s really been in an abyss, and we’re trying to climb our way out,” said Laura Kahn, a Princeton University expert in leadership during epidemics. “A little bit more public communication would be helpful.”

Said another health expert, who is close to the White House: “They’re painting way too rosy of a picture.” The source, who requested anonymity to speak more frankly, added that the administration isn’t doing enough to sound the alarm about the threat of variants and the challenges that could lie ahead.

Administration officials have chafed at that criticism, insisting they are taking the variants seriously without inciting public panic.

Should officials “get up every morning and hold a press conference and say, ‘I’m absolutely terrified’?” said one senior administration official not authorized to speak on the record about the matter. “Do you want to sound the alarm and get everybody upset? Or do you want to do your job?”

Biden obliquely acknowledged the tragedy at hand this week in a visit to the National Institutes of Health.

“We’re in the middle of the war with this virus,” Biden said in that visit. “It’s going to take time to fix, to be blunt with you.”

But just how much time? It’s a question the Biden team doesn’t appear keen to tackle too directly. Even the administration’s health experts, tucked into their Zoom boxes for thrice-weekly updates, deliver scholarly assessments of where the US stands, offering little on the existential question of when life might return to normal.

There is no shortage of reasons why a leader might want to keep his or her distance from the details right now, given how volatile the situation is.

“As the President told the nation Thursday after visiting the vaccination center at the National Institute of Health, and as he says internally regularly, we are driving a whole-of-government response to the pandemic — guided by the science, by ambitious goals, and with clear public communication,” Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 Response Team, said in a statement to Appradab Friday. “This is a national emergency. Our focus is on vaccinating people quickly and equitably, increasing testing, and opening schools and businesses. We will be transparent with the American people about our progress. It won’t be easy and we will face setbacks. However, we continue to make real progress every day until Americans feel safe once again.”

Covid-19 by the numbers

For the science-driven administration, forecasting the future is particularly challenging because the current picture is a muddle.

Coronavirus cases are trending down, and vaccinations are ticking up. But the US is struggling to get a handle on the threat posed by new variants. Experts — both inside and outside the White House — are still far from certain that America is finally clawing its way out of the pandemic.

“This is a race to get the vaccine out there broadly enough and fast enough that it eliminates the chance of spread of even more strains,” said Dr. Bala Hota, an infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

One thing is certain: over the last two weeks, the US has seen a huge improvement across all major metrics experts have used to track the pandemic.

As of Friday, the seven-day average of daily cases is down more than 22% from the previous week, and average deaths are down more than 15%, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Hospitalizations have declined nearly 13% and the percent positivity rate at 6.19%, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Friday, only one state — Alaska — was showing an upward trend in Covid-19 cases.

While the Biden administration has made a major push to reduce the spread of disease by launching mass vaccination sites, taking strides to ramp up vaccine production and promoting safety measures, such as mask wearing, many experts said it’s still too soon to say that those actions are driving the improving trends.

“Any kind of policy that is implemented at the beginning of January, you wouldn’t probably see anything that quickly,” said Nandita Mitra, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Health experts said the trends were likely improving for reasons unrelated to Biden’s policy initiatives. Cases are leveling off after holiday-related spikes and it’s too soon to see fallout from new potential super spreader events, such as Super Bowl parties.

“We’re now a month past the holiday and everybody has gone back to their bubble,” Hota said.

Vaccines are also making their way to more Americans. More than 48 million shots have been administered so far, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The pace of vaccinations has been picking up steadily from week to week, which experts attributed partly to vaccine makers growing more adept at vaccine production and partly to states streamlining their distribution efforts.

But it’s hardly time to celebrate.

Case numbers have been so high in these last two months that if you take just the first 10 days of February, the US has had more new cases than it had for the entire month of March, or April, or May, or even June of 2020.

“Now is not the time to look at those curves, in my view, and breathe a sigh of relief. We have a ways to go,” Slavitt said on Appradab this week. “We know that this thing has been unpredictable for the last year. I think it’s still going to be unpredictable.”

Unpredictable variants

The unpredictability ahead has already led to some careful hedging from the White House.

Biden announced Thursday that the US will have purchased enough doses to vaccinate 300 million Americans by the end of July. White House aides quickly followed up with a clarification: vaccines aren’t vaccinations. Even though the doses will be available by July, it’s unclear when nearly all Americans will actually be vaccinated.

The administration didn’t offer details about how thorny challenges like vaccine hesitancy and variants swirling in the US could impact America’s path to normality or when the end of this pandemic may be in sight.

“The Biden administration is going to have to address this issue and we’ve got to stop basically telling people we’ve turned the corner,” said Michael Osterholm, who advised Biden’s team during the transition and is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “At the rate we’re at right now, this is going to be a huge challenge.”

Digging out

While then-President Trump was keen to take center stage in the coronavirus response, it often ended in disaster. He undercut scientists, peddled unproven miracle cures and even appeared to suggest injecting disinfectants might ward off the virus.

Biden advisers are now facing a beleaguered American public, suffering whiplash after Trump-era promises that things were just on the brink of getting better.

“I think the country has lived through a long period of over-promises, false deadlines, dates that have no basis in science, and I don’t think you’re going to hear that from this White House,” Slavitt said on Appradab this week. “We don’t want to try to forecast the future.”

An administration official insisted Biden has been forthright with Americans, pointing to the President’s previous comments, including a line in his inaugural address in which he said, “We are entering what may well be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus.”

Since then, Biden and his team have continued churning out policy initiatives aimed at pulling America out of the crisis. Their signature effort remains a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill that awaits approval from Congress.

Even with those interventions, experts said it’s difficult to predict the next turn the virus will take.

A year into the pandemic, the nation has a higher level of immunity than it did last year, which could help slow — but not stop — the infection rate, some health experts said.

“We certainly have not reached herd immunity, but we probably have at least somewhere around a third of the population that’s been exposed that might have some short-term immunity,” said Dr. Amanda Castel, a professor in the department of epidemiology at George Washington University.

But the variants — along with human behavior — could easily send cases climbing again.

“I worry that people have a false sense of reassurance because things are trending down and then all of the sudden you see people loosening restrictions in certain areas and people relax a little more,” Castel said

Some states and cities have begun to relax Covid restrictions, even though caseloads remain high.

North Dakota and Iowa have both rolled back their statewide masks mandates. New Jersey and New York City are loosening restrictions on indoor dining. New York state is planning to reopen arenas and stadiums this month, at limited capacities. And Ohio announced it is bringing back self-service buffets.

“I understand why there’s this unbridled enthusiasm to get back to some semblance of a new normal,” Osterholm said. But “people do not realize what a curve ball the variants have thrown us.”

Appradab’s Amanda Watts contributed to this report.

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wristwatchjournal · 4 years

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Interview: Citizen Watch America’s Jeffrey Cohen On Realigning For The Future

With nearly 30 years of experience at his disposal, Jeffery Cohen is the person responsible for running Citizen and its group of watch brands in the US as the President of Citizen Watches America. What I have found to be unique at Citizen (when compared to other foreign-owned timepiece makers) is the level of autonomy in management and decision-making that the United States office has enjoyed. That means even though the Citizen Group is a Japanese company, its American subsidiary calls the shots on U.S. soil. That has given Citizen Group — currently headquartered in New York City’s Empire State Building — a special market advantage, historically. Today, the Citizen Group of brands in the United States includes Citizen, Bulova, Accutron, Alpina, and Frederique Constant.

