#portland tour company

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

[rebeccathenaturalist]

This has not been a week of writing, but I was expecting that. I had a number of other deadlines lined up, and company arriving imminently so it's just a short week where not a lot happened. That being said I managed to carve out a couple of hours of working on The Everyday Naturalist manuscript this evening before and after the class I taught. The glossary is now done, and I also added some crucial information about accessibility after consulting with Syren Nagakyrie of Disabled Hikers. That just leaves formatting the bibliography properly, and then the first draft will be done and I can start polishing the manuscript in preparation for turning it in to my editor at Ten Speed Press.

Next week will likely also be a wash for writing; I will have an information booth for my guided nature tours and other work at the Portland Spring Home and Garden Show Thursday through Sunday (come say hi to me at booth 1349!), and I'll likely be too wiped out at the end of each day to want to anything more than shower, eat, and sleep. But that's okay. I'll see what I can fit in otherwise, and then the week after I'm home and don't have to go much of anywhere.

Oh, and the manuscript is currently at 74,857 words, an increase of 654 words. It won't get too much larger, though I have a ton of website URLs that need to be formatted in the bibliography, so that'll add a little wordcount. After that--it's time to start trimming (yikes.)

[yupuffin]

Quick series of fact checks on that "Miku Expo = dashcon" post, by an attendee who has been to at least one show in every Miku Expo in North America tour since 2014, because OP made a post rife with misleading and false information and then restricted replies which is not a good look

-- "tickets were more expensive/charged people for projectors/tickets used to be at most $160" Not sure where they are getting these stats. My ticket was the same price as it has been all previous years, if not CHEAPER. OP cites $300 as the cheapest ticket for this year, which is blatantly false as my ticket was not nearly that much. (My VIP ticket in LA 2014 was definitely that much, though, so the claim that previous shows were "at most 160" is blatantly false)

--"banned glowsticks and upcharged ... their own" Chemical glowsticks shorter than 6" are still allowed, as has been standard with all previous Miku Expo shows in other years. Miku Expo merch has never been cheap. Pretty sure the glowsticks this year were the same price as always as I bought a set in ... 2016, I wanna say?

--rumors such as 'stolen cutout'/piss on floor/car crash in San Jose Can't comment on these as they are instance-specific and completely unrelated to the organizers. I recall hearing rumors about issues with staff employed by the specific venue due to lack of communication but nothing that I can personally confirm and nothing that would have been under control of the event organizers. Comment about 'unlicensed merch' indeed seems to point to venue staff rather than expo organizers

--'hologram technology not particularly complicated' Yes, you can make similar shows in your bedroom with similar technology (MMD with scrim). No, they're not on anywhere near the same scale as Miku Expo live concerts. In particular, the glass screen that utilizes the projectors (which has always been two-dimensional, by the way. so anyone who complains that this Miku "isn't a hologram" just... doesn't understand that Miku has never been a hologram, I guess?? This also makes the 'fans are disappointed because miku is 2D' headline VERY MISLEADING.) in the previous shows has a specific shape to make it look good from some angles, but it's VERY vulnerable to visual distortion when viewed from other, more extreme angles (from way off to the side, or right beneath it in the very front) as well as the problem of reflecting the lights from most glowsticks to some degree. The LCD screen used in the ongoing North America tour has neither of these problems. I can't speak to how complicated the specific setup is for the ongoing tour, but when you look at the show dates and how far apart the venues are, they don't leave a lot of wiggle room for... any kind of setup, even a simple one. (The San Jose show, for example, was only two days after the Portland show, despite the two cities being at least a ten-hour drive apart. No wonder they purportedly have a different band for each location)

--'this is the first time miku expo has been so bad' Nope. As mentioned above, I've been to at least one show in each Miku Expo North America tour since they started in 2014. I can guarantee you every previous show was not without its issues, either. In LA in 2014, the expo included daytime activities other than the concert and was hosted at an outdoor venue in the sun... with no drinking water available until the second day. Seattle in 2016 definitely also had miscommunication issues with the event organizers versus the venue staff. Can't remember 2018 well enough to comment.

--vocalo-ps are mad because this undermines their capitalistic interests Just... no?? Vocaloid producers are not major corporate entities who make a lot of money like a lot of mainstream producers. (Neither is Crypton Future Media, Miku's parent company, for that matter, but we'll address that in a little bit.) The vast majority are hobbyists and make little to no money. Those who profit from it at all are largely indie producers, some of whom retired from mainstream music production specifically to become indie vocalo-ps because they didn't want to deal with capitalist bs. (the reverse is also true in a few cases though) Vocalo-Ps aren't mad for reasons stated in the original post; they're mad because the overseas uproar is based largely on the assumption that, since Miku is obviously so popular, Crypton is a megacorporation that brings in tons of money and hence is in full control over... (vague hand gestures) all the issues outlined in the post. It really isn't. It has a grand total of 130 employees in an office in Sapporo. There's reasons they had to "crowdfund out the ass" for the online concerts during the pandemic and partner with Crunchyroll for the ongoing tour. That's why Vocalo-Ps are mad. Wouldn't be surprised if most of the issues that people are mad at could actually be traced back to crunchyroll tbh because they were apparently responsible for stuff like which venues were booked and when (which are just one of many issues that could be addressed aside from...)

--the whole thing with the screen??? I'm gonna be super honest with you. I'm in the minority here but I CANNOT understand why everyone is so mad about the screen? They make it sound like it looks SO bad but... it really isn't. (And as mentioned above, the presence of the LCD screen fixes a lot of issues that the glass screen has, so it's not without its perks.) It wouldn't have even occurred to me as an attendee of several previous miku expos that the screen was different if there hadn't been such a weirdly entitled uproar about it. So the fact that most of the words in the post and so much of the 'outcry' is about THE SCREEN when there are so many other logistical issues behind the concerts that could be addressed that are arguably more important than the type of screen they used baffles me, honestly. I could not describe this issue to my coworkers in a way that didn't make them think Vocaloid fans need to go touch grass which I think says something

People can try to sue crunchyroll over... whatever but I really don't think there's a basis for it??? I think this tour is not without its screwups and i'm conjecturing based on the evidence i have that most of them can be traced back to crunchyroll specifically but very likely NOT crypton or the individual vocalo-ps which... op seems very intent on villainizing for some reason.

[genevievemd]

Long Story Short (3/4)

Chapter Three: Should’ve Said No

Book: Open Heart Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Genevieve McClure), mentions of F!MC (Genevieve McClure) x M!OC (Jackson Hoffman) Word Count: 1945 Rating: T Category: fluff, Mini Series Trope(s): and an ex came back in the picture,

Summary: ~Series: The four times Ethan met Genevieve’s exes. (In chronological order) ~ Chapter: While on a trip to see Gen’s hometown, the couple run into another one of Gen’s exes. 

Warnings: none

A/N: We’re back for more fun. This time it’s set a few weeks after chapter 2 and right before G’s third year begins! As with all the chapters, the title is the T.Swift song that Gen associates with her ex. 

Chapter One - Chapter Two

They were two weeks into the three Leland had given the hospital staff off as it closed for renovations. And Genevieve had spent all of that time with him, exploring Boston and each other. There were a few moments where Ethan feared they’d grow tired of each other’s company, but that feeling never came. For him or for her. 

So, when she’d asked if he wanted to accompany her to her hometown of Portland, Maine for the weekend, Ethan agreed. Forgetting that it also meant meeting her parents. 

He met Robert and Marie briefly after the attack nine months ago. But he was Dr. Ramsey then, the man in charge of her case and her residency. This time, he was introduced as simply Ethan, their daughter’s boyfriend. 

And unfortunately, the meeting had not gone as either of them hoped. Gen’s father was not subtle about his wariness, putting a damper on what was meant to be a positive day. 

He wished he knew how to show Robert that he had nothing but the best intentions with Genevieve. That he was nothing like the men of her past, that all Ethan wanted was to give Gen the world, shower her with all the love he has for her. 

