#stelzer

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

Planned Parenthood must turn over some records on transgender health care to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a judge has ruled. Bailey, a Republican, is investigating providers of gender-affirming care in the state, which has outlawed the provision of such care to minors and certain adults. His demand for information from Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri came in March 2023 as part of his investigation of whether Washington University’s Pediatric Transgender Center or other health care entities in Missouri “have engaged in or are engaging in any practices declared to be unlawful,” as he stated in a letter to Planned Parenthood. The Planned Parenthood affiliate then sued Bailey in an attempt to block his demand, saying it was unauthorized and that the attorney general hadn’t shown how Planned Parenthood is directly involved in his investigation. Bailey argued that his request “should stand because he has an affidavit that alleges intentional dishonesty in Plaintiff's medical and billing practices,” St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer wrote in his ruling. Ruling in Bailey’s favor, Stelzer said the AG’s office has “broad investigative powers” and that Bailey has the right to obtain any documents that aren’t protected by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which provides for patient privacy.

Missouri AG Andrew Bailey (R) has been granted snooping powers on Planned Parenthood of St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri's records for transgender health services.

[henk-heijmans]

Rainy day, 2023 - by Roswitha Stelzer, Austrian

[vintageurovision]

Keine Mauern Mehr, Simone | Austria, Eurovision Song Contest 1990

[goodbysunball]

The weight off

One last missive before list season consumes us and 2023 is vacuumed up by time.

The Lewers, 518A (Lulu's Sonic Disc Club)

Yet another new supergroup from the endless expanse of Australia's underground, this one featuring Yuta Matsumura (Orion, Low Life, solo, many others), some folks from Itchy Bugger and Rapid Dye, and more. The Lewers douse these seven tracks with loads of reverb and a couple great Itchy Bugger-style guitar lines worming under the surface. Think 4AD: gauzy, dreamy excess best paired with a juicy red wine, topped with deceptively catchy vocals. "Postcards for Terrorists," a big winner in the song title contest of 2023, is probably the poppiest number, the intertwining vocals of Yuta and (I think) Sarah Davis driving the chorus home. The songs led by Davis ("Kalopsia," "Specter Vermillion") and others like "Sin Tonight" have a 70's English folk-like quality, lilting and haunting, performances that seem inspired in part by the soundtrack to The Wicker Man. While every track on here sounds good, and I keep returning to the record during the gray days and long nights, most don't register in my memory after the record's done, with the exception of "Postcards" and "O Karina." The latter is almost an instrumental song, with Matsumura singing well beneath the shroud of guitars, and when that second, sharp guitar line that slices through about two-and-a-half minutes in, it trickles in through the brain and down the spine every time. This kind of lush, textural music often benefits from a little length, but the Lewers keep things trim, maybe to a fault, as a couple tracks could have been teased out like "O Karina." Likely I just wish the record was a bit longer; even if it isn't anything new, 518A's confines, most definitely outfitted with a white faux-fur area rug, are a fine place to sprawl in contemplation.

The Native Cats, The Way On Is the Way Off (Chapter Music)

Long-player number five from Hobart's finest, many years removed from their last, John Sharp Toro. In the interim, the Native Cats released two of the best singles in recent memory - Spiro Scratch and Two Creation Myths - so expectations were high. Their core sound remains Chloe Alison Escott's spoken-sung vocals and incisive, biting lyrics grounded by Julian Teakle's bass, but they're joined by live drums on a number of tracks here, and there are even points when Escott cedes control of microphone to backing vocals (The Last Gang Vocal on Earth, according to the credits). Over the past ten years, Escott's lyrics have shifted from fictional scenes to the semi-autobiographical, incorporating more personal details in the songs, sporting ferocious tenacity or tender self-affirmation depending on the song. Her queer and trans identity is inseparable from the Native Cats' evolution, including all the frustration, self-doubt and pockets of joy involved in coming out and being out. She hardly sounds defeated; given the spots of violent imagery across The Way On Is the Way Off, I wouldn't bet against her in a fight.