Recently, the Citizen Group in the U.S. issued a press release about upcoming company reorganization efforts and a shifting of market priorities. I took this opportunity to connect with Mr. Cohen, who kindly offered to speak with aBlogtoWatch about what he has in mind for Citizen and its group of brands in America, and how a legacy company like Citizen is adapting to a rapidly changing world.

To set the stage, I asked Mr. Cohen to describe what the watch retail market once looked like in the United States, and then to share how exactly the market today is different. While market tastes and preferences have always changed, Cohen pointed to changes in how consumers learn about and subsequently buy watches as being the biggest differences. Historically, a company like Citizen put its efforts into selling products via wholesale to strong retailers who would undertake the effort of both marketing and selling to consumers. All of that has changed today.

Consumers are no longer relying on retailers to tell them about new products or to help guide them as to which products to buy. Retailers, like consumers, are also becoming increasingly niche, 0ffering strong relationships in some interest areas but few of which really represent the larger breadth of all possible interests. Companies like Citizen have historically planned out larger product and messaging campaigns that could be rolled out over large areas or for a large group of consumers. These days watch brand decision making needs to be more “laser-focused,” as Cohen puts it.

One of the biggest shifts at Citizen appears to be a refocusing on internal efforts, from supporting retailers to engaging with consumers. Citizen is not at all abandoning its traditional retail partners, but its relationship with them is changing, as represented by the changing value those retailers bring them. In short, Citizen (like other smart actors in the watch industry) is moving to a model whereby its efforts are designed to make consumers happy, as opposed to retailers (such as jewelers). The implication is that happy consumers motivate themselves to discover retailers who sell what they are looking for, as opposed to the more historic model of learning about what they want to buy from a retailer.

Cohen also points to the quickly evolving role that timepieces play in the lives of consumers these days. In the past, watches have been passive tools on the wrist that complement one’s character and tastes. Today, watches can be vividly more expressive and in have taken on new forms of social and tribal identification on behalf of the wearer. According to Cohen, the implication of this is that Citizen and its brands need to do more than just communicate to consumers that it has new products; it must assign authentic meaning and values to those timepieces. Cohen makes it clear that the Citizen Group of today is dedicated to having a two-way conversation with consumers.

What does Citizen want to know from the people who are interested in and who buy its products? Today is about making data-backed decisions, according to Cohen. The experienced watch industry insider would never give up his or her honed intuition, but his remarks are telling because, for the most part, the watch industry has historically made top-down decisions about market direction and focus. Market data — provided it is captured and analyzed correctly — has been instrumental to a number of businesses faring better when it comes to producing not only products that consumers want, but also to the consumers a brand actually has. Citizen’s goal isn’t just about listening to its consumers’ preferences about what watches they want, but more importantly, it is about identifying what its fans and consumers care about in the first place.

Even before the current market challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Citizen Group was well underway with a series of planned changes and strategic shifts. In addition to diversifying from mostly focusing on relationships with retail partners, the Citizen Group has determined that relationships with consumers have changed over the last several years. According to Cohen, whereas timepiece brands could more historically rely on consumer loyalty, these days consumers move freely from brand to brand as tastes and interests can sometimes shift wildly from purchase to purchase. To better correspond with the current experience of being a well-connected savvy consumer, Citizen and its brands will embark on a new era of relationship- and sentiment-building with consumers.

This is a tricky proposition because, at the end of the day, Citizen and its brands are not fashion houses but engineering firms dedicated to the proposition that the wristwatch, as a tool, can continue to get better and better. What watch brands have found, however, is that the volume of available “also-good” products in the market means that people interested in buying watches have a more difficult time than ever in choosing. To combat this, Cohen has undertaken the effort to align his brands with cultural fixtures associated with celebration and positive feelings. Two ideal examples are Citizen’s tight partnership with Disney and Bulova’s ongoing relationship with the Grammy Awards. For Cohen, connecting with these institutions isn’t merely about getting the brand name out there, but also in connecting with consumers when their moods are at peak positivity.

Citizen and its brands will also be speaking more directly to the consumers they are focusing on. Increasingly rare will be generic institutional messaging campaigns and advertising, replaced by more niche-targeted messages to particular groups. Mr. Cohen wants Citizen, Bulova, and the other brands to have more meaningful relationships with their fans, and that means both understanding the fans posing relevant statements to them. Here again, we see Cohen’s “everything is now digital” approach, whereby Citizen can get to know its fans through online data and then be in the best possible position to speak to those fans with messages catering to them. This is exactly what has served niche watchmakers so well and, finally, we are seeing a return to the big names in timepieces making the marketing-intelligence investments they need to carry their brands into the next era.

Cohen reminds me that Bulova has been continuously operating in the United States for approximately 145 years. Today, Bulova has a team of designers in New York City imagining the next generation of Bulova watches entirely from scratch. Bulova timepieces, especially, will be an example of how Citizen is tailoring everything from the design of the watch, the advertising of the watch, to where the watch is sold, to the preferences of Bulova’s known consumer base (and people like them).

Citizen Group’s next major initiative in America will be the full roll-out of the Accutron brand. Previously a collection under the Bulova name, Accutron will now launch as its own brand featuring the world’s first-ever electrostatic powered movement. Cohen remarks that the Citizen Group spent nearly a decade developing the technology and that the Accutron brand will be unlike anything else in the current brand portfolio. The concept for collectors is potentially thrilling. Accutron was the name associated with the first tuning fork-controlled electronic timepieces and was originally released around 1960. It was the most accurate wristwatch on the market until it was supplanted by quartz-regulated electronic watches about a decade later.

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The new Accutron will not see a return to turning fork technology, but it will offer the wristwatch consumer something new, as well as visually assertive. That last part, for Cohen, seems to be important because he knows better than anyone how wristwatches make the best conversation pieces. While not an actual piece of Accutron history, the appeal of the watch was memorialized in an episode of the television drama Mad Men about advertising professionals in New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s. With any luck, Accutron will capture the hearts and minds of a new generation of timepiece enthusiasts today.

Citizen and its brands have their work cut out for them both globally and in the United States given the equal need to focus on product innovation and marketing relevancy. This is also at a time when mainstream watch sales are down given the current economic environment as well as the lack of traditional sales volume, which companies like Citizen could one rely on from America’s then-powerful department stores and malls.

My guess is that while Japan is in control of R&D and production, it is the United States office that appears to be setting much of the tone for the brands’ relationship with consumers — as the United States continues to be the most important market in the world for the Citizen Group of brands. Within that sphere, Citizen and Bulova are the top two brands, respectively. As I mentioned above, Citizen is further unique for having Americans in control of their American business. This might be a strange thing for those not familiar with the watch industry to read, but the reality is that the vast majority of foreign-owned watchmakers operating in the United States have (at least in my opinion) skewed too far away from the American mentality by appointing non-natives to crucial management roles.