But it seemed that nothing he said or did would change the man’s mind, much to the disappointment of everyone. 

So, they left, and Ethan found himself on a tour of Gen’s hometown. She’d brought him to her favorite lighthouse, showed him the high school she attended, and now they were walking abound downtown Portland hand in hand. 

“Oh, do you feel like stopping for coffee? This is my favorite café.” Gen excitedly points to a storefront just ahead of them on the corner. “We can sit in the window and people watch.” 

“Did you really ask if I felt like stopping for coffee, Rookie? Do you know me at all?” 

“Right, how could I forget. You run off a mixture of coffee, scotch and sarcasm.” She rolls her pretty green eyes at him, her smile brighter than the sun shining down on them. 

“Lead the way, G.” 

They make their way to the street corner, Ethan opening the door for Gen when they’re interrupted. 

“Genevieve!?” A slender brunette approaches, pushing a baby stroller. Ethan recognizes her as Gen’s childhood friend, Tori. Who he’d briefly met on a Facetime call a few months back. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in town?” 

“It was spur of the moment.: Gen hugs her friend before bending down to greet the twins in the stroller. “They got so big!” 

“Tell me about it.” Tori laughs, then looks up at Ethan. “You brought him home?” 

“I did.” Gen stands, stepping back to him. “We were actually about to grab coffee.” 

“How fun. The twins and I are on our way to meet Owen for lunch.” 

They share a pained look, and Ethan quickly fixes the problem at hand.

“G, catch up with Tori while you have a minute. I can go order for us.” 

“You sure?” She looks up at him, biting her lip. 

“I’m sure.” 

“You’re the best.” She squeals, getting on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Can you get me an iced chai latte, with vanilla?” 

“Of course.” Ethan kisses he forehead, “It was nice to see you in person, Tori.” 

“You, too!.” Tori waves him off, making him chuckle. 

Ethan enters the café, the comforting smell of freshly brewed coffee filling the air. The line at the counter is, thankfully, short and in no time at all Ethan occupies a table at the window. Where he can see Gen still chatting away with her friend. 

He pulls out his phone, taking the opportunity to check his emails, distract himself from letting his mind wander back to the unpleasant meeting with Gen’s father and the possible ramifications of it. 

“You new in town?” 

He looks up to see a redheaded man in a police uniform. 

“Pardon?” 

“I frequent this shop a lot, never seen you in here. Plus, you know, I’m a cop.” The man adjusts his utility belt, as though it’s supposed to make him intimidating. “Portland ain’t no small town, but when ya work for it, you get to know folks. So, you new or visiting?” 

“Visiting.” Ethan answers dryly, unsure of why it’s any of this man’s business, police officer or not. 

“Nice, nice.” He nods, eyes drifting out the window, no doubt landing on Genevieve. “Wait, I know you.” 

He quickly looks back at Ethan, “You’re that famous doctor, Ramsey, right?” 

“Yes.” 

“You’re datin’ Gen! I saw it on her pictagram a few weeks back.” 

“And how exactly do you know Genevieve?” Ethan glances at the woman in question, still talking with Tori. 

“We dated in high school. I’m Jackson Hoffman. I’m sure she told you about me.” 

“She did not.” He wonders briefly why she hadn’t, worried it meant something. 

Until he remembers the conversation they had two weeks ago in his apartment. The one about Ryan Ozwell. That had been excruciating for her, and Ethan realizes that perhaps she wasn’t ready to disclose every one of her exes yet. That maybe the rest were painful, too. 

Which breaks his heart. If Patrick was the only honorable man she’s known, he can understand the wall Gen once had around her heart. 

“She really didn’t mention me? We dated for, like, a year and a half, I took her to our senior prom. Isn’t that a big deal to chicks?” Jackson pulls out the seat across from her, sitting down without invitation. 

Ethan can understand now, at least one of the reasons, why Gen had kept this man a secret. Clearly he was lacking tact, and manners. 

“Although, she probably didn’t cause of how we ended. I kinda cheated on her.” 

“Kinda?” 

“Yeah, but in my defense, buddy –” 

“Don’t call me, buddy.” He interjects, though Jackson clearly didn’t hear him, continuing on as if nothing was said. 

“She wouldn’t put out after prom, or ever. And it’s part of the gig, you know. Who goes through high school without getting laid?” Jackson chuckles, leaning back in his stolen seat. “I had to get it somewhere. I’m sure a guy like you gets it.” 

“I do not.” 

The sheer audacity of this man has Ethan shocked. How he could sit there and so proudly boast about stepping out on his partner is beyond him. It’s the type of Neanderthal that sets society back, the classic misogynist that was clearly never taught how to respect women. 

Ethan almost feels sorry for him. 

“Sorry about that, babe.” The object of their conversation finally joins them. Gen excitedly bouncing over to the table. 

She leans down to kiss Ethan in greeting, completely oblivious to Jackson still sitting across from him. 

Ethan can see him tilt his head, eyes roaming over her like she’s a piece of meet. Settling on her legs that seem longer in the shorts she’d worn today. 

It’s disgusting and has Ethan ready to shield her from the pile of trash leering at her. 

“Hey, Gen. Long time no see.” The buffoon finally speaks, clearing his throat. 

“Jackson. Hi.” She turns her attention to her ex, standing up straight with wide eyes. “It has been a long time.” 

“Yeah. I was just telling your new guy here how we dated in high school.” Jackson takes a sip of his coffee, once again brazenly checking her out. “You look great, still hot as hell.” 

“You were?” She looks down at Ethan nervously, seeming to have missed her ex’s last comment. As if she’s afraid of whatever nonsense he had said. 

Ethan stands from the table, handing her the tea she’d asked for, determined to do as he’s always promised and protect her from her advisories. 

He smiles reassuringly before taking her hand in his. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Rookie. It was more like boasting about having cheated on you. Like some blubbering buffoon who thinks he’s entitled to the company of woman, whom he very clearly never learned to respect.” 

“Whoa, dude, that’s –” 

“We’re done here. I’d be polite and say it was a pleasure to meet you, Officer Hoffman, but then I’d be lying.” He turns his full attention back to Genevieve. “Baby, I believe there’s still more to see on our tour?” 

“God… that was so sexy.” She whispers, almost in a daze. 

Ethan smirks, raising an eyebrow. That seems to bring her back to reality, causing her to turn the cutest shade of pink. 

“Oh, yeah, there is. We should go.” She grips his hand tightly as they maneuver out of the now crowded café. Both ignoring the looks from Jackson and a few other patrons. 

Once they’ve made it far enough down the street, Ethan break the silence, looking down at Gen. “You always get so flustered when I call you baby.” 

“Don’t tease me.” She bumps her hip against his, though her playfulness only lasts a second. Sobering up and looking at him with remorse. “I’m sorry you had to meet Jackson like that. OR at all, really.” 

“It’s alright, G.” 

“Also that he said all that stuff.” 

“Gen,” He stops them from walking farther, turning to face her. “You don’t need to apologize for him.” 

“I know, but I feel like all my exes are garbage, so really I’m apologizing for my terrible taste in men.” She looks away, eyes drawn down to the sidewalk.

He’s not entirely sure what to say to make her feel better. Because he, too, has had his fair share of contemptible exes. Harper had been the only exception in the last decade. 

Until Genevieve, that is. 

Now she was the exception to every rule.

“Gen, look at me.” He waits for her to meet his eyes, and Ethan can’t help but smile. Knowing in that moment, exactly what to say. 

“Don’t ever apologize for that. You have an extremely large heart, one full of love and kindness. One that always tries to see the best in people. It’s one of the many things I admire most about you.” He pauses, stepping close and cradling her face in his hands. “Your exes took advantage of that, instead of cherishing it, and you. So please, do not apologize for being who you are.” 

“Okay.” Her voice is a whisper, eyes wide and brimmed with tears. Sparkling like two priceless jewels, looking at him as though she can’t believe her luck. 

