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sanstropfremir · 3 years

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Hey, in honor of A.C.E. coming back soon would you mind talking about their outfits and makeup in their Favorite Boy comeback (or really any of their outfits/make up cause their stylists is a god and deserves a kiss on the forehead)? They have some of my favorite styling of any boy group currently. Undercover Byeongkwan in the black and yellow crop top with the pony tail lives in my mind rent free and I’m not complaining. I especially loved the mesh of modern and traditional in Fav Boys.

yes!!!! ok be prepared people this is basically a love letter to a.c.e's stylist, whoever you are please my dms are open i just wanna talk (and maybe also get married, your choice)

(also this is really long because there's a lot of pictures, so sue me)

ok there's three main things i want to touch on here that are all contributing factors in a.c.e aesthetics hitting every time: colour theory, silhouette, and pattern matching. alright let's go!

colour theory

so i won't explain all of colour theory because i’m not as good as i should be with the actual theory, but here’s the basics. colours are divided into groups: primary, secondary, and tertiary. here’s a fun diagram i stole from google:

in centre you have the primary colours (red/blue/yellow), then you have the secondary colours, made from mixing the primary colours (orange/green/violet), and then the tertiary colours are made from mixing the primary and secondary colours (yellow orange/red orange/red violet/blue violet/blue green/yellow green). there are some commonly associated schemes that are known to ‘look good’ to the human eye:

complementary, where you pair two colours directly opposite each other on the wheel (red/green, blue/orange, purple/yellow)

analogous, which is a base colour with accents from the colours directly next to it (red base, orange/violet accent),

triadic - either base colour with accent colours equidistant from it (green/orange/violet), or base colour with split complementary (violet base, yellow green/yellow orange accent)

tetradic - this is essentially a combination of two or more of the previous, usually a double complementary or an analogous triad with a complimentary accent (red/green with red violet/yellow green, orange/blue with yellow orange/blue violet)

now there’s a lot more getting into tone, value, and saturation, but these are the basic hue combinations that we most commonly see. kpop styling sometimes veers wildly from these rules, but they aren’t hard and fast so it usually isn’t a big deal. plus a lot of styling is supposed to be a bit visually overwhelming anyways, so i’m not exactly counting it against anyone. but what makes a.c.e’s styling look so nice, even though it often isn’t that complicated, is that they always stick to a specific palette. like i went all the way back through their instagram and ALL their public appearances are coordinated:

even their dance practice videos, of all things!

this is especially true with their performance costumes:

i'm not saying anything really revolutionary here, most groups get colour matching down correctly, but a.c.e's stylists have really nailed down matching the tone and saturation as well as the hue. here's a couple of examples from concept photos:

complementary - full saturation green base, desaturated red (pink) as accent

analogous - full saturation violet, pink, and magenta with desaturated and black accents

triadic - all desaturated

complementary - full saturation red base, varying degrees of desaturation for accent colours

this is fun, let's do some more! this time from their performance costumes:

analogous (monochrome) - full saturation yellow green, desaturated accents

tetradic (analogous with complementary accent) - full saturation red, desaturated violet/red/blue, desaturated green as accent)

triadic (equidistant) - full saturation red/blue with desaturated yellow, desaturated accents

tetradic (double complementary) - full saturation red/green as main pair, desaturated blue/orange as secondary pair, full saturation yellow as accents

starting to see it? you can do this with pretty much any of their styling; i've watched a lot of their performances and i don't think i've seen a single one that didn't follow a really strict colour palette. (ok there were like two savage stages that were not quite as good, but you can tell the stylist was trying to bring them in line with the current 4th gen styling and it didn't work so it didn't last).

costume colours and lighting

this is an important aside in relation to the mvs. whoever edits their mvs is really good at colouring. a big part of colour theory is tone, which is how 'warm' or 'cool' a colour is. it's super important in lighting; the colour wheel is split in half, with yellow through red-red violet categorized as warm, and yellow green through blue and violet as cool. a really easy way to visualize this in lighting is through the light from different types of lightbulbs: led lights are cool toned (they are often slightly bluish), and old style halogen lights are warm toned (they are amber tinged). tones are a thing that kpop videos seem to have a fleeting relationship with; sometimes they're used effectively and sometimes they are not. a big thing that a lot of kpop mvs do is really quickly switch tones in colouring, without connecting the intentions of the colours. here's some examples: ateez's fireworks mv, and oneus' no diggity mv. the fireworks mv has this really weird desaturated balance between warm and cool tones specifically in the interior shots, where they somehow managed to overblow both at the same time, which ends up making it look like they were trying really hard to make a cool tone yellow. you can actually feel your eyes relax in that first shot that takes them outside, because the balance is much more natural. and the no diggity mv.... i love it but it's so chaotic. everything is on high saturation all the time and there's no real limitation on the palette, established connection between colours or arc in the colour story, so the cuts between colours and shots feel more random than intentional. now lets look at some a.c.e mvs in comparision, first: undercover. for starters there's an immediate establishement of red and white/black, with a mild green accent. then it continues to a stronger green/teal, with brown as an extension of red (same undertone). there's a colour shift at the first chorus, where they are in the analogous full saturation violet/pink outfits that i mentioned previously, but they actually desaturate and de-value the hues with edit in order to have it match the tone of the room. the second colour shift is for the second rap break, with byeongkwan and wow in yellow main on black and white backgrounds, but that same level of yellow saturation only appears at the rap break specifically, it's absent from the rest of the mv. and then there's a third colour shift on the last chorus, where they pump up the blue and magenta in order to emphasize the climax of the song.

second, for something a bit crazier: goblin. it follows almost the same pattern as undercover; starting with a strong establishment of red/white/black, but then it jumps into full saturation green and teal as the other main colours. again there's a colour switch at byeongkwan's second rap break, and after than we start to see that deeper saturation blue and pink/purple more, but the main colours are still red/white/black.

ok that's enough about colour, now let's talk about

silhouette

this is maybe a little bit more vague and difficult to describe, but whatever. silhouette is pretty much exactly the way it sounds, it's the overall shape of the body. clothing and body type play equal roles in how silhouette is perceived, but clothing can do a lot to either disguise or transform the body. now there isn't really that much variation in body type in kpop; it's a microcosm of small differences between a lot of very fit people, which has been normalized as "default" by society at large for the last while. i'm not going to get into body politics here, because we all know that kpop dudes are not the median average male body type, but they are for the sake of what we've been socialized to think of as looking attractive so the rest of this is going to operate from that assumption. and when you have five dudes who are pretty smack in the middle of that slight variation (none of them are the largest nor the thinnest, they're all about the same middling height), you've got pretty much free reign to put them in whatever you want and they'll still look hot. kpop styling has a dubious relationship to actual wearable clothing, but it is all costuming so it's not necessary for it to be wearable everyday clothing. but since view in 2015 there's been a dramatic increase in "normal" clothing as performance costume, and the thing about normal contemporary clothing is that it's actually very difficult to style in a convincing way. because it's the trends that the general public is the most familiar with, it's the easiest for them to pick apart where the flaws are. this is all preface to say that there are often common silhouettes that are popular with specific trends. in 2012-2013 there was that sweater tucked into circle skirt with big scarf trend, in the 2007 was like baggy everything and layered tshirts, etc, and 2018-2019 was big colourful patterned shirts. sound familiar? it should, take me higher came out in summer 2018! now there's a debate here (like with most pop culture and celebrity) whether or not kpop is following trends or setting them, and both points are true, but personally i'm of the opinion that kpop is kind of a median between the two; it's not setting trends because it's often taking directly from the fashion industry and/or other popular culture, but it is popularizing them in a way that said trend may not have otherwise. there's a lot of digressions in this section but i'm hoping this will help you see my point.

using take me higher as a specific example, you can clearly see that a.c.e is sticking to a specific silhouette within the group, which is a boxy/loose upper with a fitted lower. which you can see really clearly in this stage, this stage, this stage, this stage, and honestly pretty much every stage for this comeback. sometimes they'll have a slight variation where one of them is wearing a longer shirt, but otherwise it's pretty consistent. this is actually a really common silhouette for them, because it puts emphasis on their specific style of choreo, which is fast footwork. you can see it to the extreme in their main cactus styling, which goes the whole nine yards, fully making their legs the focus and going so far as to embellish them:

this silhouette also shows up for callin', where they're wearing boxy hip cut bomber jackets, and for the majority of the undercover styling, which is cropper military(ish) jackets. and it's shaping up to be similar for higher, so i'll talk more about it when i get there.

they have a consistant look for the goblin stages too, which is hanbok over a tight fitted underlayer. each of their hanbok are different cuts, which you can see with wow's cropped jacket and skirt combo, but it makes the same shape as the others. and in the goblin mv, most of their looks take a traditional silhouette and pair it with modern fabrics and patterns, and combining modern accessories with modernized traditional ones.

sticking to an internal silhouette is not the common mode for most boy group stylings at the moment. there's usually an adhesion to a specific colour scheme, but i have not noticed the same kind of care taken to silhouette. there's usually an adhesion to a member specific shape, but the general shape of the group is not usually as considered. you can see it in ateez's fireworks styling (yes i'm going to use it again, the styling was very weird and i never really talked about how weird it is). in the intro you've got tight pants, loose pants, short jackets, suit jackets, AND a long jacket. and then it's the same kind of variety in the rest of their outfits. if anyhting i'd say the emphasis was meant to be on shoulders, because of the point choreo; and yunho, hongjoong, san, and wooyoung all have some kind of shoulder padding, but that's only half the group. and the stage outfits are not any better. there's the infamous ketchup packet outfit, this naruto themed styling, this inexplicable bdsm football themed styling, and whatever this snakeskin theme is meant to be. it's all over the place! there's some performer specific shapes (hongjoong with the shoulder pads and hip length jacket, san with crop top, yeosang sleeveless) but if you were to just look at the shape of the outfits regardless of colour and pattern, you'd have no way to tell if they were all in the same group.

ok now lastly, let's quickly talk about

pattern matching and texture

this section won't be as long, but i wanted to cover it because even though it's a small and subtle thing, it does a lot in the visual long run. the general rule with patterns is that you don't combine patterns of the same size. this is kind of hard to explain without a visual reference so here's a few examples:

(not my photos, these are from scott schuman's blog the sartorialist)

small check, even smaller pinstripe

mid-size print on pant, large print on scarf

small shirt stripe, mid-size print on tie, mid-large print on scarf

small print on zip jacket, mid-size on scarf, large plaid on jacket

like all fashion and like everything else i've talked about here, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but it does generally look the most harmonious. a.c.e really nails this in the take me higher stages, which you can see here:

(in addition to using different pattern sizes, they're using different colours as well to make it less visually busy)

(bonus! see if you can name the type of colour stories!)

the goblin stages utilize a combination of texture and pattern matching, where the hanbok are a mix of different fabrics (raw silk, embroidered satin, organza) with different patterns, overtop plain underlayers, or when they aren't in hanbok their outfits are very heavily embellished to add visual interest, but are unpatterned fabrics.

in conclusion: good and cohesive colour stories, emphasis on uniform silhouettes and variety in patterns and textures. they also are very specific with accessories, and use them to emphasize key features.

ok! i think that's all i want to cover for this post, because this is already so long. but i've started on the write up for higher already, so i might get into some of my points here in more detail because i'll be talking about one specific thing instead of like......all of it.

#ace w #this ended up being mostly about take me higher because everything about the stages for take me higher is SO GOOD #seriously i watched like all of the stages and they all hit #also it's the type of contemporary design that i specialize in so of course it appeals to me #i say as im in the middle of designing a heighted modern styling for a show with a limited colour palette......#the higher writeup might take a few days #but i dont think it's going to be as long as this so hopefully not #a.c.e stylist please dm me i love you #a.c.e #kpop analysis #group analysis #general design questions #kpop questions #answers #text #i didn't say very much about the cactus styling because everything about it is perfect #no notes #10/10

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lies · 3 years

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hello! I just saw your reblog recommending a compact superzoom camera for helping with bird ID, and I think I must have had some previously unrecognized compunction thinking that I HAD to get a nice DSLR zoom lens to be a Real Birder and all that - obviously untrue but I was wondering if you have any specific recs for compact cameras? I think it'd really help take my birding up a notch!

I used to think the same thing (that I couldn't afford a dedicated DSLR with a big lens, so why bother?), but over the last few years I've changed my thinking (obviously). These days I carry a bridge camera (a Sony RX10 Mark IV) whenever I'm actively birding , and if I'm being honest I probably go to it sooner than I should, sometimes even before the binoculars.

It's a tricky question, and every situation is different. If I see a "good" bird (i.e., one that's unusual, where I know or suspect I'm going to want to document it) I have to decide: use my bins, which will give me the best view now, or go for the photo, which will give me a relatively poor view now but with a chance for a photo I can study and share later. If it's a (potentially) rare bird flitting around in foliage I might just get one brief identifiable glimpse. Looking through the binoculars improves the chances I'll get that glimpse; going for the photo is harder, but with a higher payoff in terms of having documentation if I'm successful.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But back to your actual question. Yes, there are a lot of options short of a good camera + big lens that are worth considering. Bridge cameras like the one I use are kind of in the middle; my Sony weighs 2.4 pounds, is bulky enough that it's not going in my pocket, and it cost what for me was a fair amount, though still a lot less than a high-end setup.

For someone who isn't sure they want to incur that amount of expense and hassle, the "compact superzoom" option I was talking about with @anonsally makes a lot of sense, I think. I don't have one myself, though I see other birders pulling them out, and they're certainly a big step up from a cellphone camera. I might think about getting one just so I can literally always have it in my pocket.

Here's a writeup of a number of those. They're pocket-sized, weigh about 5-10 ounces, and range in price from about $200 - $300.

http://www.2cameraguys.com/best-compact-superzoom-cameras-2022.htm

Like I was saying before, everyone watches birds for their own reasons. For some people the complications of trying to get photos is going to detract from the fun. But I get a lot out of it. It has taught me a lot about the finer points of identification. It makes me happy to have those records of the birds I've seen, and to know I'm contributing valuable community science data.

#birds #bird photography

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mercuryonparklane · 4 years

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To add even more to the red and blue theme as it might relate to Tayliz...