Citizen is clearly investing heavily, and an internal reorganization is a logical result of that fact as the company shifts to being more consumer- versus retailer-focused, while continually asking itself, “What timepieces does the market want to see from us?” Cohen made it clear that Citizen would continue to seek out holes in the market that it can fill with its particular style of innovative product development and ability to produce emotionally satisfying experiences.

While the immediate future bears a host of unknowns, Cohen has confidence in the enduring appeal of what Citizen Group does best: make watches for regular people — hence, the “Citizen” name (which is exactly why its founders in Japan chose it). Cohen brings not only his honed experience as a watch industry manager to the problems we face today and will face tomorrow but also the wisdom to understand that success will be derived by making the appropriate product, which is then effectively shared with the appropriate group. This, to him, is “precision marketing with personalized messaging.”

Cohen finally reminds aBlogtoWatch that he wants the watch consumer to remain in suspense. “I want people to be surprised,” he says, when learning about new Citizen Group products. Using data acquired from consumer activity and sentiment online is valuable, but it doesn’t often tell you what consumers will like that they have never seen before. That is still where the magic of creativity comes in, and why not just anyone can do what a company like Citizen can. Cohen summed his strategy up nicely as, “Know the consumer, and you know the market.” Learn more about Citizen watches here, and learn more about Bulova watches here.

The post Interview: Citizen Watch America’s Jeffrey Cohen On Realigning For The Future appeared first on Wristwatch Journal.

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itsworn · 6 years

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Gasser Wars Veteran Del Wiesner Is Still Wheels-Up in His Olds-Powered 1933 Willys

In the early 1960s, Del Wiesner and Dean Seevers were a couple of guys from Loveland, Colorado, who built a ’33 Willys to drag race. It wasn’t long before they and another partner, fellow Loveland racer Harold Owens, found themselves in the thick of the Gasser Wars.

The trio spent several years on the circuit, towing their Olds-powered coupe all over the country to race the likes of Doug Cook, K.S. Pittman, Bones Balogh, George Montgomery, and other warriors of the era. Some weekends were spent match racing at local events, others put them in the national spotlight with fellow A/GS competitors in the NHRA. At their peak, e.t.’s were in the low 10s with trap speeds over 140 mph. In 1964, carrying 400 pounds of ballast to compete in B/Modified Gas, the Seevers/Wiesner/Owens Willys held the AHRA record at 136 mph.

Del Wiesner’s tribute to his Gasser Wars days is no static display. He built the new Seevers/Wiesner/Owens ’33 Willys to be legal for nostalgia racing. “About quickest that car has gone is 5.70 at 118 to 120 miles per hour in the eighth-mile.”

Fifty-plus years later, the Seevers/Wiesner/Owens A/Gas Supercharged ’33 Willys is still pleasing the crowds, albeit in an updated version. “People really love seeing the car. That’s what keeps me going,” Del says. “They love it because it has an Olds Rocket engine in it. That’s not something you see all the time, much less the original owner and driver in it.”

Asked about racing today, Del says, “I do still love it, but I look at it different now. I’ve been in some bad wrecks. I about wrecked this thing at a nostalgia event a year or so ago. I’d hate to wreck it now, so late in life. And I made a promise to my wife that I wouldn’t drive it so fast. So rather than running 8 seconds at 155, I’m content to go 115 in the eighth at 5.70, which is what it will run on a good track. That’s plenty of thrill for this old feller.”

Del will be 80 on his next birthday.

Pic: Bob D’Olivo Comparing the tribute to this photo Bob D’Olivo took at the 1964 Winternationals illustrates how closely Del replicated his old Willys. Dean Seevers was driving here; Del drove at the 1964 NHRA Nationals and wheeled the car from then on.

1962

Dean Seevers had a “wild” ’39 Chevy coupe with a blown Olds motor that he drove on the street and raced at the drags as the 1960s dawned. Dean, Del, and Harold Owens were founding members of the local hot rod club, the Loveland Zephyrs, and part of a group of guys who raced in NHRA Division 5.

When they built the Willys, Dean and Del put in it a ’57 Olds mill with a 4-71 supercharger backed by a B&M Hydro. The Willys hit the track in 1962, running “around 120 in the 11s,” Del says. “We won a lot of trophies at all the tracks in Division 5.”

Harold mustered out of the Air Force a year later, and he wanted to join the team. He had an engine he wanted to build. “It was his baby motor, a ’49 Olds Rocket at 303 cubic inches,” says Del. When it was done, it displaced 308 inches and was fed by a 6-71 blower and Scott fuel injection. The “itty-bitty engine” put the Willys into B/Gas Supercharged.

Dean Seevers poses with his hot ’39 Chevy in the early 1960s. Olds powered, it ran hard at the strip.

“We went out to Pomona racing some of the biggest names in the country,” Del says of their trip to the 1963 Winternationals. The three friends from Loveland ran “131 miles per hour at 10.75, and we didn’t have to apologize to anyone for anything.”

What they did have to do, though, was be quicker. Doug Cook, running 10.60s, beat them in Pomona.

So in the winter of 1963, the Willys went on a diet. The steel front end was replaced with a liftoff fiberglass nose. The factory doors with their glass windows were pitched in favor of fiberglass doors with Plexiglas. Out, too, was the baby Olds. In went a 324-inch Olds motor bored and stroked to 396 ci. Lighter and more powerful, and with a new Dean Kennedy Hydro, the Willys showed “a dramatic improvement in e.t.,” remembers Del. Times dropped to the low 10s, and speeds increased to 140-145 mph. The Willys’ appearance in 1964, with the Seevers/Wiesner/Owens lettering and the assigned number 239, was the template for the tribute Willys, as that was the last year the trio raced as a team.

Dean and Del’s Willys in 1962, when a ’57 Olds engine earned them “a lot of trophies” in NHRA’s Division 5.

“Dean decided he wanted to build one of those Mark Williams dragsters, and he wanted to put his Olds in the dragster,” Del says. “So he went his separate way. That left Harold and me to run the Willys.”

By 1966, Del had moved on, too. He and Harold built a “super light” ’23 T roadster with an Olds capable of sending the car to 150-plus top-end speeds. But the car “nearly killed” him in a bad accident that ended his racing days.

“I still have the scars,” he says.

Pic: Randy Holt At the 1963 Winternationals, the Seevers/Wiesner Willys beat the Mallicoat Bros. ’41 Willys in the first round of B/GS, but lost to Doug Cook in the next. They were using Harold Owens’ “baby” Olds mill.

2008

Scars, and memories, too. “I had two wonderful partners in this car back in the day. In 1964, we did the entire NHRA Division 5, in the points chase right up to the end. We ran every event: Omaha, Minneapolis, Great Bend, Continental Divide, Green Valley Raceway in Texas, Amarillo, plus the Winternationals in Pomona and the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. It wasn’t unusual for us to be in L.A., then Minneapolis, then Texas. We flat-towed this car all over the country until we finally got a trailer.”

Decades later, “I couldn’t shake the thrill the race car had given me. Even though I had quit racing long ago, I always loved the Willys gassers. Once you get that in your blood, it’s hard to let go. It was the most exciting time of my life, so I decided to rebuild a part of history.”

He considered another go-around with the original car. “I found the original ’33. Someone had converted it to a street machine with a Chevrolet engine. I called, but once they found out about the history of their car, they decided they didn’t want to sell it.”