A feeling Ethan knowns all too well with her. 

Gen leans up on her tiptoes, arms wrapping around his neck a moment later. Her lips on his in a gentle kiss. As if she’s reminding herself that she’d finally found the one. That she is safe with him.

Ethan lets go of her face, moving to wrap his own arms around her waist. Hauling her forward and closer, until she’s pressed tightly against his chest.

After a slew of kisses and touches, and little giggles felt rather than heard, they break apart. The sorrow and regret no longer clouding her face. 

“Wanna see the ice rink I used to go too all the time? You can show off those hockey moves for me.” She raises an eyebrow, biting her lip in a way that makes him want to press her against a wall. 

Ethan instead chooses to laugh, taking her hand in his once more. “Lead the way, Rookie.” 

He still has questions about Jackson, and her past, worries about her father, but for now they don’t matter. 

They’d get there, because Ethan knows they have all the time in the world. 

A/N: Final ex up next, the only doctor in the bunch. 

Details on her exes can be found here and here

(tagging separately) 

[justoneofthoseghosts]

"I'll meet you in my dreams"

Brettsey prompt

Sylvie thinks about what Matt told her as she and Mouch made their way through their first Paramedicine run. It was unusually warm for October and she was glad the AC was working fine in the rickety, old ambulance Chief Hawkins had presented her with a few days ago. The ice cold soda she was slurping on helped too.

Matt was moving to Portland.

For three years.

And he asked her to come with him.

There was a lot to consider. She came to Chicago running away from one relationship and left Chicago for Indiana to follow someone else. Her decisions had been triggered by whoever she was with at the time and she didn't want that to be the case this time around. She loved Chicago, she was only scratching the surface of her new pilot program. She didn't want to have to give it all up to follow someone else regardless of whether that was Matt, someone who she really deeply loved. She needed to follow her own path, to see where it would take her.

She tells him no the following night as they're walking out of Molly's. She couldn't go and she knew what she was about to say next would likely hurt them both but it was the right thing to do, she reminds herself.

So she lets out a breath and he gazes at her almost like he knew from her sigh that what she was about to tell him wasn't going to be something he wanted to hear.

He nods as she tells him how the last few months had been incredible but being 2,000 miles apart while still being in a relationship wasn't fair to either of them, not when they both deserved to find something real and permanent and maybe, the universe was telling them this wasn't it, at least not now, Sylvie says - in an attempt to console Matt or herself she wasn't quite sure.

He doesn't fight it, knowing there was some kernel of truth to what she said and as he kisses her cheek and they part, she feels some wetness on her face, whether that's from the rain or her tears, she couldn't tell.

If you love something set it free, right? If it comes back it's yours. Didn't it go that way?

Sylvie hoped that maybe it would.

---

The first time they see each other again it's during Stella and Kelly's wedding. She jokes about him being her hero when he manages to commandeer a tour boat for the wedding. He smiles at her but it doesn't really reach his eyes. Sylvie thinks that maybe he's still getting over them too. She spent nights holed up in her apartment with ice cream, wine and cheesy romantic comedies keeping her company to try and ease the pain and the ache she felt for him. The first few nights, Violet and Stella kept her company. They understood why Sylvie made the decision she did and while they were sad that Brett and Casey were no more, they supported her, sleeping over and concocting weird cocktails that was 10% apple juice and 90% bubblegum vodka.

She never really thought about dating again. It was too soon after Matt. She found it strange that it took her so much time to get over a relationship that barely lasted over six months compared to getting over either of her former fiancés.

When he asks her to dance, she accepts. He holds out his hand and as she places her in his, she feel electricity shoot up her arm, going straight to her spine, making her grow rigid.

Shazam.

She glances at him to notice him swallowing thickly. Clearly, he felt it too. She rests her cheek against his chest, inhaling his familiar scent, as they swayed in time to the slow song. When the dance is over, she holds on just a little bit longer before kissing his cheek in thanks. He doesn't let go of her hand immediately, his eyes boring into her as if telling her words he can't say because again, it would not be fair to either of them.

I still love you. I miss you. I think about you every day.

"I know," she whispers before adding, "me too."

He smiles, the same one that doesn't quite reach his eyes, as he kisses the back of her hand.

It takes everything in her not to say the words out loud, to tell him that maybe they could work it out.

---

It's another year before Matt makes it back to Chicago - this time to witness the birth of Kelly and Stella's first child. There's supposed to be a party as Molly's and as he enters the bar, his first instinct is to look for a certain blonde haired paramedic. He finds her at the bar with a dark haired man that looked vaguely familiar, laughing at something he said. She brushed her hair off her shoulder. It was longer than it had been the last time they saw each other, curled at the ends like years before. Something seizes in his chest. He thinks that maybe it's jealousy and he tries desperately to swat it away.

He shouldn't feel this way, he reminds himself. Sylvie deserves all the happiness in the world but there were some nights when he laid in bed thinking about what could have been if he hadn't left.

Would they have celebrated a one year anniversary? Maybe moved in together? Would Matt be looking at engagement rings right now?

It was tough and even if Matt dated a few women in Portland, none of them ever lasted very long because none of them had all the qualities he was looking for. Kelly had told him that maybe being older taught him to be moe discerning, that he knew what he wanted.

But reading between the lines, Matt knew what Kelly wanted to say was that Matt knew exactly who he wanted and maybe that was the problem. He couldn't and he didn't want to settle.

Herrmann spots him, calling out in greeting as everyone swarms towards him. He greets them all until it's Sylvie's turn and she smiles warmly at him. They still exchanged a few texts here and there. He greeted her for her birthday and she did the same during his. He knew she was Facebook friends with Griffin and would comment on some of his photos or updates every so often. He jams his hands into his pockets, unsure suddenly of what to do with them. She stares at him before opening up her arms and telling him how nice it was to see him, sounding incredibly sincere.

He wraps his arms around her, returning her greeting, telling her it was nice to see her too. He breathes in her perfume, somehow giddy that it still hadn't changed - warm vanilla with a hint of citrus and floral notes just as Matt remembered smelling on her sheets.

She introduces him to the dark haired man - Jason Pelham. Matt recalls the name. He took over 81 before Stella came on as the permanent lieutenant. Sylvie tells him how Pelham and his wife were helping out with Paramedicine and Matt finally notices the wedding band on the taller man's left hand.

Oh.

Somehow the tightness in his chest unfurls and he ends up having a great time that night until Stella's water suddenly breaks and they all rush to Med, Kelly swearing multiple times that the baby better not be born in the back of his Mustang.

When he sees Sylvie cradling the baby in her arms, there's that pang in his chest again, his heart constricting. Her eyes find his, shooting him a tentative smile before asking if he would like to hold his godchild.

Sylvie with a baby in her arms was a bit too much so he shakes his head and excuses himself, rushing out of the room and hiding behind a vending machine to try and collect himself.

There were so many what ifs swirling in his head.

He hears footsteps and a pair of tan leather boot clad feet appear before him.

"Are you okay?"

Of course it's Sylvie.

"I just wish some things were different," he admits softly, not meeting her eyes, gazing pointedly at his own feet.

She stands beside him, leaning against his arm, not saying a word. They stand their side by side for a few minutes until Matt finally says that they should head back. He'd much rather stay here with her but he didn't want to spend the rest of the night mopping, not when it should be about a celebration of new life.

He leans away from the wall asking her if she was ready, she nods and when he begins to walk, he thinks he hears her whisper something that sounded like me too and he's heard people say that it's the hope that kills you but in this case, it's this tiny, mad hope that will sustain him for another year.

That and a lot of wishing that by the time he's finally back in Chicago, he still has a fighting chance.

---

Ben ends up getting into The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign which was a great school for computer science. They celebrate with Griffin one afternoon along the Chicago riverwalk. It would take a month or two for Matt to move back but he's been looking at open positions at the CFD and hopefully, he can land one soon.