Liz said she was listening to Augustana’s “Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt” album about a week after attending that rep tour show. This is the opening track of that album:

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"Hey Now"

Sky black and blue Blue turned to red There's quiet in the streets now But it's screaming in your head I ain't a fool I've got my doubts Say it doesn't hurt It doesn't matter anyhow, anyhow... Hey we're just bleeding for nothing It's hard to breathe when you're standing on your own We'll kill ourselves to find freedom You'll kill yourself to find anything at all So lock all the doors And put your child to rest There's fire in the streets now But it's quiet in your head We're passing the time By breaking apart We're damned at the end And we're damned at the start Blame it on the roses Blame it on the red We're running out of time And we’re running out of breath Hey now, we're bleeding for nothing It's hard to breathe when you're standing on your own We'll kill ourselves to find freedom You'll kill yourself to find anything You say goodbye Every day and night With writing on the walls Everybody's gonna need somebody To take our troubles, and our worries, and our problems all away 'Cause, hey, we’re just bleeding for nothing It's hard to breathe when you're standing on your own We'll kill ourselves to find freedom You'll kill yourself to find anything at all Hey now, we’re bleeding for nothing It's hard to breathe when you're standing on your own We'll kill ourselves to find freedom You'll kill yourself to find anything at all Hey now, hey now, hey now Right now...

Another song on this album (”Sweet and Low”) was Taylor’s ringtone in July 2008 (which was not long after Liz moved to Nashville):

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"Sweet And Low"

Anywhere you go, anyone you meet, Remember that your eyes can be your enemies, I said, hell is so close and heaven's out of reach But I ain't giving up quite yet, I've got too much to lose Hold me down, sweet and low, little girl Hold me down, sweet and low, and I will carry you home Hold me down, sweet and low, little girl Hold me down and I'll carry you home The rain is gonna fall, the sun is gonna shine, The wind is gonna blow, the water's gonna rise She said, when that day comes, look into my eyes No one's giving up quite yet, We've got too much to lose

... And I'll carry you all the way, When you say you're fine But you're still young, and out of line When all I need's to turn around, To make it last, to make it count I ain't gonna make the same mistakes That put my mama in her grave I don't wanna be alone

In June 2011, the same journalist did this writeup about Taylor’s Teen Vogue article:

“Getaway Car”, tho... “We never had a shotgun shot in the dark”...

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"Shot In The Dark"

I had a vision for the life that was ahead of me I had a reason, had a ride and had a destiny I thought I knew where I was heading I would never look back I had it all and then I went and let it slip away I'm working overtime I'm gonna make it anyway Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you never get her back Oh, you know that I'm Rising up slowly and getting higher I've been living with a hole in my heart Weighing down on me, but I'm a fighter I know I still got a shot in the dark Baby, we still got a shot in the dark Sometimes in life you meet the people that you think you trust Wake up one day and find that everything had turned to dust I always knew that you'd be waiting for me when I got back Waiting when I came Rising up slowly and getting higher I've been living with a hole in my heart Weighing down on me, but I'm a fighter I know I still got a shot in the dark Baby, we still got a shot in the dark I'm gonna find a way I'm gonna find a way, yeah I'm gonna find a way I got a vision for the life that’s right in front of me I got a ride, I got a reason, got a destiny I know exactly where I'm headed and I'm never looking back Well, nothing's holding me back Well, nothing's holding me back Rising up slowly and getting higher I've been living with a hole in my heart Weighing down on me, man, but I'm a fighter I know I still got a shot in the dark Rising up slowly and I'm getting higher I've been living with a hole in my heart Weighing down on me, baby I'm a fighter I know I still got a shot in the dark Baby, we still got a shot in the dark And I know that I still got a shot

Liz put these 2 Augustana songs on her “H8U, love these...” playlist:

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"I Still Ain't Over You"

Out of luck and out of tune Half a day and night confused Love may wash away the blues But I still ain't over you Damn the day that I forgot Came so close and almost lost It's been one year and fourteen months But I still ain't over you Hey, I'm the blood in your veins I'm the cold when it rains I'm your heart when it breaks Time, no it ain't on our side I'm the truth to your lie I'm your tear when you cry Back and forth and side to side Right ain't wrong if wrong ain't right Well I will love you day and night 'Cause I still ain't over you Hey, I'm the blood in your veins I'm the cold when it rains I'm your heart when it breaks Time, no it ain't on our side I'm the truth to your lie I'm your tear when you cry When the walls come crashing in When the flames come closer then Just remember time and again I still ain't over you

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"Remember Me" Will you hear me blowing in the wind? Will it give you shivers down your skin? Will you stop and stare, wonder if I'm there? Will you think about me now and then? Will you hear me when the stairs creak? I always sang you what I couldn't speak Will my voice carry on when your angels gone? And will you still remember me?

Remember me, please remember me May your heart be strong May your fears be weak And remember me, please remember me May our love live on for eternity Will you keep my jackets in the drawer? And keep the kitchen how it was before? Will you look to the sky in a cold dark time And wish we had a little more? Will you laugh about those little things That used to piss you off and make you scream? Will you stay up late reading books you hate Tryin' not to fall asleep, so you can...

Remember me, please remember me May your heart be strong May your fears be weak And remember me, please remember me May our love live on for eternity

Will you keep those notes I used to write? Will you hang em on the fridge at night? Will you miss my smile every once in a while? Will you think I was worth your time? Will you find me somewhere in your dreams? When you're swimming up against the stream When the days get long, and you can't go on Sweetheart just remember me Remember me, please remember me May your heart be strong May your fears be weak And remember me, please remember me May our love live on for eternity May our love live on like a child's dream...

Liz has an unreleased song she cowrote with Augustana’s lead singer/songwriter (he also cowrote quite a few unreleased Harry S. songs as well):

It may not mean anything, but the amount of songs/artists both of them have referenced in some way is insane. It’s possible that they aren’t connected, but between this and the Joni Mitchell, Patty Griffin, Tom Petty, Ryan Adams, etc. connections, it’s the strangest set of coincidences.

I also feel compelled to mention that there is a song called “Twenty Years” on that “Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt” album... again, maybe it’s just another coincidence.

#tayliz #tayliz coincidences #tayliz crack theory

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 3 years

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Czech Republic brings their language back to Rotterdam 2021

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Reviews coming in a little too into rehearsal period? Honestly don’t care, I’m happy I have caught on with quite the speed right now (only to lose it soon after I guess), because the last two actually came out on two days in a row, hah! Up next is Czech Republic to be talked about, let’s go.

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

Joining the trend of Czech-Men-Surprisingly-Looking-Like-How-They-Are-In-Their-30s, here comes one Ben da Silva Cristóvão (aka Ben Cristovao, aka Benny Cristo), and his Angolan father explains why is his original surname so funkily Portuguese. Mans went to the finals of the Czechoslovakian version of Pop Idol in the same year Czech Republic finished with 0 in the semifinal and ended their Eurovision career for a brief moment in time (thanks for the fact linkage, Euromovidas). Since then he has quite significantly exploded in their music scene, releasing material after material, performing as a supporting act to Mr. Worldwide himself, and doing all kinds of concerts back in the day. Most of his material is in Czech, so like for TIX, Eurovision is an opportunity for him to present himself better in English, somehow.

As his Eurovision entry, “Omaga”, is MOSTLY in English. Until the miracle strikes and you hear two lines in Czech - that is right, Czech Republic having lines in Czech on their entry is a miracle in the regard that we last heard Czech Republic sing in Czech on their very debut in 2007, when the entire song was in that language. It did not give them fruitful results, but that’s not language’s fault. Now say what you will about 2021 having had that potential to kill languages that we have heard in 2020 (Slovenian, Amharic...), but 2021 is quite the greater kind of thing in that regard that we have, because of Czech Republic and the entry I’ll write a writeup for next, Denmark. "Omaga” is a clubby-ish pop song with guitar influences, something that Benny himself has never really done before stylistically, because from his repertoir, he does kinda have something somewhat laidback and toned down more than those upbeat energetic kinda stuffs, but if that is not usually his style, then he has got to be a master of many styles, lol. Lyrics are about a man wanting to woo some girl who is tired of his stupid things but she really makes him happy and he is stunned by her beauty so much he can’t help but go “omaga” “oh my God” at her constantly. Benny did that one thing about “Kemama” to “Omaga”, which is simplifying an otherwise already easy-ish phrase into a somewhat made up but catchy word (in “Kemama”’s case it was something along the lines of “OK mama”), but does that matter in the end? It’s the music that does, in this case.

REVIEW

And in this case the music is reeeeeaaaaally THAT good.

It’s an instant turn on, if not from the lowkey minuscule-tropical beginning, then it gets going from the verses on, which features some insane catchy bass chops(?) and engaging fast singing from Benny.

I also love how differently does he sing the second and third choruses from the first one, like, he goes higher on some words (“happy you’re here” and “beautiful”), and the post-chorus chorus?? The repetition of “oooooh-my-GOOOOD, oh my Gooood” is just working me the right way?????

And the Czech lines are pure magic. Whenever I hear them, my mood is made, the time feels like it freezes, I just feel smitten by the fact that it exists. Now will it be the first entry with Czech lyrics to make it? I dunno, you decide, and I trust you, even if foolishly.

I don’t know what is it with these lyrics and what was it with “Kemama”, but it’s one of those songs dying to be turned into a dance sensation, like, a song viral on TikTok thanks to a dance challenge. You can make so many simplistic moves to whatever he’s singing.

Also the music video is pretty fantastic. Full of movie references I both recognize on spot, and don’t! For instance, this is also a movie reference, and also I’ve seen this piece of music video clip material as a ČT exclusive backstage preview of whatever they were filming for Benny.

this is very relatable. whole world IS crazy

Literally quite a lot of things in the song are perfect, and so are about the rest of my top 5, maybe even top 6. Switzerland has a great second pre-chorus among many moments, Malta has a perfect combination of the chaos within itself, San Marino is a fantastic pop song with a cool little feature verse, Italy has THAT bridge, Lithuania has the unexpected good vibes. Czech Republic is just perfect for me for the most part, without a specific moment, because there are a lot of specific moments. Good vibes all around.

Though at first I thought he was singing “you’ve been hung too long, I’ve been hung too long” (it’s “home” instead in these words). *-* doesn’t help that the “why don’t you let me have it” line sounds like Benny’s asking for sexual favours that are constantly rejected against his favour. Go simp somewhere else :P

Approval factor: SAY YES SAY YES SAY YES (- Ben & Tan) Follow-up factor: Stellar! ČT had to give up their future televised NF project due to drop outs of their previous HoD for 2020, but even then, his good pals are making sure that Czech still retain a really good maintained interest in Eurovision with their songs and all. And they gave up the NF itself to have Benny Cristo to participate for the second year in a row, with an internal song, and all is fine and dandy. “Kemama” and “Omaga” are two kickass songs in a row. Qualification factor: I really want to be optimistic about the chances of this guy. I really do. I just really want to shrug off the deadpan reactions from the press center that he was constantly getting. But what if there is no hope, and his rather lackluster looking performances are what we getting live. The visuals don’t please me a lot, with the wide shots towards the arena and not much more focus on Benny, and I would absolutely hope he’s gonna do well vocally... but... I was at first really sure he would, because he’s energetic and electrifying. Now? Might be swallowed over the competition + hopeless-ish acts performing way better than him on the night + he’s on 3rd, and while Manizha will escape that, Benny could get sadly torpedoed. Hope it’s not the case :(

INTERNAL CORNER

There were some nice moments to talk about, but they’re mostly few and far in between, BUT there was this one livestream that stood out to me in a weird way - ESCZ, the thing that is in charge of Czech Republic’s Eurovision ordeals ever since like 2018, had an Instagram livestream with Benny to talk about his Eurovision related details, that among 3 songs shortlisted they’ve chosen one, that some sort of a preview will allow a singles only early peek into the entry, and so on.

There’s also this, which made me think that Omaga’s certainly qualifying.

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Just... wow. And the last higher notes he’ll certainly attempt to pull off in Rotterdam as seen in rehearsals, so I cross my fingers nothing goes awry with that.

ANY LAST WORDS?

Please Eurovision Gods, for the love of Verka and Conchita and whoever else, GIVE THIS SONG A QUALIFICATION. During the season the Czech Republic managed to slide into my top 3 and take that 3rd place spot from San Marino (yeah San Marino in my top 3 who’d’ve thought??), and that alone tells me that it is such a good song, and one of those that would seriously break me if I lost it in the semis. Please. Don’t let Benny flop. He doesn’t deserve that. Not even an ounce of that.

Or else he’ll come to haunt your nightmares after the night of the semi like this

#eurovision #eurovision 2021 #rotterdam 2021 reviews #czech republic #Ben da Silva Cristóvão #benny cristo #omaga

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phandomphightclub · 6 years

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Phinal Round Interlude: @reallydumbdannyphantomaus and @heyheyitsstillgay vs. Vlad Plasmius

(Note: This is NOT the 1st place match writeup. Sorry about that! I got really carried away with this subplot and had to break it into its own post. I’m trying to write the last match as fast as I can!)

The bowels of the Denny’s were about what Vlad expected, honestly. Cold, damp, and filled with memes too dank to see the light of day. Or in this case, the pallid glow of whatever passed for day in the ghost zone. Vlad fought his way past the ghosts of dead vines – “It’s Wednseday my dudes” had deserved that ectoblast to the face – and finally reached a vault at the end of the tunnel, where a rather surprised-looking guard hovered.

“Uh… I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here, sir.”

“And I think the Packers should’ve gone to the superbowl this year, but here we are.” Vlad shrugged, and with a flick of his wrist, an ectoblast sent the guard thudding against the door of the vault.

“Honestly, this is too easy.” Vlad smiled and straightened his collar before kicking aside the unconscious guard. The vault might take some work; ghosts did know how to keep out their own kind. Phasing through wouldn’t be option, but maybe with an ectoblast amplified with a device of his creation…

Or, the door could already be cracked. So the Denny’s employees were are stupid as they looked. The guard must have opened it when they’d slammed against it somehow. Terrible design, but Vlad would take it. He pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Sitting on a pillar, just begging to be stolen, was the fabled Reality Gauntlet.

“Birch Tree Fartman may not have wielded you properly, but I won’t make the same mistake,” he vowed as he crept towards it, carefully checking for any tripwires or hidden security measures. Focused as he was on the ground before the pillar though, he failed to look up.

A net dropped from the ceiling.

“Butter brickle,” He barely had time to curse before an electric current coursed through him.

“Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” A ghost asked, her glowing eyes appearing out of the darkness before the rest of her.

“Who… who are you?” Vlad groaned, though he still managed to make it sound contemptuous.

“Name’s Vic. One of the Phight Club mods, head of security, and really thrilled that you just tried to rob us.”