The Willys went through major changes before the 1964 season. That’s Del lifting off the car’s new fiberglass nose in the pits at Pomona, and the little motor was replaced by a 396-inch Olds. Del called the improvements to the car’s performance “dramatic.”

He opted instead to build a Willys from scratch, with a fabricated chassis and cage, a fiberglass repop body, and the help of a young car builder named Bobby Anderson, who runs Sleds Customs in Apache Junction, Colorado. Bobby modified the frame for the Willys using 2×4 rectangular tubing, and mounted a straight front axle from Speedway Motors and a Ford 9-inch rearend. Within the 10-point polished cage are aluminum seats Bobby fabricated after the fiberglass racing seats Del bought for the project “were thrown in the junk pile,” Del says.

They weren’t the only pieces that didn’t pass muster. Much of the fiberglass Willys body Del bought was either “too heavy or poorly done,” so Bobby fashioned a rear decklid, dashboard, floors, fenderwells, and other parts from aluminum.

The engine had to be an Oldsmobile. “I have a number of blocks,” Del says, preferring those out of a ’62 Starfire. “The 394-inch Olds motors were made from 1959 to 1964, and the blocks from the ’62 Starfire have a unique configuration compared to the other engines. They have a wider main bearing boss, so you could run a heavier-duty main bearing. It’s the strongest 394 Olds block.”

Pic: Eric Rickman Del remembers this round of the 1964 Winternats well. Dean went up against Bones Balogh driving Big John Mazmanian’s Willys. “We were out on Bones by three car lengths when we broke a rocker arm. We ran a 10.34, but Bones ran the first 9.99, at 151 miles per hour, in supercharged class history and beat us in the lights.”

Del built two different engine combinations for the Willys. One has a stock crank with steel billet Crower rods and 8:1 compression pistons. The other, his “quickest engine,” has 9:1 compression and aluminum rods. “I went to the aluminum rods so I could use a pinned rod bearing to keep the rod bearings in place. The steel rods had a tendency to tear the tangs off the ends of the rod caps. Pinned bearings eliminated that problem, but it means a trick crank situation. The crank is undersize 300-thousandths—that’s a lot—then resized to use Chevrolet main bearings. That’s a unique situation for an Olds to have that.”

As Gasser Wars veterans, Del and Howard were used to being courted by camshaft makers. “Several companies gave us camshafts back then.” Jack Engle ground cams for the SWO Willys, and 50 years later, Del again went to Jack, even after the cam maker had retired, for grinds for the tribute car. But with two engines in play, Del also uses a billet Isky 505-C roller cam in his other engine.

Dean left the team after the 1964 season, so the SWO Willys became the Wiesner/Owens car in 1965. Here Del is racing at Mickey Thompson’s invitational 200 MPH meet in Fontana. “We drew K.S. Pittman in the first round and got beat, but we were allowed to grudge race the other A/GS cars the rest of the evening between rounds of Top Fuel and A/GS. Our top time was a 10 flat e.t. at 146.69 miles per hour.”

“I like both cams,” he says. “Both those manufacturers treated us really well. The Engle definitely has more lift. It’s a more modern camshaft. The 505-C is like it was ground in 1960. I bought a pair of them unused at the Bakersfield swap meet. It has 100-thousandths less lift than the Engle, but I can make the car run just as hard for the first 300 to 400 feet as with the big cam. That’s what I do with the car, run hard out of the hole to give them the show.

“People come out to see cars drive up to the starting line and carry the front end for 100 feet. That’s the show, right there. I don’t run the car at top speed any more. These aren’t real stable at 150-plus.”

With some concessions to NHRA regulations, Del worked to keep the outside of the engine “looking like it was running the old stuff, nostalgia stuff.” Feeding the fire is a vintage Hilborn two-port fuel-injection system “that’s probably from the early 1960s,” says Del. Igniting the fire is a Joe Hunt Vertex magneto.

The start of the SWO tribute. Bobby Anderson fabricated the frame out of 2×4 rectangular tubing, “much stronger and less flexible” than the original Willys frame, says Del. The straight axle “is probably four times heavier than in the 1960s car, because we weren’t as concerned with weight as getting the right look for the new car.”

The headers, too, with their distinctive wraparound collectors, were built by Bobby to mimic the pipes on the SWO Willys. “At the time it was a convenient way to pull the tubes together, and it looked neat on the weed burners,” Del explains.

Another carryover from the original Willys is the tribute car’s shifter, which is on the column. “We always ran a column shifter on them, even though everyone else had it on the floor. In the old days we’d run a Powerglide shifter, a ’53 or ’54 column shifter, but you can’t race one of those anymore since there’s no reverse lockout on them.”

Del admits it “took a lot of work” to graft the B&M ratchet shifter onto the column. “It was a lot harder than putting it on the floor. Everything is handbuilt around the shifter.”

The Ford 9-inch is filled with 35-spline Moser axles, 4.56 gears, and a spool. The ladder bars here are mockups; the finished versions were machined from billet aluminum stock. “They’re probably 50, 52 inches long, go about halfway up to the front of the car,” Del says.

In the 1960s, the B&M Hydro was the transmission of choice for the SWO Willys as well as many of the other gasser teams. It wasn’t Del’s favorite, though. “I’m not a Hydramatic guy. We ran them back in the day, because that was the transmission to race. Everyone ran them until people started using the Chrysler TorqueFlites. But we had a lot of trouble with the Hydros. We lost races because of transmission problems.”

The tribute Willys, too, started with a Hydramatic, but Harold Owens had another idea. “Harold was running a Hughes Performance Powerglide in his dragster, and he recommended it. So I went with it. It matched up to the early Oldsmobile and works slick.”

The cage is certified to just an 8.50 e.t. “because of the way we built the bar in the driver’s side of the cage. It will hinge to let me in.”

Both of Del’s former partners are still around. “Dean Seevers, the top engine man and driver, is very ill, but Dean and Harold Owens are my biggest supporters of the car. When I started, I was the gopher guy, the polish guy. I painted the original A/Gas Supercharged car and kept it looking great. But then I started driving in mid-1964, so I got to run Doug Cook a number of times, Bones, K.S. Pittman, Chuck Finders, and the big-name racers.”

Re-creating the Willys that meant so much to him took a full five years. “It was a challenge, largely because all the parts we needed are now considered antiques.” But with Bobby Anderson’s help, Del now enjoys running and showing his tribute Willys for “all the past drivers, owners, and fans who truly loved these kinds of cars.”

The Willys being mocked up. During its construction, several body parts—the rear decklid, firewall, inner fenders—were “put on the junk pile” because they were either too heavy or poorly made, Del says. Bobby fabbed aluminum replacements for those parts.

The firewall and dash were among the pieces Bobby made from scratch for the Willys. “He’s quite a sheetmetal worker,” Del says of Bobby.

The engines Del uses in the Willys are ’62 Olds Starfire blocks bored 0.030 over and fitted with number 23 cylinder heads from 1963-1964 Olds 394s. Dave Sarno of SCH Racing Heads in Arvada, Colorado, “is my head guy,” Del says. “They aren’t ported or relieved as extremely as they were in the 1960s, since Dave says the extreme polishing we used to do doesn’t make that much difference. But deep pockets work.”