It's a hot summer's day. He treated the brothers to some ice cream as they walked around, talking about things they needed to do while they were in town and things Ben needed to get done before he started college in the fall.

Matt suddenly stops when he spots Sylvie coming out of a store with a giant smoothie in her hand. Her hair was in a messy ponytail and she was in a pair of leggings and trainers, looking like she had just come from the gym. He'd had a dream about this for a long time, sporadically over the years that they'd run into each other on the street anywhere in the country - Portland, Chicago, Fowlerton, maybe even some random street corner in New York.

He calls out to her, not sure where the sudden courage was coming from. Maybe it was from the fact that Stella let slip that she recently broke up with a guy she had been seeing for a few months or maybe it was from the knowledge that he was coming back home - to the place he always called home and maybe, if given the chance, back to her.

Her head snaps up when she hears his voice, smiling sweetly when she sees them. She raises her hand in greeting, waving to Griffin before introducing herself to Ben.

'That's her," Griffin whispers to his brother and Ben nods before glancing at Matt.

"You know what, Matt? I think Griffin and I are going to go sit by the river. Watch the boats or something," Ben says loudly.

Matt attempts to follow them but Ben groans, rolling his eyes.

"You can stay here. Griffin can babysit me," Ben teases before he and Griffin wave to Sylvie, quickly making their way towards the steps.

She glances at Matt in amusement as he rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment. Clearly, the two teenagers had been talking about something behind his back.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," he echoes.

"You in town for a few days?"

He shrugs, "yeah, needed to fix a couple of things before I move back."

"Oh," she lets out, "that's great to here. You've been missed around here."

He smiles at her and as he works up the courage to continue this conversation, Sylvie's phone pings. She looks down at it, frowning, before looking at Matt apologetically.

"Sorry, I have to go. I promised Stella I would babysit today."

She leans in to give him a quick hug, telling him how nice it was to see him and as she makes her way, Matt finally finds his words.

"Sylvie, would you maybe like to have dinner with me tomorrow night? Only if you're free of course."

She turns around and Matt is nearly knocked off his feet by her blinding, radiant smile, her blue eyes twinkling.

"Sure," she tells him, "text me the details."

Matt watches as she walks away, grinning widely. Maybe three years ago wasn't the right time for them but maybe it was now. Maybe, just maybe, this was the start of them finding their way back to each other.

And it's made even more certain when Matt picks Sylvie up from her apartment the following night. He bought a bunch of her favorite flowers and told her how beautiful she looked in her blue summer dress. She smiles almost shyly at him as she blushed, her cheeks reddening causing a thrill to course up Matt's spine.

It was maybe a do over of sorts. They were older now, maybe wiser and even if Matt's had this dream for so long that they could get to their point, it wasn't any comparison to reality especially when she leaned in and kissed him on the lips before whispering a soft good night when their date was over.

[yesterdaysanswers]

Mauro Pagani has his say (Gong, April 1975)

It is another world. We have been there three times since last June and have had an amazing ride, all over the North, Detroit, Chicago, New York three times, then Ohio with Columbus, Cleveland, which is already a pretty strange downtown area (Country Music reigns supreme), then we will go South, to New Orleans, Miami in Florida, Texas to S. Diego, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, and we have been all over Canada. We immediately realized that we had landed on the moon.

There is still the conception that having become rich is a sign of personal ability. You still find people who, accompanying them home, say phrases like: "everything you see around is my stuff”. And musicians among others are not saved: They are people who have done this job all their lives, one cannot speak of victims of the system as is often done (in Italy, for example, we tend to blame all the organizers of concerts or the record companies, without thinking that even the artist who asks for fees of millions to play two pieces is rotten). After all, there is nothing crazier than an enriched rock singer, guitar, bass, drums, Texan hat, spurs and music at 12,000 volts. The J. Geils Band, for example, are horrible people. We played with them on the last tour and found out that they are foulness itself, unspeakable, I don't even want to talk about it. (Carlos Santana, on the other hand, even if I don't share his mysticism, is one of the few musicians I've met who I liked on a human level, a clean one who believes in what he does). Yet it has been seen that people like Bob Dylan and today like Frank Zappa, why not? They had a huge following making music of a certain type. I'm sorry if Zappa makes a lot of money and doesn't spread it around, as would be coherent from his point of view, and I'm sorry Dylan broke out and sold out. But their message remains, and I don't dispute their beginnings, when they were pure and honest musical heroes.

The discussion on the cost of music is completely different in the USA. The records, first of all, sell for much less, from 4 to 5 dollars, that is to say between 2,500 and 3,000 lire which for them, with what they earn, then becomes more or less 1,500 lire. So they can afford to buy even 5 albums a week. About 1000 new ones come out every month, and for us Italian groups, it is terrible competition (in Canada it is differs because they also have a cultural background closer to the European one, and they understand PFM music better: we have sold 20,000 records out of 18 million people, while in the USA, where almost 250 million people live, we have passed 100,000 LPs). The concerts cost much more than here. No American organizer would dream of bringing musicians into the theater working to the bone as almost all of us do (except two or three). And then there's the manipulation of ratings and the mafiette to get on TV. We have had the good fortune to meet people who love music, for once not being overly schemed, who made us do television shows with very high approval ratings, something like 25, 30 million viewers per evening. There are 3 rock programs a week, almost two hours each, which are broadcast in a row on Friday evening. That day you sit in front of the TV at 5 pm and finish listening to music and it's already night. But they almost always screw up the choice of appearances. For example, PFM was put with Steppenwolf and Herbie Hancock (by the way, he broke out too, with the upholstery-style jacket, the puffed sleeves like a page. He’s also a clown and plays absolutely useless funk). Dave Mason is perhaps one of the few musicians met on these trips who doesn't sell himself like a whore. He goes on stage, plays, sings, doesn't fuss, doesn't bang. He stands out completely as an American-style type of entertainer. In fact, in my opinion, the audience that follows him is wonderful, finally a credible, fair audience that doesn't need the buffoon on stage. In general, the artist in the USA is forced to undertake tremendous scenes. They must amaze, nail to the chair. It's one of the most passive artist-to-audience relationships I've ever seen. At concerts people want to get high, blitzed, stoned, wasted. There is a lot of beer and alcohol (and drugs of course): they consume everything, just to get drunk. In Italy, all of this is inconceivable, the kids still come to listen to music, with a very different cultural and political background. They may not know exactly what they want, but what is certain is that they do not want to lose touch with reality. Made in USA fans want to be physically involved, so they don't abandon the most indecent hard rock. Rock just hits; progressive music also involves you from a mental point of view, it stimulates creativity and imagination. Even the European progressives who made it big in those parts must have had scenic "skills": Emerson Lake & Palmer, or Yes arriving at the concert in a hot air balloon. Another proof is that jazz in America is not as popular as it is here: the artist sits there and plays almost exclusively for himself. You're the one who has to move your head and make images come to you.

Not for nothing is the current American artistic production dying of gigantism, it impresses, it leaves nothing to the imagination.

Have you seen "C'era una volta Hollywood” [the 1974 film “That’s Entertainment”]? Billions of extras, the public is doing well, without thinking, without producing. An indelible trace of psychedelic culture has remained in the US, but sucked into the system. There has been no development. It was an identity crisis, that of the sixties that led the American youth to look within. But when people found out who the fuck they really were, they said, "well, now I know,” and went back to doing things exactly like before. In the end, the American way of life hasn't changed much.

