#this is what happens when you decide you want to play on your crafting alts

[keanuquotes]

As Keanu confirms — it started with “Lust,” the title of the seventh song on Dogstar’s Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees (releasing October 6), and the first they wrote for the new album. He flashes pages from his spiral-bound notebook, symbols, words, and letters that look more like sanskrit. “The guys call it my hieroglyphics,” he says, of his coded method of keeping track while they’re building a song.

“Sunrise,” the album’s eventual ninth track, came second, and this may be the theme of the whole album, as well as Dogstar’s official return to the music scene after 20 years: warm, bright, hopeful with a heavy dose of pull-at-your-heartstrings nostalgia, as only an authentically alt-rock ‘90s band can do. While internationally their names might not carry the same recognition, within the band, they are the sum of three equally vivid parts: singer-guitarist Bret Domrose, bassist Keanu Reeves, and drummer Robert Mailhouse. It’s this triality that sparks reference to that ancient Greek philosopher who proclaimed the number three the best of all numbers — and the most harmonious.

“I guess it's just who we are. Hey, we're warm people,” Bret jokes with a laugh, and though the ease and deep friendship these three share speaks for itself, the overall grungy-summery sound was actually the overall endgame. Robert credits producer Dave Trumfio for bringing “beautiful, layered, lush, warm tones in combination with what we came up with ourselves.”

“We specifically looked for a vintage Neve mixing console because we wanted that warm, fat '70s sound,” Bret adds, explaining the band’s process of choosing studios based on gear. “Lyrically, I try to keep hope as an undercurrent. Musically…if we go to a dark spot or something, we don't spend too much time there.

“That's just the way we craft songs…with some hope.”

No need to call the new album a comeback. They’ve been plenty busy over the last two decades, keeping in touch and even playing together, as friends — who also happen to be bandmates — do. On this mid-September afternoon, they’re just now back on their Southern California home turf after two shows in Yokohama and Osaka. Ironically, as Bret recalls, it was in Japan where they had their “last” show in 2003, after which they decided to pause. “We came back [from Japan in 2003] and it was just one of those things where we just took a break and then everyone went their own way, different musically, and just expanded and tried different things,” Bret explains. “We always stayed together and we were always friends.”

Time passed and lots changed, namely the industry, and the strengthened climate of artists’ creative control. This time, the guys were determined to be in charge.

“There was just such a machinery that we didn't have to contend with this time,” Bret says, describing the process of creating the new album as a fresh experience. “There was just so much garbage back in the day that now, this time around, we realized, ‘Wow. We could be in charge of this thing. We don't need a record company right now. We can do this all ourselves and we can even release it ourselves, and the music will get heard.’”

This time, Dogstar would focus on the music they wanted to create. “If you're an artist, you're sculpting or painting, you're going to start a new project, you never go, ‘This painting has to be a hit,’” Robert says. “I think all those years that passed really helped in a way because when we got back together, that's exactly what happened. We got into a room and we made sounds, and we started building music without thinking anything other than pleasing ourselves.”

They all agreed: At this stage, they were going to start with songs they liked. They’d create music for themselves. Robert remembers Keanu’s let’s-see-what-happens attitude as a “refreshing” start.

“Roast the chicken and see if it burns,” Bret says with a laugh.

“It's this kind of step-by-step approach…” Robert recalls. “It was like a tasting kitchen...let's try the bouillabaisse.”

“Then at the end, we opened a restaurant,” Bret smiles, carrying the joke.

Keanu leans forward, for emphasis, proclaiming: “Rock ‘n roll!”

“You’ve got the lights…you got the waft of cigarette smoke coming in the back door…it was old-school good times,” Bret says of their July show at The Roxy, “a good, old Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard rock night…you look out five rows into the audience and there’s Steven Tyler dancing. You got that going.”

Their DIY/anti-corporate/non-conformist attitude from the beginning should give a hearty glimpse into why these guys create music. Good. Old Hollywood. Sunset Boulevard. Rock night. That’s Dogstar, in sum, not simply because they were formed in Los Angeles, but because their reputation as a kick-ass live band is eternally fixed, their garage-band inception firmly rooted in their souls and sound.

Keanu agrees that a true garage band is a state of mind. Or heart. “Because we get together and we fucking play music and we start to jam and we start to just play.”

“It’s that same energy, for sure,” Bret agrees. “It's that same energy that you have when you're a kid…when you're starting out and you're doing it for all the right reasons. You don't care if your ears are ringing at the end of the day because you're in too small of a space, your amp is too loud, or whatever it is. All that not caring, that's what makes a good record, I think. That's what makes a cohesion between the band members, too.”

“I think we're a marriage of that,” Keanu says. “Now we're a marriage or an integration of that garage band with caring and trying to keep that spirit of that, but take in our experiences and how we want to care about our music and it works.”

Bret starts: “Yes, I think over the years, we've learned to file off the rough edges a bit and how to use the equipment properly and how to—“

“We're pro now,” Keanu quips, and the guys erupt in laughter.

“We're a pro garage band now!” Bret says.

“The pro garage band,” Keanu says. Everyone is still laughing.

“Thanks to Rob, we have a nicer garage,” Bret says.

From their initial jam sessions up to the actual recording, they’ve managed to preserve that authentically stripped-down “pro garage band” sound on Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees. In a world of filters and special effects, they’ve chosen a more honest, old-school route. “Hit songs” are amongst the many words they never mention. “Chart success,” “singles,” and “algorithm” are a few notable others that never come up. That means that the undeniably happy alt-pop riffs on “Everything Turns Around,” as well as the strummy, Manchester-movement-eque “Upside” were unintentional, undeniable (sorry, guys, but someone has to say it) ready-made commercial hits.

And no, not every song sounds like this, that wouldn’t make sense for an album-journey album. “Glimmer” — a moody, swelling alt-serenade — is and should be a live-show staple, its crowd at the ready to sing and sway along with thumb-operated, gas-station-purchased flame lighters.

All that said, the album refreshingly lacks predictability. Take the Eastern-influence break on “Lust,” for instance. “You could hear a sitar…out of nowhere,” Robert says, delightedly, recalling Dogstar’s 1999 performance at the Zee Cine Awards in Mumbai, followed by a “drum-off” on the hotel rooftop, as “the most surreal moment of our lives.” No matter how surreal, there’s no doubt some shred of the experience can be heard on “Lust,” a little over a minute in.

Bret recalls the Eastern-influenced break came out of one of their jam sessions. Keanu looks at his “hieroglyphics” treatise to recount the process, like an ancient scholar: “We have here…we go to Rob's house, there's a verse, and then we go, a disco funk, all-star jam. Then I crossed out “funk,” and then it went to the High A, and then we have the Indian [break] put in there. That's, I guess, where Bret started to go into the Indian influence of holding that A and the tension there…”

Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees ends with “Breach,” an unapologetic grinder — to use Bret’s words — “a punctuation mark” at the end of this here-comes-the-sun album journey. This is not the hearts-and-flowers sendoff. It’s more of the wake-the-fuck-up-people sendoff. As Robert says, “we digged in a little harder.” Bret explains that they intentionally ended this journey — the album journey — this way.

“It’s a bit of fun cold water,” Keanu says. “It’s a cliffhanger.”

“This genre, it's a lost thing. If you listen to the radio, things are so different now,” Robert says, describing Dogstar as “just three guys playing their instruments…it's not that complicated…it's not the mainstream anymore like it used to be.”

Through the decades, and after all they’ve been through, they’re idealistic. And you can feel it on the album – raw human emotion, the same that inspired them in their early years. “You can't trick people into believing you,” Bret says, after a passionate citing of some of his most influential musical imprints: Hüsker Dü, the Clash, Elton John.

Honest and inspired, Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees fully reflects these three guys, the stories of their lives over the last three decades, and exactly who they are.

“Rock is what keeps you young,” Bret says. “30 years times three guys' lives…that's 90 years of living. That's a lot of shit that could happen, that did happen. It ain't all good and it ain't all bad, but it's all in these songs. It sounds hippie-dippy corny, but there's a little bit of every year of our lives in these songs, I think. In that sense, [it’s] a mature endeavor.”

“This is who we are now,” Keanu says. “We're all over 50. I think to what Robert was saying…the influences that we have are coming through us into how we interpret, but also what we create in the moment. I think that's individually and collectively…that's what Dogstar is. It's like all of these personal things and then us collectively coming out with this music that would not happen if it wasn't the three of us.

“Individually, none of us would write a Dogstar song, but collectively, with who we are as artists and who we are, when we all come together and start to make music together…the sum of the parts is Dogstar.”

[onestowatch]

Amanda Brown on the Artists’ Role in Society, COVID-19, and Advice to Young Women [Q&A]

Amanda Brown has had a hell of a career, but she wants you to know she is just getting started. Born and raised in the Bronx, the Puerto Rican/Jamaican vocalist and songwriter got her start as a fan-favorite on NBC’s The Voice and has made a name for herself backing up Adele, Stevie Wonder, and Alicia Keys… just to name a few.

With a resume apt to make just about any musician jealous, Brown is one of the most in-demand session and touring vocalists in the biz, but parallel to this work, she has been crafting her own artist career, writing mature, alt-pop tracks like “From Here.” Begging questions about self-acceptance and the uncertainty of the road ahead, “From Here,” released in October, became the perfect quarantine companion just before the presidential election as the nation stood at a crossroads. Though she originally expected to spend her year on tour busses and backstage, working with the industry’s A-listers, COVID-19 allowed her a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stay in and tell the stories of the year through her own artist project.  

For Brown, her success as a songwriter and vocalist stems from more than sheer talent (though she could easily find success on her innate gift alone). It is her regimented soul-searching and her living by Nina Simone’s mantra “an artists’ duty is to reflect the times” that sets Brown apart from the pack as she builds her profile as not just a vocalist for others but as her own artist.

Ones to Watch spoke with Amanda Brown to recap her unexpected 2020, her advice to young women, and her plans for the new year.  

Ones to Watch: You've been working in various roles as a vocalist/musician for years. How do you approach your own music as an artist differently than the work you do with other acts?

Amanda Brown: When it comes to my work as a solo artist, I don’t hold back. What I mean by that is, when it’s my show and my recording session, I can do, say and sing whatever I want the way that I want! There’s a certain amount of freedom that comes with being a solo artist, accompanied by more responsibility. Whereas, when I am working with other acts, I am subject to the will and vision of those creatives. Not to say that I don’t enjoy those experiences and get lost in the music when I’m on stage. Performing with other acts carries it’s wonder as does my work as a solo artist and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to experience both.

You've been on the road a lot in the last few years, but COVID-19 this year has forced you to stay home. Have there been any positives to this tough situation?

I definitely miss traveling, meeting new people and playing live shows (while being in the same room as the audience); however, this year has allowed me the opportunity to create music for the sync and licensing world, which I’m enjoying. This year has also allowed me time to myself to think, learn and do things I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time, like gardening for example. I most definitely had a black thumb prior to the start of this year. I believe I’ve grown as an individual, for the better. I’m strong and resilient - those aren’t qualities I would have necessarily attributed to myself in the past, not because they weren’t true but more so because I’d be too shy to say them out loud. Also, witnessing the resiliency and strength of so many others around me has left me inspired and hopeful for the future. Yes, there are many downsides to covid-19, the main one being the loss of life (I lost family and friends this year). With that said, I’m hopeful that we will make it through the rest of this difficult year with the support and love of each other. Community is important and this year has driven that point home for me.

We've seen a lot of people lean on music to get them through such a tough year. What do you think an artists' role is in our society today?

Nina Simone said, “an artists’ duty is to reflect the times” and I believe that to be true. Some artists are called to make social commentary, others are called to reflect upon their personal experiences and the experiences of those in their close circles. Either way, I believe art is a reflection of how an artist may be feeling, what they are experiencing and/or what they see others experiencing. Sometimes art is created to help people forget difficult things that are happening in the world - I believe that to be a reflection of sorts. Regarding myself and my art, I’m am learning to honor my feelings - not to silence myself in order to make others feel comfortable but to dig deep, be vulnerable and honest.

You've used your platform this year to speak on important social/cultural issues, especially in your collaboration with LACES for the single 'they say.' Has using your platform in this way always been a fundamental goal of your career?

I want to be myself and in order to accomplish that, I have to be honest at every turn. I may not share everything but when I do share, I want it to be the truth. Life experience has taught me that certain things should not be tolerated. Sexism, misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, classism, and any other type of prejudice and discrimination is fucked up and should not be tolerated! We need to stand up to that shit and anyone that seeks to perpetuate those toxic behaviors and systems - I believe that should be the goal of everyone, regardless of whether you’re an artist or not. These social and cultural issues are human issues, and they should matter to everyone.

There are many people who grow up, dreaming of a career like yours. What do you think it took to set yourself apart as a vocalist and artist?

Sometimes I think I know the answer to this question and other times, I have no idea. There are things I could list off like me being hard-working, detail-oriented and studious but I don’t think those attributes alone are responsible for the career I’ve been fortunate to have thus far. I have not made it to this place in my career on my own. There have been so many people that believed in me throughout my journey, encouraged me, recommended me for work and supported my music and artistry. I think it may be a combination of qualities I possess, music training, live music experiences and the individuals that helped create opportunities for me. Regarding my success as a vocalist and artist, I think I’m equally indebted to some of those individuals that helped me as I am to my innate propensity for creating music and art and being disciplined within my craft.

What was a turning point in your career that really changed your life?

I’d say being a contestant on The Voice changed the trajectory of my career. It allowed me to perform in front of a national audience weekly. As a result of being on that show, I’ve had a number of beautiful music experiences playing all over the world and meeting fans of the show and myself. I’m grateful for the platform The Voice allowed me and to those that continue to listen to and support my music after watching my performances on the show.

Do you have any advice for a young woman hoping to create a career in music?

Don’t be afraid to experiment in order to figure out what you like. You will fail. Failure is a part of life and helps us grow. No one can tell you what’s going to work for you and your artistry. Only you can decide what is right for your music and art and the way that you’d like to create and communicate that art. Trust your gut. No one should make you feel uncomfortable or unsafe EVER! Surround yourself with people that inspire you to be the best version of yourself. A career in music is not easy. Educate yourself as much as possible. Make a list of all of your goals, figure out how to accomplish them and then execute them. You will often be the only person advocating for your vision (until you find your team) -  don’t give up! If you don’t believe in yourself, your gifts and your art, no one else will.

Looking ahead to 2021, what are some of your plans?

I’m ready to release more music and I can’t wait to perform in front of an audience. My next live show, I may try to hug every single person as they enter the venue, once it’s safe to do so of course. I’d want to collaborate with more female producers and songwriters. I’ve had lovely experiences working with women over the past three years and I want to create more of those opportunities for myself and others. I’m going to continue to build upon the good habits I’ve developed this year and pay more attention to my mental health. More gardening with homegrown fruits and veggies. I want a puppy friend next year, so I’ll be on the hunt for that little guy or gal. Also, people! I can’t wait to see people face-to-face...in-person and without masks or fear of getting sick because it’s no longer a big threat. I understand that all of the precautions we’re taking are necessary but I’m looking forward to the day when we can all hug and hang out together again.

Black Lives Matter! Trans Lives Matter! Stop Policing Women’s Bodies!

[things2mustdo]

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about whether or not the media has our best interests at heart, and with more and more men awakening from the feminist matrix, it seems that the mainstream media is going the way of the dinosaur.

Donald Trump has been urging the public not to trust the mainstream media, but I’m sure that if you’re a reader of Return Of Kings, you don’t need him to tell you that. The modern mainstream media is basically the same thing as the Church was in the 1200’s—they control the flow of information, and they don’t like it when people disagree with them. In fact, if someone who disagrees with them gets popular enough, they often times resort to smear campaigns (see: smearing Roosh as a manipulative pickup artist, and Milo as a pedophile apologist).

Now, I know what you’re thinking—“I know the media doesn’t report on things, Jon, but fake news? That’s, like, intentionally lying and manipulating information, isn’t it?” Yes, sir, it is—and this is what the mainstream media, particularly CNN, has been doing ever since television became popular.

Here’s 5 examples of how CNN is, in fact, “fake news”:

1. Kicking Bernie Sanders Off-Air

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

Bernie Sanders, the unofficial leader of the socialist movement in America, recently called CNN “fake news,” before being kicked off the air. CNN tried to play this off as a “connection issue,” but anyone with a grain of common sense knows better.