Topping the 6-71 blower is a two-port Hilborn injection system that Del modified to accept a four-port scoop. “I wanted more volume going to the injector,” he says. “The two-port scoop has considerably less frontal area than the four-port scoop.” So he fashioned an adapter to join the two.

Mad Mike the Striper out of Greeley, Colorado, lettered the original Willys. “When I rebuilt the car I contacted him. He’s still in business in Denver,” Del says. “He did a lot of signs and posters for the car, stuff like that, gratis.” Mike did not letter the new car, though. Del and Bobby took photos of the original Willys to a sign shop, “and he did the cutouts, like vinyl letters. But we didn’t want the lettering—we wanted what was left over, to use as a stencil to paint the lettering on the car.” Bobby then applied the graphics.

More of Bobby’s handiwork is found inside the Willys, where he fashioned the floors, the seats, the dashboard, the cage, and more.

The toughest part of the interior build was getting the B&M ratchet shifter up on the steering column, Del says. The eagle-eyed among you will spot two tachometers in the car, an original Sun tach in the dash and a new Auto Meter tach on the column. Del wanted “something bigger” than the Sun tach for racing. Plus, “I never had much luck getting a Sun tach to work with a magneto.”

“I got to know Marv Rifchin, from M&H Tire, late in life. I didn’t know him from the 1960s, but I got to know him later. He was such a gentleman, so that’s what I have on the car. That’s all I’ll run because of that.”

“Bobby [Anderson, right] did the painting on car. He does it all, the little sh*t. I knew him when he was just 4 years old. People ask, ‘Who did the work?’ That young guy, he did it. He does it all.”

“Sometimes the front end is off the ground, sometimes it’s rubbing against the wall. I never know which direction it’s going to go, but the crowd loves it.”

The post Gasser Wars Veteran Del Wiesner Is Still Wheels-Up in His Olds-Powered 1933 Willys appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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latesthollywoodnews · 6 years

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Vogue RESPONDS To Backlash Over Kendall Jenner Posing With Afro

Jeremy Brown - Latest News - My Hollywood News

Vogue RESPONDS To Backlash Over Kendall Jenner Posing With Afro, New Hollywood Celebrity News 2017.

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List Of 2017 Hollywood Films New Celebrity News Youtube find Walt Hollywood Studios The Walt Hollywood Studios is an American film studio, one of the four major businesses of The Walt Hollywood Company and the main component of its Studio Entertainment segment. The studio, best known for its multi-faceted film division, which is one of Hollywood’s major film studios, is based at the eponymous Walt Hollywood Studios in Burbank, California.

How much are the Celebrities on Hollywood anywhere?

Walt Hollywood Studios has debuted their new Hollywood Celebrities Anywhere online service and iOS app which allows users to buy Hollywood, Pixar, and Marvel Celebrities and view them on multiple devices. Individual Celebrities – from a catalog of over 420 films – will cost $19.99 each.

What is Mulan’s last name?

Although Mulan is set in north China, where the dominant language is Mandarin, the Hollywood film uses the Cantonese pronunciation, “Fa”, of her family name. In Mandarin her name is pronounced “Hua”.

Who is the president of Hollywoodland?

With Meg’s transition complete, George A. Kalogridis is named president of the Walt Hollywood World Resort, and Michael Colglazier is named president of the Hollywoodland Resort.

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The internet is furious over Kendall Jenner posing in an afro for Vogue.

Another day, another Kar-Jenner accused of cultural appropriation.

Vogue tapped Kendall Jenner to be the face of their November issue, which is celebrating the 15th anniversary of the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund. And let’s just say one look at the photos from the shoot, and you’ll see why Kendall is once again coming under fire from the internet.

Two of the photos from the series were posted to Vogue’s Instagram account, and they show Kendall’s hair styled in an afro, as well as painted-on freckles. Outraged fans immediately took to the comments section to call out the look as cultural appropriation.

One person shared QUOTE, “Why did you use a white celebrity for this shoot instead of a person of color who rocks this hair naturally?”

Another wrote QUOTE, “Now that Black Women are getting praised for their natural locks and seen a beautiful, white women are trying to high-jack as usual.”

One user explained why the style was problematic, sharing QUOTE “African Americans were forced to straighten their f$$ing hair in America in order to get jobs…If you wore your hair natural it had to be cut short. Hell, the military only allowed dreads two years ago. So GTFOH with ‘Blacks straighten their hair’. If we weren’t forced to, I can only hope we wouldn’t! It’s appropriation! Period!”

Of course, there were also a number of fans who defended the look, as one person wrote QUOTE, “I’m black and think the outrage is ridiculous. That is not an Afro. It a curly hairstyle which we would see on a lot more white women if everyone was so obsessed with these bone straight styles. And yes black women were pressured to straighten their hair in the past but you should be strong and not follow what the herd is doing. Don’t blame someone else for your choices.” Another argued QUOTE, “I don’t find it offensive. She has freckles in real life, that hair style everyone wore in the 70’s and she’s not a Kardashian. She has had a successful modeling career for years.”

One fan summed up the argument against Kendall wearing an afro, explaining QUOTE, “The discussion is more about the double standard that there is towards Afro hair and black culture. There are negative connotations surrounding actual black people who have this hair (or other things that are a part of black culture) however, conveniently when a white person does it it is suddenly ‘fashionable’ or en vogue. The thing about straight hair or blonde hair is that it’s already part of the western beauty standards ideal, so there’s no double standard.”

After all the backlash, Vogue released the following statement: “The image is meant to be an update of the romantic Edwardian/Gibson Girl hair which suits the period feel of the Brock Collection, and also the big hair of the 60s and the early 70s, that puffed-out, teased-out look of those eras. We apologize if it came across differently than intended, and did not mean to offend anyone by it.”

Alright guys now I wanna hear your thoughts on this — do you think Kendall should issue an apology, or do you think this one was completely on Vogue? Let me hear all your thoughts in the comments below.

And once you’ve done that click right over here to check out another new video, and don’t forget to subscribe! Thanks so much for hanging with me on News Feed, as always I’m your host Emile Ennis Jr. and I’ll see you next time!

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Best Hollywood Celebrities ever, Must Watch English Celebrities, Vogue RESPONDS To Backlash Over Kendall Jenner Posing With Afro.

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sukoptfe-blog · 6 years

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Teflon Is Forever

For decades, DuPont has sold the answer to crud, gunk, and grime. What the company didn’t advertise was that its nonstick wonder sticks—to us.

Congresswoman Pat Schroeder was scrambling eggs, one day back in 1984, when she coined one of the most durable political metaphors of our time. Her 1984 description of Ronald Reagan as “the Teflon President” became instant vernacular, attaching itself to everyone from “Teflon Tony” Blair to “Teflon Don” John Gotti.