The Americans liked PFM after all. The reviews have always treated us well, sometimes they spoke enthusiastically about us and badly about Poco, for example, to whom we "supported" (they never got angry, they were the first to come and congratulate, to say that the we were nice and they respected us. Well, I have a happy memory of them). In three tours we've only had two concerts where we didn't really connect with the audience until they asked for an encore. The fact is that we are, together with some new German groups on the rise, a bridge between European and American culture. We don't make a scene and we never will, but we play happy, popular music. Celebration, without killing anyone, involves entirely. Live, they notice our vitality, they appreciate us as individual musicians, which is very important (we always improvise when we can). The elite in the US feel the need for a breakthrough and so does the general public, even if they don't ask you directly and they are satisfied with what they have. They have exported blues, rock, and jazz to Europe and we have assimilated them there, mixing them with the music of our home. In turn, however, the US, with the Beatles and English music, had an injection of novelty years ago (Eleanor Rigby would never have been created in the USA, even if the Beatlesian matrix then comes from Little Richard and the Everly Brothers). Now in America they are waiting for the second European return and they are not waiting for it from England, which is now dead, killed by business. Perhaps they expect it from us. One amazing thing: avid collectors have all the records by the New Trolls, Le Orme, Osanna, for them they are relics.

The meeting with the Italian emigrants was contradictory. In Toronto, Canada, they welcomed us like a true home away from home, but it's only natural because their culture doesn't clash so strongly with the local one as it does in the US. At the Academy of Music in New York there were almost 200 Italians that had made a tremendous fuss, unfurling a 15 meter tricolor banner on the balcony. It felt more like a football game than a concert. Among them there were certainly those who had known us in Italy in 1971 (they asked us for Impressioni di Settembre) and who, now seeing each other again, it felt like home.

But in a radio station where they were broadcasting our records together with an interview in the Italian language, the transmission was interrupted by a compatriot who shouted angrily, "it's not our music, it's not genuine, they sing in English”. Once, Maurizio Vandelli of Equipe 84 had gone to Brooklyn to play and he was surrounded by a Rudolph Valentino-like group, with pomaded hair, who attacked him because he had long hair and a face that "brings dishonor to the country”. There are real fascist overlays carrying weight down there. That's why I don't believe it when record companies make speeches about the fact that your records abroad can be based on an Italian audience.

As far as the political matter is concerned, there are precise responsibilities on the part of the artist, as I have already said, but there are very few worldwide who really intend to carry this discussion forward. In Italy there will be at most 4 or 5, even if something is moving, but unlike overseas, we have better prospects, something behind that moves us faster than elsewhere. I'm not a revolutionary barricade, I don't have the preparation for it, but I'm a comrade and whatever doubts and impressions I can express, I try to do so as a comrade. In short, I'll be in the square with the others. Banchetto and l’isola di Niente do not have revolutionary lyrics, but they show which side we are on, what our problems are, and also our limits. 

PFM is made up of different people that are not all comrades, in the strict sense of the word, there a few who perhaps feel like simply being a musician, but there is an average of common approach from which no one fails. In short, we know what things we want or what not to do. Pay attention to a pricing policy, help this organization rather than that one. But it is a type of our image that has not yet come out well. On a musical level we have made a certain type of experiments, just for our evolution in the early days. Storia di un minuto, when it came out it was an avant-garde album. But there comes a certain point that the head is ahead of the hands that hit the keys or tend the strings, and then it's time to stop and study. We intend to intelligently exploit the classical culture that we have more or less left behind us (I did 4 years of violin, Flavio 5 years of classical guitar, etc.), especially in the arrangements (there is a symphonic way of developing a theme that can be used on any kind of music). But that's not enough.

The actual direction is about valuing popular culture (this is a creative period for us, we're tired of our usual language). Since the days of Celebration we were convinced that it was necessary to do this: that song was edited in a very short time, we were all full of energy. On stage it was truly a party, a bravado (but sincere), almost from the Commedia dell’Arte.

And I don't agree with those who argue that our way of filtering popular materials is too external and spectacular. What must be avoided in these operations is cultural complacency, but it is not right to give up on oneself, on the vitality of one's roots. Our way of using popular music is not pandering or shameless: in this sense, Harlequin is also a sycophant, that is, a street theatre, but a true, authentically popular one…

About the future. Back from America, we perhaps have some big news in store for the album we'll be making (with an almost live album feeling): a sixth element will enter PFM, probably definitively, whose name I still can't reveal.

We have increasingly felt the lack of a natural singer, we were all a bit tired of our vocal performances and above all of the fact that none of us was a natural singer and it cost us a lot in concerts to approach the microphone, giving up the maximum concentration on our instruments. The singer we've set our sights on is full of grit, and not only has a beautiful voice, but also composes and is a profound student of popular music culture. I hope that the adjustment to the lineup goes through soon and immediately gives positive results.

Mauro Pagani 

[nwbeerguide]

Block 15 Brewing releases more details on their upcoming 15th anniversary tour, including a new take on Sticky Hands.

Press Release

Corvallis, Oregon’s Block 15 Brewing, announces part of their vintage beer list and distribution tour details for their 15th Anniversary Fest: The Past, Present, and Future held on April 22nd and special throwback items at their 2008 Throwback Party on April 20th.

Specialty Beers: On Thursday, April 20th, Block 15 will kick off celebrations with a 2008 Throwback Party. This will be an all-day event from 11 am to 11 pm at the Original Block 15 Brewing and Restaurant (300 SW Jefferson Ave) with throwback food specials like the Brewben and the 185 Mile Salad, throwback beer prices, and a special brew of the OG Sticky Hands recipe: Sticky Hands, the Past, Present, and Future (while supplies last).

Following the 2008 Throwback Party, Block 15 will begin their 15th Anniversary: The Past, Present, and Future Fest on April 22nd, starting with a special VIP hour at 1 pm (SOLD OUT). The VIP hour will start off the vintage bottle list below, with bottles periodically opened throughout the General Admission session as well. Available while supplies last.

Specialty bottles of OG recipe Sticky Hands: the Past, Present, and Future in 750 mL bottles and Revolve will be available for purchase in limited supply on a first-come-first-serve basis throughout the day. (Purchase Tickets here).

Partial Bottle List (Limited supply):

2018 Ripple 2014 Super Nebula 2018 Imagine Double Choc. 2023 Revolve 2014 Kriek 2018 TC The 5th 2019 Barmhouse 2018 Apricot Canary 2017 Figgy Pudding 2017 Holiday Friends 2023 Sticky Hands: Past, Present and Future - bottles available for purchase And more…

Partner Beers de Garde Brewing: The Marion: Sherry-Whiskey Barrel Cuvee The Ale Apothecary: Ralph - Wine Barrel-Aged Wild Ale Foreland Beer: Sunstone Lager Ferment Brewing: Cherise du Nor Cherry Sour Ale Bespoken Coffee Roasters: Cosmic Cold Brew And more…

Anniversary Distribution Tour Announcing the Past, Present, and Future Distribution Tour hosted by Block 15 Distribution. The locations listed below will be the first locations that will receive the featured anniversary collaboration beers. 

WILDWOOD TAPHOUSE - HILLSBORO Wednesday, April 26th 5 pm-close 9345 NE Windsor St, Hillsboro, OR 97006

PUBLICHOUSE - SPRINGFIELD Thursday, April 27th 6-8 pm 418 A St #4606, Springfield, OR 97477

BRIDGE & TUNNEL - ASTORIA Friday, April 28th, 5-8 pm 1390 Duane St, Astoria, OR 97103

COMMON FIELDS - CORVALLIS Friday, April 28th 6-8 pm 545 SW 3rd St, Corvallis, OR 97333

MAYFLY TAPROOM & BOTTLE SHOP - PORTLAND Saturday, April 29th 12-5 pm 8350 N Fenwick Ave, Portland, OR 97217

About Block 15 Established in 2008 Block 15 aims to elevate excellence in the craft beer and beverage experience, measured by endless passion, curiosity, and drive for accessible brilliance. Our family includes our Corvallis Downtown Brewpub, South Corvallis Production Brewery, Winery, and Tap Room, Caves Restaurant, and craft distribution through the Pacific NW.