The record begins in fits and starts, and while the first three tracks are undeniably in the now-recognizable Native Cats style, I think the action really begins after the "Former Death Cult" interlude. "Small Town Cop Override" roars into action with a drumroll and features one of Escott's sharpest lyrical performances ("I strive for victory or hallucination" and "I've seen the future, it's a chain of tricks/Come 'round and watch me turn a crisis into six") atop pounding live drums and blaring chords, burning bright and out in 80 seconds. It bleeds right into "Vivian Left Me," a slow, plodding number with a bass line ripped from David Sims' playbook. Escott has free reign to prowl over the buzzing, ominous terrain, and drops one of my favorite lines of the year with "When your dreams come true, they feel/distressingly like dreams." The track sears and bubbles without cresting, endless tension floating exhaustedly into the haunting "Dallas," a spare, solemn ballad. The lyrics are opaque, tangled; it feels like a meditation on what has changed for Escott, and what can't be changed or outrun, all wrapped up in the album of the same name released ten years ago.

"Suplex" kick-starts the B-side, a mean bass line and Escott's sneering vocals competing for the first minute and a half, and then the song's taken over by keyboard and piano, a pillowy landing from the body blows of the first half. "Rain on Poison," like "Dallas," is moody and restrained, pounding toms and a single piano note ratcheting up the tension along with Escott's powerful vocals, and as the song progresses, elements are stripped back until it's just Escott in your ear: "Time is running out/At a rate I can handle." It's an almost absurdly powerful affirmation, implying some mastery over the passage of time, but such is the confidence espoused by the Native Cats across The Way On Is the Way Off. It ends the world-beating five-song stretch, and while the rest of the record is good-to-great, even including some of Escott's solo piano work at the end, the middle section is so rich that it feels excessive to have more music outside of it. Yeah, "Tanned Rested and Dead" is a burner, and the NYC-in-the-early-aughts bounce of "Battery Acid" is a good look, too; those tracks might be my favorite part of the record next week. That's the innate joy of a Native Cats record, now more than ever: still harshly resistant to snap judgement and best lived in, seeping into your skin like a sauna and pulling lost memories or feelings or chemicals to the fore. And yet, The Way On Is the Way Off remains endlessly listenable despite the weight of dreams or expectations, the band fully in control of their sound, as comfortable as ever in it. I don't know if it's their best yet - ask me in another few months - but it definitely feels like it might be. Stunner.

Howard Stelzer, oh calm down you're fine (No Rent)

Great tip from my brother to check this one out, he being an effective filter for No Rent's endless release schedule. Howard Stelzer is not a new name, but new to me, and oh calm down you're fine is a sterling example why digging for new music remains my favorite pasttime. Stelzer layers tape loops here, of anything and everything; during the impromptu Bandcamp "listening party," which Stelzer "attended," he revealed that samples include that of making an omelette and the school band warming up next to the classroom where he teaches, the latter featured prominently on "Everybody Thinks So." He's in the league of artists like Joe Colley or Jeph Jerman to my ears, though less wracked with anxiety than the former and more interested in the noise made by humans (as opposed to nature) than the latter. What makes Stelzer's work so exceptional here is the subtle sense of composition; the hard-to-follow logic in the way the sounds are paired, or layered, reminds me of how Philip Jeck would compose and arrange his music. One could mistake "Reconsider From Memory" for something by Jeck with unfocused ears, reminiscent too in the unhurried pacing across the tape. The results are decidedly much more abrasive in Stelzer's case, more smart aleck than somber, though like all experimental noise music worth its salt, what's being communicated is in the hands/head of the listener. As the somewhat disarming "Proportional" appears to wind down, Stelzer introduces some dizzying drum loops, conjuring some sort of ritual where you're at the stake, until the laugh track hits. Better luck finding the thread next listen. My favorite tape of the year, and lucky for you, still available from the label. Dig into more of his work on his Bandcamp.