It is all the more ironic, then, that our favorite metaphor for bad press that won’t stick comes from a product whose toxic legacy will stick around forever. Teflon, it turns out, gets its nonstick properties from a toxic, nearly indestructible chemical called pfoa, or perfluorooctanoic acid. Used in thousands of products from cookware to kids’ pajamas to takeout coffee cups, pfoa is a likely human

carcinogen, according to a science panel commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency. It shows up in dolphins off the Florida coast and polar bears in the Arctic; it is present, according to a range of studies, in the bloodstream of almost every American—and even in newborns (where it may be associated with decreased birth weight and head circumference). The nonprofit watchdog organization Environmental Working Group (ewg) calls pfoa and its close chemical relatives “the most persistent synthetic chemicals known to man.” And although DuPont, the nation’s sole Teflon manufacturer, likes to chirp that its product makes “cleanup a breeze,” it is now becoming apparent that cleansing ourselves of pfoa is nearly impossible.

DuPont has always known more about Teflon than it let on. Two years ago the epa fined the company $16.5 million—the largest administrative fine in the agency’s history—for covering up decades’ worth of studies indicating that pfoacould cause health problems such as cancer, birth defects, and liver damage. The company has faced a barrage of lawsuits and embarrassing studies as well as an ongoing criminal probe from the Department of Justice over its failure to report health problems among Teflon workers. One lawsuit accuses DuPont of fouling drinking water systems and contaminating its employees with pfoa. Yet it is still manufacturing and using pfoa, and unless the epa chooses to ban the chemical, DuPont will keep making it, unhindered, until 2015.

The Teflon era began in 1938, when a DuPont chemist experimenting with refrigerants stumbled upon what would turn out to be, as the company later boasted, “one of the world’s slipperiest substances.” DuPont registered the Teflon trademark in 1944, and the coating was soon put to work in the Manhattan Project’s A-bomb effort. But like other wartime innovations, such as nylon and pesticides, Teflon found its true calling on the home front. By the 1960s, DuPont was producing Teflon for cookware and advertising it as “a housewife’s best friend.” Today, DuPont’s annual worldwide revenues from Teflon and other products made with pfoa as a processing agent account for a full $1 billion of the company’s total revenues of $29 billion.

Teflon is not actually the brand name of a pan; it’s the name of the slippery stuff that DuPont sells to other companies. Marketers deploy the trademark as a near-mystic incantation, a mantra for warding off filth: Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner With Teflon® Surface Protector, Dockers Stain Defender™ With Teflon®, Blue Dolphin Sleep ‘N Play layette set “protected with Teflon fabric protector.” In one TV spot, an infant cries until Dad sets him down on a Stainmaster (with Advanced Teflon® Repel System) carpet, where baby, improbably, falls into blissful slumber.

Breathing in dust from Teflon-treated rugs or upholstery as they wear down is one way we may be ingesting pfoa. Food is another: Pizza-slice paper, microwave-popcorn bags, ice cream cartons, and other food packages are often lined with Zonyl, another DuPont brand. Technically, Zonyl does not contain pfoa, but it is made with fluorotelomer chemicals that break down into pfoa. Regardless of how it gets into our bodies, once there, pfoa stays—quietly accumulating in our tissues, for a lifetime.

Teflon is not the only nonstick, non-stain brand that has turned out to be stickier than advertised. Scotchgard and Gore-Tex, to name just two, are also made with pfoa or other perfluorochemicals (pfcs). Last year the epa hit the 3M corporation, maker of Scotchgard, with a $1.5 million penalty for failing to report pfoa and pfc health data. Chemicals similar to pfoa have recently turned up in water supplies of suburban Minneapolis and St. Paul, near 3M facilities.

Unlike DuPont, though, 3M no longer sells pfoa: In the late 1990s, when testing blood samples for a health study, the company found pfoa even in the “clean” samples from various U.S. blood banks that it had planned to use as controls. “They realized they were contaminating the entire population,” says Richard Wiles, the Environmental Working Group’s executive director. In 2000, 3M announced that it was discontinuing pfoa production.

When 3M got out, DuPont, which until then had bought its pfoa from 3M, jumped in. Now the company’s bottom line depends on whether its product’s mythic reputation—Teflon’s own Teflon—remains intact.

So far, it seems to be holding. Nonstick pots and pans account for 70 percent of all cookware sold. “Amazingly enough, all the publicity has had no impact on sales,” says Hugh Rushing, executive vice president of the Cookware Manufacturers’ Association. “People read so much about the supposed dangers in the environment that they get a tin ear about it”—though sales of cast-iron skillets, touted as a safer alternative, have doubled in the last five years, in large part because of “the Teflon issue,” according to cast-iron manufacturer Lodge.

In fact, nonstick pans are not a major source of exposure to pfoa, because almost all of the chemical is burned off during manufacture. Still, when overheated, Teflon cookware can release trace amounts of pfoa and 14 other gases and particles, including some proven toxins and carcinogens, according to the Environmental Working Group’s review of 16 research studies over some 50 years. At 500 degrees, Teflon fumes can kill birds; at 660, they can cause the flulike “polymer fume fever” in humans. Even at normal cooking temperatures, two of four brands of frying pans tested in a study cosponsored by DuPont gave off trace amounts of gaseous pfoa and other perfluorated chemicals.

A $5 billion multistate class-action lawsuit representing millions of Teflon cookware owners alleges that DuPont has known for years that its coatings could turn toxic at temperatures commonly reached on the stove, but failed to tell consumers. DuPont’s website recommends not heating Teflon above 500 degrees (so it doesn’t “discolor or lose its nonstick quality”) and advises that when overheated, “nonstick cookware can emit fumes that may be harmful to birds, as can any type of cookware preheated with cooking oil, fats, margarine and butter.” But who knows how hot a pan gets, and who looks out for birds before fixing dinner? Even while researching this story, I left a nonstick skillet on the stove. The fumes smelled like fried computer, and I vowed not to do it again. But I also decided to go with the hazardous-waste flow, figuring, “We’re all toxic dumps anyway.” (ewg studies have found a “body burden” of 455 industrial pollutants, pesticides, and other chemicals in the bodies of ordinary Americans.) With toxic substances unavoidable, or at least key to convenience, we run our own self-interested cost-benefit analyses. I throw out the Teflon-coated Claiborne pants my mother-in-law sent my son, but I let him play on swing sets made of arsenic-treated wood because I don’t want to face a tantrum.

Still, consumers of Teflon pans and pants (not to mention the mascara, dental floss, and other personal care products made slippery with a touch of Tef) have it relatively safe. The people who make the stuff, and who live near the plants, face far worse dangers. The granddaddy of trouble plants—and the one inspiring a range of lawsuits—is DuPont’s plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia. Residents there have sued DuPont for polluting their drinking water with pfoa, and in March 2005, DuPont settled the case for $107 million. If an independent science panel finds links between pfoa and various health problems, DuPont will have to pay up to an additional $235 million to monitor the health of 70,000 people for years to come. Meanwhile, as part of the court order, the company is supplying the entire population of one nearby town with bottled drinking water.

The epa’s $16.5 million fine against DuPont for concealing evidence of health risks traces back to the same Parkersburg plant. According to the epa, workers were reporting health problems there for years, including birth defects in their children; as far back as 1981, DuPont scientists knew that pfoa could cross the placenta and thus contaminate fetuses. DuPont also knew that some of its workers’ babies had been born with eye defects similar to those 3M had just then reported in rats exposed to pfoa. At that point, rather than risk finding more evidence, DuPont terminated its study and didn’t report the troubling data to the epa as required by law. “Our interpretation of the reporting requirements differed from the agency’s,” the company explained in 2005.