“Not try, girl,” he sneered. “As soon as I get out of here–”

Vic pressed a button, and the net shocked him again.

“Don’t worry, you will be getting out of here.” Vic smirked. “Just maybe not in the way that you’d like.”

XXX

“What’s going on?” Danny finally asked Tali. The first match was over, all the feathers and fidget spinners had been removed from the ring, and yet there so still no sign of the next two phighters. Ember and some of the Denny’s employees had begun putting on a half-time show to pass the time, but Danny could see Tali fidgeting uncomfortably in her chair.

“Nothing,” she replied too quickly. “…Just hoping Vic’s doing alright, that’s all.”

“What’s Vic up to?” Tucker asked.

“Nothing,” she replied even more evasively.

When the ground started shaking, though, Danny knew it absolutely wasn’t “nothing.”

A few startled yelps came from the ground below, where the Denny’s crew and Ember were flying away from the epicenter of the quake. Thankfully they hadn’t reset the stage, so there was nothing to fall in when the center of the ring suddenly crumbled away.

“Oh, good.” Tali sighed in relief.

“Good?” Sam asked. “How in the world is the whole ring caving in good?”

“It means Vic did it.” She grinned. “Look.”

Upon further inspection, the way the pavement had crumbled wasn’t random – it revealed a circular pit in the middle of the arena. A pit which soon had something rising out of it.

“Oh my gosh,” Sam said, covering her mouth with her fist to hide a laugh. “Is that–“

“Vlad?” Tucker finished with a cackle. “They caught him in a net! A net!”

“Yeah, I can see, Tuck,” Danny laughed, shoving Tucker’s elbow away from his side. “Ooh, it looks like it’s an electric net too. Nice.”

Tali raised her mic. “Alright phriends–“

“Could you stop pronouncing it with a ph?” Sam groaned.

“Nope! Anyway, if you’ll direct your attention towards the center of the ring, you’ll see one sad frootloop who’s been caught trying to steal Denny’s property!”

The crowd booed, some even going to far as to throw popcorn, Cheez-Its, and mayo cheesecake at Vlad, who had begun cursing in even more diverse food items.

“So, as his due punishment, we’re throwing him into the ring with two of the baddest ghosts I know: our two Phinalists, Reallydumbdannyphantomaus and Heyheyitsstillgay!”

The two ghosts entered the ring as We Will Rock You began blasting from the speakers. Bug clapped to the beat with their four hands.

Vlad scoffed as Vic released him from the net. “You honestly believe these imbeciles can—"

“PHIGHT!”

Vlad was still shaky after his encounter with the electric net – the average ghost might not be able to tell, but after being shocked by at least a dozen of them, Danny knew the effects like the back of his hand. Vlad, on the other hand, wasn’t used to shaking it off so quickly.

“Hey, fruit bat!” Anri yelled at him. “I heard you like cats!”

From her overstuffed duffle bag, they pulled out a fat, fluffy orange cat with a Danno taped to its face.

“I already have a cat, thank you,” he drawled, then attempted to fly out of the ring – only to smash directly into the forcefield.

“No way out.” Bug grinned, rubbing two hands together and pulling out their PowerPoint staff with their other two.

“Have they always had four arms?” Tucker asked.

“I’m not sure,” Danny said.

“Either way, I just hope they lose.” Sam crossed her arms. “Not to Vlad, though. He needs a kick in the face more than anyone.”

“Amen to that,” Tucker agreed.

Meanwhile, Anri yeeted the cat at Vlad’s head. It yowled as its claws tangled in Vlad’s horribly impractical hair.

“Gah – get this thing off me! You’re nothing like my sweet Maddie!”

Tucker’s face puckered in disgust. “Dude, does he have a cat named after your mom?”

“Is that an ew or a yikes?” Sam asked.

“Both.” Danny grimaced. He knew he’d told Vlad to get a cat, but that wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

While Vlad was distracted by the cat, Bug flew up behind him and whacked him across the back with their staff, sending him back towards the ground. Mid-fall, he was finally able to detangle himself from the cat, but not in time to avoid hitting the pavement hard.

“Nngh… you think that’s funny, do you?”

Obviously the crowd did, by their cackling laughter. Bug and Anri grinned down at him in agreement.

“Fine. No more mister nice Vlad.”

He charged an ectoblast in each hand, taking both of the phighters in their chests. They recoiled in the air, but then Anri started laughing even harder.

“You really shouldn’t have done that,” Bug said.

And then Anri lost consciousness.

Vlad smirked. “What, is that your secret weapon? Playing dead? You’ll have to do a lot better than that to—”

Then their unconscious body fell on top of him. Little did he know that the concentrated power of memes and bad edits cause their host to have a density much higher than any material known to man or ghost. This effect is usually controlled subconsciously by the ghost’s aura, so that they avoid crushing things even when sitting. However, upon losing consciousness…

Vlad was completely crushed under their weight.

Tali blew her kazoo. “Vlad Plasmius is unable to battle! Heyheyitsstillgay and Reallydumbdannyphantomaus win!”

“But who won the tournament?” Danny asked, eying Anri’s unconscious form. “It’s not over, is it?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get them woken up and have the real phinal round in a few minutes. Just sit back and eat some cheesecake in the meantime.”

Tucker winced. “Hard pass. Tried it. Did they make that thing with mayo?”

“Well, then do something else. I gotta help Vic yeet Vlad back to his ghost portal. Be back soon!”

#final round #round 6 #writeup #reallydumbdannyphantomaus #heyheyitsstillgay

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myfriendpokey · 6 years

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50 Short Years!

This January makes a full 5 years since releasing 50 Short Games!

I admit, it is weird to think about.

In general I don’t have very strong feelings about anything I’ve worked on, since anything like that has usually burnt itself out somewhere in the process of making the thing.

But it feels a little startling that this particular game came out 5 years ago, because in many ways I feel like I’m still working somewhere in it’s orbit – it still feels “close” to me in terms of, I guess, setting up the way I’ve been thinking about and working on these things ever since then. I still feel like I’m working out some of the stuff that came up in its production.. compare to older games which can feel like they were made by different, mercifully forgotten, people.

The game is temporarily discounted on itch down to just $1, until valentine’s day - good for friends, good for lovers.

When this first came out, I included a big note file of the processes and ideas and etc that went into it. I have posted that to my website for free to mark this little anniversary. But since a decent bit of time has passed since those impressions, and since I don’t feel like refreshing them, I thought it might be interesting to try writing up a sort of “afterlife” of this game, specifically the ways it sort of covertly turned out to influence what I did for the 5 years after it, as well.

Here are my notes seperated by theme.

- colour - mice - pacing - work / life - gameplay - theme - writing - distribution

- COLOUR: this is a strange one. 50SG felt like the first time I was really aware of / interested in trying to add “colour” as an element I could play with within my games, trying to add it to the lego set along with “rocks” and “little guys”. More colours, interesting colours, colour combinations, games which would be colourful as images. Because I’ve never actually been a very visual person (surprise surprise ha ha ha) and even when I draw, or sculpt, I tend to focus on lines and omit colour as much as possible... When I was a kid I disliked any kind of colouring or painting, as opposed to scribbling, but just before 50SG I’d been working on an uncompleted game with painted textures, and enjoyed it enough to want to explore the effects more.

The reason I call this a strange one is that, mostly - - I failed!!! I feel very aware now of how much of this game is just scratchy line drawings, how little colours are actually used once I'd worked out which ones I preferred working with from the set. I did try to change things up over the course of the series and some games (specifically the Mogey ones) tried to use flat colour or colour patterns more. But when I think about the game now the memories I mostly have are of essentially monochrome or mostly-monochrome drawings.

In fairness, some of this was technical too - I never had any kind of consistent way to light my pictures for when I was photographing them, and a lot of the time the bright markers came out muddy, which sort of discouraged me from trying to do anything specifically with colour effects. Strong lines are also a lot easier to chop up into discrete little game-shapes.

But I think this sense of missed opportunity - having this big bag of markers in all colours, all translucent lines, and not really using them - was specifically what made me spend the next few years trying to work with colour even more. Hence stuff like Mouse Corp, and certain entries in the Hardpack 11-in-1, and Magic Wand. I think I moved more towards pixel art again because it gave me a very quick way to play with colours, and swap them in and out, without having to worry about correctly photographing them first. And in fact my current game came about directly from trying to play more with ideas of translucent outline sprites on top of flat fields of colour – trying to combine colour with line in a looser way than just colouring stuff in.

I'd like to go back to playing with markers some time.

- MICE: I think this was the first time I used mice in my games. Previously the emblematic animal was the Dog – Murder Dog, Goblet Grotto dog... The dog is a "LAWFUL" animal, one which can be aimlessly malevolent on behalf of some higher system or master. The dog stands in for the implicit malignity of the game system as a whole.

Meanwhile, mouse is the "UNLAWFUL" animal - they live in spaces they do not construct, and scavenge from what they find within, they are constrained by those spaces but also have something of an independent life within them. By this time, I had been working on a lot of games where the gameworld itself was sort of an ominous presence - Crime Zone, Goblet Grotto, Drill Killer etc - and I think the move from "dog" to "mouse" came about as a way to think about these spaces as just kind of indeterminate and abandoned instead of actively malign. Places which don't really notice your being there, which were constructed and then left for some unknowable purpose. I cannot say if this shift in thinking is good or bad.

- PACING: I forget whether I mention it in the notes - but the prototype for all the marker games was an earlier one-off called "Gold's Enigma", done with crayons and in Klik N Play. And that game felt like sort of a revelation because it was so quick to just add new areas to it, or copy and paste elements around, or switch from one game control system or mode of representation to another. So you could have an extremely short, quick game that still contained enough of a shift to make you feel like you’d gone somewhere or like the view from one side of the game was different to the view from the other. I don’t know how consistently or successfully this was ever really done (the end of Happy Bird is my personal favourite version) but it did stick in my head, as an ideal to work towards. And I think something like the more longform Magic Wand was still sort of driven by a desire to try a “fuller” take on this same idea.

- WORK / LIFE: I don't remember exactly but I think this was my first time successfully trying to start a new, slightly longform project while also having a day job. With other games either they were short enough for me to just blow through in a concentrated rush or else enough pieces had already been laid down (eg Goblet Grotto) that I could just brainlessly slam together any remaining levels in the mornings before I went to work. Making games as a hobby isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to do it consistently over long periods took me a long adjustment period. For the short games I ended up doodling ideas at lunch, coming home, eating dinner, and then around 7 or 8 I'd start chopping up my image sheets and putting them into the game. And hope to finish by 11 so I wouldn't be too wiped the next day. These days it's more like 8-10pm. Working in the early mornings can be good if you're very determinedly getting through some pre-assigned tasks but can be harder and more frustrating if you're trying to be more exploratory about things. I guess to the extent I’d draw any lesson from this it’d be, set aside a very specific time period for working on stuff but also try to have a process where “working on stuff” can involve a certain level of constructive busywork just so you don’t come home and have to immediately face a blank page? “Placing stuff around on a screen” is ultimately what absorbs me so working in a way that let me do that as quickly and aimlessly as possible helped a lot. Well, that’s my opinion.

- GAMEPLAY: I used the default 8-directional walk system in MMF2, and the default screen-follows-the-player function, so many times in the course of these games that I just burnt myself out on them entirely. They’re fine, but using them so many times over a brief period made me more and more conscious of them to the point where it could feel like I was just filling in the same template each time... I think part of why I shifted to Unity, even though it’s more of a hassle, is just to be able to escape that sense of a singular unchangeable “point of view” and make things where moving or looking around would feel a bit looser and less set in stone. I hope this helps explain my gradual, doomed love affair with extremely idiosyncratic camera systems.

- THEME: Did any themes carry over to any of my post-50SG games? Maybe some but to me it’s less noticeable than seeing what was stripped out. Having a deadline and a very fixed scope did sort of push me more towards including “real world content” in whatever strange way – dreams, specific moments of the early morning or the night, events like work nights out, locations I knew... Compare that to the longer games I’ve done which all kind of take place in these dreamy, private fantasy dimensions. I enjoy that too, and it’s easier to do that when you’re making a game that’s just sort of endlessly adding to itself over time.. It’d be good to get back to working in a way which encouraged that material connection.

- WRITING: I think the notes file that came with 50SG was the first time I did any real writing about the process of making these things, or ideas and notes, etc. And now I can’t shut up!! Well, I did a similar writeup document for Magic Wand, and hope to do so with my current game eventually as well. I think writing that, and having people be encouraging about it, did help me become more interested in looking at and recording the state of my brain as it’s slowly rotted into goop from exposure to these terrible machines. Which is in itself not a bad reason to keep doing it.

- DISTRIBUTION: This was my first commercial game and probably the biggest impact of that was in getting me to move away from PC-only tools. I'd planned a mac version of this game at some point, or specifically to do HTML versions and then use a workaround I'd read about to convert HTML files to Mac and Linux apps... but the HTML conversion sometimes led to strange bugs, and I never had a testing computer to see whether the actual ports would work, and the multiple layers of things that could go wrong (making a html export, to be put into a mac or linux wrapper, to be loaded from a Unity scene...) eventually made me slowly give up on this. I think of getting back to it but to be honest I have such limited energy and for the five months a year I don't just want to hibernate I'd rather keep working on new projects.... I am sorry.... Well, this was a big impetus to try moving to pure Unity and HTML which had more multiplatform support from the get-go. I don't know if I took any other commercial lessons from it! It sold around 500 copies, and talking to other people making weird scrappy narrative type games it sounded like they mostly also sold 500 copies, maybe to the same people or maybe just to each other. At this level of economic activity you can just do what you like.

So in conclusion 50 Short Games is a land of contrasts. It feels distant to me, I don't have any strong feelings about it anymore, but I also feel sort of like I'm still moving around in the terrain this game originally sketched out for me, and still kind of responding to it in either positive or negative forms. Thank you to anyone who bought it. I just put it on sale again to mark the five year anniversary, you can find it on itch.io, gamejolt or kartridge. Please buy several hundred copies and salt them around through hidden disc drives buried in a desert somewhere so that some day they can inspire some form of apocalypse cult.

In the year 2525 if man is still alive if woman, still survives they will find.....

- stephen 2019

#vgames #50 short games #indie games #gamechat #game criticism #notes

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prorevenge · 7 years

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You mess with my cat, I'll bury you.

Sit back, this ended up kinda long.