About Block 15 Distribution From the team behind Block 15 Brewing Company, Block 15 Distribution’s mission is to supply the Pacific NW with unique artisan goods—thoughtfully produced by like-minded companies using practices that emphasize artistic expression, quality, employee welfare, and sustainability—delivered in an efficient, professional, and enthusiastic manner.

from Northwest Beer Guide - News - The Northwest Beer Guide https://bit.ly/3KFGlli

[candispice]

"Since the fifties, the American public has heard a great deal about background radiation in cities such as Denver, though background radiation has little to do with the hazards of ingesting fission products.  In the United States, the public also heard that nuclear power is 'green.'  In the sixties, nuclear power saved fish that might have perish in hydroelectric dams.  In the 21st century, nuclear power promises a carbon-free future.  Soon after the Fukushima catastrophe, public relations agents dusted off a five-year-old report on the dangers of the coal industry.  It was a maneuver that had been seen before:  The Atomic Energy Commission first trumpeted the hazards of coal mining in the mind-sixties.  In the decades before the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese government and corporate proponents of nuclear power censored the Chernobyl disaster from textbooks and spent millions on advertising an image of nuclear safety.  Meanwhile, Japanese power companies glossed over accidents, doctored safety reports, and failed to purchase emergency equipment for fear of alerting workers of the danger of the industry.

Another important way to neutralize the plutonium disasters has been to naturalize them.  In the last decade, officials have repurposed the Hanford, Maiak, and Chernobyl territories as wildlife preserves.  The Chernobyl zone, open to tourism, features a breathtakingly beautiful terrain of forest, lakes, and streams.  Journalists and scientists describe it as teeming with wildlife.  Tim Mousseau, an evolutionary biologist, however, tracked birds in the Chernobyl zone and found a zone  of ecological calamity.  Even in areas of moderate contamination, 18 percent of the birds he followed had deformities; 40 percent of male barn swallows were sterile, and the total number of swallows was depressed by 66 percent.  Mousseau could not find in the hot spots bumblebees, butterflies, spiders, or grasshoppers.  Whole zones in the Zone are dead.  In eastern Washington, the territory around the Hanford Reservation is promoted as the last stand of original shrub-sage habitat in the Colombia Basin, yet periodically deer and rabbits wander from the preserve and leave radioactive droppings on Richland's lawns.  In the eighties, the Hanford Reach gained recognition as the last free-flowing stretch of the Colombia River.  Watching the river's water level rise and fall with demands for electricity in Portland while measuring the radioactivity of Mulberry tree on the graded gravel banks of the Colombia makes calling the Hanford segment 'wild' a reach indeed.

Wine production in the Colombia River's region's latest diversification project.  Tourists are encouraged to tour tasting rooms located in a large arc around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which figures as an unnamed area on the vineyard tour map.  As I tasted a few wines, I mentioned to a vintner that a lot of Wanapam Indians down the road are sick with cancers, and that a Centers for Disease Control study found local Indians had a one in fifty chance of getting cancer, in part because of there traditional diet of Colombia River fish.  If the study is correct, I asked, how did she feel about growing wine grapes so near the mothballed plutonium plant?"

-- Kate Brown, Plutopia

[aprillikesthings]

Every time I meet someone new and I'm talking about my life I start to mentally cringe because I sound like I'm a way more interesting person than I actually am??

And I think the thing is, the majority of my life is boring. I go to work, I come home. I spend too much time on twitter. I hang out with Daci. We sometimes drive to Target and buy dumb shit.

It's just that my otherwise-boring life has a lot of interesting, unusual things scattered along the dullness? I guess?

"Yeah I lived in Iceland for a couple years as a kid, that's part of why I went back for a week last year. Oh ha ha I've written fanfiction and I do cosplay. Yeah that's a photo of me in Lolita fashion, I really enjoy it. That reminds me of when I lived in a tree off and on for a few months in 2000. I'm going to Spain next year to walk across it on a medieval pilgrimage route. When I was on a bicycle tour that was four and a half months long in 2011..."

People will be SO AMAZED that I did bicycle touring and I'm like, you know there's at least one entire non-profit with a glossy magazine devoted to people doing this, right? They sell specialized maps just to do this. Many bicycle companies make bicycles specifically designed for this. I am not doing anything worthy of the local news. My friends and I used to bicycle to campgrounds within a day's ride of Portland and then sit around a campfire daring each other to drink Malort. Bicycle touring is a hobby many, many people have.

Or with the Camino, people who haven't heard of it before are like, you're doing WHAT? and meanwhile I'm thinking; dude the reason I'm leaving in April is partially an attempt to go when it's not crowded. So many people do this per year that there are nights that it can be difficult to find a hostel bed, especially on the last 100km. These days it's rare for you to be walking the route I'm doing and not constantly have other pilgrims within sight range unless you're literally doing it in January.

It doesn't help that I know people whose lives are, in fact, more interesting than mine. So maybe my basis for comparison is just broke?? 🤔

Because people will be SO AMAZED that I biked 3,800 miles in 4.5 months and I'm like, you know there's at least one entire non-profit with a glossy magazine devoted to people doing this, right? They sell specialized maps just to do this. Many bicycle companies make bicycles specifically designed to do this. I am not doing anything worthy of the local news. This is a hobby many, many people have.

Or with the Camino, people who haven't heard of it before are like, you're doing WHAT? and meanwhile I'm thinking; dude the reason I'm leaving in April is partially an attempt to go when it's not crowded. So many people do this per year that there are nights that it can be difficult to find a hostel bed, especially on the last 100km. These days it's rare for you to be walking and not be able to see multiple other people doing it at the same time.

[dwellordream]

“...Historians often stress the differences in the education of early modern girls and boys, and echo the dismissive attitudes of didactic authors toward a female education that focused on “the accomplishments” rather than on serious scholarship. But in the informal, yet essential, lessons of sociability, elite boys and girls frequently shared the same educational process. While scholars recognize the importance of mothers in early training, the continued role of women in this informal education as children grew up has generally been underestimated.

Of course women were excluded from the Grand Tour, the experiential education so important to young men of the aristocracy. Yet as the arbiters of the rules of sociability and politeness among the elite, women played a powerful role. It should perhaps not be surprising, then, that aristocratic women were acutely aware of the importance of “good breeding,” and spent much time and energy trying to ensure an adequate social education for their children. Thus Lady Strafford noted with pride that one night at court the French Ambassadress had praised her son’s “Politeness” for giving up his place to her.

The Countess of Portland, on the other hand, was outraged when she found out that her grandsons had failed to pay their respects to the Princess Royal. Learning such formalities was a fundamental part of “a man of qualities education,” she insisted; her grandsons “must have a great politeness, which will gain them esteem.” Acquiring politeness while still young was essential, so that as an adult one could interact in the Quality with ease, demonstrating the naturalness that was thought to reveal good breeding. Behaving naturally in polite society showed that one deserved a place in that society, but it took many years to learn this “natural” behavior.

The skills taught in formal polite education, such as dancing, were the outward representations of the aesthetic sensibility and self-control valued as the bases of polite behavior, and many aristocratic women took great care to ensure that their children learned these skills. Dancing was essential since it revealed gracefulness and deportment – hence, dancing masters also taught the details of bowing, curtseying, and proper posture. In 1695 Viscount Hatton’s eldest daughter helped him to find a dancing master for her halfsiblings; it cost £3 a month for instructions that would include helping the smallest boy learn “to walk and make a legg.”

The Countess of Strafford paid slightly more – three guineas a month – for a dancing master to teach her three youngest children. She kept careful track of all her children’s dancing partners, including her son’s, and reported the details of balls to her husband. In 1734, for example, she came back well satisfied from court after the Prince Royal had offered to find a partner for her daughter Lucy and had expressed his enjoyment of the entire family’s company. Lady Strafford was proud of Lucy’s dancing abilities but worried about another daughter, Harriot, “for she Pokes sadly & I tell her of it perpeatually.”