Bernie: “…who is the head of Russia, and now we’re learning that there may have been discussions between Flynn and the Russians, about sanctions, before this administration took power. So this is very, very troubling, and I think the president is going to have to tell us what he’s gonna do about it.”

CNN Anchor: “So far he hasn’t said much…he was asked about Flynn on his flight to Mar-a-Lago late today…here’s how he responded:

[plays clip of Donald Trump denying obvious lie directed towards him]

CNN Anchor: “He says he hasn’t seen any of these reports. Is that a problem?”

Bernie: “Well, I don’t know, maybe he was watching CNN Fake News, what do you think?”

Bernie: [sees her offended look] “It was a joke.”

CNN Anchor: “You don’t buy what he said, obviously?”

Bernie: “Erin?”

Bernie: “Kevin, I’m not—are we on?”

CNN Anchor: “Umm, it looks like we’ve lost connection with Senator Sanders…”

Right, of course. You just happened to “lose connection,” with Senator Sanders conveniently right after he called you fake news.

2. “Racism” Is Why Adele Won Grammy

After Adele won the song of the year, record of the year, and best solo pop performance awards, it wasn’t long before CNN charged in to proclaim that “racism,” was the cause. CNN “reports”:

…”but with its racial themes and imagery, some are questioning if the project was “just too black” for Grammy voters. Kevin Powell, author of the memoir “The Education of Kevin Powell” and a forthcoming biography on rapper Tupac Shakur, thinks so. He told CNN “Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ made a lot of people uncomfortable, because it is so political, so spiritual, so unapologetically black, and so brutally honest about love, self-love, trust, betrayal.”

Right, because apparently Beyonce, despite being nominated for 62 Grammy awards, and winning a whopping 22 Grammy awards, is being discriminated against. In the Leftist’s delusional reality, any time a white person succeeds, it’s due to “racism,” yet any time a black person succeeds, it’s due to “overcoming insurmountable odds.”

Give me a break. Adele won the Grammy, because the panel thought her songs were better, period. This has nothing to do with racism, but apparently CNN still thinks it’s a good idea to race-bait the hell out of current events in 2017. I don’t see this changing anytime soon, either.

3. Venezuela Bans CNN For Lies

According to Fox News World, the president of Venezuela actually asked CNN to leave:

“CNN, do not get into the affairs of Venezuelans. I want CNN well away from here—outside of Venezuela. Do not put your nose in Venezuela.” -Nicolas Maduro

…and can you blame him? CNN has repeatedly shown how ridiculously biased they are, and they’ve shown how willing to lie they are, for the past year after running a gigantic smear campaign against Donald Trump.

Didn’t CNN claim that The Donald had a 3% chance of being elected president? What did they do, just poll the gender studies department at UC Berkeley? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, because nobody in their right mind would ever accidentally come to the conclusion that our current president had a 3% chance of winning.

In fact, other independent journalists such as Mike Cernovich actually predicted that Donald would win months before the election day in November—how? Because they saw the trends. They saw that men were tired of being emasculated and having their lives ruined, they saw that we’re tired of being shamed for our whiteness, and they saw that the people of America were starting to wake up from their NWO conditioning.

4. “Our Job Is To Control Exactly What People Think.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoXGV4Vw-VA

Yeah, yeah—I know this one isn’t CNN, but they’re all the same to me. MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and even Fox News to an extent…they’re all just different heads on the same globalist-controlled hydra. Buckle in though, boys, because this one’s pretty bad…and it just happened days ago.

Mika Brzezinski, whose name should automatically create suspicion in the wary citizen, recently stated on MSNBC that it’s “our job,” to “control exactly what people think.” I honestly couldn’t even make this stuff up, but if you don’t believe me, you can watch it in the video above.

Mika Brzezinski: “Well, I think the dangerous edges here are that he’s trying to undermine the media, trying to make up his own facts, and it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he could control exactly what people think…and that is our job.”

No, Mika, that isn’t your job. Your job is to report the facts and let THE PEOPLE decide what to think, but if you can’t get that through your thick skull I guess we’ll just stop watching your crappy network.

5. Donald Trump Calls CNN “Fake News”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZI0Q3LQZmo

Ah, I saved the best for last—I do love me some Donald burns. After a CNN “news reporter” tried to aggressively ask Donald a question for some odd 20 seconds, repeatedly interrupting him and interjecting his way into the conversation, Donald lost it and called him “fake news.”

And who could blame him? They spent the last 8 months doing absolutely everything within their power to completely ruin Donald Trump’s chances at winning…and yet, by the grace of God, and by the memes of Pepe, lord of Keks, the Trump train smashed its way through the entire god damn establishment…and won.

Trump: [to other reporter] “Go ahead.”

CNN Fake News: “MR. PRESIDENT SINCE YOU’RE ATTACKING US CAN YOU GIVE US A QUESTION!”

Trump: [to CNN] “No.”

Trump: [to other reporter]: “Go ahead.”

CNN Fake News: “MR. PRESIDENT ELECT! MR. PRESIDENT ELECT! SINCE YOU ARE ATTACKING OUR NEWS ORGANIZATION,”

Trump: [to CNN] “No, not you.”

Trump: [to other reporter] “Go ahead.”

CNN Fake News: “CAN YOU GIVE US A QUESTION,”

Trump: [to CNN] “Not you.”

CNN Fake News: “GIVE US A CHANCE! MR PRESIDENT”

Trump: [to CNN] “Your organization’s terrible.”

CNN Fake News: “CAN YOU GIVE US A CHANCE, JUST LET US ASK…”

Trump: [to CNN] “Your organization’s terrible.”

CNN Fake News: “LET US ASK A QUESTION, SIR! SIR!”

Trump: [to CNN] “Quiet.”

This goes on for literally 25 seconds, before Trump finally becomes visibly angry and proclaims:

Trump: [to CNN] “You are fake news.”

If the President of the United States of America thinks that CNN is fake news, I think they’re probably fake news.

Summary

In conclusion, if you still watch the mainstream media, don’t. Get your news from real news sites, like Return Of Kings, Info Wars, Gateway Pundit, Drudge Report, and Cernovich. The MSM has shown us multiple times in the past that they’re globalist whores, selling out the American public to fatten their own pockets.

I recently bought an Info Wars shirt to start wearing around in public, and the results have restored my faith in America. Everywhere I wear it, I’ve gotten complements—it’s not that often, but you’d be surprised how many men are awake, but just don’t broadcast it.

The MSM would have you believe that 99% of the American public hates Trump, but it’s really only something like 10% who hate him, and maybe 25% more who dislike him.

I usually wear Info Wars, Breitbart, and Trump apparel to the gym, because most guys who have a shredded six pack from lifting heavy ass weights are strong and masculine, and are therefore not subject to stupid social pressures that the media uses to influence you.

Do your part in spreading the good gospel of the manosphere, the alt-news, and the resurgence of America, and we’ll reclaim our country for sure. Let’s all make America great again.

https://www.returnofkings.com/165920/how-journalists-became-whores

Journalists are supposed to follow a set of rules and values called deontology. These rules say journalists should strive to be impartial, objective, and to inform their readers. We know well this is not the true nature of their activity.

Most MSM journalists today if not all are spinsters. They cherry-pick their facts and craft narratives around to steer people towards an untold yet ever-present agenda. They make up stereotypes while attacking other stereotypes, they make up ideas while attacking other ideas, as it suits the editorial line of their employer.

In the name of information, journalists create and fulfill an artificially constructed consciousness. They are paid to do so. They believe what they’re doing is normal or cool, just like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, where officers burn archives then forget they just destroyed records (soon to be rewritten); your average leftist journalist spins all the time, follows all the time, yet doesn’t even know he spins and follows.

A little bit of history

If you lend an ear to leftist historians, up to perhaps to age of discoveries, the West didn’t know much. Everybody were locked into their own towns and fields. Well, this is not true. Europeans had known about the Silk Road from time immemorial. Kings and the clergy had their messengers, their events, their gatherings. Individuals like Saint Bernard or Saint Thomas of Aquino were quite familiar with communicating at a distance.

It was just much slower than today—and quite of a luxury as well. Common folk had to rely on minstrels, travelers, and on their own travels. Most communication was done orally. Academics today love to point out how unreliable the bush telegraph is, but at least this communication is done naturally between common people rather than top-down from a shadowy agenda.

Also, as slow as this word-to-mouth communication was, people then did not need more: they could make a living on their own, with the insurance that they could consume it themselves or sell it. Markets tended to be stable, and whether you were a field-tiller or a craftsman, you didn’t need to know about the latest fad not to be left behind. People were also much less bored and in need of diversions. Didn’t have newspapers, didn’t need them.

Then came the printing press. What had been done by scribes secluded in monasteries became partly automatized and multiplied. Bibles were printed. Then pamphlets. By the time, Protestantism had well developed, clever princes tried to use it to their advantage, and the Catholic church counter-attacked by launching one of the most manipulative orders ever created.

More power to independent people meant chaos. Printing outside of the rigid hierarchy of the Church meant a never-ending contest of ideas, systems, tastes, experiences, and egos. The hypocritical journalists of now who chide “trolls” while sniffing their own written farts should remember that trolling appeared as a side-effect of the printing press, as it became possible to say anything remotely instead of being necessarily confrontable. Plus, trolling helps to think of things to talk about with a girl.

Nevertheless, printing what you wanted was not that simple. First, literacy was still the hallmark of a comfortable upbringing, and second, you had to be able to print. You had to know a printer, had to make a deal with him and pay him. Not to mention the dissemination of your lovely printed book. It was always possible to print in a country with virtually no censorship, then smuggle books, but who was to receive them and share them?

No matter what you had to say, you always needed to address a noble-bourgeois audience, which meant catering to fashionable topics or debates. Otherwise, your material would be simply ignored. Authors who weren’t too well-known had to rely on booksellers who conspired to arrange a discrete monopoly on over-the-counter books. Yep, the world of “culture” has always been murky, and its members believe this is a sign of their superior intelligence.

As “culture” developed, with its train of noise, untold rivalries and social parasitism, periodic journals were printed at an ever-faster pace. Eighteenth century bi-annuals were replaced by daily or weekly newspapers. Which meant a great need, not for amateur gentlemen, but for people who could write constantly. Such people would be called journalists.

The modern journalist plant

If you believe journalism is about informing the public, forget it immediately. There is no such thing as an automatic progress which just makes happen what seems desirable. If an unbiased, all-objective information seems desirable, that does not mean someone will pay for it or even manage to get it. Even the CIA Factbook was made in the first place because objective information would benefit the CIA itself, not “enlighten the masses” or whatever a leftist salesman would say.

A journalist is basically someone who is paid to write on particular issues, in a well-defined format, as his boss sees fit. A journal belongs to someone—no matter if the owner is public or private—who usually has its own aims. Whether the newspaper has to simply sell or shape the opinion, it always aims at something else than merely informing.

(Even ROK has an agenda, and I’m fine with it, because I believe it is sound and fair, but I’d never pretend I write for the sole love of truth or as if I was a disembodied soul with no consciousness of its own. Any writer having such pretenses is a hypocrite or a liar.)

Back to the nineteenth century. Newspapers were just like factories. As plant workers had to churn tangible products, journalists had to churn out impressions. They were like paid artists for the ephemeral, creating appearances that would sell, or satisfy, or infuriate—anything as long as it suited the editorial line of their employer. Journalists did not become whores. They were paid employees, to put it politely, from day one. But at least the blue collar workers had to pretense to say the truth or illuminate or whatever BS that sells.

Let’s say you were born with a high verbal IQ, a knack for writing, and some ideas. What could you do? You may consider writing books, become an intellectual, but book writing takes time and often doesn’t pay. If you can’t live like an annuitant, you must be an employee.

If you choose the written words, you have to conform to a preexisting editorial line, to a particular milieu that already existed before you did, in hope of being granted a job. Creating a journal demanded not only experience but capital as well. Can you pay a printer? Would a banker trust you if you asked him for a loan so you can start a journal?

As the nineteenth century was an epoch of exceptional growth, some people had this capital or trust, and many independent journals were formed. Many, though, were bought off, or chased away, or censored. The elite does not want you to become an influencer, unless, of course, you remain a perpetual servant of their agenda.

This is why mild conservatives are accepted as a stooge opposition, along with the alt lite, whereas those who really want to save civilization and its creators are reviled. The elites want to destroy civilization, so, their journalists, who all depend on them socially and financially, foster their agenda while lying to themselves on the nature of what they do.

So-called investigators are paid by Darth Soros to “investigate” on convenient targets while turning a blind eye on other things, like mass immigration, or upholding a mandatory narrative which rests not on truth but on pure social conformism—muh minorities r always good, muh white males r always wrong.

Perhaps the “fake news” offensive has been crafted, not only to maintain the masses into the blue pill matrix, but also to reassure the frail employees that they are serving truth and progress. Which is already dubious, as worshiping an arbitrary strand of “progress” has nothing to do with objectivity, just as the contemporary humanities are rather a Hollywood for nerds than a place of real knowledge, but you can’t ask vapid girls to get to this level.

No one writes for the sake of truth alone. Independent writers or journalists also speak of what they think relevant. They will mention XYZ facts because these are important, or, at least, ensure a modicum of success. Just like men tend to read Miyamoto Musashi quotes, not merely because he existed, but because he’s interesting.

Mainstream journalists are courtiers. They are paid by global elites to do their bidding. They work in cities just like filmmakers work in grand obscure studios—because their activity lies in creating perceptions, in shaping fashions, ideas, mottos, norms. The difference between a marketer, a journalist and a filmmaker is only of scale and means. The aim, and the bottom, is the same.

We are different, because we are bottom-up. When mainstream journalists sold their souls, we are upholding ours. The problem with this is that we’re ill-paid. The globalists and the boomers tend to concentrate all the money, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to witness that the non-mainstream outlets tend to all lack money. Such is the price of independence.

We ought to have our own money elsewhere, and have a lot of independent journalists around, so that autonomous individuals from our side can work or investigate and help masculine men to shape their own consciousness.

[rainofaugustsith]

Rain Plays SWTOR: SOLO gearing 6.0

In my opinion the SWTOR devs have given solo players a hearty "fuck you" with 6.0, between an insufferably long gearing system, nerfed companions, much higher conquest targets (with solo-friendly activities like galactic rampage now removed) and overtuned content. It's why I'm not paying for a subscription anymore. Damn it, though, I like the game, I like hanging out with Viri and I still have characters who have not finished all the content. Even though I am not subscribed now, I invested in Artifact Authorization for my account so my characters can wear the good stuff.

Despite the fact that the devs seem to be heavily pushing people to group, I decided that my own "fuck you" to them would be getting Viri to 306 without grouping even once. And I did.

Almost. Her gear rating is 304, but hell, she's close, and she already has several 306 pieces. These aren’t the final stats I want for her (as she changes to moddable 306 pieces I’ll be adding back her augments and changing those relics) but she’s a beast again. 

The important takeaway from this post:

You do not need to group to get good gear, even at level 75. You do not need to do veteran flashpoints to get good gear. Good gear drops in the solo flashpoints too!

Do you "need" it?

I hate it when other players tell me I "don't need" certain gear, so I won't do that to you. It's a personal choice. The higher levels of gear do seem to compensate for at least some of the currently overtuned parts of the game. In other words even if you are not interested at all in the endgame you may wish to pursue the higher-end gear simply to do the other content more easily.

If you are not playing Onslaught (or not playing it yet) there have been numerous reports of other missions/areas being overtuned, including the Star Fortresses, Bowdaar's recruitment mission, walker combat in KOTET and Iokath, the H4s and some H2s, and better gear could help there.

Onslaught is supposed to be designed so that you gear up as you level up, ending the expansion with a full set of 268 gear and a tactical item. In my own experience going through Onslaught, some of my classes did okay with this system but others did not. All had similar gear ratings (242-252), at least some augments, and at least one or two level 50 influence companions (usually Lana, but also included Vette, Mako or Akaavi for some characters). My Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight were fine. My Smuggler died if an NPC looked at her the wrong way and really struggled to get through. My Bounty Hunter and Lightning Sorcerer had a few hiccups but managed.