TL;DR: Shitty coworkers let my cat live in filth for a week while I'm out of town, I get one demoted and crush the others life into dust.

I like to think I'm a patient man. I'm hard to anger, my coworkers say they haven't seen me angry in the 2 years they've known me. I have firm boundaries and as long as you don't cross any of them I can let anything go.

One of my boundaries is don't fuck with my cat.

This story is about 2 of my coworkers and me, and happened the winter of 2013.

So I worked at a veterinary hospital as a vet tech/kennel attendant, and coworker 1 is a kennel attendant(KA) coworker 2 is the kennel lead(KL). KA is the one who comes in to take care of the animals, KL is in charge of overseeing everything boarding and kennel related. They both crossed that very simple boundary.

I went away over Christmas since I lived in another state from my family, and while I was out I left my cat to board at work(one of the perks is free boarding). I trusted my coworkers would take care of him even if it was a top 2 busiest weekend of the year.

So, I set up his cage the night before I leave. He's a shy boy so i set up a tent with very distinct blankets(one is bright green, the other has rocket ships). I kiss him bye, and am on my way. I enjoy Christmas with family, candy and fudge, and other things unrelated to the story, and come back 6 days after leaving.

It's late when i get back, so the hospital is already closed and everyone has gone home. We all have a key so I swing by because I miss my cat and want to take him home.

What I am greeted by when I get to him is those same blankets, the white rocket ships now slightly tan/yellow damp with urine, old desiccated pieces of shit and smears on the wall, and a very stressed cat that smelled like pee. We're talking 6 days worth of filth. All they did was put in more food and change the litter box as far as I could tell.

I saw red.

KA, the attendant, was scheduled to take care of the animals that holiday. KL, the lead, had been there 3 different days I was gone, including the last 2. Figuring out how to destroy these people became the only thing i thought about.

I'm scheduled to work the day after I get back, and KA is there. I don't look at her all day, as it's the only way I could contol my emotions. My blood is still boiling thinking about my boy who I'd had to bathe the night before(much to his chagrin). The sight of her makes that primal part of my brain reserved for beating the shit out of things starts to burn and makes my muscles tense.

(Now some important backstory here is that KA is kind of terrible at her job. We were kind of friends since she was the only one who wasn't shitty to me when I first started. Whenever I'd find something she messed up, I'd gripe to myself but I'd fix it. She did some write-upable shit on a regular basis. I never did anything because KL was already aware and working on her so I figured 'eh, none my bidness.')

I decided against violence and figured I'd let my manager handle it. At first, I just told him about the condition of my cat and kept the rest to myself. He agreed it was unacceptable and said he'd talk to her. She denied everything, said she'd changed my cats bedding every night, that he didn't get all of it in the litter box(unfortunately true, 12lb cat[not fat] aiming at a box made literally for kittens). Basically said I lied to my manager, to my managers face without batting an eye. I gave her the chance to own up to it because that would've come with punishment enough.

My manager told me what she said, and her blatant bullshittery poked the dragon that was already awake and pissed. I told him she's fucking lying, I work in the kennel too and not to mention I know my cats shit well. He believes me, and I not so subtly point out that if she pulls this shit on an employee pet, what has she been doing with the lot of random boarders? Manager thought it was a good point, and asks me to keep an eye out for mistakes and let him know what I find.

The next day, I was in the kennel alone without her, and I began to document every single thing she did incorrectly. Remember me saying how crap she was at her job? She left me a treasure trove of shit to dig up.

To name a few of these nuggets, every single animals cage was filthy, like multi-day filthy like my cats was, two dogs had had their medications switched for the whole week, there were copious amounts of shit left in the yard(big no-no, spreads parasites and disease), and not even her documentation and charges were entered correctly. It was a trainwreck that took me the whole morning to get back to an acceptable condition.

There was material here to get her enough writeups to lose her job if she had been perfect before, and she had already been disciplined a couple times for other shit she pulled. I gather it all together and bring it to my manager, who is horrified and says he's setting up a meeting with me, KA and KL, and him to discuss it all. He encourages me to hold my temper and call them on their bullshit at the meeting. Until then I hadn't even considered KL's complicity in this bullshit, but I immediately realized there were 2 people on my wrong side. KL was not as horrid at his job as KA, he was old as hell in a demanding physical labor position. I figured what he'd got coming will be enough so I could aim everything I'd got at KA.

What's the human equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel? Because this girl had already dug herself such a hole it was incredible she hadn't been fired already. She didn't do her job, she was stealing clients from the clinic by offering to petsit for cheaper instead of offering boarding(explicitly against our contract, fireable). She had been leaving 30 minutes early leaving the shit condition I'd had to deal with. And I knew all of this.

The day of the meeting rolls around, and KA and KL are blissfully unaware when manager calls us into the office together. We all sit down and manager begins to explain what the meeting is about. He was a fucking boss and we prearranged to give KA one more chance to own up to my face and leave out the rest at first. He had asked me how far I wanted to take it, I told him I had a lot of dirt. Let's let KA dig a deeper hole first so I can use it all.

She denied it all, swore up and down she had taken care of my poor cat properly. I graciously gave her the benefit of the doubt, saying ok I believe you did clean like you say, but then how did you miss this dried up piece of shit? She said my cat must've been dehydrated. I say "oh, well you documented he'd been drinking well all week, why would he be dehydrated?" She says it might have been just from the last day. She wouldn't just admit it... So I give my manager the look, and he tells her "ok so you took care of the cat, what about all of this?" And he pulls out my stack of evidence I'd collected.

KA's face paled. KL had been silent up to this point and starts trying to apologize on KA's behalf, saying it was a busy week and things slip through the cracks. I called their shit, saying I had been able to handle as many animals as she had had to a higher degree of cleanliness than the 2 of them could accomplish, so busy was not a valid excuse.

We went over every single sin KA and KL had committed for the past 3 days, individually and in depth with discussion about each one before moving on. As we worked through the stack, manager wrote up KA for every single offence that warranted it. By the end of it she had 6 writeups(3 to get fired). She was sobbing, saying she couldn't afford her kids daycare if she didn't have that job. My manager very pointedly told her he had never seen someone with such terrible job performance in 30yrs, and if she were worried about her kids she would have done her job better.

KL was written up and removed from his lead position, and KA was given the option to quit before she was fired.

The end.

... hah! No it isn't. This is ProRevenge, not GirlOnlyLostHerJob. Oh no, there's so much more.

Remember how she had been stealing clients from the clinic? She had built up quite a large client base, and had told me some weeks before she was about to quit her job and petsit fulltime since she hates her job sooo much. Plus when she returned her key after quitting, she made sure I knew the crying was fake and she was planning to put in 2 weeks in the next couple days.

At the clinic, we still saw all of those same clients she had skimmed all the time, and plenty of them asked what happened to KA. Manager told everyone we should tell the truth, since we had a petsitter we referred to and KA was not it.

For the next few months, we saw so many faces twisted into expressions of disgust, contempt, betrayal, worry when we told them why KA was no longer there and why they should reconsider letting her watch their pets. Literally dozens of people. Anyone who has tried to petsit or do yardwork for a living before knows how hard it is to build that client base. KA had a decent one, which we absolutely destroyed.

After a while, she texted me saying I was a piece of shit who was destroying her and her kids life and she couldn't afford daycare anymore. She went from 2 or 3 petsitting gigs a week(about 300 dollars a week) to maybe 1 a month. I told her to fuck herself and blocked her number, and haven't heard anything since. Bitch.

Don't fuck with my cat.

Updates:

Edit for those saying I'm a shit human for letting this go as long as it did: KA and KL cleaned sometimes, just not enough for my standards. KA had only been there a few months and it was her first big girl job (yes, kidS at 20yrs old), and there's a small learning curve. I figured it'd be ok for a week and was poor as shit at the time so options were thin. Until that week, i was there constantly cleaning to my standards so didn't know how bad these 2 would really let it get. Protocol said lead is informed of performance issues before manager, and as i mention he was aware and KA had already been written up a couple times. I was done when i realized just how far they'd let it go so i went over KLs head right to manager because they clearly weren't handling the issues at all. Even if my cat wasn't affected, I would've done the same, he was just unfortunately there because i had to go out of town. In hindsight i wish I'd said something sooner, but workplaces have rules and i was young and tender, and didn't know it was that bad until then. But yes I'm a terrible person who abuses animals, gets people SWATted, I'm pompous and arrogant and only care when things personally affect me and my cat. You're right, reddit!

Edit 2: I'll take this opportunity to give some advice on how to pick a good kennel facility. Always, i mean ALWAYS, ask to take a tour before leaving your animal. Dont schedule an appointment, ask to go back randomly. If they try to say no, say you dont feel comfortable leaving your pet without an idea of where they're staying. If they still wont, and even a manager denies a tour, take your business elsewhere as they probably have something to hide.

If you do get a tour, here are some things to look out for. Check water bowls for grime and dirt. Some pets are messy, but if a good number are dirty, it's a big red flag.

If the kennel smells strongly of some kind of air freshener, be wary and look around for messes. A good kennel attendant will smell pee and clean and replace things until they get rid of the smell; a bad one will spray some animal odor eliminator and cover it up.

Make sure everything looks organized, properly labeled, and has some kind of system to it. Cluttered storage and unclear labeling is where so many mistakes come from; make sure they take those little things seriously, or something big may slip through the cracks.

Finding a good clinic and good boarding facility can be difficult, but they do exist. And just like you wouldn't want you or your child going to a shitty doctor or daycare, I don't want anyone taking their pets to a shitty veterinary clinic!

(source) (story by Amesa)

#pro revenge #by Amesa #prorevenge #pro revenge stories #revenge stories #pro #revenge

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furrycatcollection · 4 years

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Being a Mac user, we agree that it offers the most secure and seamless user experience. However, we must not forget it’s a machine end of the day. Some odd day, it might collapse or compromise the space of your data. Eventually, erasing everything in it and making you lose all of it if you didn’t opt for backup software for your Mac. In our today’s writeup, we’d be talking about – best backup software for Mac? Need to do a Backup? Which one’s better, backup or cloning? And How often should you backup your data on Mac? Let’s begin.

Numerous software helps you back up your data on Mac. Understanding its vitality, it’s crucial to have the best software on board to serve the purpose. Just in case there are any further details you want, please feel free to share it with me in the comment section. With the Seagate backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup, you will have multiple options to back up your Seagate external hard drive. You can back up the hard disk data to a local hard drive, external hard drive, cloud storage, and more. Try it to back up your Seagate hard drive in Windows 10/8/7 with ease. Different from Windows computer, you can download Seagate software like Toolkit to back up and sync files directly. On Mac computer, you can follow these steps to back up files like photos, documents, and videos on Mac. Plug in your Seagate Backup Plus (It could be Ultra Touch, Slim, and Portable) to your system. Backup Plus for Mac desktop Thunderbolt 3TB hard Drive STCB3000400 3-year limited warranty. 3TB 3072.0: 3 years: 168mm: 120.9mm: 1.17kg: Backup Plus for Mac desktop drive 4TB STDU4000100 4TB 4096.0: 2 years: 179.4mm: 118.10mm: 860g: Backup Plus Desk Mac with Thunderbolt 4TB STCB4000401 3-year limited warranty. Seagate® Media Sync for Mac. Copy and synchronize your media files with your external drive. Seagate® Media Sync for Windows. Copy and synchronize your media files with your external drive. Current Dashboard users can effortlessly back up content as well as share and save media on social networks with legacy backup software.

What is Data Backup, and Why It’s Important?

We use our Mac regularly to create, transfer, and receive ‘n’ number of files. While some of them are personal, some play a significant part in our professional life. By backing up your data, you can stay assured of not having any loss of your moments stored in Mac or your work-related files.

What is Cloning, and why it’s important?

Unlike backup, cloning creates a copy of the selected drive on the partition made at the target location. Having said this, you’ll have access to an exact copy comprising partition layout and split. However, in comparison to backing up, cloning requires larger space considering that it gets created immediately, and encryption or compressing the file isn’t feasible.

What is the Difference Between Backup and Cloning?

Backing up to a hard drive lets you create a backup for the entire content of a selected partition into the target source. This is also known to create an Image. Just if you are taking the backup of the entire system, an image file will be created of all the installed programs and settings. You also have the option to encrypt the backed up file for enhanced security.

How Often Should You Backup your Data on Mac?

Did you know, according to a report published, 24% of adult users never back up their data, 42% do it once a year or even less, and 34% do it once a month. It’s just 6% of users who back up their data daily. Strange it may sound, but in a world where our MacBook serves an invincible role in storing our data, we sideline the role of having Mac’s backup software.

If you are among the 6% of users who do it daily, Kudos to you!! If you are part of the remaining population, it’s time you should take data loss seriously.

What is the Best Mac Backup Software?

Keep scrolling to find some of the best free and paid available data backup software for your Mac. Let’s begin.

1. Time Machine

This is macOS’ built-in back software. Being designed primarily for Mac, it’s easy to use and copies everything on your Mac, including applications, accounts, email, messages, documents, photos, music, videos, system files, and preferences.

Setting up Time Machine doesn’t require more than a hard drive, which is twice the internal hard drive’s storage capacity. Once you connect it with your Mac, you’ll notice a box seeking confirmation on using it with Time Machine and whether or not you intend to encrypt the backup disk.

While the backing up process may take hours to finish, here’s how you can backup using Time Machine.

Compatibility: All macOS’

Price: Free (Built-in with Mac)

How to install Time Machine: It comes by default with Mac.

2. Super Duper

The software offers intuitive software and is extremely easy to use. You have to select your target and the destination drive and sit back to watch it happen in no time. The software will take a backup of your entire data. Once the initial backup is completed, you’ll have the option to select incremental backups. This will copy only the files that were created after your last backup was done. Isn’t that interesting? It also has a feature named Smart Wake, which enables you to take the backup even when your Mac’s not awake.

Compatibility: macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) and later

Latest Version: 3.3.1 (Updated on 7th February 2020)

Price: Free to Try (License costs $27.95 for single Mac)

3. Carbon Copy Cloner

The cloning tool offers you a straightforward interface to execute the process. It gives you the option to create a back of your internal drive at a bit level and create a bootable backup disk or a clone, which is ready to install. In their recent upgrade, they resolved concerns linked with “Copying of SystemKey” in macOS Catalina and an issue linked with the bootability of Yosemite and EI Captain backups.

Compatibility: macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) or later.