Skill in dancing mattered because it revealed gentility as well as coordination; Lady Hervey complimented the Duke of Grafton’s daughter as “the agreeablest dancer, the genteelest and the prettiest Creature that ever lived.” Dancing also introduced children to the arenas of sociability in which they would encounter other members of the Quality, including potential spouses. The lessons began early in life. In 1751, Mary Delany organized a “tiny ball” in the afternoon for fourteen people between the ages of eight and twenty-one.

Occasions like this one, which mirrored all the rituals of dancing and dining common to balls for adults, enabled children to practice their skills in both dancing and politeness before trying them in the larger world where the stakes were higher. Even more important than such formal skills, however, were the less tangible lessons that were acquired through association with people of quality. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu remarked about assemblies, sociability created “a more enlarg’d way of thinking” through “a kind of public Education.”

Because women were especially important in this training, they continued to play a major role in this aspect of children’s education well after the very early years with which their influence is usually associated. Frances Boscawen’s journal for 1763 repeatedly recorded taking her daughters visiting, to balls, and to court, and she noted when they were presented to the Queen, or the occasions on which they danced.

Another woman saw a double value in her daughter’s visit to Bath: she “improves almost as much as she diverts herself here,” wrote the proud mother, adding (perhaps a bit optimistically), “I hope seeing so much of what is called entertainment now will make her less eager for public places when she is first married.” In the 1730s, the Countess of Strafford’s letters as well as her children’s described them engaging in a wide array of sociable activities. Lady Strafford was pleased that her son’s “acquantance increases & mulltiplys Extremly,” which she clearly saw as important to his position as only son and heir to the earldom.

When her daughters grew older, she became more careful of their acquaintances. In 1736 she was happy to have her son attend as many dances as possible, but her sixteen-year-old daughter Harriot was “to bigg now to [go]e amoung a heap of boys where I dont viset.” Even within this gendered framework, however, she remained in charge of all her children’s sociable activities. The family frequently wrote about visiting, dining out, and trips to court, theater, and opera. 

In one sense this was, of course, simply passing on news of the day’s activities. But it was more significant as well. Such correspondence communicated the children’s successful assimilation into the Quality. Mothers were not the only women involved in this sociable education; a wide network of women, both kin and friends, could help in the good breeding of children. Lady Frances Hastings was concerned that her niece and nephew were picking up bad habits from the broad Yorkshire accent and dialect of one of their servants, so when her niece offered to cut her “a bonny flower,” Lady Frances took care to reprove the child for her uncouth language.

Elizabeth Montagu similarly worried about Lord Lyttelton’s thirteen-year-old daughter, who had not mastered polite behavior. “There is a great deal of good in her, but her virtues are in deshabille, her understanding totally undressed,” she wrote, adding, “she does not know how much the amiableness of a woman depends on trivial things. I talked very seriously to her on the consequences of neglecting the ordinary accomplishments of people of her rank.”

…Aristocratic women thus often played a significant role in the education of children not only during their infancy but also, and perhaps more importantly, during their introduction into elite society in their teens. These women ensured that their children – and those of their relatives and friends – received the necessary training in the accomplishments that distinguished the members of the elite. They also introduced children to the Quality and continued to monitor their behavior to ensure that they had mastered the rituals of polite interaction.”

- Ingrid H. Tague, “Politeness and Sociability.” in Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690-1760

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Vice surrenders

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in LA with Adam Conover at Vroman's, then on MONDAY in Seattle with Neal Stephenson, then Portland, Phoenix and more!

Vice died the way it lived: being suckered in by smarter predators, even as it trained its own predatory instincts on those more credulous than its own supremely gullible leadership. RIP, we hardly knew ye.

For those of you who don't know, Vice was a Canadian media success story. It was founded by a motley clique of hipsters, one of whom – founder of the Proud Boys – has since grown to be one of the world's great fascism influencers. Another perfected the art of getting young people to work "for exposure" even as he built a massive, highly lucrative media empire on their free labor:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/vice-oral-history/

Eventually, Vice transitioned to a string of progressively worsening corporate owners, each more dishonest, predatory – and gullible – than the last. The company was one of the most enthusiastic marks for Facebook's infamous "pivot to video" – in which Mark Zuckerberg destroyed half the media industry by tricking them into thinking that the public was clamoring for video content, based on fraudulent viewing numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video

Vice went all-in on video, spending hundreds of millions to finance Zuckerberg's doomed attempt to conquer Youtube. But unlike other the rubes who got zucked, Vice found greater fools to scam, convincing giant, slow-moving meidia companies that the best way to get in on the Next Big Thing was to shower them with vast sums of string-free money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceland_(Canadian_TV_channel)

And yet, at every turn, through a succession of increasingly incompetent owners who bought the stumbling, declining Vice at fire-sale prices and then proceeded to hack away at the wages and tools its journalists depended on while paying executives salaries so high that they beggared the imagination, Vice's reporters continued to turn out stellar material.

This went on literally until the last moment. The memorial posted by 404 Media rounds up a selection of major stories Vice's beleaguered, precarious writers produced even as Vice's vulture capitalist leadership were pulling the rug out from under them:

https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-vices-legacy-and-the-idea-that-the-internet-is-forever/

True to form, those private equity scumbags locked all those workers out of the company's CMS without notice – and then forgot to lock down the podcasting back-end. That allowed a group of Vice veterans – Matthew Gault, Emily Lipstein, Anna Merlan, Tim Marchman and Mack Lamoureux – to gather for a totally unauthorized, tell-all session that they pushed out on an official Vice channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKT4OtDEJRA

It's a hell of a listen. Not only do these Vice veterans have lots of fascinating history to recount, but they also describe the conditions under which those blockbuster stories of Vice's final days were produced. As the "visionary leaders" of the company paid themselves millions, they halted payments to key suppliers, from Lexisnexis to the interview transcription service the writers depended on. Writers paid out of pocket to search PACER court records.

Not only did Vice's reporters do incredible work under terrible and worsening circumstances, but the Vice writers who got out ahead of the total collapse are also doing incredible work. 404 Media is a writer-owned investigative news publisher founded by four Vice escapees – Samantha Cole, Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, which is both producing incredible work and sustaining the writers who founded it:

https://www.404media.co/

All of which leads to an inescapable conclusion: whatever problems Vice had, they didn't include "writers don't do productive work" and also didn't include "that work isn't economically viable*. Whatever problems Vice had, they weren't problems with Vice's workers – it was a problem with Vice's bosses.

Which makes Vice's final, ignominious punishment at the hands of those bosses even more brutal, stupid and inexcusable. According to the leaked memos emanating from the company's investors and their millionaire C-suite toadies, the business's new strategy is abandoning their website in order to publish on social media.

This is…I mean, this,..

This is…

Wow.

I mean, wow.

The thing is, the social media business model is a giant rug-pull. They're not even bothering to hide their playbook anymore. For social media, the game is to encourage media companies to become reliant on third parties to reach their audiences. Once that reliance is established, the companies turn down – or even halt – the ability of those media companies to reach their audience altogether. Then, they charge the media companies to reach their audiences:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Now, this wasn't always quite so obvious. Back when Vice was falling for Facebook's "pivot to video," it wasn't completely obvious that the long con was to take your audience hostage and ransom them back to you. But deliberately organizing your business to be reliant on social media barons today? It's like trusting your money to Sam Bankman-Fried…in 2024.

If there was ever a moment when the obvious, catastrophic, imminent risk of trusting Big Tech intermediaries to sit between you and your customers or audience, it was now. This is not the moment to be "social first." This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/#two-much-posse

Predicting that a social media platform will rug the media companies that depend on it today doesn't take a Sun Tzu – as cunning strategies go, the hamfisted tactics of FB, Twitter and Tiktok make gambits like "Lucy and the football" look like von Clausewitz.

The most bonkers part of this strategy is that it's coming from private equity bosses, who laud themselves as the great strategists of the 21st century, whose claim on so much of our global capital and resources is derived from their brilliant insight, which allows them to buy "distressed assets" like Vice, "restructure" them to find "efficiencies" and sell them on.