My own preference will be to get my characters leveled to 75 and geared before hitting KOTET now. I don't think they all need to be 306. My test subject, canon Viri (who has not done Onslaught) was blazing through content by the time she was a 286. I will likely aim for at least that rating on all characters.

So you want the gear. Now what?

Okay. It's a long, mind-numbingly boring experience to gear up but if you hang onto enough stuff, you might be able to avoid going through this nightmare on more than one character. How can you get gear without grouping?

1. The easiest and most effective way is to run a lot of solo flashpoints. Over and over again (the same way the folks who group are doing with Hammer Station).

The shortest and simplest flashpoint (at least for me) is Korriban Incursion, followed by Depths of Manaan. By the time you hit a gear rating of 286ish, you can chew through either of these alone in less than 20 minutes. Black Talon is next, but one of the bosses only seems to drop crafting material (including those coveted isotopes) and the bonus boss now has a lot of very uncomfortable flashing lights.

I went through several of the longer flashpoints like Copero, False Emperor, Rakata Prime and Boarding Party, too. On Copero I had four gear drops instead of three thanks to the bonus boss, and some random green gear dropped from NPCs, but otherwise the longer flashpoints don't seem to offer any real advantage over the shorter ones. Thus, unless there's something else you want from the flashpoint (like decos or achievements), it seems most prudent to run the ones that will cause you the least trouble. You might get random pieces (usually green 270s) from enemies but overall, usually only three bosses will give you proper drops. There will be a sack of Grade 11 crafting materials, probably a mod or two, and at least one piece of gear. This is RNG. Sometimes you will luck out and get two pieces of gear you can use. Sometimes you will get nothing and will end up deconstructing it all. Viri has received tank gear, things she clearly can't use like blaster barrels, and 274 pieces when she's a 294. As far as I know it happens in the veteran group flashpoints too. Just deconstruct it, or set it aside for another character if you think they will want it.

Once you get past 300, I have noticed you will start getting a lot more mods, enhancements and armor/hilts/barrels. This is a good thing. These are the pieces you can set aside for alts.

2. Conquest.

It's harder to meet this goal now but it may be doable for you on one or two toons. During this exercise Viri reached her conquest goal of 50,000 points just by doing flashpoints and a couple of easy heroics on Tatooine and Korriban. The Conquest gear crates are in my experience good, and I've pulled numerous gold set pieces, so it's worth it to try to aim for the goal, and it can be done solo.

3. Chapters.

I was very surprised to get a gear crate when I finished Shroud of Memory. A character who was just finishing up KOTET received crates for her last two chapters, too. I think this replaces the gear that used to be given for KOTFE/KOTET chapters. It's in line with the other weekly/daily crates.

4. Onderon weekly/daily crates.

If you have a character who has gone through Onslaught, do ten missions for the weekly and six for the daily. There are some simple quests that can be done quickly. In my experience these crates provide little more than deconstruction fodder most of the time. However it's worth it, if only for the tech fragments. Aside from gear, there are some nice decos available at the reputation vendor so raising your Onderon rep isn't pointless.

5. Mek-Sha heroics.

Again, if you have a character who has done Onslaught. Not the best option for the planet - see #11 for an easier one. Both of the Mek-Sha heroics give gear crates and in my limited experience they have been good. However, the heroics are tuned very, very high. Viri's clone (Sith Warrior; Vengeance Juggernaut) with a gear rating of 300 had trouble. The final boss in the Matter of Respect heroic has more HP than many flashpoint bosses, and he's with two silvers. Dying in these heroics is expensive, too: the tune of 20,000 credits per repair bill. I don't think this really is a good option for most solo players, even if you want to run them once for the experience/achievements.

This is the final boss in the second Mek-Sha heroic. No, you’re not reading that  HP number wrong. 

6. Renown crates.

Instead of Command Levels, there are now Renown levels. It's the same overall concept: gain a level, gain a crate with a piece of gear (the fun stuff like pets and companion gifts are gone). The difference: you're not going to gear up via Renown. For all intents and purposes it's probably best to pretend Renown doesn't exist. It's not like Galactic Command where doing the weekly in Section X or Ziost will at least earn you a crate or two.

You need 1,600,000 points to get one Renown crate. Considering that the weekly areas now award between 7000-28,000 points and a flashpoint awards 2000-3000 (and that is WITH the full 25% boost), it's going to be a while before you earn even one crate. When you do, I might suggest hanging on to them until your rating is high to try to get better gear. In my limited experience (I think my characters combined have earned about ten Renown crates!) I don't think I've ever pulled any sort of useful upgrade out of these crates. Take the item and deconstruct it for tech fragments, don't disintegrate it. Consider anything useful to be a pleasant surprise.

7. Treasure Hunting missions

Level 10 lockbox missions return with gear. It's not highly rated, though. Deconstruct it for the tech fragments. 

8. Crafting

From what I have heard this is such a clusterfuck that it's not even worth attempting, with many mats required even for low-level gear. Skip this, I think.

9. LS/DS vendors

Apparently if you are willing to fork over all 100 of your LS or DS coins to the vendor you can get an equipment box. I wouldn't do this because it's now very hard to get LS/DS coins (see Renown). Once you blow them all you're not likely to get so many back. 10. Random drops

NPCs in heroics, flashpoints and open world may occasionally drop random pieces of gear, usually green 270ish stuff that may or may not be for your discipline. It's good to deconstruct.

11. Mek-Sha Tradehouse missions In your faction’s starting point on Mek-Sha, you will find a datapad. Click this to get a short mission to speak to a Nautolan NPC in Huttbreaker’s Compound. The NPC will tell you that you can do short “adventures” around the galaxy to help out Huttbreaker’s auction house.  Now check out the small clickable terminal to the left of the NPC. You will get a Weekly - Tradehouse Acquisitions - and a daily mission that will take you to either Rishi, Tatooine, Onderon, Nar Shaddaa or Dantooine. These missions are very simple - usually just gathering some clickable items or scanning several targets with provided macrobinoculars.  To complete the Weekly, you need to complete three Tradehouse Missions. You can only do one per day. It will award you a gold gear box, so it’s worth it. 

When you get gear:

Use a character that you can devote solely to gearing for a little while. Canon Viri has not done Onslaught, but she's my strongest character and my main, and she has nothing else to do right now. I decided to gear with her.

If a piece of gear is an upgrade, equip it immediately. The higher your overall gear rating, the more likely you are to get upgrades. This will screw with your stats for a while, but you can sort it out when you get to the 300s. If it's not an upgrade deconstruct it for tech fragments - the currency you will use to purchase gear later.

Once you get to the high 290s or 300s you may wish to start setting aside gear pieces for your alts instead of deconstructing them. ETA Gear is now legacy bound, so you can pass it from one character to the next (except for weapons, I found). If you are moving up to a 306 piece, for example, save that 304 for the next toon who might need it, and pass around the gear to everyone’s advantage. 

Mods: Viri kept her augmented mainhand and offhand weapons (lightsaber and focus). I ripped out mods/hilts as needed to upgrade those weapons. However, ripping mods is very expensive so you don't want to be doing this for all your right side pieces. Don't worry about mods until you get to the 300s. Just keep using the non-moddable gear as you progress. This includes mods that don't seem to suit your character. If a Barrage or Studious enhancement would take Viri from one gear level to another I used it.   Use Takanna: Takanna is the vendor who sells "unidentified" pieces for around 350 tech fragments each. The pieces are supposed to be at least your item rating or higher, and with the exception of left side and mods, are supposed to be for your discipline. 

 I used Takanna to get over the plateaus that Viri would hit sometimes, when she would reach a certain item rating and would not get anything higher from the flashpoint drops. Buying a higher rated set of boots or bracers (for instance) would sometimes be enough to get her to a higher overall gear rating and break the stalemate.   Once you reach your quitting point: You don't want to go all the way to 306? You're fine at 290 or 286 or 300? That's cool. This is where you either decide that you're going to augment the non-moddable gear you have or start playing with mods and those gold set pieces. It is VERY expensive to move around mods and augments, especially after you reach 300 (we're talking 450K to rip three mods, I'm not exaggerating), so I advise that you put them where you want them to stay.

Set bonuses: The old set bonus you had from your GEMINI or Ossus gear vanished when you hit level 75. I don't think the new ones are as good, but in some cases all you need are two pieces to get the bonus. Ostensibly you could therefore have three different set bonuses (2, 2, 2) operating at once.

Tacticals: Viri received two as random drops once she was in the 280s. You also receive one good all-around tactical at the end of Onslaught. I wouldn't be fussed about getting these. If you get one, great. If you have credits to burn check out the vendor on the fleet who sells them. Otherwise wait until you finish Onslaught.   Amplifiers: I DGAF about these. Re-rolling the amplifiers is a large credit sink for (IMHO) small boosts. I personally am not bothering with re-rolling anything. Viri has what she has on her gear and I'm not worried about changing what is there.However, re-rolling an amplifier will now give you Conquest points, so you may decide to re-roll one just for that boost.    Augments: Viri has kept her 236 and 240 mods. They have been nerfed a little but the Grade 11 augments and kits are really expensive, and IMHO her old augments do fine for her.

Gearing alts: Send your highest-iRated toon shopping for the others. Vendors like Takanna will give you gear that corresponds to your toon’s level. So send your 306 rated character shopping, grab that high-level gear, and leave it in your Legacy hold for your alts.  I'm gearing my weakest alts, and those that have a lot of content left to do, first. "Weakest" might mean many things to many people. For me, it's the alt that has the most trouble getting through content and/or the class that I'm the least skilled at playing. I've also geared one of Viri's clones who did do Onslaught so she could do the Mek-Sha and Onderon tasks.  Overall, this gear system is no fun. I don’t think it would be quite as bad if there weren’t so many levels, but when you’re going through 19 - 284, 286, 288 and on and on and on - it feels like you’re slowly pulling teeth for every gain.  Still, the point was to show that it could be done without the grouping that the devs seem to be trying to force on us. Et voila.

[beg-for-it-black]

LDWS Week 1 Voting

Guys! Voting is HERE! As of right now, voting will stay open until Monday at 6pm EST. You all have 1 vote for most favorite and 1 vote for least favorite drabbles. Participants are encouraged to vote, but you may NOT vote for yourselves! I should explain a bit more how this works, I guess. The winner isn't decided by whoever gets the most most fav votes. Each most fav vote gets +1. Each least fav gets -1. Once those are tallied, a winner will be determined. If there's a tie, there will be a tie breaker so that there is one winner and one person eliminated. Please, try not to vote on a drabble just because you like a pairing. Take into account the quality of the writing and how well it fits the prompt! When you vote, just send me a message stating the number and the title of the drabbles. Do not send messages on anon. The prompt this week was "Well that was a bad idea" and had to be between 440-450 words.

[maneaterwithtail]

Anti-shipping thoughts

@sunder-the-gold

(Continued from here, felt drifting)

It's  not helped that all too often it comes off as hypocritical. One of the most bothersome aspects of Steven Universe in terms of the depiction of garnet is at one point she harshly rejects Jamie for having any feelings towards her as opposed to her final rejection which without returning his feelings still lets him down with respect sort of. She says something supposed to be true but harsh, like love at first sight doesn't happen; it takes time and it takes work and then we fast-forward to the answer where apparently it totally does not take those things. it was at first sight and it was some wonderous Whirlwind Adventure.

Many people who use same-sex ships as a way of exploring and understanding their own sexuality will say something along the lines of the first - how they're pushing back against patriarchy or forced heteronormative standards or anything like that.- and then that shit goes straight out the window the moment they get any representation or same sex or just 'anticishet'

Way to sound like a liar by putting someone to an impossible standard you have no intention of either holding others to or living by rather than owning your own shit.

Panda we bare Bears has a lot of stereotypical feminine traits and has more or less been forced to associate with Charlie to the point where he often has to by circumstance be made to like him? "One true pairing, is obviously gay, and he just hasn't met the right guy and it's all in his head he thinks that he wants women." Wow that's a pretty ruinous and narrow Assumption of what straight people are actually like. In addition to the rather disturbing implications of how Panda must be gay because Charlie is kind of insistent on him. I like the ship of panda and Charlie as it sometimes depicted by the fans but then I look to how their relationship plays out in the show and I'm a little disturbed because of the context of panda only liking him when he's high off of nitrous or under public pressure. This is despite the fact that yeah you can easily say that's where pandas storyline is going but if it turns out Charlie was merely a means for him to comprehend how to be at Kinder much more considerate person as opposed to someone trapped in his own emotions and romantic projections I don't think one is lesser than the other

Marco Diaz takes up stereotypical masculine activities, is looking forward to puberty changes like body hair or facial hair. But look he wore dress and didn't freak out about it and crafted a female alt identity so he must be trans. He has body image issues so he must be trans cuz you know only gay or trans people have those

One of korra's biggest problems in relationships is her use of power and force in order to get her way. But since Asami is another woman that's not a problem. By the way Korra Forced a kiss on a man who was in a relationship. This won't actually piss off The Other Woman- which okay that's possible but isn't it convenientd how they just get along with zero interaction?

My personal favorite is the doctor and the master. when they both shared the same gender "let's tease about how gay they are for forever and a day. oh one became female? Well that won't look quite as transgressive anymore it might even look straight. Guess we better emphasize how it's friendship and not you know this weird romantic tension we kept on teasing."

You know people pick up on this stuff and it's kind of insulting. You're asking them to be compassionate and empathetic and to agree with you and you're very obviously lying or just doing something to twist their nose. And this is when you are genuinely trans bisexual gay what have you. This going to have negative repercussions down the line in terms of your own identity and how people and you relate to it

And yet at the same time exploring these transgressive boundaries is it part of growing up and being human or just being a person without needing to grow up and stop. With relation to the post that this was a response to I guess my main problem with shipping is that he eats every fucking thing. It doesn't stay in its little box and people invest way too much of themselves into it. I want to like the character of pearl on Steven Universe but I can't because too many people think she's the autistic sword lesbian revolutionary icon instead of the very complicated bigot and yes lesbian mother who wasn't able to get over the fact that her wife kind of sort of broke up with her and married or at least hooked up with a dude and decided to have a child. Or how her inability to responsibly handle this has perpetuated damage to that child. And uncomfortably I get the very real sense that the number one reason people are pissed off with rose quartz isn't that she lied to her friends so much as she ruined their lesbian revolutionary fantasies and she did Pearl wrong

But none of that matters because representation and shipping

And then there's the context of all of this where you can't discuss the relationship in tax and what have you without being labeled a hater and then you got to make anti tags which is probably just going to have an echo chamber effect and not get any real discussion going on. So instead of being able to appreciate the relationship and a speculation and the Viewpoint it become ship Waring and fandom drama instead of just being able to discuss the interesting aspects of all the characters could relate either romantically as friends or what have you. Even though I completely understand making them all friends is a way of repressing discussion of same-sex stuff even when it's placed in your face

[alternativewinxcontinuity]

Winx Alt Con Season 02 Recap:

Previously: season 01, Weeks 9.2, 10/11, 12, 13, 14

Week 15: Episodes 212, 213, (partial) 214, 215

With two out of four magical macguffins missing, The Winx convince a few of the older students to help them train after classes. One of the students wants them to focus on thinking outside the square, using what they know from a sideways perspective.

She takes them down to the Magical Reality Chamber and sends them in, telling them to trying finding new ways to combine their powers, every trick they have in their arsenal, is one step further away from defeat.

Plus it's a great way to learn things you didn't know about your abilities.

With the pixies watching from the control room, the older student boots up the MRC.

The Winx are faced with an unusual, and somewhat hostile world, their enemy though, is a single large beast. The girls begin by flinging magic at it, but the monster only grows in size.

They dodge its attacks while they strategize, coming up with an idea that might work. Remembering what they'd been told about magical and physical immunities rarely overlapping, the girls swap in and out, distracting the monster while the build a titan of their own to beat the monster in combat.

Aisha crafts the body's base out of morphix, Flora gives it a skeletal system of wood and vines, adding in some hair just because it happened that way. Stella gives it eyes to see, Tecna and Bloom give it a brain and free will/intuition, and then Musa steps in.

The fairy of music gives the titan the ability to hear and speak, but Musa can also hear discord in their titan's being. She steps up and finds a way to harmonize the various magics, so the titan doesn't fall apart.