Water Damage, 2 Songs (12XU)

2 Songs is my first proper run-in with Water Damage, and that is something I've committed to fixing after living with this LP in constant rotation for a month. The ensemble, running eight members deep, creates a thicket of psychedelic repetition, playing with tenets of noise, jazz, krautrock, and hip hop across two side-long tracks, appropriately titled "Fuck This" and "Fuck That." The former rips into action after a false start, a dense, throbbing miasma anchored by a tireless bass line and squalls of guitar noise and feedback circling each other. The band takes a quick breather after six minutes, coming back even noisier, and then inexplicably does the same thing again thirty seconds later - and somehow it all works, the two intentional hiccups swallowed by the aural equivalent of The Blob over the track's barely registered, but deeply felt, ebbs and flows. "Fuck That" is comparatively lighter, roomier, allowing room for a maddening circular xylophone (?) line and keyboards to float atop the distorted bass line and agile drums. Stick around until the bass line becomes loose and rubbery, the whole song submitting to its own weight, like the ghost of DJ Screw just took over your turntable. It's really difficult to do this record justice with words; it feels like it consumes the room, your house, then you when it's on. The density of the record is rendered in sharp relief through the high quality recording and the combined power of the players here, combining as one pulsating mass or frictionlessly bobbing and weaving. That they're an octet likely means I'll never have the pleasure of getting to see them do it live, but it's a consolation that 2 Songs is the best-sounding record of the year; it'll peel your scalp back plenty, and I recommend that you grab the LP and let it rip.

[arc-angel-o]

I started my first Zero Chill fic! I'm not totally confident in Sam and Anton's voices yet and omg I just remembered Bear and Sam are British

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Labyrinthine Library of Xleksixnrewix by Darcomai/Daniel Stelzer, Ada Stelzer, and Sarah Stelzer

IFDB - Game Note: this was a La Petite Mort entry.

Summary: A Reverse Dungeon Crawl…

Now, that was something different! Instead of going through a dungeon, fighting your way through waves of monsters, and solving crazy puzzles, all for a measly reward... you shape up the maze and fix up some traps to stop some annoying adventurers from desecrating your place of work (and avoid loosing your job).

This is the kind of game that is deceptively small (and so darn hard!), the kind you could spend hours trying out different combinations of maze formation and traps location, to stop adventurers from getting to the treasure. It is both a great brain-picker and a time-waster...

How this was done in only 4h is a mystery. Even with freely available extensions, which were mostly made by the author, the amount of content and writing within the game is impressive, and honestly insane. Do you have access to some time-wrap or something? Can you share?

Anyway, I'm going back to try to foil the adventurer's plans again...

[dinnickhowellslikes]

“Aquarius” / “Pisces” is Turkish artist Ekin Fil’s latest single release. The cover and label have been designed by Gothenburg-based Henrik Stelzer, using the typeface Suisse Int’l Mono.

[wtf-scientific-papers]

Submitter comment: "The article is actually fascinating (and free!), but the authors decided they were not pulling any punches with their title."

De Carvalho Neto, E. G., Gomes, M. F., De Oliveira, M., Guete, M. I. N., Santos, I. P., Monteiro, M. D., Stelzer, F. G., Kowacs, F., & Barea, L. M. (2019). The worst is yet to come: probable sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in a well-controlled HIV patient. Prion, 13(1), 156–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/19336896.2019.1648985

[rapeculturerealities]

Court rules Missouri AG entitled to transgender care records

A St. Louis judge has ordered Planned Parenthood to turn over certain documents to Attorney General Andrew Bailey in his ongoing investigation of transgender health care providers.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer on Thursday ruled that the state’s Merchandising Practices Act entitled the Republican attorney general to documents he requested that weren’t protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal law known as HIPAA that protects patient privacy.

[the-rosebush-mag]

Welcome to The Rosebush

Welcome! We’re very happy to announce the preliminary launch of The Rosebush, a new online magazine for interactive fiction theory and criticism. The purpose of this preliminary launch is to let the interactive fiction community know that we exist, and to invite submissions. We hope to begin publishing early this summer, perhaps in June.

Learn more below, or you can also read this post on our website.

What is The Rosebush?