The reality is that PE goons – like other financiers – are basically herding animals. Everyone's hit on the tactic of buying up beloved media companies – from the 150-year-old Popular Science to modern publications like CNet – and then filling them with spammy garbage in the hopes that Google will fail to notice and continue to award them pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The fact that these billionaire brain-geniuses can't figure out how to "turn around" a site whose workers a) produce brilliant, popular, successful work; and b) depart to found successful firms that commercialize that work tells you everything about their ability to spot "a good business opportunity."

PE – like other mafiosi – only have one business-plan, the "bust out," where you invade a business that produces useful things, force them to pay your chosen suppliers sky-high fees for things they don't need, extract massive fees for your "management" and then walk away from the collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

[rebeccathenaturalist]

My apologies for the radio silence, folks! The past couple of weekends have been super busy--but with a lot of great stuff!

Weekend before last was Wings Over Willapa, the birding and nature festival that happens on and around Willapa NWR in the very southwest corner of Washington. It's one of my favorite events throughout the year, and I have been involved from the very beginning back in 2018. This year I actually got to be a tourist in addition to a tour guide, getting to explore the old growth cedar forest at Ellsworth Canyon with a Nature Conservancy employee. it was incredible getting extra perspective on this special place. I also got to guide tours through even more old growth cedar at Long Island on Saturday, someplace that I never, ever, ever get tired of. I love how the thousand-plus year old cedars have crowns on the top, since the storm winds often shear off the trees' leaders, so another must then sprout. It gives them more personality.

Right after that I hustled on over to Loomis Lake State Park to lead my beach tour. We explored the dunes, and I showed the participants how to tell the difference between the native Leymus mollis dune grass, and the invasive Ammophila grasses that have taken over that habitat. We found some neat things while beachcombing, like marine snail egg casings, and had some great wildlife sightings, like lines of brown pelicans coasting over the waves, and a lone Hudsonian whimbrel picking its way along the beach in search of food.

That evening we were treated to the keynote speech by author and conservationist Paul Bannick, who spoke on how woodpeckers and owls are very often keystone species in their habitats. I had just enough time that night to get some sleep before peeling myself out of bed for an 8am tour that I led around the Art Trail and Cutthroat Climb at the old Refuge headquarters. I am in love with that place, and I am overjoyed the trails are open to the public after extensive improvements were made earlier this year.

This past weekend was just as much fun! I have been very excited to see the development of Snow Peak's new campfield in Long Beach. For those who aren't aware, Snow Peak is a quality outdoor supply company based in Japan, analogous to REI or Patagonia. Each of their flagship stores has a campfield within a couple of hours which has camping and events. The Long Beach location is associated with the Snow Peak store in Portland, and is just about ready for a soft opening!

I have been hoping to get in touch with folks there since I really, really want to see more ecotourism out in the Long Beach and Willapa Bay area. We're so lucky to have so much beautiful nature out here, and I want to see more people getting to enjoy it. I was thrilled when a representative contacted me some weeks back inviting me to teach a couple of mushroom foraging classes during this year's Snow Peak Way, an annual camping event that draws hundreds of people and which was held this year over on the east side of the Cascades in Tygh Valley.

To say that I had a great time would be an immense understatement. I have been to a lot of festivals, conventions, and other events over the years, and this had all the things that I love about these events, without the things I find obnoxious. I made a lot of friends and connections, was fed VERY good food, and if my experience with borrowed gear is any indication, Snow Peak is well worth the hype. I am very much hoping to get to partner more with these folks once the campfield is open and running.

There's no time for downtime right now, though. I'm back in Portland later this week for several classes, and I have less than three weeks before I'm on the road to Missouri again for my fall visit. In between now and then I have several writing projects due, including the first deliverables for The Everyday Naturalist, plus various other tasks around the home and farm. Things will slow down once we get closer to the holidays, but for now it's all go, all the time!

[brookpridemore]

Tour Dates September/October 2022

Hey, y’all. Glad to be Alive, the 7th album from Brook Pridemore, is out tomorrow! I’m celebrating with a long tour. Here are the dates.

September 22 cafe bourbon St Columbus 

23 Tune Temple, Akron, OH

24 The DAAC Grand Rapids

25 Night Shop Bloomington, IL

26 Rhinelander checked with Shelley

27 Dark Horse Madison, WI

28 Badger’s Den, Minneapolis, MN

29 PS1 Close House, Iowa City, IA 

30 TBA, Lincoln, NE 

10/1 Sk8 Bar, St. Joseph, MO

2 Farewell Transmission, KCMO

3 Rubber Gloves, Denton, TX

4 Kick Butt Coffee, Austin, TX 

5 Casa de Avi, San Antonio, TX

6 Super Happy Fun Land, Houston, TX need locals 

7 Mudlark Theater, New Orleans, LA

8 TBA, Jackson, MS HELP

9 Hi Tone , Memphis

10 Betty’s, Nashville

11 Eric’s House, Knoxville, TN

12 Coal Chute, Roanoke, Va

13 Baltimore

14 The Pop Club, Long Branch, NJ 

15 New Brunswick David on it

16 Dan’s Farm, Cambridge, NY

17 10 Forward, Greenfield, MA

18 Deese House, Swampscott, MA

19 FIND Portland, ME 

20 The Collective, Brattleboro, VT

21 New Haven Cafe Nine

22 Ralph’s, Worcester, MA

23 Dusk, Providence, RI

24 The Silhouette, Allston, MA

25 Curry Donuts Wilkes-Barre

26 Ormsby Cafe, PGH 

27 Flat Burger Society, Pittsfield, MA

28 Charlie O’s, Montpelier, VT 

29 Penuches, Concord, NH

30 The Studio, Laconia, NH 

31 Chess Company, Rockland MA

[swipegardencom]

About Swipe Garden

The Swipe Garden story

Our story began in 1999 when Mike and I established a retirement business from our beautiful gardens set back in the hills of southwest Portland Oregon where my friend was working as a groundskeeper. We wanted to share our knowledge for rare trees shrubs or vines so we did just that with Swipe Garden – a small project which aimed at making every garden “bloom” new plants by giving them love whenever you swipe over.

Our company thrived under the leadership of this enthusiastic team cultivating a remarkable band of devoted members both locally and online, all eager to learn from unrivaled knowledge about citrus tree- an ever-changing world that is never-ending with new information coming out every day.

I think everyone can agree on one thing: business has changed! We at Swipe Garden know there’s no better way for us than by spreading love through our website as well because it was designed thanks in part to Mike who brought his own passion into everything he did , while George and I provide nurturing care alongside them

“Although the business has changed, we at Swipe Garden continue to do what it does best.” Though you can no longer tour Portland’s impressive gardens with your own eyes (they are now closed), this doesn’t mean that our team is going anywhere! We’ve always been about acquiring new botanical information and sharing it so people like us have access.

We’re excited to announce that the Swipe Garden website now includes more than just Citrus tree! As custodians of this special place, we continue our rigorous investigation into all fruit trees. We investigate tips like these with careful scrutiny before giving them back out through our website (or other social media channels).

Whether it’s advice on how to keep cut hydrangeas fresh in a vase or which backpack leaf blower to buy, we’ve got you covered.

You’ve got to love a company that goes all-in on the word “blooming.” What better way is there than by giving our customers great advice and service, whether they’re looking for new ways to keep cut hydrangeas fresh in vases or help with choosing backpack leaf blowers?

We hope you liked learning more about “what makes us blooming” as much as we did share it with you.

Kelly & The Whole Swipe Garden team.

CONTACT:

Address:  25226 W Willow Dr, Plainfield, IL 60544

Phone:  +13022311289

Website: https://www.swipegarden.com/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/swipegarden

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/SwipeGarden

Pinterest:  https://www.pinterest.com/SwipeGarden/