Once complete, the titan goes on the offensive and beats the monster soundly, ending the simulation.

The older student runs the simulation applauds them, then asks what they plan to do with their new friend, since the titan hasn't dissolved. Uncertain, the group calls down Faragonda, who takes several moments to be flabbergasted by what the girls have done, creating an artificial, magical life form. (not unheard of, but not typically first year magic, even by accident.)

The titan, being both sentient and sapient, is alive, and none of the fairies want to kill it/her, so Faragonda offers to let the titan stick around and figure out what she wants to do.

(The titan later takes up the name Titania, and can often be seen playing with Kiko and the pixies, or helping Knut maintain the grounds around Alfea.)

 Later in the week, Bloom finds Faragonda and talks to her about the break in at her mother's flower shop several weeks prior. Vanessa has gotten in contact with Bloom because a court date is coming up. Bloom is hoping to get the day off to be with her mother for it. Faragonda allows it, as long as Bloom doesn't go alone.

(Bloom mentions Earth's/California's truancy laws, and Faragonda writes up several 'day passes' for Bloom and the Winx.)

Musa and Tecna decline going, mentioning they've been talking with some people from Magix and the other schools, and have decided to help out with the concert the Magix council wants to host, to celebrate the last of the repairs in the city. (things go a lot faster with magical assistance.)

Aisha volunteers her assistance with the concert, and Bloom wishes them luck. Stella says she would help, but she wants to support Bloom, the girls agree Stella can step in later, and that supporting their friend is important too. Flora chooses to go with Bloom and Stella to Earth. The pixies all choose to stick with their respective fairies.

 On Earth, the trio of fairies spend the day with Vanessa, who is thrilled to meet Flora, a fellow plant lover. The girls are confused to realise Vanessa and Mike (who is also there to support his wife during the trial) can't see the pixies, until Stella gives them 'clarity of vision', an ability she learnt from her mother, who comes from a line of seers.

Random children they pass though, seem to have no trouble seeing the pixies, and the girls file that away to think about later.

 In Magix, the group of students and council members for Magix meet to discuss the concert. During the repairs, the governing body of Magix took the opportunity to upgrade some infrastructure, including an outdoor theatre, and they'd like to open it with a concert to commemorate the lost, and celebrate moving forward.

The group discus some things they'd like to do for the concert, and move their meeting to the new amphitheatre, to get a feel for the space.

Unbeknownst to the group, Stormy has grown bored waiting around for Darkar and Icy to come up with a new plan for finding the pixie village, (since he, apparently, has a plan already in play for Alfea) and has gone out by herself to wreak some havoc.

She stumble across the concert group in Magix, and decides to rain on their parade by summoning up a destructive storm.

At first, the group don't pay much attention to the sudden rain, beyond noting the oddly sudden change in the weather. It's not until it gets intense enough to start pulling signs from their foundations that someone realises the storm is very localised.

By this time, the wind is too much for any of them to fly through, and they can't find the source of the storm, so Musa suggests weather magic, reminding the other fairies of their first lecture with Avalon.

Musa summons a small hand drum, sets a beat and starts dancing, Aisha and Tecna falling into step, with the other Alfea students present joining in soon after. As the weather starts to lose intensity, the witches, heroes and even the council members begin to copy the fairies movements. Soon the storm begins to die down, then fall apart.

With the storm dissipated, Stormy appears before them, and in a fit of rage, hurls a bolt of lighting at the group, but Musa bring her drum up and strikes it, letting loose an unbelievable crash like thunder, causing the lightning to explode on itself midstrike, flinging the Trix back through the sky.

With a snarl she disappears, and everyone turns to Musa, who seems shocked at what she's just done. When asked how she did that, Musa can only shake her head and admit that she doesn't know, that she just felt 'very powerful in that moment.'

Riven, who was there to pilot the Red Fountain students, and had been the first of the heroes to join in, posits that as the fairy of music, maybe she'd been empowered by the 'anti-rain dance' and its accompanying song, since they'd all been acting in concert to the music Musa had provided on the drum. The group agree that's about as likely as any other explanation, and the very grateful council members get the group back on track for the concert, as soon as they put out an alert for Stormy with the local law enforcement.

 On Earth, after the trial wraps up, Mike and Vanessa take the trio of fairies and their pixies out for pizza, and ask the girls how school has been going. They are aware of the siege and Darkar, thanks to phone calls with Bloom, but hearing it in person makes it more real.

Bloom also, hesitantly and for the first time, tells her parents about Daphne and their shared parentage. She begins rambling as she tries to explain, and she just keeps talking trying to get it all out, and then a secret slips out amidst the verbal vomit.

Bloom is scared and confused and worried and lost. Her sense of identity has taken a hit, and between Bloom Peters, Earth girl, and Pyra, lost princess of Domino, she isn't sure who she is any more. Part of her wants to embrace her lost heritage, but part of her is afraid embracing it will mean loosing her Earth identity, her Earth family.

Her parents comfort her immediately, letting her know that no matter what, she will always be part of their family, and that Daphne, ghostly or otherwise, is welcome as well, they won't make her choose.

Flora tells Bloom, that she has a few truths about her: Bloom is a kind person, a great leader, and an artistic soul, but before anything else, she is their friend, she just needs to find something about herself that doesn't change, and start from there, no matter how long it takes, they'll be there while she figures herself out.

Stella agrees completely, pressing herself bodily and magically against Bloom in a hug that lets the fire fairy feel the love and support Stella had for her.

Surrounded by their love, Bloom finds peace within herself, a certainty of self she'd lost somewhere along the way.

Her magic surges and blossoms, and her Charmix materialises.

Which leads to a whole new round of celebration. (after a lengthy explanation of fairy levels and transformations and such, and why this was such a big deal.)

 That night, back at Alfea, the group catches up, and Bloom decides she'll begin writing and drawing a 'memoir' of sorts for her parents, so they can share in the adventures she's had.

In the meantime, the girls talk about the concert for Magix.

Given the reason for the concert, the heads of the schools allow the students to have half days in order to be ready for the weekend, since the Magix council want the concert to take place as soon as possible, to show the Magical Dimension they're back on their feet.

Riven makes an effort to help behind the scenes, as part of his 'I need to unlearn how to be an arsehole' self improvement project. He and Musa discover they get along pretty well, having quite a few things in common, like the fact they both have scholarships to their respective schools.

Musa, having heard the whole story of 'why Riven is the way he is', has helped come up with a few tricks (mostly specific hand signs) so that the group (the Winx and Specialists) can tell Riven he's being an arsehole, without actually being confrontational.

(The most used hand sign is 'run that by me again,' which is for moments when Riven says something super offensive or just outright annoying, and the group want to be sure he knows what he said wrong, and that he meant it. Most of the time it turns out he's just worded something badly and it's come out ruder than he intended. It goes a long way to helping group unity, and they find themselves using the signs for other team members, not just Riven.)

For the closing act, Musa and a few other students, and volunteers from Magix, write a song about the unity between the very different groups.

Stella helps organise the wardrobes, Tecna runs a team in charge of the electronics, and Aisha gets right into helping the dancers, one of whom is Mirta. (Musa has been unanimously voted In Charge of the project as their resident Fairy of Music, but also as the only person who has any experience in setting up a concert from scratch.) Bloom and Flora find places and people to help out amidst the preparations.

 The evening of the concert arrives, all the performers are nervous, they've done the best they could in the time they had, and they all plan to give it their all.

Musa has an additional reason to be nervous however, she's invited her father to come watch the performance. Musa is trying to show her father how much music means to her, not just because of her mother, but because music is who she is.

When the concert starts though, Musa and the other performers set their worries aside so they can give their best possible performances.

The show gets off to a great starts, all the acts go flawlessly, but as the evening progresses, dark clouds begin to gather over head, and thunder rumbles across the sky. When Musa steps on stage during the later half of the concert, a bolt of lightning strikes the stage, causing several of the lights and speakers to explode. Musa is flung across the stage, and in the crowd, her friends are scared, but the fairy of music gets back up quickly.

From the darkness overhead, Stormy descends, her Gloomix glowing an unusually bright, and menacing red.

Stormy calls Musa out for what happened a few days prior, saying that how ever Musa managed to fight her off, it won't happen again. Amongst the crowd, in strategic locations for just this scenario, fairies, witches and wizards bring up shields to protect the crowd. With the number of civilians in the area, there aren't a lot of people free to combat Stormy. Musa loudly declares that she beat Stormy before, and she can do it again.

Stormy proceeds to trounce her for several minutes before Riven manages to get close enough to Mirta to call out a plan to her. Mirta smirks and casts illusions all throughout the crowd, lyrics and the music for their concert's final song.

The Winx, and the members of the concert who were there for the last confrontation, realise what Riven is planning, and start singing, making music with hands and feet and instruments, and focusing on Musa. As the rest of the crowd looks at the music makers and the lyrics in confusion, Riven sprints through the masses, calling out for people to sing, that Musa if the Fairy of Music.

An older man vaults onto the stage and settles himself down in front of the piano, joining the song. At the back of the crown, a young woman with a long, pale blonde ponytail summons a small orchestra of instruments and helps out as well. (spoiler alert, it's Galatea.)

Musa feels the power swelling up inside her, and quickly turns the tide of battle.

Stormy is enraged as she is beaten back again, by the fairy, and attempts to summon a powerful lightning elemental.

On stage the man at the piano calls out in fear for Musa, who turns to him and asks for him to trust her, because this is who she is.

They share a moment as he agrees, and Musa feels like she's pushed through an obstacle she didn't even realise she was trying to overcome. A bright light flares on her chest and around her waist as her Charmix finally manifests, multiplying her powers even further.

She wraps Stormy in a bubble of percussive force, the elemental she was attempting to call falls to pieces, and the witch's ears start to bleed, her screams swallowed up by Musa's unrelenting display of power.

With no other recourse, Stormy teleports out.

The crowd cheers, and despite the near disaster, the show goes on, with even more energy than before.

(At Alfea, the students who stayed at the school and watched the concert on tv all break out into cheers as well. In the Headmistress's office, Faragonda and Griselda share a look and break out their celebratory alcohol for a single victory shot each... before writing up a pardon for Musa for classes since the girl will be recovering from her power boost for a few days. (The more a fairy boosts her powers above her normal level, the longer she has to sleep it off.))

Musa rides the high until the last song, which everyone sings along to now that they know the words. Musa has just enough time after the final curtain call to talk to her dad (the man at the piano) before she passes out.

Musa's dad sees his daughter and her friends back to Alfea, before he returns home to Melody.

[attract-mode-collective]

Scorpion Vs. Elon Musk’s Mom: FIGHT

Yes, that is indeed Elon Musk’s mother up there. And no, I do not have a bigger sized version of the pic. Guess we could always ask captain-price-official if one does exist.

Or perhaps make your own? Here’s Elon’s mum by herself (and in higher res)...

And with that, it’s time to see what else I tweeted during the first half of March! So, sticking with fighting games: which Street Fighter character does lighting better? Ryu, via the animated movie (via settei)...

… Or Bison, via the live action flick (via toghomevideo)...

I absolutely love win quotes from rom hacks (via bison2winquote)...

I have a massive backlog of games, yet Tekken 7 just shot straight to the top of the list, thanks to the knowledge that you can accurately recreate Dynamite Headdy characters (via mysterious0bob)...

This Hatsune Miku X Space Channel 5 figure is v. nice (via nendoroidoftheday)...

A friendly reminder to everyone that A. I'm a massive fan of Seaman & B. my birthday is about a month away (via nutastic)...

This scene at the beach with a Figma of Link, from A Link Between Worlds, feels more like Link's Awakening than anything else (via vyntic)...

Toys and models are no longer just for reenacting memorable in-game moments, they can also reproduce famous IRL events that surrounded the games themselves (via 8bitcentral)...

So what's the going rate for ET for the Atari 2600 that was supposedly dug up in for that so-called documentary, Atari: Game Over? Which I recently re-watched and still can't believe people think is real. At any rate, am assuming the autograph from Howard Scott Warshaw gives it some actual value (via it8bit)...

And what's the going rate for Chinese Famiclone karaoke carts, primarily one with Jackie Chan on the label. Am also wondering if it's cuz his songs are included... you are aware of his successful career in music as well, right? (via ulan-bator)...

Been struggling to come up with a zinger for the past 10 minutes, but ain't nuthin gonna beat "Welcome to the Velvet Room y'all!" (via jatayu)...

To be filed under: it's funny cuz it's true (via doctorbutler)...

So the weather has been awful around these parts, lots of rain & snow, which gets in the way of imagining a giant tetromino in the sky (via uvula.jp)...

When playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, please keep in mind that somewhere out there, despite being out of view, is the ghost of Luigi floating through vast stretches of empty space, with zero destination or purpose (via suppermariobroth)...

Speaking of Luigi, and Supper Mario Broth; they’ve taken the adventures he talks about in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and illustrated them in the form of a comic that closely adheres to the style of the game...

Also a friendly reminder of that rift between Mario & Luigi for a few years (they'd eventually make up & resume doing games together, as everyone knows) after Mario discovered his brother being all friendly with the enemy in Super Mario World (via peazy86)...

Yet another obscure Mario factoid: the move he uses to defeat Bowser in Super Mario 64 originates from an old furikake commercial that predates the game by about a decade (via suppermariobroth)...

Yet another random gif of Mario from the 80s, this one from a video guide from Super Mario Bros; I miss the days in which his look was not yet standardized (via suppermariobroth)...

And here we have a completely unlicensed Dr. Mario, unless Nintendo gave him the OK to brush up on his doctoring skills by assuming an alias at a family clinic in Houston TX (via suppermariobroth)...

It's funny how, when it comes to obscure Mario games, everyone brings up Mario Is Missing or Hotel Mario, but what about Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up? (via kazucrash)...

Mario gets his own breakfast cereal.

Luigi? Booze. (via @carolynmichelle)

A question that I posed on MAR10Day (via retrogamerblog)...

It's not Super Mario Bros, but simply…. Bros (via therubberfruit)...

I've never wanted something "bootleg" to be official as much as as this Dark Souls fan art. And if the actual game somehow looked like this, that would be... gladly welcomed (via gamefreaksnz)

Oh God, Nier is amazing and all, but I would SO be down for a yelling & screaming match with Yoko Taro on this point (via @Avisch_)...

Behold my fave Twitter thread in recent memory: "You see, that was taken from Africa, but it belonged to the Keyblade Masters. Imma take it off your hands for ya."

"Nah, It was taken by British soldiers in Africa but it's actually from Gaia. A sword far heavier than any sword has rights to be, yet a true 1st Class will wield it with ease. Don't trip, I'm gonna take it off your hands for you."

"Nah, It was taken by British soldiers in Africa but it's actually from Hyrule. Originally crafted by the goddess Hylia herself. Only a true hero that is pure of heart and strong of body is capable of wielding the sacred blade. Don't trip, I'm gonna take it off your hands for you."

Naturally the star of Home Alone 1 & Home Alone 2 has both a NES Classic and Famicom Mini, like all Hollywood bigwigs (via @SimonParkin)...

While discussing Ready Player One with a colleague, was reminded of the dude who was so inspired by the book that he turned his apartment into an arcade (and then his fiancé broke up with him; via nydailynews.com)...

Recently there was some kind of event at Sega HQ, I think? Details are basically nonexistent due to the language barrier, but far as I can gather, 16 super fans were invited to come by & party (via @SEGA_OFFICIAL)...

... If you check out #セガ公式アカウントオフ会 you'll see numerous pics from the get-together, though the one thing that stands out is the assortment of Sega hardware (via @KK__Cy)...

... MIA, cuz no variants were on display, is my fave alt ver. of the Mega Drive: the Wondermega. But @yu100s took one of his own… with the ugly ass US Sonic 1 NOT FOR RESALE cart inserted, Jesus fucking Christ...

The Sega logo in katakana looks pretty hawt (via @Exciteless)...

... Yet the Sega logo in Arabic which is official, is even hawter (via boingboing.net)...

Please enjoy your daily recommended dosage of an erotic hospital-management sim (via @topherflorence)...

NCSX makes the fidget spinner comparison, though the fidget cube seems a bit more appropriate; behold the fidget game controller...