Latest Version: 5.1.21.6053 (Updated on 24th September 2020)

Price: 30-day Free to Try (License costs $39.99 for all the devices in a premise)

4. Chrono Sync

The software dons an editor rating of 4 stars out of 5 and works seamlessly between different work stations. It helps sync data and takes backup from multiple devices. Though the user agreement may look lengthy to you, once it starts to work, you’d see the effortlessness with which it carries all tasks. With its trial version, the software allows you to backup/transfer data up to 500mb. Further, you’ll have to buy its licensed version.

Seagate External Drive Software Download

Compatibility: OS X 10.12 (Sierra) or higher.

Latest Version: 4.9.10 (Updated on 10th June 2020)

Price: Free to Try (License costs $39.99 for all the devices in a premise)

5. Smart Backup

The lightweight backup application is created to serve devices with macOS X or higher. It uses a custom sync engine to improve performance and enhance features. It gives you entire liberty to select the volumes and folders you want to sync and create a bootable clone of your hard drive. It also comes with built-in automation that lets you schedule backup in just a few clicks.

Compatibility: OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) or higher.

Latest Version: 4.2.1 (Updated on 4th March 2020)

Price: Free

Seagate Manager Software Download

6. Disk Drill

This one’s a powerful tool to scan your Mac or connected devices to find lost files. Though mostly it happens that some files can’t be recovered, this tool has successfully reconstructed such lost or deleted files in many cases. It has a preview feature that will share with you the list of recoverable files after scanning.

Compatibility: OS X 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) or higher.

Latest Version: 4.0.123 (Updated on 8th October 2020)

Price: Free basic version. $89 for Pro Version that allows recovery.

7. Carbonite Safe

It allows you to backup your Mac to remote servers and fetches files as and when you need them. We need to note that it only backups your files and folders and doesn’t include system files and applications. The software protects your files with 128-bit encryption. However, there’s no option of adding an access password to your protected files.

Compatibility: OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher.

Latest Version: 2.4.4

Price: Free Try. It starts at $71.99 for a single Mac.

8. Acronis True Image 2020

This one’s widely used and recognized by Windows users in comparison to those using Mac. However, the truth is that it can be of great help in availing personal backup solutions and taking backup of data in a local disk, an attached network, or its cloud service. However, to leverage the cloud service, you’ll have to set up an account, which won’t take much time, though.

Compatibility: OS X EI Captain or higher.

Latest Version: 2020.25760 (Updated on 29th April 2020)

Price: Free Try. It starts at $49.99.

9. Get Backup Pro (V3)

One primary reason for the popularity of this software is the flexibility it offers. It gives you the option to either backup your entire drive or a particular folder. It can create boot-ready clones of Mac’s startup drive and sync folders and files to different drives. You can also schedule backups. These will happen in the background without hindering your work-in-progress. Once completed, the software will close automatically.

Compatibility: OS X Mavericks or higher.

Latest Version: 3.5.9 (Updated on 1st October 2020)

Price: Free Try. It starts at $19.99.

10. Backblaze

The software performs auto backups for you on Mac as per the schedule set. So just in case you forget doing it or have a busy schedule, this can be of great help. However, it keeps the backed up data stored for 30 days and then deletes it by self. Having said this, to be on the safer side, it’ll always be a good idea to create a schedule for daily EoD or weekly.

Compatibility: OS X Mountain Lion or higher.

Latest Version: 7.0.1.452 (Updated on 14th August 2020)

Price: Free Try. $6 per month or $60 per year.

11. IDrive

The online backup service offers free accessibility up to 5GB capacity. After that, things get pretty expensive. However, there’s one thing that you might like about this software. It does not delete your backup, giving you the liberty to roll back to any date from the past. While the data is fully encrypted, the features like Rewind and Snapshot are indeed a charm.

Compatibility: OS X Mavericks or higher.

Latest Version: 3.5.9.19 (Updated on 25th September 2020)

Price: Free Try. $52.12 for 1st year and then $74.62/year.

Download Seagate Backup Software Mac Pro

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Mayank is a published author and a tech-blogger with over ten years of writing experience for various domains and industries. At iGeeks, he mostly writes about blogs that solve user-problems and guide them on unleashing the full potential of their Apple Device. He can often be found with his headphones on, typing to the rhythm of some country song.

Seagate Backup Plus Software Download

https://www.igeeksblog.com/author/mayank/

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Richard M. Hays, The Rise and Fall of Authoritarianism in the Teaching of Medicine, 29 Einstein J Biol Med 49 (2013)

The spring of 1903 arrived in Baltimore on schedule, and the trees and flowers on the campus of the Johns College of Medicine were already in bloom. But the medical students scurrying to the amphitheater hardly noticed. Sir William Osler was waiting with a patient, and heaven forbid they should be late.

Sir William was a remarkable figure in the history of American medical education (Geyman, 1983). Born and educated in Canada, he did his graduate work in England, Scotland, Germany, and Australia. Following his arrival at Johns Hopkins, he reorganized the curriculum, combining the English system and the German internship and residency systems. There were two years of clinical clerkships, with small-group teaching at the bedside. Central to his teaching was his textbook: The Principles and Practice of Medicine (Osler, 1892). That day, he planned to discuss a section on cardiac dilatation. He had already mastered the lecture; he had written virtually every word of the book.

The students had spent the night memorizing the section, which focused on history and physical manifestations, since little was known at the time about disease mechanisms, laboratory findings, or treatment. Osler may have taken this avoidance of therapy to the extreme; indeed, Hogan (1999) wondered whether Osler had “paranoia antitherapeuticum baltimorensis.” Still, Osler remains among the immortals.

Osler eventually turned over the updating of his textbook to Henry Christian, who continued the practice of writing the entire text himself. Christian argued that “there is an advantage in presentation by a single author, who has studied the reports of others in the light of his personal knowledge and experience, and presents the various subjects with a unity of critical thought as is not possible in multiple authorship.” Authoritarianism indeed! Edition after edition appeared, with no outside contributors. Principles and Practice lost value, and finally ran aground.

Fortunately for American medical education, a new, multiauthored book under the editorship of Russell Cecil, Textbook of Medicine, appeared in 1927. Experts in their fields wrote each chapter, and disease mechanisms and therapy were in abundance. With Cecil’s work as a model, Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine (Harrison, 1950) was published. Harrison’s book and similar texts are now used throughout the world.

Students and Residents

With the advance of the materials of medical education, we might ask about the students themselves. Here, a paradox appears: students at many schools continued to be subject to professorial authority, receiving rigorous and sometimes ruthless questioning and contributing few of their insights during the rituals of teaching. Dr. Sam Ziegler, Einstein Class of 2002, showed me the memoirs of his grandfather, Dr. Samuel R. Ziegler, who entered Case Western Reserve Medical School in 1936, and recalled the following experience (Ziegler & Ziegler, 1999):

I had another of those real hair-raising experiences to start off my sophomore year. One of the subjects we took was Pathology. Dr. Harold Karsner was the instructor. Dr. Karsner had the reputation of being very hard on students. I was again afraid that I was going to be the first to be called on with my name beginning with a “Z”. I prayed he would start with the “As” when we walked into the amphitheater for our first class. But what did he do? He started with the “Zs”. He called out “Ziegler!” And asked me a question that had something to do with syphilis and serology.

I finally replied, “Dr. Karsner, I don’t know.” I then stammered out some half-assed answer after a short pause during which Dr. Karsner continued to look in my direction. Dr. Karsner took another long drag on his cigarette, inhaled deeply and said “Ziegler, I don’t see how you can be so goddamn dumb.” You could have heard a pin drop in the amphitheater.

This state of affairs went on in our schools—perhaps not so colorfully—for a surprisingly long time. I, like many of my contemporaries, recall professors who were brilliant but seemed to delight in demolishing students. Students were not the only victims; interns and residents were driven to exhaustion by long hours of service and relatively little supervision. Indeed, it could be argued that when reform came, it started with the plight of the members of the house staff.

In 1957, interns and residents in New York City’s public hospitals took leave of their roles as underpaid and over- worked apprentices in what has been termed one of the “last great sweatshops in America” (Duncan, 1996), and founded the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR). In 1969 they were joined by house staffers in the private sec- tor. In 1999 the CIR won a National Labor Relations Board decision guaranteeing residents in private teaching hospi- tals the right to form unions. The CIR went on to negotiate contractual limits for on-call schedules, benefit plans, and higher pay.

Figure 1. The learning studio at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. This is a building designed to accommodate students gathered around conference tables, and conferring with each other on the answers to questions projected on the screens above. Permission to reprint granted by Norman Shafer (University of Virginia Magazine, spring 2011, pp. 36–37).

The movement gained strength following a tragic event in 1984, in which Libby Zion, an 18-year-old girl with a complex history of drug use, was admitted to a New York hospital with fever and agitation. The admitting intern was beset with other patient problems, and Libby died of cardiac arrest. Her father, Sidney Zion, a journalist, took up her cause and “set in motion a series of reforms, notably work hour limitations instituted by the ACGME that have revolutionized modern medical education” (Lerner, 2006). Dr. Bertrand Bell of Albert Einstein College of Medicine headed a panel of experts that recommended that residents could not work more than 80 hours a week or more than 24 consecutive hours.

The Medical Curriculum

There has been a profound and heartening change in the approach to teaching medical students, brought about by a deeper understanding of the teaching process and a greater respect for the ability of the students to teach themselves and each other. After all, they are college graduates, and have already gone through a meaningful pro- cess of achievement and reflection. One need only survey the home pages of our medical schools to appreciate the variety and imagination that have gone into their curricular design. A list of some of the newer programs would include the following:

Earlier encounters during the preclinical years with patients, who share their stories with students.

Problem-based learning, in which students work in small groups to deal with scenarios designed to simulate real-life cases.

Evidence-based medicine, in which students learn to evaluate new drugs and new findings in the search for effective therapies.

Students-as-teachers programs, in which third- and fourth-year students take on the role of teachers for small groups of first- and second-year students. This program has been in use at Einstein, and has been favorably reviewed by both teachers and students.

The opportunity for students in their clinical training periods to return to basic science in the form of class- room teaching during their work on the wards. Also, at Einstein, under the guidance of Dr. Jeffrey Avner, students taking pediatrics are asked to include a “basic science paragraph” in their admission writeups. This serves not only as a reminder of their preclinical studies, but as a means of giving their preceptors and attending physicians an update on the latest in the basic science of the disease at hand: the student as professor, if you will.

The opportunity for students to take an extra year or two to obtain advanced degrees in areas such as public health and business administration.

Team training, moving the student “toward being an effective and competent team player and not an individual achiever” (Morrison, Goldfarb, & Lanken, 2010), in preparation for the growing need for cooperative approaches to healthcare management (Figure 1).

Finally, the Internet. Many of our current students may have come from colleges where the Internet has played a major role in their education. At least two articles in the New York Times have surveyed the role of the Internet in today’s college education (Parry, 2012; Lewin, 2012). At the extreme, the Internet has supplied much of the information that students receive, has influenced their choice of courses, and has even identified appropriate partners for them in the learning process. Inevitably, the Internet is now having an impact on medical education. For example, the syllabus, a printed document so carefully assembled each year as the central source of information for each course, is on the Internet in many schools, and is only part of a flood of sources of information. And, as already noted, it plays an important role in the clinical years.

Some of the programs listed above should, in theory, increase the collegiality among students and the attending physicians and house staffers responsible for their education. But it appears that this is not entirely the case. A recent nationwide poll conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges (2012) showed that a substantial percentage of students still encountered what they regarded as mistreatment, including public humiliation and gender-based discrimination. More work must be done in this area, which may extend beyond the limits of medical education.

Conclusion

This brief commentary has taken us from the early days of medical education, when a few authorities dominated the source of medical knowledge, to the computer age, when students and teachers share the information provided by the Internet. But rest assured: teachers still have much to contribute in terms of experience, perspective, and examples of kindness toward patients seeking their help. Sir William Osler would be grateful to know this.

References

Association of American Medical Colleges. (2012). Medical school graduation questionnaire. Retrieved from https://www.aamc.org/data/gq

Bell, B. M. (2003). Reconsideration of the New York State laws rationalizing the supervision and the working conditions of residents. Einstein Journal of Biology and Medicine, 20(1), 36–40.

Cecil, R. L. (1927). A text-book of medicine, by American authors. Philadelphia, PA: W. B. Saunders.

Christian, H. A. (1942). Principles and practice of medicine, originally written by Sir William Osler, designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine (14th ed.). New York, NY: Appleton-Century.

Duncan, D. E. (1996). Residents: The perils and promise of educating young doctors. New York, NY: Scribner.

Geyman, J. P. (1983). The Oslerian tradition and changing medical education: A reappraisal. Western Journal of Medicine, 138(6), 884–888.

Harrison, T. R. (1950). Principles of internal medicine (1st ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Hays, R. M. (2004). Students as teachers: An idea whose time has come. MedEd @AECOM, 7(1), 1–3.

Hogan, D. B. (1999). Did Osler suffer from “paranoia antitherapeuticum baltimorensis”?: A comparative content analysis of The Principles and Practice of Medicine and Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 11th edition. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 161(7), 842–845.

Lerner, B.H. (2006). A case that shook medicine. Washington Post. November 28: Special Section.

Lewin, T. (2012). Universities reshaping education on the Web. New York Times, July 17, A12.

Morrison, G., Goldfarb, S., & Lanken, P. N. (2010). Team training of medical students in the 21st century: Would Flexner approve? Academic Medicine, 85(2), 254–259.

Parry, M. (2012). Please be eAdvised. New York Times Education Life, July 22, 24–27.

Osler, W. (1892). The principles and practice of medicine, designed for the use of practitioners and students of medicine (1st ed.). New York, NY: D. Appleton.

Ziegler, S. R., & Ziegler, I. H. (1999). For the soul is dead that slumbers—A memoir: The adventures of a surgeon and his family in northern New Mexico (1946– 1996). Shreveport, LA: K’s KopyIt.

#medical education #medicine #medical school #authoritarianism #The Way We Live Now #paradigm shifts #libby zion case #practice of medicine #william oster #medical residency

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 5 years

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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta France to Eurovision with king of controversy

youtube

T’was a good decision for the French televisions to make Destination Eurovision a thing for yet another year. Sure, I only end up having heard of only 1 name per year beforehand (Nassi from 2018 and Florina from 2019, additionally hearing music from one other act from each year but forgetting their names soon after!), but that doesn’t stop everyone else for me from showcasing their best. Heck, I have listened to quite a lot out of some of my Destination 2018 favourites and I have never had any idea who they were! (They were Masoe and Max Cinnamon, je suis absolutely NOT désolée.)