Today, DuPont remains adamant that pfoa—whether in pots, pants, or drinking water—is no threat. The epa may say studies show unequivocally that in “laboratory animals exposed to high doses, pfoa causes liver cancer, reduced birth weight, immune suppression and developmental problems,” but DuPont’s website quotes Dr. Samuel M. Cohen of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, who says, “We can be confident that pfoa does not pose a cancer risk to humans at the low levels found in the general population.” But, notes Robert Bilott, one of the lead attorneys in the Parkersburg suit, “the general population isn’t drinking it. And they have five parts per billion in their blood. Near the West Virginia plant, it’s in the hundreds of parts per billion; and in the elderly and in children, several thousand parts per billion.”

DuPont is hardly unique in trying to cast unflattering data as incomplete or uncertain. As epidemiologist David Michaels wrote in a 2005 essay in Scientific American titled “Doubt Is Their Product,” many corporations have followed the tobacco (and more recently, global warming) model of insisting that the scientific jury is still out, “no matter how powerful the evidence.” Michaels took his title from a 1969 memo written by an executive for cigarette maker Brown & Williamson: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Even the indoor tanning industry, notes Michaels, “has been hard at work disparaging studies that have linked ultraviolet exposure with skin cancer.”

Chemical companies caught a break with the passage of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (which they helped write), a measure so weak it doesn’t require industrial chemicals to be tested for toxicity. Only toxic effects, often found after a product has become ubiquitous in the environment and in people’s bodies, must be reported—and even that rule, as DuPont discovered, can be broken with only a minor hit to profits.

In the case of pfoa, it was left to the epa to finally investigate the risk to public health. That assessment, begun in 2000, is expected to go on for years. If pfoa is determined to be a proven (not merely likely) carcinogen, says agency spokeswoman Enesta Jones, “this chemical could be banned.” It would be one of the epa‘s very few outright bans since 1996, when it proscribed ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. DuPont was the world’s biggest producer of those too.

For now, DuPont is subject only to the epa‘s voluntary “stewardship” program, under which it has agreed to reduce pfoa emissions from products and factories by 95 percent by 2010 and 100 percent by 2015. DuPont says it is likely to meet those deadlines: In February, the company announced it had found a new technology that reduces by 97 percent the pfoa used in making Teflon and other coatings, and it has vowed to “eliminate the need to make, buy or use pfoa by 2015.”

“It’s interesting how DuPont says they’re going to eliminate the ‘need’ to make, buy, or use pfoa,” says Rick Abraham, an environmental consultant for the United Steelworkers, which represents workers at DuPont’s plants. “It’s a self-imposed need. They need it to make money. Are they going to stockpile it, make as much as they can by 2015? Given DuPont’s history, that’s very possible. They need to make public a time frame for annual production and have it subject to third-party verification.” DuPont spokesman Dan Turner responds, “We’re going to eliminate it, period.” As for time frames, he says, “I can’t get into specifics. I can only say we’re moving as quickly as the technology allows.”

Meanwhile, DuPont has been applying a protective layer of PR to the problem. Last year, caught in a flurry of bad publicity about fines and lawsuits, the company took out full-page newspaper ads. One stated, “Teflon® Non-Stick Coating is Safe.” And, as if to flip the bird at workers’ complaints, it ran an ad in Working Woman showing a female factory worker and declaring: “DuPont employees use their skills and talents to make lives better, safer and healthier.” This year, DuPont plans to advertise its pfoa-lowering measures only in trade publications, perhaps because it’s tricky to boast of reduced pfoa while also maintaining that the chemical is harmless. “No one is better than DuPont at greenwashing,” says Joe Drexler of the Steelworkers’ DuPont Accountability Project.

Possibly. Recall DuPont’s 1990 “Ode to Joy” commercial, in which seals clapped, penguins chirped, and whales leapt to honor DuPont for using double-hull tankers to “safeguard the environment.” The seals evidently didn’t realize that a law passed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill required double-hull tankers. The penguins probably didn’t connect the ice melting under their flippers with DuPont’s chlorofluorocarbons either. The company fought against regulating them right up until they were banned.

It is in such ads that corporate fantasies and our individual ones meet and agree to ignore unpleasantries. Corporations lie to us, sure, but we make it easy for them with the little lies we tell ourselves. Especially when it comes to our everyday conveniences, it’s easier to accept the company line that there is no risk than it is to accept that authorities won’t necessarily protect us from risk. Jim Rowe, president of the union local at DuPont’s Chambers Works plants in New Jersey, told me that despite the science about birth defects among DuPont employees, many of his coworkers have convinced themselves that there’s nothing to worry about: “When we took blood tests and interviewed them, they said they were told ‘pfoa‘s not a problem—it’s even in polar bears.'” Precisely. And even if DuPont (and companies that make pfoa in Europe and Asia) stopped producing and using the chemical tomorrow, the millions of pounds of it already on earth would remain in the environment and in our bodies “forever,” says the ewg‘s Wiles. “By that we mean infinity.”

Denial, avoidance, and magical thinking aren’t new. Like Teflon, they’re barriers that keep unpleasant things at bay, and like Teflon, they’re entrenched deep inside us.

Tags:teflon ptfe,teflon

#teflon ptfe #teflon

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platatoandsoquoquediscovern-blog · 7 years

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Soquoque discovers:

My thoughts while watching twilight breaking dawn part 2, in 100 sentences or less

1. WHY ARE THE OPENING CREDITS SO LONG?

2. Lol Bella is a vampire now, SURPRISE.

3. AAAAH CGI PANTHER IS CGI

4. Also, a panther? Really Bella? Way to overachieve

5. Ew ew, CGI baby is CGI and really fucking weird looking

6. Bella is about to beat Jacobs butt (also why does he take so long to tell her that he imprinted on her infant. Bruh this is not the moment to be vague)

7. Kristen Stewart angry is only slightly more expressive then everyday Kristen Stewart

8. Baby had feelings for Jacob in the womb

9. Ah no Seth… Sam..? the brown werewolf

10. Shortest fight EVER

11. Also, anyone notice how he calls her Ness once and then literally never again.

12. Aaaaah CGI baby is still heavily CGI

13. I feel like part of Bella’s reason for being in this movie is to just point out all the stuff about vampires we already know since this is the fifth fucking movie. E.g. “vampires don’t sleep”

14. Tbh this movie has a really good soundtrack, and a lot of sparkle effects

15. There she goes again pointing shit out “we don’t get tired” yeah Bella, we fucking know

16. Directors message to Jacob was “eat this sandwich and stare out of the window longingly” and Taylor Lautner was like “I got this”

17. Why didn’t Jacob know the entire plan? Like what did they expect him to do. I would totally go and wolf out in front of Bella’s father if I got this totally out of the blue news

18. I fucking love Charlie man. And Taylor Lautner’s work out programme.

19. Was the acting always this bad? Also did Edward always sound like he was from Boston, New York?

20. Lol these vampires seriously overestimate what we as a human species notice about each other. Move your shoulders so it looks like you’re breathing? You know how often I notice if people are breathing? Never

21. Carlisle got tan-ish. I like it

22. Kristen Stewart pretending to be Bella pretending to be a human-being-like Kristen Stewart is a sight and a half

23. Charlie took all of this crap a lot better than they gave him credit for. Also, was he even in the Part 1? Or is this whole concerned dad act only present when the script calls for it?