Toy Fair recently took place, and naturally I took tons of pictures. You can find all of them on my personal Instagram, though a few are worth re-posting here. Like the latest in NECA's line of classic movie characters, as they appeared in video game adaptations...

Though in the case of their take on the Alien vs. Predator arcade game, they even included Capcom's original characters...

Unpainted, pre-production figures from Reflection's upcoming Ghost 'N Goblins line, sporting the oh-so popular Kenner-eqsue retro look...

Pint-sized arcade cabs, available this fall for $400. They’ll come unassembled, though dead simple to put together; the construction of the assembled mini cab was surprisingly sturdy, plus the screen wasn't bad (contrary to the picture that my iPhone's camera paints). Though the controls were shit; no word on whether the parts can be swapped or not...

Was delighted to not not only see Cuphead merch at Toy Fair, but more than just one instance (though this was the only time I was allowed to take a picture)...

Came across a producer of infant goods that had a selection of Super Mario baby bibs...

I asked the rep if this was their first foray into video games and the answer was "Yes." And when asked who's been mostly buying them, was told "Video game collectors, who don't even have children… it's so bizarre!!!"

Sticking with bibs, here's a set that tied to Dragon Quest (via miki800.com)...

... I asked on Twitter what they said and @alexfkraus was kind enough to provide translations, here and here.

Was so inspired by @MinusWorld listing which characters he'd like to see in the next Super Smash Bros that I decided to cite a few of my own:

- Mona from WarioWare - Nester from Nintendo Power’s Howard & Nester comics - Link from that Japanese A Link To The Past commercial - A deck of Hanafuda cards

... BTW, had no idea Ollie also mentioned a Hanafuda; I only saw his initial four, initially! Anyhow, my second round of choices:

- Ashley from Another Code - The "who are you running from?" guy in the Game Boy Camera - Lucas from The Wizard - The 4WD from Stunt Race FX (since Fighters Megamix with the Daytona USA 2 car clearly ain't ever happening)

I alas forgot to include BoxBoy, much like how I got these Uniqlo shirts when they were on sale last year (via minusworld.co.uk)...

Here we have my fave reaction on Tumblr to the Nintendo Direct with the Smash 5 reveal, if only for the punchline (via mendelpalace)...

And here we have my fave reaction on Twitter (via @redford)...

This one is also great because wrestling (via @SteveYurko)...

Speaking of wrestling, remember that time Tazz, while commentating for Smackdown, was also playing a game of Final Fantasy X-2… or so he thought? (via defjamvendetta)

"hey quick question whoever's developing the wwe games now: what the fuck"

"It helps him eat small fish"

"better question: why isn't this an option in every game ever"

"FAIR POINT" (via snoozlebee)

Whereas most publishers in Japan, during the 80s & 90s, had festivals (or carnivals) centered around shmups, Asmik's was based on women's wrestling (via oldgamemags)...

It's not for a video game, though the illustration is by someone who has been involved in a few; it's by Satoshi Yoshioka, of Snatcher and Policenauts fame (via videogamesdensetsu)...

It's not for a video game that actually exists, but is instead a completely fictional instructional manual, one that makes you wish it was real (via tomeccles)...

Just when you think you've seen every ultra, wacky & obscure video game box art there is to see out there (via @CoolBoxArt)...

I have a serious soft sport for the usage of video game imagery among early 80s musicians (via siryl)...

... What the final product looks like BTW/FYI...

A. so there's a VR version of Fruit Ninja, did not know that, & B. if you like watching people play it (for whatever reason), yet wish you could actually see a person swinging a sword and not just some abstract swiping motions… here ya go (via prostheticknowledge)...

Playing games in VR is so 2017… Handling your collection of games in VR? Now THAT is very 2018 (via mendelpalace)...

Lots of friends are playing the new DBZ fighting game, though I'll give it a shot once it hits the arcades and is also in a cab like this (via @Fotosdecomics)...

I absolutely need to get my hands on this S.H. Figuarts Shinya Arino (via tinycartridge)...

Available right now, some Altered Beast, Bare Knuckles, and Rent-a-Hero resin kits (via miki800.com)...

Cursed? More like blessed amirite (via @Pretzel_Pup)...

I know Yoji Shinkawa is best buds with Hideo Kojima, but would he be open to doing another gig at Konami? Cuz him art directing a reboot of Twin Bee would kinda be the best (via @SESKOU)...

There's money on the table with this Metroid X Pepsi mash-up, am confident of this (via ryangilleece)...

Cuz even someone like Samus Aran needs a good stretch every once in a while (via jon-bliss)...

And this third piece of Metroid fan art in a row is very much related to Metroid 3, aka Super Metroid (even though it technically depicts the ending to Metroid 2; via mmillus)...

Awakening indeed (via brookietf)...

For those who have asked, yes, I have seen the hack that connects the Switch to an itty-bitty black & white TV...

Though I'm only really interested in tiny b&w CRT TVs if I can play Duck Hunt on them (via arcade-crusade)...

I not only dig teeny-tiny displays for light gun games, but also for driving games as well (perhaps some of you might remember the following from this)...

Back to tube displays; seeing Zelda on a CRT also reminded me of how Dark Souls look on a CRT, aka CRT Souls or 480i Souls (which again I'm hoping regular readers of the blog remember, especially since the original post has fallen victim to a Tumblr bug)...

"while playing king's field just now i died in the magic cave of fire and when i warped back there were beautiful graphical glitches everywhere" (via mendelpalace)...

Some landscapes, filled with beauty and mystery and terror, are accidental (see: the graphical glitches from before)… whereas others are completely deliberate, as in the case of Atlantia (via obscurevideogames)...

Once again, I REALLY need to figure out a way to play some PC88 games (via obscurevideogames)...

Here we have a semi-common Space Invaders sighting for the time, in an episode of Battle Fever J, one of the earliest Super Sentai shows (via himitsusentaiblog)...

And here we have a rare Game Gear sighting, in old OVA anime, Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. Hell, it’s a rare Game Gear in anything sighting; the only other example that comes to mind is Rumble In The Bronx (via @TheOtaking)...

And an equally rare Sonic on the runway sighting (via kotaku.com)...

I normally watch a video in its entirety before making a recommendation. Yet when it came to this overview of Last Bronx's legacy in Japan (and lack thereof in the West), hearing the main theme to Beat Takeshi's Violent Cop near the 3 min mark was all I needed (have since watched the whole thing, and as expected, it's another awesome Kim Justice production)...

And finally, a friend notes: "subzero's right arm is real close to trump's spinal column

just sayin" (via @jbillinson)...

[carriejonesbooks]

So, I have to go to Book Expo America at the end of this week. If you are not some official publishing person you’re probably like, “What is Book Expo America?” It’s this big huge massive (insert another large-sounding adjective here) industry thing where there are:

1. Publishers 2. Authors 3. Book sellers 4. Publicists

And almost all of them are well dressed.

There is the issue! I am from Maine…. Okay, I live in Northern Maine. How northern? When people from Glamour Magazine came up here to do a photo shoot with Megan Kelley Hall and myself (for our Dear Bully anthology) they made us DRESS IN LL BEAN CLOTHES!!!!!

Yes, even Glamour knew that it is not glamorous up here.

Sigh.

Megan still looked good. Me? The hair stylist/make-up person kept complaining about my hair, and how my nose turned red in the cold, and I felt so badly for her because she was used to super models or My Little Pony (really – she was the stylist for My Little Pony) and then she got stuck with me.

Anyway, I was thinking about BEA and authors who are always beautiful and poised and funny and lovely. And I have decided I need to somehow magically channel these authors at BEA so I don’t look like a hick from Maine or like, you know, I’ve never actually interacted with other actual human beings before.

But pretty much everything in my wardrobe has paint stains on it, holes, or long white dog fur.

She always blames me. There are lint rollers out there for a reason. Geesh.

I basically come across as either an eccentric old-money professor or homeless.

You may think I have no reason to be panicky, but I’m going to repost what happened to me the last time I went to BEA, and maybe you’ll understand.

ONCE AGAIN FOR THOSE WHO MISSED IT BEFORE – HERE IS THE HORRIBLE INCIDENT OF ME AT BEA LAST TIME (Taken from the original blog post of horror): So, yep, I had my skirt fall off (YES! PAST MY KNEES!) when I got out of the taxi today!  Oh, Britney…oh Lindsey…oh Paris… I so feel your pain. Fortunately, there were no paparrazzi, just my cab driver (His eyes got really big) and a father with his eight-year-old son (WHO WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!). They were standing right there, waiting for the taxi. The little boy gasped! GASPED!!!! I have marred him for life.

I then realized I should not be let out of Maine.

So I started yanking my skirt up with my hand while trying to: a. Pay taxi driver guy b. not die c. juggle three massive bags full of ARCS d. not worry about that little boy’s therapy bills.

It was then that I realized that hotel security cameras probably totally caught the skirt fall action.

I thanked God (and pretty much every potential deity in existence) that I am not famous and therefore not worthy enough to have the skirt DISASTER image blasted all over the internet.

I then hid in the hotel room, vowing never to come out again.

So, yeah. I don’t want that to happen again.

If you would like to see me in unsuitable clothes, check out the Lerner Booth on Friday, June 1 from 11:30 to noon.  I’ll be there with a spy who was also a catcher. 🙂

  WRITING NEWS

Yep, it’s the part of the blog where I talk about my books and projects because I am a writer for a living, which means I need people to review and buy my books or at least spread the word about them.

I’m super good at public image and marketing for nonprofits but I have a much harder time with marketing myself.

So, please buy one of my books. 🙂 The links about them are all up there in the header on top of the page on my website carriejonesbooks.blog .  There are young adult series, middle grade fantasy series, stand-alones for young adults and even picture book biographies.

Time Stoppers

Flying

Moe Berg

Write! Submit! Support! Begins Again in July!

“It’s not easy to create a thriving writing career in the children’s industry, but what if you didn’t have to do it alone? Write. Submit. Support is a six-month program designed by author and Writing Barn Founder Bethany Hegedus. Classes are led by top creatives in the children’s industry field; they’ll give you the tips and tools you need to take both your manuscripts and your developing career to the next level. Think of it as an MFA in craft with a certificate in discovering (or recovering) your writer joy! – Writing Barn “

And more about the class I specifically teach? It is right here.

Here is what current students are saying:

Carrie is all strengths. Seriously. She’s compassionate, funny, zesty, zany, insightful, honest, nurturing, sharp, and…Wow, that’s a lot of adjectives. But really, I couldn’t praise Carrie enough as a mentor. I’ve long respected her writing, but being talented at something doesn’t automatically mean you will be a great mentor. Carrie just happens to be one of those rare cases of extreme talent and excellent coaching. Aside from the specific feedback she offers, she also writes letters in response to the process letter and analyses. These letters have been so impactful for me as I writer that I plan to print them and hang them up. Creepy? Maybe. But they are so inspiring. And that, in the most long-winded way possible, is how I would summarize Carrie as a mentor—inspiring.

Dogs Are Smarter Than People

And finally, the podcast DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE is still chugging along. Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of.

Look, Mom! It’s a podcast.

Book Expo America is Coming and I have Nothing to Wear So, I have to go to Book Expo America at the end of this week. If you are not some official publishing person you’re probably like, “What is Book Expo America?” It’s this big huge massive (insert another large-sounding adjective here) industry thing where there are:

[because-its-important]

transitions & transformations

i. the rest of my batch at RC

I spent the first six weeks of my batch at Recurse Center in an out-and-out sprint. I learned Python, built and released projects, and wrote blog posts every week. I wasn’t sure where my limits were, but I was determined to find out - preferably by overshooting them, then adjusting after the fact.

A curious thing happened. I kept finding that I was more than capable of starting and finishing projects, especially when I had a firm mental image of the end goal. There were at least as many unexpected good-turns as there were setbacks, and I certainly didn’t come up against any inscrutable barriers. Mostly the challenge was in overcoming the distance between a thing that doesn’t exist and a thing that does, which I was able to sort out pretty handily through a consistent application of effort across time.

Who’d have thought?

A selfie taken on my birthday, which also happened in the last few months and was really great!

The second half of my batch was not so visibly productive - with the exception of The Question Game. The Question Game is a simple game designed to help groups of people get to know each other better IRL. I designed it with my friend Brittany a few years ago as an icebreaker when we found ourselves in a group of folks who knew us but didn’t really know each other. The game only really needs a method of generating random numbers for a small but arbitrary group size, but building it out as a toy webapp was a good excuse to get practice working with a JS-only stack. I learned React, got a lil more familiar with node, and even went as far as to attach an otherwise completely unnecessary PG database and Sequelize ORM. You can see the code for it here. Outside of this project, however, I didn’t publish any code. I didn’t publish any writing, either.

So I’d like to take a moment and shine a bit of light on the work that I did during the rest of my batch.

🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘

First, I made the decision to leave community.lawyer, the social impact startup I co-founded in 2016 following the Blue Ridge Labs Fellowship.

I’m happy to report that I left on the come up, which seems a rare and privileged thing for a founder to be able to say. Gaining traction in a hyper-specialized industry like legal tech takes a gargantuan amount of sustained forward momentum, and I departed just as we began to reap the fruits of our labor. In the last few months community.lawyer has reached final approval on partnerships a year in the making, won federal grants we’d submitted to in 2016, and every day our software is being used to help connect people who have legal needs with credible lawyers. Our first two partners were exactly the types of legal organizations at the heart of our mission: the Justice Entrepreneurs Project and the DC Reduced Fee Lawyer & Mediator Referral Service.1 Based in Chicago and Washington DC respectively, these orgs are specifically chartered to deliver quality services at rates that more Americans can afford. I am so proud. ⚖️

Second, I started my first ever job hunt as a software engineer. Wowee, this was scary! I knew that I had to prepare for interviewing, which meant a) getting my career change narrative straight, b) studying Data Structures & Algorithms 101, and c) learning how to perform my handle on both of these in a live, semi-adversarial environment.

At one point during my batch my laptop broke. I read through this wonderful illustrated book during the two days it was being fixed.

In order to direct my search I also had to craft a set of selection criteria of my own. Foremost: “What good will my work do for the world?”2 Additionally, “What degree of access will I have to supportive mentors?”

Getting started with interview prep was a challenge, at least partly because I had so many options for where to start. But I did get started! I read Cracking the Coding Interview, I did the free trial and weekly free problems on Interview Cake. I attended a few group mock interviews at Recurse Center and signed up for a 1-1 mock interview with an RC alum. Her name is Leah, and she’s amazing - the superbly friendly and encouraging Comp Sci TA I wish I’d had years ago. 💚Brittany also set up mock technical screens for me with her pals, Leaf and Ian. They were the vanguard against my outsized anxiety about programming for an audience and they each took the time to give me solid feedback.

Third, I extended my batch at Recurse Center by another 6 weeks. I had decided early on I wouldn’t extend (for no real reason) and stuck with this decision up until two days before my batch ending. A small group of folks - Lily, Connor, Alicja and I - went to NYX in Union Square to try out lipsticks. We played with different colors and finishes (satin! matte! shimmer!) for half an hour or so. There came a point when I looked up, glanced across the narrow makeup store at my beautiful friends’ beautiful faces and thought, “You know, you don’t have to leave yet, right? What’s the rush?” I’d already accomplished my primary goal, to forcibly rework my identity as an engineer, but it sure seemed that I could stand to reach for a second one. That night I decided to extend my batch, with the intention of sampling a more open method of self-directed learning, i.e. with a little more chill and a lot less panic. Specifically, I wanted to practice connecting meaningfully with my limited supply of social energy.

In my bonus six weeks, I: gave three talks (2 planned, 1 impromptu) under encouragement from Ayla and Lily, learned to juggle thanks to instruction from a fellow RCer, Edward, who also loaned me a book about learning, made it into weekly Feelings Check-in (read as: opt-in support group) fairly regularly, picked my first ever lock, saw a live-coding show and then later attended two live-coding workshops (one on TidalCycles, another on Super Collider), sat in a dark room and played howling wolf clips while Microsoft Sam read grimoires aloud, got my hair braided for the first time in a decade, made dumplings and DJ’d for a dinner party, connected with folks about queer-poly relationships, gave fiery advice, and received compliments so earnest and rational and persistent that it was difficult to refute them.

Zine fair plus Lightning Bolt concert inside a movie theater in Times Square??