The Rosebush will be a free online magazine dedicated to publishing longer form articles about interactive fiction. The interactive fiction community already has well-established channels for reviews of individual games, and several people have well-read blogs, but we’ve been lacking a good platform for in-depth analyses, theory articles, discussions of craft, interviews, historical pieces, and so on. The Rosebush aims to be this platform. It will publish substantial articles that increase our understanding of interactive fiction, from individual works to design patterns, community structures and historical trends. The intended audience consists of both players and authors of IF.

What is the scope of the magazine?

Interactive fiction is a term with many uses. The focus of The Rosebush lies on digital works in which a player interacts with a pre-written story where text is the main medium. In particular, The Rosebush will publish about both parser-based and choice-based interactive fiction. While tabletop role playing games, computer role playing games, visual novels, and choose-your-own-adventure books are also interactive fictions in a sense of that term, they are not our primary topic.

Most of the organisers of The Rosebush come from the communities around the Interactive Fiction Competition, the Spring Thing, the IFDB, and so on; but we explicitly also intend to publish about the works of adjacent communities, such as the ChoiceScript community and the retro text adventure community.

What is the magazine looking for?

Articles! See the submissions page for the detailed call for articles. It is possible to either submit a pitch, which we will check to see whether the topic is suitable for The Rosebush, or an article. Links to submission forms can also be found on the submissions page.

What does The Rosebush offer authors?

Most importantly, a place for disseminating your articles. The Rosebush will maintain its website and ensure that all articles are also stored on the IF Archive, the best guarantee for perpetual availability in the current world of interactive fiction. In addition, the editorial team will work with you on your article, which can range from simple spelling/grammar editing to more substantial ideas and feedback on improving your piece.

The Rosebush is an entirely volunteer effort. There are no plans to offer a monetary compensation to authors of articles.

Who are we?

The editorial team currently consists of:

Aster Fialla (se/er)

Benjamin Slade (he/they)

Daniel Stelzer (they/them)

Drew Cook (he/him)

Josh Grams (he/him)

Kiana Lee (she/her)

Lisa Fox (she/her)

Mike Preston (he/him)

Mike Russo (he/him)

Victor Gijsbers (he/him)

Zee (they/them)

[soon-palestine]

Douglas Murray was scheduled to host a fundraiser for Israeli soldiers in London tonight, but the event was cancelled after workers refused to staff it even when they were offered triple pay.

Douglas Murray worked for many years as a director of the Henry Jackson Society alongside executive director Alan Mendoza. Mendoza is also president at the UK branch of the largest settlement-building organisation in Palestine, the JNF, where Netanyahu is a patron.

The Henry Jackson Society historically shares funders with the Friends of the IDF, illegal settlements in the West Bank, and Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins. Its international patrons include former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold, Israel lobbyist Natan Sharansky, and former director of the CIA James Woolsey.

At least two Henry Jackson Society employees have moved directly to positions within the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Senior Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society Goor Tsalalyachin was previously Head of Strategic War Games in the IDF Operations Directorate, a spokesman for the Israeli PM, and a media advisor to the Israeli Minister of Defence.

All of that would cast doubt on Murray's ability to work objectively as a host on Piers Morgan's TalkTV show. One of the key signatories to the Henry Jackson Society's founding statement was Irwin Stelzer, an adviser to Rupert Murdoch for four decades, so it is no surprise that Murray has been pushed so heavily on Murdoch platforms, including TalkTV.

[polkadotmotmot]

Ramona Stelzer - Fragrance of Spring, 2023

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Chriatoph and Ulrike Schneider photographed out and about in Vienna, 2023-07 found on ig marionyrp, photo credit to Biagio Stelzer

[loveoldmen24world]

Rudi Stelzer

[blogoslibertarios]

Itamaraty confirma morte de mais uma brasileira em Israel após ataque do Hamas

  O Itamaraty confirmou na manhã desta sexta-feira, 13, a morte da carioca Karla Stelzer Mendes, que estava desaparecida em Israel desde os ataques iniciados pelo grupo terrorista Hamas no último sábado, 7. “O governo brasileiro lamenta e manifesta seu profundo pesar com a morte da cidadã brasileira Karla Stelzer Mendes, de 42 anos, terceira vítima fatal brasileira dos atentados ocorridos no…