And honestly I found this year extremely much more better to care about. For the previous edition I ended up not caring for like 5 or more songs, because I spent more of my investment in the finalists. This year I pretty much cared about way many more songs, even those that I didn’t wound up liking THAT much. Seemone for example, AKA “the only best possible choice for France from those that don’t need to have big followship numbers to have fans for the song, unlike Bilal tsk tsk”. I can’t say I was 100% mesmerized with her song, but I do remember her more than June the Girl, which was quite a fan fave but also a disaster from 2018. Oh sorry, I mean, June the Who?

And of course Destination 2019 paved the way for some more exciting plot twists and turns, for example, two of the bigger fan favourites fizzling out in the semis (and I already lowkey discussed them on my other segment, Fanwank Assimilation), and another two lowkey favourites crashing and burning live (one of them sounding like she was drunk and scared, another one being less energetic than her song requires). What did that give out at the end? Why, nothing but a homosexual French-Morrocan social media starlet Bilal Hassani of course. Let’s go ahead and review his entry.

My first impression of this song turned me off a little because of how... poppy bland it sounded. Nothing against Madame Monsieur’s co-crafting (they did make a song I liked for last year’s Eurovision), it’s just that I think that I’m a person that’s looking more into pop songs with expectations full of excitement, but then getting something average at the end. The English lines in this are ‘reasonatable’(?) with though - it’s a self-empowerement against haters, telling to oneself that they’re the “king” (yes Bilal may be wearing wigs a lot but for the last time - HE DOES NOT IDENTIFY AS A SHE) and that they “can see [their] kingdom”.

Though it grew on me overtime, to the very point I couldn’t see anyone taking his way, not even Seemone, not even any other darkhorse of the comp. No. My organism was fully adapted to the fact Bilal will win, so I ended up there lowkey supporting his win, even if I wanted someone else deep inside. (Same for A Dal 2019 but my inner systems refused to bring myself to Joci possibly winning an A Dal again, though they saw it being a likely endgame... just in a different light of events, but more on the Hungarian writeup, buckle up for that one because there’ll be buckets of everything for that one! >:) ) That and Bilal was kind of a runaway choice considering France is huge and the jury in there can’t do shit if the televoting is valuated in stronger numbers than in Melodifestivalen (I mean, look at how many points did he get??? His telescore beat the televote’s runner-up’s one by 87 points!), so if he has that many fans in a big enough country then of course they were gonna flock to him massively, and ain’t no Eurofan can’t object against the French televote numbers like these. Though they might seem too big because last year Madame Monsieur won with 118 as opposed to the artist’s of a song’s they have co-written with him for this DESC 150. And the televote gap between the 1st and the 2nd was much more humble - 29.

Maybe it has had to do it with the fact that it has a pretty damn alright pop melody that doesn’t sound specifically written for an ESC NF (unlike most of stuff that’s been done by Ylva & Linda and the like)? Maybe it has got to do with the golden hands of both Madame Monsieur members (pretty sure it might have just been Jean-Karl) touching upon this track (and some randomer whose name I don’t remember rn and I don’t want to? idk)? Maybe it’s the state of Bilal’s studio voice capabilities that carry this across for me nicely enough? Maybe it’s the persona? Somehow I don’t think I know but I’ll probably choose the first option. This is listenable, yes. Flows through like a normal pop song would. Maybe would have needed some polishing in some places (for that exists an up-and-coming revamp that will only be revealed on rehearsals (youhou Moldova 2014), but actually I only think that it will impact the song in a way that it will now be in F minor rather than F sharp minor?? So that Bilal could avoid being one of those kind of people that did sth like this:

RETWEET IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS PICTURE

Anyways. For all that it is, I savour it, it’s pretty decent, it stands out with its message if you know what it is (a kiss-off of the haters that once doubted this “roi”), I kind of like the way it’s being sung (and that vocal variation at 1:21) and some of the lyrics are not that bad actually, and for the matter of fact, I’d DIE for a possibility to create a song like this at best; I don’t quite know if it can do as well as his fanbase imagines, but I really hope it at least doesn’t do France dirty for choosing its up-and-coming-ish social media icon over the NF acts that I’ll be going off about a little later and brings a savourable result! I cannot remove my like for this song now that the deed is done, period. And I really hope that someday all this outrageousness over Bilal in a bad way will be stopped because poor 19 year old, let him be whatever sexuality he wants to be as of now, let him have his fans, let him wear those wigs, and keep those upcoming TV series about a terrorist man with an intent to blow up Eurovision in Israel (or something like that) at bay. Not to mention, these nasty caricatures. I definitely did not like seeing them. I legit feel like we’re almost talking about Lithuanian situation and what do my country’s citizens think about gay rights and all that (spoiler alert: they’re not friendly towards them). Stop it, get some help.

Oh and I know this is essentially 2,5-ish months late now but can I adress something real quick before finishing off this review and moving down to my chance-o-meters and all? Pretty please?

To all the Nightcore lyric videos of “Roi” that did this and would still do this:

Please consider looking back at the official lyric video for “Roi”, where it says:

and thank me in advance.

Not can’t, can. No wonder he’s a “roi”, ffs. What would be a king who cannot see his kingdom now? I’m sorry but this is just lowkey absurd, ngl.

Anyway:

Approval factor: As of the time I’m finishing this, I sort of approve it for now. The big dilemma though is to where do I rank this big boy - do I think it deserves to go higher than UK or lower? Do I drown it in the bottom 3 just because I had a rather negative first impression for it? God knows. For now though I’ll aprove it and carry on, dreading for the revamp obliterating some of the song’s charm that I had for it, just like maybe for Spain.

Follow-up factor: I think it is quite of a stepdown, considering last year a lot of guys publicly ADORED “Mercy”, and Madame Monsieur didn’t even need to have a huge social media following just to get that far as to win Destination! Bilal, however, did, and most people didn’t even fancy his self-empowerement ‘anthem’. And so did I at first, and eventhough I kind of like it as of now, I still prefer “Mercy” big time. France for the kings of controversial song topics and controversial entrants!

Big 5 factor: at the end of the day, you cannot change the fact that most of the Bilal fans are definitely centered in France (and maybe in some outskirts in Belgium as well) and not around Europe, especially the first time viewers, boo. So Bilal’s memorability levels in there from a Big 5 country will be questionable, unless his massive-ass French fandom decides to mass-emigrate for a week, get some foreign Simcards and start spamming votes for their idol - that’s a guaranteed televote for a guaranteed low jury vote, and if high any-votes are any indicators for where things are heading (like for Poland 2016 for instance), then Bilal will finish decently, but without any high-votes, he’ll be stuck in a low-low, maybe somewhere in the bottom 10. Sorry if you’re reading this, any remaining Bilal fans on Tumblr... you better get ready for your mass emigration for a week then?

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Destination’s memes are still glorious to look at, even if it feels like it’s been years since them, considering my social media timeline does not have all that many of them remaining, BUT we still got some highlights from them saved and I can’t wait to freshen up the minds of the mutuals that seemed to have forgotten them. As well as some note-worthy NF songs that the others won’t get the chance to see because only one can represent France and Bilal can’t stand in for any other ones but himself, cuz he is he, and you know he’ll always be. Let’s go:

• Silvàn Areg, probably the biggest underdog-turned-overdog-overnight act of them all out there. Back when his song was still “Le petit Nicolas” (it was changed to “Allez leur dire” thanks to copyright turmoil with some book’s publisher - no it wasn’t about Le petit prince, there ARE Le petit Nicolas stories in there), I don’t think anyone really saw THAT much potential in this song to stand out, maybe except a few select others? I mean who’d even DARE to support this upbeat guitar French-like tune that... has cartooney visuals on stage and that way wows the viewing audience??? NO WAY!!! Yeah these visuals made me truly forget this was one of the songs that didn’t come out in full release yet (as of DESC 2019, only 3 songs weren’t released in full yet, along with The Divaz and Doutson (the latter dragged his kid on stage for his performance BTW, maybe that kid liked Silvàn’s stage illustrations despite maybe not seeing them the way they were supposed to be viewed?) and enjoy the king of popup-book visuals taking it away. So much so I ended up rooting for both visuals AND the song during the final as well (and the final had the colouring book painted!). Don’t you love it when your fave has an impeccable staging AND can nail their performance as well? I sure do... Click to find out his performance serve. I stan men who can sometimes rap out of nowhere when necessary and unexpected.

• Looking for typical French chansons/ballads that make you think of how longsome and melancholic (with a hint of happiness) can things be? Look no further than aforementioned Seemone and her alive-father-ballad, “Tous les deux”. If you’re not here for all this French zany, you can sit back and relax with hearing this piano delight with Adele-ish vocals on top and the paternal gratitude intertwined in the lyrics... well duh, if the constant repetition of “PAPAAAAAA” in the bridge doesn’t give it away for you, an unassumer, then idk what does. Noir, compelling, heart-wrenching, stunning, solid and all that it is. For all the ballad lovers out there. Hope her father’s proud of her achievements (for what did she do is to take the Eurofans by storm against this inevitable Bilal-ness with her feelings-over-fireworks and her strenght to carry out this beauty without crying... in the NF final at least, making International juries side with her more than Bilal, for whom we firstly thought it was over until 150 televotes, even getting the Bjorkdaddy on her side in the semis... only to never win the televoting as hoped to (Bilal was in a different semi so another man won over the girl, while in the final Seemone was 3rd and voted just under another experienced artists and Bilal obviously) and just remain the jury darling) and will hold this song up to himself dearly. We love supportive and thankful children <3

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• This 25 year old chanteuse/violinist Gabriella Laberge, hailing all the way from Canada but with a passionate love to France probably ever since performing in La voix (je t'aime nuit et jour), I mean, The Voice France 2016, dived head-first into the social interraction game, with being all-round positive with her supporters, retweeting their stuff, liking their posts, being in groupchats... she did all she could. And the international jury still let her flop big time. Probably they were too underwhelmed at how engaging her entry, “On cherche encore (Never Get Enough)”, was on the big stage, with Gabriella out there, rocking her yellow pantsuit and dancing on top of a rectangle with other cello-or-contra-bass player madames inside of it and stairs to get on top of that rectangle besides the rectangle. Oh and playing the piano at the beginning. Were they afraid she was gonna fall off the rectangle with her musical ‘gun’ the next time? Was it the show opening that startled her chances (as people are afraid that the same will happen to Srbuk in Eurovision 2019)? I don’t know, but for one that I know is the fact that the poor woman was robbed to the core for all the friendliness she radiated. And the violin lady realness she delivered. Here’s now hoping her strong friendship ties with Olivier Dion will persuade him to fly to France from Canada next for a Destination Eurovision adventure, then? (tbh he’s pretty decent!)

• UH-OH! GIVE A LITTLE RESPECT for The Divaz! Seen by me as a little bit of those girlies that will definitely be drowned in the results because of their... aura and decision of paying a tribute to the late Aretha Franklin, I was shooketh to the core when I saw them NAIL “La voix d’Aretha”... the passion, the drive, the energy, the sass, the style, the dresses, THEM VOCALS! Needless to say I got incredibly sold and even more so happy I was interested in hearing that song all along beforehand, so much I think I tried skipping our own NF over just to see these gurls S-L-A-Y! Hopefully this ain’t the last of them together, they’re a true cool bunch. Happy to see that the international juries saw something in them!

• Emmanuel Moire... now, his song “La promesse” is even more so boring sounding imo and would do less of an impression if people didn’t know the message of it, but the message (and his status in the French music skies), boy does it shine. He sings about making a promise to stay true to himself and not be afraid to admit that his heart beats... FOR A MAN! And where is the Eurofan community that denounces a ballad unless it’s gay?? Some happen to still denounce gay ballads too, but only if it comes to NFs apparently :F I applaud for this song existing tbh as I find it nice myself. Such a shame the man couldn’t really sell his song THAT strong enough though, as I couldn’t help but crack a smile at hearing his falsettos go terribly off, but still feeling sorry for the guy. His staging (that has two men playing around, further going for his song’s memo) and the fact that he beat Seemone in televoting due to his bigger status than the rest of the most other DESC participants this year (save for Chimène Badi which has a status as big as his?). And this one moment that made me feel like I’m looking at Malena Ernman’s true form:

• So how about these few other bedazzling NF flops in a little bit of blitz summary, seemingly as the paragraphs here are already going out of hand? Sure! Allow me to introduce y’all to the shy French Mélovin named Ugo who was tryna get to the spotlight all by himself with a song about... crushing I think (he’s fantasizing of meeting a gal in some interesting interesting ways), but tanked majorly live due to being nervous and letting the pre-recorded backings overwhelm him majorly. Then comes the other up-and-coming chanteuse Florina which I also talked about in the fanwank flops section (though I published it right after Spain’s NF because I had enough of THAT rattling around my drafts... and same goes for the rest of my 2019 reviews!) but I’ll put up a mention for her because I undercooked my thoughts for her. “In the Shadow” - studio god-tier that sadly reeked of “Chandelier” heavily and another NF underperformance that grew condescencing during the rehearsal-snippets period that maybe made people keep their hopes up during it just like for Rykka’s, Jana Burčeska’s and Sennek’s odd pre-party performances. Who knows if Michela would have followed them suit if she was allowed to attend all the pre-parties despite “rehearsals”! In the end we still got a lackluster performance and a total 0 point score from the international juries. Wow. I hope that didn’t scar her for life. Also worth a mention are Battista Acquaviva, the Basque-singing goddess that had some sort of a potential but heavily crushed it by sounding weak and a bit drunk even (or even similar to this) on her own performance + adding some Roman-esque shirtless hunks for no reason (sweetie if they didn’t work for Anggun then what’s the point saving your live with them? Unless you can mask it up like Demy, just leave), and the other studio fave that tanked that was Tracy de Sá who served a French-Spanish (!! that’s where the title came from, you really thought the song was gonna b called “Par ici” noooo) summer bop with her rapping skills on fleek and her desire for “whiskey cocktails rum rum rum” as a cherry on this delightful cocktail has also got really grinded down by her live performance where she was barely even enthusiastic to live up to her own song and maybe have needed some of those liquors she offered on the song to make it sound better. But hey, at least from Tracy we got 1) studio version leak drama that obviously affected the poor sis so hard she raged about it on Instagram a bit; 2) slapping track about parties n stuff for our own summer 2019; 3) her own little version of that notorious song which wouldn’t probably be remembered so fondly in the memedom if not for some mother’s pasta dish; 4) the light tunnel she emerged from at the beginning of the song during her performance, which in reality is just the NF arena exit tunnel; 5) this meme:

Yeah well, good luck at your hairbuns and your hoop-de-hoop ‘rings trying to save you this time

• I was also gonna add this interesting phenomena of “hot violinist guy” because of course I remember this hype being set up for some dudes (especially for THAT violinist. I remember almost everyone suddenly crushing on him but I couldn’t care enough to buy it because lol!) even without their song coming out to public - yes I’m talking of Lautner who obviously also tanked during their live performance of this song but the international juries loved the shit out of it (same for aforementioned Ugo... and mind you I wrote them down as sure NQs after seeing their carcrash performances live! To think they would have almost MADE it thanks to them and SHATTER my predictions???) and their bromance probably lived on... for another 15 minutes

And the ‘drunken auntie’ of someone’s that sang a rather underrated catchy spring-esque sunflowery song but completely ruined it by her awkward jumping around in red suit on stage, PhilipElise, but that’d require me to brief my thoughts upon like nearly all of the damn roster of the irrelevants, so it’s best if I forget all the rest and move on!