I also put my interview prep to use and interviewed with a handful of Recurse Center partner companies. Job searching meant squaring off against impostor syndrome and a ton of related anxieties in rapid succession. I successfully choked most of that down when it mattered, though, and it was only a couple short weeks before I received my first offer.

To that end, I’m super happy to say that I’ll be joining Blink Health as a Fullstack Product Engineer! Blink Health is a healthcare startup in SoHo. They make it easier for people to afford prescription drugs, especially for those with limited insurance plans or none at all. These savings aren’t trivial either: an extra $50 can spare someone from choosing between groceries or medicine that week, and for some folks Blink saves many times that. I’ll be starting at the end of this month. ✌️🤓

The last two years have been a wild ride: participating in a social impact fellowship and accelerator, busting my product chops and learning web dev to get a public benefit company off the ground, then diving into four months of self-directed learning at Recurse Center. I’m really looking forward to having some externally imposed structure again. Real health insurance, too.

ii. some hard truths

I made a few radical life changes in 2016, like getting involved in activist spaces, dating more, biking everywhere, building strong friendships, going capital-B Boogying, programming full-time. As I carried those changes forward through 2017, I began to notice a lot of mental and emotional reconfiguration happening to me.

Did you know that along its way to becoming a butterfly, a caterpillar nearly completely liquifies inside its cocoon?

Psychological growth is confusing, full of false starts, and generally painful. You’ve got the static pain of stretching beyond your limits, the pleasure-pain of feeling an old knot finally release, the frustrating pain of stubbing your toe because some helpful asshole has been rearranging your psychic furniture when you weren’t looking. There’s the more dramatic knife-in-the-gut pain of realizing that just because you’re growing doesn’t mean the people closest to you are, and that now in certain cases what you previoulsy regarded as friendship actually looks a whole lot like run-of-the-mill exploitation or even emotional abuse, if you're being honest, and it's a realization that only hurts more because it’s so irredeemably cliche and boring. And despite all that pain you gotta go ahead and grow anyway, claw your way out of the relative comfort of ignorance. Transcendence may not be the only show in town but afaik it’s the one most worth watching.

Prior to attending Recurse Center I’d spent lots of time exploring my surroundings and cataloguing people and places worth coming back to. My view of myself did change (and positively!) as a consequence. But sooner or later, ya get tired of the taste of low-hanging fruit.

So, armed with the bookshelf of a philosophy grad and a burgeoning psychoanalytic vocabulary begging to be let off leash, I decided to use my time at RC to try confronting a few of my Hard To See truths in addition to becoming a better programmer.

Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Truth #1: People like me a lot. This causes me problems.

I’ve been metabolizing this one for some time. I remember having a conversation with Brittany in January of 2016. I don’t remember what social anxiety I’d been vocalizing, but I must have been worrying that someone “hated me.” Brittany cut me off, exasperated in the way that only a friend can be in the face of utter delusion: “No one hates you Nicole! You’re always worried that people don’t like you and it’s never true!”

I carried that admonishment with me through two years of voracious friendship-building. On the whole, seeing that people do in fact enjoy and seek out my company has curbed the most egregious overreaches of my social anxiety. But reckoning with my anxiety honestly has also meant acknowledging that my compulsive instinct to withdraw from social situations is also a protective (if suboptimal) response to a few very real dangers.

Most acutely: being friendly, generous, and intensely empathetic makes me a ready target for users. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can, which makes me proportionally susceptible to being taken advantage of and then gaslighted about it. A lifetime of socialization as a petite woman don’t help, neither. This leads to a pattern where, semi-regularly, I look up and take stock of how someone has been treating me and realize that the answer is Very Badly, For Quite A While. This in turn leads to rough periods of cutting ties and moving on. Ideally I’d like to be be able to filter bad actors out sooner, but I also want to stay open, giving, and hopeful beyond reason. Those desires are fundamentally at odds with each other - raising vs. lowering one’s defenses - but it’s clear that I need to come up with a strategy that balances both.

More broadly, though, I operate under an ever-present dread of inevitably disappointing everyone who knows me. Whether people project onto me because they already like me or like me more because they project positively onto me, I am extremely sensitive to the fact that when people meet me the conception they form has waaay more to do with what they want to find than what’s actually there. My body is a surface readily projected upon: young, female-shaped, ethnically ambiguous, small, smiling. These well-intended projections cause me the most trouble when people see me interacting socially; they’ll witness fifteen minutes of seemingly effortless extroversion on my part and extrapolate out massively. As far as they’re concerned I’ve got plenty of social energy to spare, and if I don’t spend it hanging out with them, it must be because either my friendliness is fake or I don’t like them.

Pretty much none of this is conducted consciously, of course, but it still creates a lot of unnecessary pressure that I can’t pretend not to feel and resent. I know there are people who dream about attaining this kind of “popularity” - to be assumed Cooler than one truly is - but getting buffeted around by folks’ totally unexamined, unarticulated psychological desires mostly sucks.

Truth #2: I’m non-binary.

I’ve also spent a very long time resisting this one. Two decades on the rack, easy. As such, the story of getting here is long. Perhaps one day I’ll tell it. 😛

The short of it, though, is this: I’m probably at least as much of a boy3 as I am a girl. Outside of where my life has been mutated by the chronic background radiation of sexism, “benevolent” and otherwise, I don’t strongly identify as a woman. Furthermore, I find the two-gender system to be infinitely more alienating than comforting. Gender is a social construction designed to impose order on the natural messiness of sexual experience, and as far as I’m cool with that, I am decidedly Not Cool with the “normal” state of affairs, i.e. aggressively shoving whole human beings into an absurdly reductive false dichotomy.

Between its either-or-ism and its forced assignment, the traditional approach to gender reveals itself to be obviously bullshit to anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about it. Its boundaries are arbitrary, inconsistent, and generally ill-fitting at the level of individual experience, which why they require such an outrageous amount of coercion and bodily violence to enforce. As much as other folks want to participate in a system of ritualized violence I guess they are free to? Personally, I’d prefer to see it actively dismantled.

If gender is to be saved it’ll be by subverting it, taking it apart, remaking it into something life-affirming. Not the dehumanizing garbage we’ve got now.

As of yet I don’t have any plans to change my presentation because I don’t fuckin’ gotta!

I do have a preference towards They / Them pronouns, but She / Her is still fine. For most of my friends this isn’t going to be at all surprising nor will it in any way negatively impact our relationship. Anyone who needs me to just-be-a-girl, however, can expect turbulence.

Truth #3: My righteous anger is justified and I am good at using it to help others.

I have felt conflicted about my anger for a long time. Since a very vocal childhood I have been regularly frustrated by prejudices and injustices, and I was frequently the first voice of dissent against them, whether that meant challenging adults or my peers. Unsurprisingly, I became well acquainted with the standard strokes of the backlash.

When you are confronting bigotry in a mixed environment, the voice of the status quo will generally manifest in one of two ways:

Gaslighting, e.g. “you are wrong to have said this at all, obviously I am a Good Person, you are just imagining that what I said sounded like XYZ, honestly how could you even think this, as a matter of fact it is I who is offended!”

Tone policing, e.g. “you’re too upset about this! after all, I, the person who did Fucked Up Thing, am perfectly calm about Fucked Up Thing, so any amount of anger makes you irrational by contrast, and I get a raincheck on whatever this is about!”

I know these responses are repulsive. I know they are merely the signs of a weak and imperiled ego acting out of fear. And yet I still spend an inordinate amount of time second-guessing my own anger. Gaslighting and tone policing are a favored weapon of the status quo because they work, and they work in direct proportion to how agreeable their target wants to be.

content warning: the following segment talks about sexual harassment and assault

About couple weeks ago I had the misfortune of being sexually harassed at a club in Bushwick. After numerous rejections and explicitly telling a creep bothering me, my friends, and other women in the club to get lost, I finally went to get a bouncer to eject him. The bouncer got the creep to leave. When I went to thank him, the bouncer told me a whole story about how the creep was “a harmless guy.” Then he reached down and grabbed my ass. Presumably he felt entitled to do this after helping me get rid of a person I asked him to remove... for unwanted touching.

It Really Sucked.

At every turn during the whole ordeal (and its aftermath) I had to hold onto my anger, convince myself that I wasn’t overreacting, remind myself that anyone who thought this was acceptable to do to me is almost certainly doing worse to more vulnerable people. I kept picturing myself the way this guy, this man in a position of power, must have seen me in order to feel okay doing what he did. That I was young, small, female, too friendly to say No, already indebted anyway; that he was one of the Good Guys, that his behavior was also “harmless” because he had decided it was. I conjured up as much anger as I could, pushed down the nausea of envisioning my own degradation from an attacker’s POV, and got to work. I reached out to the club and was quickly put in contact with the owner. The venue now has a publicly posted zero tolerance sexual harassment policy. The entire staff is going through training with a local org dedicated to creating safer nightlife spaces. And that motherfucker has been fired.

I demonstrably made the world better. I wasn’t alone, but all that happened because of my actions. Me and my anger, we did that.

I wish more people were this fucking angry. 💢

~ end of content warning ~

iii. an opinion

My Saturn return is upon me, y’all. As Frank Ocean serenades, we’ll never be those kids again. I have lived a few of these here nine lives and it seems only prudent to be moving forward with some sort of opinion on the matter.

My opinion is this: us folks with financial and physical security should be spending more time fixing shit around here. Figuring out what needs fixing and how you might help are the first steps.

If you’re operating on a similar scale of privilege as I am, maybe that means changing jobs to do more mission-oriented work. If you can’t swing a change of that magnitude, maybe it means showing up to community events and engaging with, caring for, supporting people you otherwise wouldn’t talk to. Churches, libraries, volunteering, supporting local artists, participating in local politics - this all counts. If you’re already doing this sorta thing, that is awesome! Maybe you also have a friend worth inviting who you sense is just itching for a chance to exercise compassion?

I’m using “fixing” pretty loosely here, too. Fixing, to my mind, means making the world brighter, safer, and sweeter for your fellows, human and otherwise. We’ve all got different ideas about what that looks like, and there are definitely folks - myopic or malevolent or both - who will swear up and down that their fear- and hate-driven behaviors will bring about better world. Ultimately, though, I believe that many hands reaching towards their personal vision of Better will in fact make things Better, especially when that vision is informed by meaningful interaction with the real world and its real sorrows and its real triumphs.

But ya gotta reach. Ya gotta try.

I am so tired of hearing my well-fed, well-homed friends piss and moan about late capitalism4 without lifting a damn finger in service of the communities bearing the brunt of material hardship. Unfettered capitalism sure does have a marked tendency to wreak havoc on organic life! But capitalism is not a monolith, and lamenting the abuses perpetuated by its principle benefactors as unchanging or inevitable only normalizes them. Any investigation into the history of capitalism (or the broader phenomena of how a Few come to subjugate the Many) will very quickly disabuse you of the notion that this shit is going to stop without a great deal of active resistance.5

So unless you are personally doing work to put our current strand of democracy-withering corporatism six-feet-under, seriously, just STFU instead. Your nihilism is boring! You don’t sound woke! Save it for your local DSA working group!

Which isn’t to say that I’m not convinced of the wickedness6 of the problems we’re facing: skyrocketing wealth disparity with no relief in sight; the destruction of most of Earth’s biodiversity via mass extinction; a pernicious climate of racism and xenophobia that scapegoats black and brown folks and then visits misery upon them; the weight of an aging population bearing down on the shittiest healthcare system of any nation in its class; a widely disenfranchised electorate further fragmented and fatigued by hyper-polarization; the gendered terrorism that is inflicted daily on women, trans and non-binary folks, and queer people at large; a rising wave of depressive anxiety as people become more aware of these problems and how thoroughly they’ve been disempowered from changing things for the better.

So yeah, I get it. These are hard problems. I just don’t see any better option than trying anyway. I want to spend my time fixing things around here and encouraging others to try their hand too. You already know the bad news: real change is hard and it can take a very long time. You might work your whole life sowing seeds whose fruit you never get to taste.

The good news, however, is that you can get started whenever and wherever you are. The good news is that a sense of purpose is its own reward.

iv. how to get started

When you’ve got hard work ahead of you, your best bet is to use your beautiful human brain and create some leverage. Ask Archimedes about it.7

Lever systems got two parts:

The lever, which is the tool you use to amplify your effort. The longer your lever is, the easier your job will be.

The fulcrum, which is the wedge the lever rests on. The nearer your fulcrum is to the thing you want to move, the easier your job will be.

If you’re starting from zero - “I want to do more for the world but I don’t know how!” - my advice is to forget about the lever arm for now. A lever ain’t shit without a fulcrum, anyway. Your time is better spent exploring the world, keeping an eye out for problems you’d like to solve, and identifying nearby points of leverage. If you want to get into activism, a fulcrum might be volunteering to fold pamphlets for an organization with a mission you believe in. If want to see more self-expression in the world, it might be might be inviting your friends to a zine-making class or hosting your own arts and craft night.

The best fulcrum is one that makes you Feel Good when you apply any amount of effort against it. Too many people get caught up in a self-defeating belief that if they can’t give 110% of their creative energy to something they might as well not try. I can confidently say that trying is itself a virtue. Every time you try even a little bit you make it easier for yourself to try again later, and more importantly, you make trying easier for others. A bunch of people altering their behavior a smidge in the same direction doesn’t add up to nothing; on the contrary, it’s a sea change.

If you’ve got a decent idea of the types of problems you want to solve, though, and you’ve tested your fulcrums, and you are thinking, “Okay, but is this all I’m capable of giving?” then it’s probably time to work on your lever. Given your own interests and inclinations, what skills can you develop that will increase the good you’re doing 10x, 100x over? This is the long game, but it scales a whole lot better than “keep doing what I’m already doing, but more.”

For me right now this means deepening my technical knowledge, building a resilient support network, and sharing what I’m learning. Helping others has been a powerful motivator for self-improvement, not the least of which because it’s a convenient shortcut through the snarl of self-confidence issues.

I am so grateful that Recurse Center was a stop on lengthening my lever! What a concentrated cluster of helpful, considerate beings.

I’ve spent the last two years wandering around New York City in wide-eyed wonder, asking myself the most ambitious question I could think of: how do you save the world?

Getting older comes with a lot of downsides, but asking yourself big questions and living your life as the answer is the primary pleasure of adulthood. It took a ton of courage to get started and I am still frequently awed to find myself moving in the right direction. I’m humbled by the grace and fortitude of the folks who’ve been at this for way longer.

I’m also a hell of a lot happier. This summer’s gonna be rad. ☀️

There are lots of extraordinarily sexy company names like this in the legal world. ↩︎

Having the choice to direct my energies in this way is a privilege. Working in tech gives me this freedom of motion and I have been drawn to software engineering in part because it is the freest of the free (if you still gotta labor for your living). ↩︎

😱😫😖😬😬😬... 😏 ↩︎

Substitute with whatever modifier is en vogue. As a point of fact, “late capitalism” is a term that’s been floating around for literally over a hundred years. ↩︎

Thankfully, history also clearly demonstrates that the tide can be turned. ↩︎

“The use of the term ‘wicked’ here has come to denote resistance to resolution.” Wikipedia page. ↩︎

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” etc etc. ↩︎

[aion-rsa]

Is World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Pre-Patch Friendly to New Players?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

World of Warcraft‘s Shadowlands expansion may have been delayed until sometime later this year, but the expansion’s pre-patch is already live. While you won’t be able to explore Shadowlands‘ new zones, dungeons, bosses, gear, and other upcoming content as part of this patch, many of Shadowlands‘ core upcoming changes (including changes to the MMO’s leveling structure and classes) are already in the game.

It’s around this time that many people start wondering whether or not this is a good time to return to World of Warcraft or even start playing it for the first time. After all, there’s theoretically no better time to jump into an ongoing game than around the release of a new expansion when even veteran players are navigating new content.

At least that’s the question I found myself asking. As someone who never really played World of Warcraft until I spent hundreds of hours with World of Warcraft: Classic, the idea of jumping into the “Retail” version of the game was as appealing as it was daunting. After all, is it really possible to feel at home in a game that’s been growing and changing for the last 16 years?

To help answer that question, here’s a brief look at some of the key points new players need to know before they consider starting their World of Warcraft adventure with Shadowlands.