24. Bella makes promises she can’t keep

25. Bells? Bells? Nope don’t even try to pull that surprise nickname thing Chuck. Also, aaaaah CGI baby is back. Again I ask, why couldn’t they JUST USE A NORMAL HUMAN BABY. YOU MADE A SHIT TON OF MONEY TWILIGHT, BUT YOU COULDN’T SPRING FOR A ACTUAL BABY (ASSUMING THEY ARE ALSO PAIID ACTORS OBVIOUSLY)

26. The movie has time for a Bella vs Emmet arm wrestling match in case you forgot that new-borns are stronger than their aged vampire counter parts

27. “That’s right bitches, I sparkle too now” – Bella, circa 2012

28. “we shake hands now you forgive us for trying to kill the girl you loved and her baby. Yes?” “Yes.”

29. Also, wtf is Reneesme and why do we only see this really high jumping power once and never again?

30. Also, also, fuck Irina.

31. Also, also also AAAAAAAH CGI EIGHT-YEAR-OLD IS CGI

32. Yay, the Edward piano solo I was waiting for… said literally no one ever

33. Damn she got to Rome fast.

34. Also, the Voltari man. If you look up creepy old guys in the dictionary you will see their picture, posing like Charlie’s angels

35. Can we run through Alice’s plan really quickly? She has this vision that the Voltari are ‘coming for them’ and then she, the fucking future see-er just bounces? Leaving them all to their own devices? Like what a dick move Alice- and yeah yeah I get that she needed to go find that other vampire-human hybrid and shit but a heads up would have been nice

36. Also, “Vampire sex?” “No, too graphic.” “Throwing babies into fires?” “Yeah, that should be fine.”- the producers, probably

37. Does Rosalee… Rosaline… Nikki Reed’s character, only have like five lines in this entire movie?

38. Oh, look it’s those two shock ladies and that one brunette lady.

39. AAAAH CGI 8-YEAR-OLD- YOU GET THE POINT

40. Wow do all vampires overreact like this

41. she touches their faces and now everything’s fine (even though they tried to kill her like 2 seconds ago)

42. Yaaaaay Rami Malek. Look at the nature man go.

43. Benjamin is the bestest

44. Random safari ladies are fucking random… but appreciated

45. Mentions the unpredictability of the nomad Peter… nothing happens ever again

46. We have eighteen people, yay

47. You don’t want to fight Allister? Then why are you here dude

48. Its CGI jungle within a CGI jungle- its CGI-CEPTION

49. Ooooooh, she’s a shield…. We knew that but okay

50. The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming

51. I thought Jacob was supposed to be the smart wolf… why is he hopelessly jumping at trees he can’t climb?

52. Cedric Diggory: Hufflepuff, piano player, vegetarian, prize speech giver.

53. Lol Bella stood up like she has a choice in whether to fight or not. Its your child babe, you best fight.

54. Sudden introduction to Jane’s psycho brother Alec is sudden

55. You’re telling me the Voltari found this one chump who couldn’t get to Carlisle house in time? That’s convenient

56. And thus, commences Bella’s training, which lasts like five minutes before she totally has that shit down. And henceforth to the battlefield

57. Also, Edward and Emmet make this scene… and the entire movie really

58. Oh right, Reneesme is in this movie… forgot about her. Thanks for the bedtime story reading time thing twilight makers

59. Bella: new-born, question-asker, part time Sherlock Holmes. Also, Edward GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE GUTTER MAN. YOUR CHILD’S LIFE IS AT STAKE

60. Ah Charlie, poor, hopeless, oblivious Charlie.

61. Bella sits in a restaurant while her child’s life hangs in the balance

62. Also, AH, ITS RACHEL ZANES FATHER

63. Bella has some seriously crappy handwriting… also goodbye Allister, we all knew you wouldn’t last

64. Look at that, Charlie has a girlfriend. And I don’t care

65. Uhm I got up and left for like 3 minutes and now… campfire? Okay cool.

66. These stories are really freaking depressing…. anyone know any good Dracula stories?

67. Father- son bonding moments for the win.

68. But side note, Edward never thanked Carlisle once for saving his life? Not even once? Dick move Cullen, dick move.

69. Dum dum duh dum… landscapes, snow, so…many…vampires

70. I love how they all stand in nice little groups just to really emphasise how pathetic the Cullen Army is compared to the monstrosity that is the Voltari

71. Remove the hoods of our coats so they know we mean business

72. Hey Carlisle, if you move closer you won’t have to yell

73. If there was ever a time to vampire speed run, IT WOULD BE NOW EDWARD

74. Question: what exactly is Aro’s ability again? He can read a persons past? Their minds? Their hands?

75. “Emmet, you and Jacob in the back. Edward and I will protect her from the side. Ready? Break” – Bella probably

76. Dude, I will never get over Aro’s creepy as shit laugh. Like we get it dude, you’re batshit crazy, no need to scare the kids.

77. These Voltari don’t play around… they brought torches and everything. Also, oh no that lady that betrayed the Cullen’s is dead…but on the plus side Bella is actually being useful for once so yay?

78. “Suck on my awesome shield making powers bitch”- Bella, probably again

79. Lol Aro stopped Alec from unleashing his slow ass fog on the Cullen’s like it was going to make a difference?

80. Such…a long…speech

81. Alice is back yay… took her sweet ass time getting here though. Also, WHY IS NO ONE VAMPIRE RUNNING?

82. Okay so a summary of the events taking place right now: everything is going to shit. Carlisle is dead (not gonna lie, the first time I watched this movie I lost my shit when that happened) and basically everyone is killing everyone. But obvs the Cullen’s have to win or else what is the point although all logic would say that they really shouldn’t because they have eighteen fucking vampires and the Voltari have like…a lot more than eighteen but hey, Cullen’s for the win

83. “Aaaaaaaaand it was all an illusion suckers. Fuck you for thinking we would kill Carlisle, we love that guy” – the maker of twilight, probably.

84. Hey there’s that Brazilian vampire-human hybrid dude that’s going to save the day. Woohoo

85. Oh, so NOW they vampire run. Fucking stupid ass Voltari

86. Lol another father-son bonding moment. Easy there son Jacob, respect your dad

87. Aww look at the happy family on the CGI beach.

88. And now folks, a recap of the past four movies… you know, just in case you missed it.

89. Is it just me or are they just making up Bella’s ‘abilities’ as we go along. What, now she can remove her shield and let Edward read her mind. Fuck off twilight people.

90. Also, AAAAHHHH its younger, creepier Edward

91. And just like that, the end of an era. So long you sparkly sons of bitches

92. So…many…end credits. (I do love this song though)

93. Wait, is Booboo Stewart related to Kristen Stewart? Please hold while I Google this

94. He’s not.

#twilight breakingdawnpart2 teamedward honesty funny allgoodfun

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caityamyvr-blog · 7 years

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My thoughts while watching Breaking Dawn Part 2: in up to 100 sentences