• Not to mention, Bilal himself is a highlight. On an occasion he’s such a mood, as demonstrated on this first biggest ESC 2019 NF season meme down here:

And keep in mind, that wasn’t the final. But for the final this happened, which is still as amusing as the first:

Epic hairspin! Laura Rizzotto wishes she remembered this technique just in time to engage some more audience so that they could at least pull her out of the NQ zone.

• Who cannot forget the occasional thought of Garou, the NF’s host, singing. This year he was one of the final’s interval acts, and his choice to sing was because of honouring a Frenchman who passed away not so long before the DESC broadcast. Truly the dedication <3

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• One of those NF cases that had people rallying up against Eurovision being in Tel Aviv and withdrawing the broadcasters from it by their own force because “well fuck you, our feelings and sentiments towards Palestine are more important than this schlager-ridden shitshow musicfest!!” lolno. Some protesters came on stage sometime after Netta’s guest performance during Semifinal 2, and both Garou and the security guards did their best and hardest to chase them away, but some still got on shot because reasons. This is ridiculous (as much as it was when it was found out that some people in Spain were waiting outside RTVE’s headquarters before the OT 2019 ESC Gala just to make THEIR move) and thankfully it didn’t follow on many more NFs to come.

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• oh and also the neon cube argh

Feels like a way larger post than I intended to, and this review is waaaaay long overdue, so at least I tried reminding you of the memes, didn’t I? Anyway, I wish Bilal for all the best in Tel Aviv! xx

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #france 2019 #bilal hassani #roi #france

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meyerlansky · 7 years

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platoapproved replied to your photo “boardwalk empire: daemon au [5/?] arnold – clouded leopard…”

post the deets immediately just saying

UM EXCUSE YOU’RE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE ONLINE THIS WEEKEND I SAW UR POSTS

i am working on the writeups for the previous two posts, i swear, but. you all know who i am as a person at this point. team ny’s picks were the FIRST ONES I DID and i’m fairly secure in the rationale for all of them SO UH:

ar — clouded leopard

given the rationale for the other bird daemons i assigned, ar probably should’ve gotten the birdiest bird of all time, but i picked all four of these out before anyone else’s so he’s solidly been a clouded leopard for me for like two years. clouded leopards are at least semi-arboreal, though, so the “above street level” mentality plays out there, and he is more directly involved in the actual dirty work of gangstering than nucky, who does still try to play politician for a good chunk of the series. ar is pulled back far enough from the cooperative elements of the organization he oversees that giving him a canid wouldn’t have fit, but a big cat fits his mystique and reserve perfectly. at the same time, something like a tiger or other well-known big cat is too flashy, too visible, too obvious. clouded leopards are supremely under-studied and not a whole lot is known about them in comparison to other apex predators, so it seemed like a sensible choice of species. all four of them have bonus details and are more fleshed out than most other characters’ daemons are, because, again, you all know who i am as a person at this point, so here are ar’s: her name is maximiliane, with every flourish of pronunciation that is appropriate on a name like that. they settled in ar’s late teens, after a few years of skulking around pool halls playing at wolves to try to fit in. once ar figures out how to work the flow of gambling, they try some of those flashier big cat forms on for size, but it’s not until ar owns a few games of his own that she settles into a clouded leopard.

charlie — black-backed jackal

charlie’s daemon has actually gone through two iterations; he is the archetypical wild canid for sure, so that was never in question, but picking out the species has gone through some changes. initially i gave him a golden jackal, but after thinking about it more in depth i switched the species to a black-backed jackal instead. superficially, black-backed jackals are much prettier to look at than golden jackals, they’re much more visually striking and, listen, charlie’s a pretty boy, i’m not gonna let that go unacknowledged in the daemon i pick for him, i’m allowed to be superficial here. the more in-depth reasons include the more basal nature of the black-backed jackal’s taxonomy: they’re more removed from domestication than any other wolf or jackal, but not as removed as the foxes like chalky’s grey fox. charlie very much has a “pack” in meyer and benny, and operates best when he’s got the support of that pack, but he pushes back pretty hard against the idea that he should be loyal to other italians just because they’re also italian, considering he calls for the death of the two bosses who try to keep him from his partners and profits, so the black-backed jackal’s taxonomic position fits better than the golden jackal’s did. [for reference, the golden jackal is more closely related to the ethiopian wolf, but jimmy’s reliance on the traditional don’t-make-waves structure of AC’s political maneuvering got him killed, so i wanted charlie further up the chain than that.] black-backed jackals are also relatively less specialized than a lot of canids, and able to survive in a variety of environments—the parallel to charlie’s prolific business [and personal] ties to non-italian gangsters is probably clear there. the only holdover from the golden jackal daemon days is her name, which is oriana, from the italian for “golden” because i am unoriginal and uninspired in my naming. they settled after charlie’d been in hampton farms for about a month; for at least a year or two before that they were trying on different canids for size, but he comes out of hampton farms with a concrete idea of who he is and who he wants to be, and it’s just about the only good thing they take out of there.

meyer — beech marten

THEY EAT CARS. BEECH MARTENS EAT CARS AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY THEY DO IT. i don’t even NEED any other reasons for this one. I HAVE THEM, but i feel the need to stress that the car-eating is a determining factor in determining daemon species for ex-tool-and-die-shop-worker car-nerd meyer. because, really, any of the martes or mustela species would work pretty well for him? he’s tiny and cute and looks relatively nonthreatening, but then you find out that beech martens routinely take down hares twice their size and there’s a few recorded incidences of house cats [who are effectively tiny superpredators in their own right] being injured or killed by martens, and after that you’re a bit less flippant about saying they’re harmless. that said, beech martens in particular do tend to forage a bit more than pine martens or fishers, and since meyer tends to prefer the least-confrontational option [until he doesn’t] that felt like a pretty good fit. also, beech marten pelts are generally considered less desirable to trappers than pine marten or sable pelts, so there’s a comparison to be made there wrt meyer’s exclusion from the formal “mafia” structure on the basis of not-being-italian which you all know i have my own scholarly gripes about but ANYWAY. bonuses for meyer: her name is atarah, which i have in my notes is the hebrew word for “crown” because, again, i am uninspired and unoriginal when it comes to names. they settled early, i mean early-early, as in before meyer hits his teens. meyer and atarah prefer to have it out of the way, but it… unsettles people. for a few years. which they find useful, most of the time, but the set of people that are unsettled by how early they settle include meyer’s family. that stings, a little bit.

benny — black-necked spitting cobra

like charlie, benny also went through a few iterations of species, and i honestly had trouble nailing him down to an ORDER for a while. i settled on something with some sort of externalized offensive “attack” pretty early on, given how combative he is. very prominent in the running was a bombardier beetle, both because they also spray chemicals as a form of attack, and because it plays into the “bugsy” nickname, but ultimately the nickname is why i decided against it; since by all accounts benny hated being called that and i don’t really want to saddle him with a soul that he hates, and because i’m not super comfortable with the ableism of the nickname, i shelved that one as his permanently settled form pretty quick. in the AU itself, though, i think they did a long stint with the bombardier beetle form, long enough that people thought that might be what they settled as, which itself contributed to the nickname. once it started bothering them, they tried on other forms for size and eventually she settles as a black-necked spitting cobra. it maintains the offensive attack thing, while also being flashy as fuck. a jet black huge fuck-off cobra is so up benny’s alley i cannot even stand it. it took some figuring out to pick a spitting cobra species, and i’d be lying if i said the flashiness of the black-necked cobra wasn’t a heavy factor. one of the other species in the running was the rinkhals, which also has an interesting visual appearance. the black-necked spitting cobra has higher accuracy with its venom, though, and a higher tendency to spit in the first place than most other spitting cobras. she’s named neva, from the hebrew for “speech,” and in terms of settling, they’re pretty much the exact opposite of meyer in that they settled very late, probably not before benny’s early 20s. they enjoy the freedom of multiple forms for as long as possible, and even after neva settles they’re never 100% comfortable with feeling stuck as one thing.

#replies #platoapproved #boardwalk empire #bwedaemons #daemon au #I AM WORKING ON THE OTHER SET I SWEAR #i've just #had these done #for two years at this point #oops

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hironvn · 5 years

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paradoxicalca · 5 years

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I used 17 rankings to simulate Friday's draft 1 Million times; 2019 Edition! Who could be available when your team picks? Results inside.

People enjoyed this last year and I enjoyed doing it so here is this years version. I've also made more graphs this year.IntroOnce again, the goal is to see, given publicly available information, the likelihood of each player getting selected at any given location in the draft. Rather than just a consolidated list, I wanted to run the draft over and over to really account for possible drops.I was partly inspired to do this by online and offline discussions where people exclaimed to me that "there's no way player X will be available at pick N".Rankings UsedI used 17 different rankings this year (noting, paywalled rankings not linked): Future Considerations, Russ Cohen (Sportsology), Craig Button (TSN), Prospect Pipeline, ISS Hockey, Hockey Prospect, Ryan Kennedy (THN), McKeens Hockey, Corey Pronman (Athletic), Cam Robinson (Dobber Prospects), Sam Cosentino (SN),Bob McKenzie (TSN), Scott Wheeler (Athletic), EliteProspects, Tony Ferrari (Dobberprospects), Will Scouch (Scouching), Steve Kournianos (Draft Analyst)Again I tried to get a good range of opinions as the more diverse the lists the better this works. This year actually has considerably more diverse rankings than last year. The top 2 are clear cut. After that, there is a ton of disparity (Such as Zegras as high as 3rd and as low as 21st!). 62 total ranked players. I was really curious how this would play out in the simulation.MethodologyThis model works by simulating the draft 1 million times. Teams are randomly assigned rankings to use in each iteration.Each simulation is essentially this: Every team walks into Vancouver on draft day and randomly selects a piece of paper containing one of the aforementioned rankings. They then select the highest-ranked player still available to them at their pick. Once all 31 picks are made, we restart. 31 picks, repeated 1 million times for 31 million total selections.Pre-Results (A quick note on draft falls)As Bob McKenzie always says; "it only takes one team to like one guy higher." That's why there's always unforeseeable reaches and drops. Even if a player is a consensus top 10 pick, they could drop lower. For example, Chicago, Colorado and LA might all have Byram at #4 overall. But if Chicago has Turcotte 3rd, Colorado has Zegras 3rd and LA has Dach 3rd, then Byram will fall to 6th. Despite all 3 teams agreeing he's the 4th best player, he still goes 6th. We likely saw this with Wahlstrom, Zadina and Veleno last year.ResultsLets get to the results. This year I made violin plots to get an overall picture. There are also histograms and cumulative probability charts for each player. The cumulative probability chart shows the likelihood each given player is still available at each pick. I also have a few other graphs:The "Top 11"The Middle PackThe Best of the RestAll Player ChartsSpreadsheet ResultsResults Breakdown and Fun FactsI wanted to run through a couple of the interesting players or groups of playersLets start with Hughesand Kakko. These 2 are going first and second, it’s a given. There is some dispute about the order, but this sim has Hughes then Kakko in 100% of simulations.I found there was a fairly defined "Top 11". Many people thinkByram and Turcotte will go 3/4 and the sims mostly agree.After the aforementioned 4 is a big pack that includes 3 WHL forwards (Cozens, Dach, Krebs) and 3 USHL forwards (Zegras, Caufield, Boldy). Finally, the Russian enigma Vasili Podkolzin, who ended up higher in this sim than I expected.Spencer Knight demands an explanation. Many of these rankings separated their goalie rankings from their player rankings. This led to Knight being either ranked in the mid-first round or not ranked at all. His graph is likely skewed downward. Hence the cool bimodal graph. Pavel Dorofeyev has a similar looking graph due to split opinions on him.One of the most polarizing prospects this year is Arthur Kaliyev. Who some have as high as 11th, and others have outside their 31. Yet it looks as though the 2 extremes will balance out nicely as he's projected to go in the middle of the first round. Notably, he fell outside the first round in 4 sims!Philip Tomasino is an interesting one to me as some have him hyped up to the top 12 or 15. Nobody on my rankings had him higher than 17th, and 5 rankings didn't even have him top 31. Nonetheless, he went top 31 in 96.981% of simulationsVictor Soderstrom was picked between 8th and 27th in 999,999 out of the 1 million simulations. He also had the widest range of selections. Peculiarly, in the other one sim, he fell out of the first round. So when people say "There is NO WAY Soderstrom goes in the 2nd round" you can tell them "Yes, there's a 1 in a million chance".FAQWhy only the first round?A couple reasons; Firstly, many of these rankings only go to 31 spots and I don’t want to oversaturate on the longer lists. Secondly, many of these rankings are public to #31 but behind a paywall for everything afterwards. Thirdly, There is so much variety in lists beyond the first 20-30 picks that it's basically useless."Ranking X is dumb because player Z is too high/low"This complaint should be directed at the ranking-makers. More variety is better for this simulation as it better reflects the randomness that is the NHL draft. The reality is, we see players go 10+ spots higher or lower than expected every year.How did you do this?I modified and re-used my Python program from last year for the actual simulations. The rankings and results were compiled in excel. The rankings and results were compiled in excel. I used R (including ggplot2 and dplyr packages) to create the graphs.Can I see the code?Absolutely. I have the Python and R scripts here on GitHub. Note that I removed the rankings behind a paywall. I also don't really understand GitHub so hopefully that works (can I make the repo pull-only?)Did you validate the data this year so you don't have duplicate players?Yes...there should be no duplicates I hopeHow long did this take?The Python script took 28 minutes and 48.57 seconds to complete the 1 Million sims. Last year was ~50 minutes, yay for upgraded hardware. The graphs, rankings, and other stuff took much longer, but it was a good learning exerciseI want to read more!I made a more in-depth writeup here if you're interested. Also, peruse the data and the graphs.TL;DR: The draft is even more wide open than last year and basically anyone can go anywhere I used 17 rankings to simulate Friday's draft 1 Million times; 2019 Edition! Who could be available when your team picks? Results inside. Source

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thrashermaxey · 6 years

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Weekend power rankings: Counting down my worst rankings of the season (so far)

We’re getting into that time of year when power rankings start to lock in from week-to-week. A team might still occasionally have an especially good or bad week and move a spot or two, and every now and then a dark horse will make a surprise charge down the homestretch. But generally, once we get past the trade deadline and close in on the 70-game mark, there really isn’t much reason to make big changes to what we have. Spoiler alert: The Lightning are in first place again this week.