Shadowland’s New Starting Zone is Welcome but Underwhelming

Shadowlands introduces a new starting area called Exile’s Reach that is mandatory for new players (which, in this case, means you don’t have a World of Warcraft character at or above level 10 on your account) and optional for veteran players. It’s basically a glorified tutorial area that you’ll stay in until around the time your character reaches level 10.

While it’s nice that World of Warcraft now has a proper tutorial area that offers a (nearly) universal leveling experience for new players, the results leave something to be desired. This area will teach you the bare basics (accepting quests, attacking enemies, managing equipment, etc), but unless you’re entirely in the dark about how World of Warcraft and MMOs work, you may find yourself mindlessly jumping from quest to quest waiting for the real game to start.

Exile’s Reach is a better alternative to the old system (which dropped players into unevenly designed starting areas based on their chosen race) but it may still leave you with unanswered questions regarding the more meaningful basic mechanics of the game and how to really take advantage of the playstyle of your chosen class.

Leveling By Expansion Is an Acceptable Solution to A Bigger World of Warcraft Problem

What happens if you’re past the mandatory requirements for Shadowlands‘ new starting zone? Well, you’ll always have the option of starting a new character at Exile’s Reach, but veteran players are also able to essentially “jump” to any previous WoW expansion and level their characters to 50 by following that expansion’s storyline. 

It’s a cute idea, but the execution is a bit of a mixed bag. You’ll never really be able to truly recreate the process of leveling through each of these expansions (unless Blizzard releases “Classic” versions of each of them), so this option seemingly just exists to offer a little variety to veteran players leveling their character alts as well as a way for new players to experience the basic lore of old content. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

So far as that goes, this mechanic really works best as a novelty implemented for variety’s sake. Not only would it take quite a while for new players to go through every previous expansion just to experience the lore, but the truncated versions of those leveling processes means that you’re still probably better off reading/listening to an explainer if you want an overview of what’s happening. This change doesn’t really address the problem of new players feeling like they’ve missed out on 16 years worth of content updates and storylines. Besides, those looking to level an alt character will likely stick to the newer expansions which offer much quicker leveling experiences. 

Shadowland’s Level Squish Makes Leveling Much More Enjoyable

While it’s easy to assume that Shadowlands offers less leveling content now that the level cap has been reduced from 120 to 50 (soon to be 60 with the full release of Shadowlands), the opposite quickly proves to be true. 

This new system ensures that reaching new levels in Shadowlands feels more meaningful. There are still some levels in the game that don’t reward you with anything more exciting than a passive ability or a skill that you’ll almost never use, this new leveling system at least sustains the illusion of role-playing progress. 

That being said, it’s entirely possible that new players will feel a little overwhelmed by the number of new skills they acquire throughout the course of this revamped leveling process. After all, Blizzard revived a lot of the skills and talents from the previous World of Warcraft expansions and incorporated them into the streamlined leveling process, so you actually end up with quite a few mechanics to manage. The good news is that “problem” is addressed somewhat by the next point we should discuss…

Reaching The Level Cap Really is Faster Than Ever

For the purposes of discussion, let’s say that first time players will go from 1-50 in the Shadowlands pre-patch in about 24 in-game hours. That number is going to vary wildly from player to player, but somewhere around that mark seems to be the average. 

Honestly, that’s not bad when you consider that the average journey from 1-60 in WoW Classic typically sets you back closer to 100 hours. More importantly, the game’s relatively quick leveling time makes it clearer than ever before that modern WoW is really all about the end-game. That means that new players shouldn’t necessarily fret over whether or not they feel like they’ve mastered their character by the time they reach the max level. The reduced leveling time also means that it’s easier than ever to level multiple characters to 50 (and eventually 60), which is great for those who want to explore different classes and find what works for them.

It’s entirely understandable if you miss the slower journey of the old leveling process and the adventures you have en route to the level cap, but so far as accomodating new players go, the much-improved leveling speed is a welcome addition.

Solo Play is Easy but Limits the “Massively Multiplayer” Aspects of Shadowlands

Aside from the new starting zone, one of the most noteworthy accommodations the Shadowlands pre-patch makes for new players is a “Newcomer Chat” system in which new players can talk amongst themselves and even ask approved veteran guides for help. 

It’s a neat idea that works well enough if you just want a basic answer to a simple question, but generally speaking, the community aspects of WoW’s early game still feel weak. You can fairly easily solo your way to the level cap, which means that you probably won’t find yourself really needing to work with other players until you get into raiding and other, deeper forms of end-game content. 

I wish I could tell you what the perfect solution to this problem is, but at the moment, World of Warcraft suffers from the fact that not all max level players are made equally. Some have been playing the game for 16 years and others just started. The idea is to find a group of players that match (or accommodate) your experience, but because the game doesn’t really encourage social play until the end game, learning to find and work with other players feels more complicated than it did in the early days of WoW Classic when social play was spread more evenly throughout. Hopefully, the early days of Shadowlands‘ full release will encourage people to group up and solve early challenges together.

Overall, it’s clear that Blizzard crafted Shadowlands with the new player experience in mind. You won’t have a hard time jumping into the game at this point, but whether or not you decide to stick with it is really going to come down to the strength of Shadowlands‘ proper debut and how much you enjoy the World of Warcraft experience once you’ve hit that level cap.

The post Is World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Pre-Patch Friendly to New Players? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2TaFUVY

[lostandfoundmagazine]

Interview with James Martin

Your favourite alternative musician’s favourite alternative musician, James Martin, is slowly becoming a potent influence on the burgeoning London alt rock/pop Scene. Whether working with Black Country, New Road’s Isaac Woods, Famous or Jerskin Fendrix, James Martin brings an otherworldly brilliance to the music. However, much like Brian Eno, his solo work stands-out as much as his collaborations.

His debut Our Giant Panda is Not Pregnant feels like nothing else out there at the moment - sounding like an electronic Orphic descent to the underworld.

I caught up with James Martin to dive a bit deeper into his immersive debut and how he is using his times these days.

How would you describe your music?

It’s pop music, which is to say, it’s an attempt to bear witness to human suffering which does not presuppose an experiential gap between the instruments and victims of that suffering.

Your debut release Our Giant Panda is Not Pregnant released by Slow Dance just celebrated its first anniversary. Could you explain how that album came together?

A few years ago I found myself living in a friend’s garden shed for a few weeks. I couldn’t really sleep in there, so I just decided to stay up at night writing that EP using my phone, my laptop, and Audacity software. Later on Slow Dance decided to release it, for which I am very grateful, because it allowed me to stop tinkering with it and now I’m working on something new.

Often your music feels like it is ingrained with messages or ideas, are there any songs on Our Giant Panda that are especially interesting to you in terms of what they attempt to communicate?

Yes! I guess the whole thing has one message: “this is the story of a conversion”. We can view it like this: in logic, "No X is Y" is the converse of "No Y is X". So the conversion of the proposition “No material objects are sacred” to “Nothing sacred is a material object” is not representative of a religious conversion; we’ve just upcycled the absence of the sacred with respect for the immaterial situation of the sacred, and the victory gained by swapping that predicate and subject is pretty pyrrhic. That’s why I put Rachmaninoff’s setting of the Magnificat into “Introduction” and “The Assassination of…”, to signpost how this incarnation of something has to fail and flail in order to get conceived – to be acknowledged for what it is.

There is a rich versatility in your vocals across your music, ranging from powerful choral performances to theatrical rap and everything in-between. Do you consider your voice as a malleable element in your music?

Yes, everything, voice or computer or guitar or dignity, needs to be malleable in service of the music. I can’t change my voice; I was born with it and my entire body would have to change the way it sounds. So whether it’s voice or acoustic instruments or electronics, it’s about having lots of limitations, but total freedom within those limitations to keep hammering away.

You are in the process of finalising a monograph about Taylor Swift, could you explain what that’s about and how much her suddenly dropping Folklore presumably ruined your plans?

I think Taylor Swift’s music demonstrates a combination of thematic density and popular accessibility which hasn’t been seen in the English-speaking world since the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe. My essay is an attempt to fight for interpretations of her music which are serious and avoid mystifying what she’s doing for fan service, or subjecting its readers to dry critical theory. I doubt folklore will be topped this year for the sheer craft of its songwriting, so I'm very glad it happened when it did. But yes, I do need to rewrite the whole thing this summer! 

Who or what out there inspires James Martin?

At the moment I’m really into Lingua Ignota, Merlin Nova, clipping., Pharmakon, Bola de Nieve and Nadah el Shazly especially. But if I want to get more reliably inspired I tend to read rather than listen to music. So I’m currently making my way through Herrlichkeit by Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Susan Sontag’s diaries, which are amazing. I also like watching television shows where basically the same thing happens in every episode. Narrative arcs do not inspire me.

Words by Robert Davidson

[queerofcups]

what bands are True Emo? bc when i think of emo i think of lo-fi but i'm pretty sure that's bc i'm 18 so i wasnt around for the Real Emo Tunes :(

i’mma answer this publicly because i needed the excuse to be entirely self indulgent, k? 

wait. hold on.

*puts on grad school hat*

so my answer/view on what counts as “emo” is really heavily influenced by this book, Nothing Feels Good, its been years now since i’ve read it, but it includes (may be wholly?) a history of the development of emo as a genre, as well as profiles on some really well known bands. what’s super cool about it is that it was very of the moment. it was published in 2003, which is when emo was gaining mainstream notoriety amongst rock circles, but was nowhere near the cultural zeitgeist it became.

so if you ask me, i’d argue, as andy greenwald identifies in Nothing Feels Good that “true emo” bands would include the likes of Rites of Spring, Sunny Day Real Estate, Jets to Brazil, Mineral, American Football etc*. There’s a really interesting idea that Dan kept kind of bumping up against but didn’t really articulate–that late 00′s emo and the indie music that was fucking exploding around that same time (so, your Death Cab for Cuties, Minus the Bear, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, etc) actually have a common ancestor in the early 00s emo that was coming out of places like DC and further Northeast (as far North East as…New Jersey, eh? eh?). But Dan says some bullshit about the indie guys not liking the emo guys, not exactly? Like sometimes indie guy and the emo guy were the same dude.

And that dude was a dude who was into the hardcore scene/punk, but who wanted to sing about his feelings and heartbreak, and mental health issues, things that were seen as more feminine and less aligned with the more masculine, more politically charged punk/hardcore scene.

And so you have bunch of dudes doing this, with differing levels of alignment with the hardcore scene. On one end of the spectrum you’ve got your Thrices, your Alkaline Trios and on the other end you’ve got your Sunny Day Real Estates, or even further, your Dashboard Confessionals where he’s not even using an electric guitar. 

This, btw, is part of why you’ve got both Death Cab for Cutie and AFI on the same list of bands that are “emo” on wikipedia. The whole emo genre was actually super fucking prolific and because the genre qualifications were so vauge (its “emotional” “rock” music. that’s a lot of musical space to play in) a lot of different sounds were able out of early 00s emo. 

Mix emo with hardcore? You get Thrice. 

Mix emo with goth? AFI and Hawthorne Heights

Mix is with metal? You get Coheed and Cambria, I guess??

Mix it with rap? Dear god you get Brokencyde, undo undo. 

And if you mix it with pop? Well shit, you just built a Fall Out Boy. 

So, Dann, you say, I didn’t need any of this. 

I mean that’s fair, but I’m sure you’re also wondering where the fuck My Chem, P!atD and FOB come in. 

Wikipedia makes the really helpful delineation of emo and emo pop, which is like…sociologically accurate, even if I feel like its not generically accurate. Like, MCR and Panic! at the Disco are two very different genres of band.

Those three bands, along with a glut of other bands in the mid-00s somehow managed to ride the wave of popularity that started with these early 00s emo bands. I don’t want to make it sound like these bands aren’t significant, like these are people who were and are at the top of their craft (and pete wentz). but they were also pretty lucky. they came up in a time when not only indie bands but indie labels were experiencing pretty unprecedented public attention, MTV was still showing music videos, but maybe more importantly Fuse was still showing music videos. There was a whole TV station dedicated to “alt” music (how do people even find music these days? Spotify?). 

Now why were those three bands the ones that made the catapult from Fuse to MTV (so from very very popular alt/indie to straight up popular)?

Teenage girls.

See, emo came out of punk spaces in the mid-to-late 90s, and these spaces (at least the spaces that these particular guys were in) were, more often than not, pretty white/male spaces. Emo might have been about girls, so many girls—girls who agreed to date you, girls who agreed to fuck you, girls that dared to stop fucking you, girls that broke your heart—but it wasn’t really for girls. People who talk about rap music being the most misogynistic genre haven’t sat down to listen to emo. My god were some of those dudes upset about getting dumped.

But pop music. 

Pop music has been the bread and butter of girls, young girls since what, the 1950s aka its inception? Teenage girls created pop music.

And teenage girls decided they liked this emo stuff. And they decided they liked those emo boys. Really they decided they liked MCR and FOB and then Pete Wentz bore panic and lo, the teenage girls decided, it was good. 

(Brendon Urie and Harry Styles ought to sit down and have a talk sometime about how they owe their whole career to teenage girls finding them appealingly non-threatening)

You know why MCR and FOB were so dedicated to “equality” and their pits being “safe” (back when they had pits) and also challenging gender norms in a way that happened to be acceptable (and lbr titillating) to teenage girls?** 

Because teenage girls chose them and Made. Them. Rich. 

You don’t get rich of teenage girls aren’t coming to your shows/in your pit because they might get hurt. You don’t get rich when homophobic assholes, that are also sexist assholes, are coming to your show.

Don’t get me wrong. There were boys there. Obviously. Sensitive boys that didn’t fit in with the jocks, bullied for acknowledging their feelings etc. But teenage girls created the Scene.Christ, what was your question?Ok, yeah. You’re pretty spot on thinking of emo as being a low-fi, diy thing, if you’re thinking of it from the same direction I am. But the cultural moment Dan is talking about is defined way more by emo pop/scene than what I personally would call emo.* I mentioned an emo revival in an ask earlier today/yesterday. A lot of those bands are “reviving” the sound of early 00s emo. Which is interesting.**there’s a whole fucking book in the concept of stage gay alone. also the trend of “emo boys kissing” videos. these things are connected, obviously but I can’t quite say how.***this is a tumblr ask answer, so I can’t get into things like the effect of the internet, the breaking down of the fourth wall for fandom, why you can thank/blame Jimmy Eat World for all this, why DIY punk these days sounds the same as emo if you ask me, etc.****yeah I wrote that whole teenage girls made the scene diatribe and didn’t mention Paramore once. Paramore changed the fucking game and there’s a reason every emo band with a girl got compared to them. 

[suzanneshannon]

Request with Intent: Caching Strategies in the Age of PWAs

Once upon a time, we relied on browsers to handle caching for us; as developers in those days, we had very little control. But then came Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), Service Workers, and the Cache API—and suddenly we have expansive power over what gets put in the cache and how it gets put there. We can now cache everything we want to… and therein lies a potential problem.

Media files—especially images—make up the bulk of average page weight these days, and it’s getting worse. In order to improve performance, it’s tempting to cache as much of this content as possible, but should we? In most cases, no. Even with all this newfangled technology at our fingertips, great performance still hinges on a simple rule: request only what you need and make each request as small as possible.

To provide the best possible experience for our users without abusing their network connection or their hard drive, it’s time to put a spin on some classic best practices, experiment with media caching strategies, and play around with a few Cache API tricks that Service Workers have hidden up their sleeves.

Best intentions

All those lessons we learned optimizing web pages for dial-up became super-useful again when mobile took off, and they continue to be applicable in the work we do for a global audience today. Unreliable or high latency network connections are still the norm in many parts of the world, reminding us that it’s never safe to assume a technical baseline lifts evenly or in sync with its corresponding cutting edge. And that’s the thing about performance best practices: history has borne out that approaches that are good for performance now will continue being good for performance in the future.

Before the advent of Service Workers, we could provide some instructions to browsers with respect to how long they should cache a particular resource, but that was about it. Documents and assets downloaded to a user’s machine would be dropped into a directory on their hard drive. When the browser assembled a request for a particular document or asset, it would peek in the cache first to see if it already had what it needed to possibly avoid hitting the network.

We have considerably more control over network requests and the cache these days, but that doesn’t excuse us from being thoughtful about the resources on our web pages.