Before we can start looking at our Stanley Cup and draft lottery hopefuls, let’s take a look back with a different kind of top five: My five worst rankings from this season.

I’ll pause here so you can all make your “How did you narrow it down?” jokes.

It’s true that in one sense, we’ve got plenty of candidates to choose from. In all, there have been 15 teams that have made at least one appearance in the top five, and 13 that have made an appearance in the bottom (including one team that showed up in both). That’s a lot, more than in any previous season I’ve been doing this. It’s been a volatile season. Or maybe some of the picks have just been bad.

To be honest, I don’t think anything stands out as an embarrassingly awful call; it’s not like there was some week that had Tampa in the bottom five or the Kings as a Cup contender. But that’s a low bar and let’s just say that some of those picks hold up better than others. Today we’re going to take our medicine and own up to five of the worst:

5. Arizona Coyotes ranked No. 1 in the bottom five (Oct. 5) – The Coyotes might end up making the playoffs and at one point I thought they were the odds-on favorite to finish dead last. That’s not a great look, although in this case, it comes with a pretty decent excuse: The season was just a few days old. We even called that week’s rankings the “way-too-early edition.” The Coyotes had started 0-2-0 so they were probably as good a pick as anyone; within a few weeks they’d made their exit from the bottom five to great fanfare, never to return. But for one week at least, I thought they’d be worse than the Senators, Red Wings or Kings. They were not.

4. Colorado Avalanche ranked No. 4 in the top five (Dec. 3) – “I’ve never fully bought into the Avalanche. I still don’t, if I’m being honest.” Good for you, past me, but you still let a hot streak mislead you into ranking them as the fourth-best team in the league. This one only lasted a week, but it doesn’t hold up well and unlike with the Coyotes, I can’t claim the “it was early” excuse.

3. Buffalo Sabres ranked No. 5 in the top five (Nov. 26) – Of all the teams to crack the top five this year, none will finish lower than the Sabres in the final standings. In that sense, no call was more wrong than this one.

If that’s the case, why not rank it higher? For one thing, the Sabres only showed up in the top five once, at the tail end of that ten-game winning streak. That stretch had briefly elevated Buffalo to first place overall, and yet I only had them fifth that week. More importantly, my writeup was packed with caveats, like that their top-five case “is far from iron-clad” and that this is “probably the only chance to slide them into the top five” and “Will it last? Maybe not.” Reading it all these months later, I half-expected to go back and see that the first letter of every line spelled out “I don’t actually believe this ranking.” But I still made it, so I’ll own it. (But do check out the comments that week from furious Sabres fans who insist I’m short-changing them by ranking them below the Lightning.)

2. St. Louis Blues ranked in the bottom five (five weeks total, as late as Dec. 10) – I have to include this one, especially since it lasted over a month. But the funny thing was that at the time, nobody thought I was wrong. If anything, it became a running joke that Blues fans were mad that I was going easy on them (they dipped as low as No. 3 for a few weeks). As I wrote on Dec. 10, “something big has to be coming in St. Louis.” I was right, just not in the way I thought I was.

1. Minnesota Wild in the top five (for three straight weeks beginning on Nov. 12) – The Wild aren’t as bad as the Sabres and might finish ahead of the Avalanche too. But what stands out here is how long I had them listed – three weeks in all, with them drifting as high as third after a big win over the Jets. And I can’t even fall back on hedging my bets when I wrote about them, because I was saying things like “Yeah, it’s probably time to start taking them seriously” and “Honestly, (fifth spot) is probably too low for the Wild.”

They were playing well at the time, going 10-2-0 at one point, but it was a stretch powered largely by red-hot goaltending from Devan Dubnyk. He eventually cooled down and then got hurt to start an extended cold streak. I couldn’t have seen an injury coming, but I was too eager to buy into the Wild as a legitimate Central favorite instead of what they were: a decent team that can sometimes look like more than that when the goalie is hot and they’re getting some breaks.

OK, I feel better. Now onto this week’s ratings, which I assure you are all 100 percent accurate. (Unless they’re not, in which case, uh, it was still too early.)

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.

One big story to watch in the final month: The Colorado Avalanche are going to have to make their playoff push without Gabriel Landeskog, who’s out four-to-six weeks with an upper-body injury. That timeline means he could be back early in the playoffs and there’s a slight chance he could return before the end of the season. But as Ryan Clark wonders, by that point will it still matter?

5. Washington Capitals (41-21-7, +22 true goals differential*) – Screw it, I’m back on board.

The Capitals showed up in our very first top five, then vanished for two months before reappearing in December. They hung around for five weeks, reaching as high as the two-spot on New Year’s Eve even as I wrote that the ranking “seems a little high.” Now, after two weeks of winning pushed them back into top spot in the Metro, they seem like as good a pick as any out of a crowded top-five field.

Or maybe not. You might prefer the Jets, who have a decent case even though they lost in Washington last night. But the Jets look to have a tougher road out of the Central than what the Caps will have in the Metro and that matters too. For the same reason, I can’t talk myself into Nashville. The post-Stone trade Golden Knights? They’ve looked great at times, but the top of the Pacific is very tough and they’re locked into third. The Islanders are still at least in the mix, but I’d rather know more about the Robin Lehner injury before I get them back near the top five. And the Leafs somehow haven’t shown up here in eight weeks even as they’re tied for second in the league in wins.

It’s a tough call. But this is about who’s going to win the Cup, and when in doubt, deferring to the defending champs doesn’t seem like a bad way to break the tie. For this week, at least.

4. Boston Bruins (42-18-9, +35) – Figuring out where to rank the Bruins is really getting interesting. On the one hand, you could make a very strong case that they’re the second-best team in the NHL. Last night’s loss aside, I’m not even sure you’d get much pushback from anyone. That means they should be ranked second, right?

But this isn’t a “best teams” list. It’s “most likely to win the Cup,” and that means that having the best team in the league in your division is bad news. Without going into the whole playoff format debate again, the Bruins’ path out of the Atlantic is brutal, and unlike the next two teams on the list, there’s no hope of improving it down the stretch.

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from All About Sports http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DownGoesBrown/~3/3pRg6MRLRag/weekend-power-rankings-counting-down-my.html

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thisisaworkofheart-blog · 6 years

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On My School

I perched myself on a student’s desk, behind the group of kids huddled on my carpet, observing the school counselor fiddle with my computer until she found the webpage she was looking for. It was an online review of our elementary school: two-stars. That meant, according to this website, that our school scored below average on our standardized tests, our overall academic improvement, and our ability to service disadvantaged students. She scrolled past the cringe-worthy statistics until she reached the comment section. Most of the comments slammed the teachers for being uneducated and inattentive. They chastised the school for not teaching the students, but rather babysitting them.

I watched my students’ faces grow solemn and, I swear, my classroom had never been that quiet. I remember thinking: Why? Why lower my students’ self-esteem when it’s already below ground-level? The counselor was apparently trying to use these reviews as a rallying cry of sorts? I’m not sure. Maybe it was an attempt to motivate students to perform higher on test scores or behave better because they were scaring other kids off. But why? Why remind them of their disadvantages?

My kids were well aware that they were unable to read on grade level. They knew they were under-performing on state tests (because she had told them just a few weeks prior to this event). Why did they need anonymous people on the internet to confirm the fact that they were getting a shoddy education? I was furious. This was the same counselor who decided that only two students in the fifth grade (out of ~120 students) needed counseling when nearly all of my students came from broken homes; all of whom were on free or reduced lunch; all of whom were products of this so-called “two-star” school.

I realized, in that moment, why we were a two-star school. In my little sisters school in rural upstate NY, she has one primary teacher who, at any given time, has two teacher aids to assist her. If my sister is having an issue, she has almost immediate access to the counselor and can request a meeting at any time with her principal. In my school, however, if a student was terrorizing my classroom, I had no resources at my disposal. No one to bail me out. No one to step in.

I was forced to rely on my fellow teachers, rather than my administration, to help me. My fellow fifth grade teachers were the only resources at my disposal. On several occasions, when things got out of hand, I would send a student to Ms. Newman’s classroom to bail me out. We would switch rooms and while she chastised the students who were acting up, I would wipe my tears in the corner of her room. Despite having four building principals, there was rarely and authority presence in our hallway.

My students were more intimidated by the possibility of Ms. Newman coming into my class than they were of Mr. Anthony, the fifth and sixth grade principal. Mr. Anthony had good intentions but his overall execution was painfully flawed. Perhaps my most productive and positive week, in fact, was when Mr. Anthony took a vacation and our head principal, Ms. Mayor (who was normally out of the building for meetings), took over as our local principal. The kids knew that Mr. Anthony wouldn’t follow through on any of his disciplinary actions, Ms. Mayor, however, meant business. There is one salient example that come to mind when I think of Mr. Anthony’s inability to discipline.

The first occurred in a sixth grade teacher’s classroom. The teacher, Mr. Henry, had sent a student directly to Mr. Anthony (this was not typical because normally a student would remain in class even after a tantrum; the only way a student would receive a consequence was if a formal writeup was delivered to Mr. Anthony but this would typically take about two days to process.) The student in question had said something along the lines of f*ck this class, f*ck this school, this is f*cking stupid. I’m paraphrasing but you get the gist. Moments later, the student was sent back to class because he had cussed around Mr. Henry, not at him. In one simple action, Mr. Anthony had completely undermined Mr. Henry’s authority in his own classroom. He sent a strong signal to the students that they could do whatever they wanted so long as it wasn’t a direct threat to Mr. Henry.

The teachers were left to fend for themselves.

Mr. Anthony, however, was not the problem with the school but rather a symptom of the larger issue at hand. Failure to hold students and staff responsible was the norm. A fight between students would often result in a suspension, but usually only for the perpetrator. If students disrespected teachers, however, they would only receive a firm talking-to. In an effort to regain our accreditation, the principals were hesitant to suspend students because if too many were suspended, the government would not return our funding. Students were rarely expelled, in fact, my school was the last resort for kids who didn’t want to be sent to the Special School District which housed kids who needed more structure and support than we were able to accommodate. Throughout the year, my classroom was a revolving door with students leaving and students enrolling, without any prior knowledge on who they were or where they were coming from.

This might not seem like an issue unless you’re aware of the demographics of our students. Students entered our classroom and all we knew were their first and last names. To give you an idea of why this was problematic: Let’s take Matthew as an example. Matthew entered my classroom and I was given zero information about him. It wasn’t until his first breakdown that I realized something wasn’t right. I filled out care team packets and alerted my principal and school counselor but to no avail. It wasn’t until April (Matthew was enrolled in September) that I was informed that Matthew had an IEP. This was a child who desperately struggled in regular classes and had multiple outbursts everyday. He struggled not only paying attention in class but also forming basic friendships. As it turns out, Matthew was supposed to have upwards of 10 hours/week of specialized pull-out instruction to help, not only with his academic needs, but his social and emotional needs. Matthew was not only forgotten by the system, he was completely betrayed by it.

I didn’t trust the system my school had in place. Moreover, I didn’t trust my principal or the guidance counselor to intervene when things were chaotic in my classroom. The counselor had already made it clear that she wouldn’t accept students simply based off of my recommendation, and Mr. Anthony was knee deep in write-ups that rarely resulted in any administrative action. I was overwhelmed trying to hold my own as a first-year teacher (who received only eight weeks of training) while also being a full-time therapist and disciplinarian for traumatized kids.

I can honestly say that I wasn’t the best teacher BUT I can say that I tried my hardest. By the end of the year, I was one of two TFA teachers who remained at my school, out of the five of us who had began the year. In my opinion, we were all baited into this illusion that we could change the trajectory of these children and provide them with the education they deserved. In reality, most of the teachers who had any type of classroom management were also borderline verbally or physically abusive towards their kids. I saw teachers scream at students within an inch of their face. Students came running into my classroom, tears streaming down their face, claiming that another teacher had grabbed them by their collar and pinned them against the wall. I was encouraged to lock my door and remind my students that what happens in my classroom, stays in my classroom. And, though I never used it, a common phrase I heard was: Who are they gonna believe… me (a teacher) or you (a student)?

Because of the lack of support from our administration, teachers were forced to use intimidation and fear to maintain order in our classrooms. On a few regrettable occasions, I was even overly aggressive or angry with my students. I truly felt like the only way to have “good” classroom management and to gain the respect of my students was to let loose on them.

Towards the end of the year, I abandoned my anger and made a vow to my kids to no longer raise my voice at them. It worked. They did what they were supposed to do and I did too… but I think we reached a state of symbiosis because they felt bad for me. I told them on many occasions that I couldn’t stand getting mad at them, that it hurt my heart. They listened, bless their hearts. By the end of the year, they acted “good” because they didn’t want to make me upset (AKA cry); because they loved me and they knew I loved them. But this, too, wasn’t a good environment. I was becoming a shell of myself because of all the anger that echoed through the halls of the school. I was unable to be fully present for them in the way that they needed me to be.

When I told my students that I would not be returning next year, I assured them that they were not the reason why. And that was true. My kids were fantastic; it was the environment I could no longer tolerate. My students acted out because they received no counseling from the “counselor” and no discipline from the principal. My students were kids. Meaning, they relied on the adults around them to make decisions that were in their best interests. I tried to do the best I could but I felt helpless against the weight of their problems. My kids deserve better than a two-star rating.

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