Request only what you need

As I mentioned, the web today is lousy with media. Images and videos have become a dominant means of communication. They may convert well when it comes to sales and marketing, but they are hardly performant when it comes to download and rendering speed. With this in mind, each and every image (and video, etc.) should have to fight for its place on the page. 

A few years back, a recipe of mine was included in a newspaper story on cooking with spirits (alcohol, not ghosts). I don’t subscribe to the print version of that paper, so when the article came out I went to the site to take a look at how it turned out. During a recent redesign, the site had decided to load all articles into a nearly full-screen modal viewbox layered on top of their homepage. This meant requesting the article required requests for all of the assets associated with the article page plus all the contents and assets for the homepage. Oh, and the homepage had video ads—plural. And, yes, they auto-played.

I popped open DevTools and discovered the page had blown past 15 MB in page weight. Tim Kadlec had recently launched What Does My Site Cost?, so I decided to check out the damage. Turns out that the actual cost to view that page for the average US-based user was more than the cost of the print version of that day’s newspaper. That’s just messed up.

Sure, I could blame the folks who built the site for doing their readers such a disservice, but the reality is that none of us go to work with the goal of worsening our users’ experiences. This could happen to any of us. We could spend days scrutinizing the performance of a page only to have some committee decide to set that carefully crafted page atop a Times Square of auto-playing video ads. Imagine how much worse things would be if we were stacking two abysmally-performing pages on top of each other!

Media can be great for drawing attention when competition is high (e.g., on the homepage of a newspaper), but when you want readers to focus on a single task (e.g., reading the actual article), its value can drop from important to “nice to have.” Yes, studies have shown that images excel at drawing eyeballs, but once a visitor is on the article page, no one cares; we’re just making it take longer to download and more expensive to access. The situation only gets worse as we shove more media into the page. 

We must do everything in our power to reduce the weight of our pages, so avoid requests for things that don’t add value. For starters, if you’re writing an article about a data breach, resist the urge to include that ridiculous stock photo of some random dude in a hoodie typing on a computer in a very dark room.

Request the smallest file you can

Now that we’ve taken stock of what we do need to include, we must ask ourselves a critical question: How can we deliver it in the fastest way possible? This can be as simple as choosing the most appropriate image format for the content presented (and optimizing the heck out of it) or as complex as recreating assets entirely (for example, if switching from raster to vector imagery would be more efficient).

Offer alternate formats

When it comes to image formats, we don’t have to choose between performance and reach anymore. We can provide multiple options and let the browser decide which one to use, based on what it can handle.

You can accomplish this by offering multiple sources within a picture or video element. Start by creating multiple formats of the media asset. For example, with WebP and JPG, it’s likely that the WebP will have a smaller file size than the JPG (but check to make sure). With those alternate sources, you can drop them into a picture like this:

<picture> <source srcset="my.webp" type="image/webp"> <img src="my.jpg" alt="Descriptive text about the picture."> </picture>

Browsers that recognize the picture element will check the source element before making a decision about which image to request. If the browser supports the MIME type “image/webp,” it will kick off a request for the WebP format image. If not (or if the browser doesn’t recognize picture), it will request the JPG. 

The nice thing about this approach is that you’re serving the smallest image possible to the user without having to resort to any sort of JavaScript hackery.

You can take the same approach with video files:

<video controls> <source src="my.webm" type="video/webm"> <source src="my.mp4" type="video/mp4"> <p>Your browser doesn’t support native video playback, but you can <a href="my.mp4" download>download</a> this video instead.</p> </video>

Browsers that support WebM will request the first source, whereas browsers that don’t—but do understand MP4 videos—will request the second one. Browsers that don’t support the video element will fall back to the paragraph about downloading the file.

The order of your source elements matters. Browsers will choose the first usable source, so if you specify an optimized alternative format after a more widely compatible one, the alternative format may never get picked up.  

Depending on your situation, you might consider bypassing this markup-based approach and handle things on the server instead. For example, if a JPG is being requested and the browser supports WebP (which is indicated in the Accept header), there’s nothing stopping you from replying with a WebP version of the resource. In fact, some CDN services—Cloudinary, for instance—come with this sort of functionality right out of the box.

Offer different sizes

Formats aside, you may want to deliver alternate image sizes optimized for the current size of the browser’s viewport. After all, there’s no point loading an image that’s 3–4 times larger than the screen rendering it; that’s just wasting bandwidth. This is where responsive images come in.

Here’s an example:

<img src="medium.jpg" srcset="small.jpg 256w, medium.jpg 512w, large.jpg 1024w" sizes="(min-width: 30em) 30em, 100vw" alt="Descriptive text about the picture.">

There’s a lot going on in this super-charged img element, so I’ll break it down:

This img offers three size options for a given JPG: 256 px wide (small.jpg), 512 px wide (medium.jpg), and 1024 px wide (large.jpg). These are provided in the srcset attribute with corresponding width descriptors.

The src defines a default image source, which acts as a fallback for browsers that don’t support srcset. Your choice for the default image will likely depend on the context and general usage patterns. Often I’d recommend the smallest image be the default, but if the majority of your traffic is on older desktop browsers, you might want to go with the medium-sized image.

The sizes attribute is a presentational hint that informs the browser how the image will be rendered in different scenarios (its extrinsic size) once CSS has been applied. This particular example says that the image will be the full width of the viewport (100vw) until the viewport reaches 30 em in width (min-width: 30em), at which point the image will be 30 em wide. You can make the sizes value as complicated or as simple as you want; omitting it causes browsers to use the default value of 100vw.

You can even combine this approach with alternate formats and crops within a single picture. 🤯

All of this is to say that you have a number of tools at your disposal for delivering fast-loading media, so use them!

Defer requests (when possible)

Years ago, Internet Explorer 11 introduced a new attribute that enabled developers to de-prioritize specific img elements to speed up page rendering: lazyload. That attribute never went anywhere, standards-wise, but it was a solid attempt to defer image loading until images are in view (or close to it) without having to involve JavaScript.

There have been countless JavaScript-based implementations of lazy loading images since then, but recently Google also took a stab at a more declarative approach, using a different attribute: loading.

The loading attribute supports three values (“auto,” “lazy,” and “eager”) to define how a resource should be brought in. For our purposes, the “lazy” value is the most interesting because it defers loading the resource until it reaches a calculated distance from the viewport.

Adding that into the mix…

<img src="medium.jpg" srcset="small.jpg 256w, medium.jpg 512w, large.jpg 1024w" sizes="(min-width: 30em) 30em, 100vw" loading="lazy" alt="Descriptive text about the picture.">

This attribute offers a bit of a performance boost in Chromium-based browsers. Hopefully it will become a standard and get picked up by other browsers in the future, but in the meantime there’s no harm in including it because browsers that don’t understand the attribute will simply ignore it.

This approach complements a media prioritization strategy really well, but before I get to that, I want to take a closer look at Service Workers.

Manipulate requests in a Service Worker

Service Workers are a special type of Web Worker with the ability to intercept, modify, and respond to all network requests via the Fetch API. They also have access to the Cache API, as well as other asynchronous client-side data stores like IndexedDB for resource storage.

When a Service Worker is installed, you can hook into that event and prime the cache with resources you want to use later. Many folks use this opportunity to squirrel away copies of global assets, including styles, scripts, logos, and the like, but you can also use it to cache images for use when network requests fail.

Keep a fallback image in your back pocket

Assuming you want to use a fallback in more than one networking recipe, you can set up a named function that will respond with that resource:

function respondWithFallbackImage() { return caches.match( "/i/fallbacks/offline.svg" ); }

Then, within a fetch event handler, you can use that function to provide that fallback image when requests for images fail at the network:

self.addEventListener( "fetch", event => { const request = event.request; if ( request.headers.get("Accept").includes("image") ) { event.respondWith( return fetch( request, { mode: 'no-cors' } ) .then( response => { return response; }) .catch( respondWithFallbackImage ); ); } });

When the network is available, users get the expected behavior:

Social media avatars are rendered as expected when the network is available.

But when the network is interrupted, images will be swapped automatically for a fallback, and the user experience is still acceptable:

A generic fallback avatar is rendered when the network is unavailable.

On the surface, this approach may not seem all that helpful in terms of performance since you’ve essentially added an additional image download into the mix. With this system in place, however, some pretty amazing opportunities open up to you.

Respect a user’s choice to save data

Some users reduce their data consumption by entering a “lite” mode or turning on a “data saver” feature. When this happens, browsers will often send a Save-Data header with their network requests. 

Within your Service Worker, you can look for this header and adjust your responses accordingly. First, you look for the header:

let save_data = false; if ( 'connection' in navigator ) { save_data = navigator.connection.saveData; }

Then, within your fetch handler for images, you might choose to preemptively respond with the fallback image instead of going to the network at all:

self.addEventListener( "fetch", event => { const request = event.request; if ( request.headers.get("Accept").includes("image") ) { event.respondWith( if ( save_data ) { return respondWithFallbackImage(); } // code you saw previously ); } });

You could even take this a step further and tune respondWithFallbackImage() to provide alternate images based on what the original request was for. To do that you’d define several fallbacks globally in the Service Worker:

const fallback_avatar = "/i/fallbacks/avatar.svg", fallback_image = "/i/fallbacks/image.svg";

Both of those files should then be cached during the Service Worker install event:

return cache.addAll( [ fallback_avatar, fallback_image ]);

Finally, within respondWithFallbackImage() you could serve up the appropriate image based on the URL being fetched. In my site, the avatars are pulled from Webmention.io, so I test for that.

function respondWithFallbackImage( url ) { const image = avatars.test( /webmention\.io/ ) ? fallback_avatar                                                 : fallback_image;   return caches.match( image ); }

With that change, I’ll need to update the fetch handler to pass in request.url as an argument to respondWithFallbackImage(). Once that’s done, when the network gets interrupted I end up seeing something like this:

A webmention that contains both an avatar and an embedded image will render with two different fallbacks when the Save-Data header is present.

Next, we need to establish some general guidelines for handling media assets—based on the situation, of course.

The caching strategy: prioritize certain media

In my experience, media—especially images—on the web tend to fall into three categories of necessity. At one end of the spectrum are elements that don’t add meaningful value. At the other end of the spectrum are critical assets that do add value, such as charts and graphs that are essential to understanding the surrounding content. Somewhere in the middle are what I would call “nice-to-have” media. They do add value to the core experience of a page but are not critical to understanding the content.

If you consider your media with this division in mind, you can establish some general guidelines for handling each, based on the situation. In other words, a caching strategy.

Media loading strategy, broken down by how critical an asset is to understanding an interface Media category Fast connection Save-Data Slow connection No network Critical Load media Replace with placeholder Nice-to-have Load media Replace with placeholder Non-critical Remove from content entirely

When it comes to disambiguating the critical from the nice-to-have, it’s helpful to have those resources organized into separate directories (or similar). That way we can add some logic into the Service Worker that can help it decide which is which. For example, on my own personal site, critical images are either self-hosted or come from the website for my book. Knowing that, I can write regular expressions that match those domains:

const high_priority = [ /aaron\-gustafson\.com/, /adaptivewebdesign\.info/ ];

With that high_priority variable defined, I can create a function that will let me know if a given image request (for example) is a high priority request or not:

function isHighPriority( url ) { // how many high priority links are we dealing with? let i = high_priority.length; // loop through each while ( i-- ) { // does the request URL match this regular expression? if ( high_priority[i].test( url ) ) { // yes, it’s a high priority request return true; } } // no matches, not high priority return false; }

Adding support for prioritizing media requests only requires adding a new conditional into the fetch event handler, like we did with Save-Data. Your specific recipe for network and cache handling will likely differ, but here was how I chose to mix in this logic within image requests:

// Check the cache first // Return the cached image if we have one // If the image is not in the cache, continue // Is this image high priority? if ( isHighPriority( url ) ) { // Fetch the image // If the fetch succeeds, save a copy in the cache // If not, respond with an "offline" placeholder // Not high priority } else { // Should I save data? if ( save_data ) { // Respond with a "saving data" placeholder // Not saving data } else { // Fetch the image // If the fetch succeeds, save a copy in the cache // If not, respond with an "offline" placeholder } }

We can apply this prioritized approach to many kinds of assets. We could even use it to control which pages are served cache-first vs. network-first.

Keep the cache tidy

The  ability to control which resources are cached to disk is a huge opportunity, but it also carries with it an equally huge responsibility not to abuse it.

Every caching strategy is likely to differ, at least a little bit. If we’re publishing a book online, for instance, it might make sense to cache all of the chapters, images, etc. for offline viewing. There’s a fixed amount of content and—assuming there aren’t a ton of heavy images and videos—users will benefit from not having to download each chapter separately.

On a news site, however, caching every article and photo will quickly fill up our users’ hard drives. If a site offers an indeterminate number of pages and assets, it’s critical to have a caching strategy that puts hard limits on how many resources we’re caching to disk. 

One way to do this is to create several different blocks associated with caching different forms of content. The more ephemeral content caches can have strict limits around how many items can be stored. Sure, we’ll still be bound to the storage limits of the device, but do we really want our website to take up 2 GB of someone’s hard drive?

Here’s an example, again from my own site:

const sw_caches = { static: { name: `${version}static` }, images: { name: `${version}images`, limit: 75 }, pages: { name: `${version}pages`, limit: 5 }, other: { name: `${version}other`, limit: 50 } }

Here I’ve defined several caches, each with a name used for addressing it in the Cache API and a version prefix. The version is defined elsewhere in the Service Worker, and allows me to purge all caches at once if necessary.

With the exception of the static cache, which is used for static assets, every cache has a limit to the number of items that may be stored. I only cache the most recent 5 pages someone has visited, for instance. Images are limited to the most recent 75, and so on. This is an approach that Jeremy Keith outlines in his fantastic book Going Offline (which you should really read if you haven’t already—here’s a sample).

With these cache definitions in place, I can clean up my caches periodically and prune the oldest items. Here’s Jeremy’s recommended code for this approach:

function trimCache(cacheName, maxItems) { // Open the cache caches.open(cacheName) .then( cache => { // Get the keys and count them cache.keys() .then(keys => { // Do we have more than we should? if (keys.length > maxItems) { // Delete the oldest item and run trim again cache.delete(keys[0]) .then( () => { trimCache(cacheName, maxItems) }); } }); }); }

We can trigger this code to run whenever a new page loads. By running it in the Service Worker, it runs in a separate thread and won’t drag down the site’s responsiveness. We trigger it by posting a message (using postMessage()) to the Service Worker from the main JavaScript thread:

// First check to see if you have an active service worker if ( navigator.serviceWorker.controller ) { // Then add an event listener window.addEventListener( "load", function(){ // Tell the service worker to clean up navigator.serviceWorker.controller.postMessage( "clean up" ); }); }

The final step in wiring it all up is setting up the Service Worker to receive the message:

addEventListener("message", messageEvent => { if (messageEvent.data == "clean up") { // loop though the caches for ( let key in sw_caches ) { // if the cache has a limit if ( sw_caches[key].limit !== undefined ) { // trim it to that limit trimCache( sw_caches[key].name, sw_caches[key].limit ); } } } });

Here, the Service Worker listens for inbound messages and responds to the “clean up” request by running trimCache() on each of the cache buckets with a defined limit.

This approach is by no means elegant, but it works. It would be far better to make decisions about purging cached responses based on how frequently each item is accessed and/or how much room it takes up on disk. (Removing cached items based purely on when they were cached isn’t nearly as useful.) Sadly, we don’t have that level of detail when it comes to inspecting the caches…yet. I’m actually working to address this limitation in the Cache API right now.

Your users always come first

The technologies underlying Progressive Web Apps are continuing to mature, but even if you aren’t interested in turning your site into a PWA, there’s so much you can do today to improve your users’ experiences when it comes to media. And, as with every other form of inclusive design, it starts with centering on your users who are most at risk of having an awful experience.

Draw distinctions between critical, nice-to-have, and superfluous media. Remove the cruft, then optimize the bejeezus out of each remaining asset. Serve your media in multiple formats and sizes, prioritizing the smallest versions first to make the most of high latency and slow connections. If your users say they want to save data, respect that and have a fallback plan in place. Cache wisely and with the utmost respect for your users’ disk space. And, finally, audit your caching strategies regularly—especially when it comes to large media files.Follow these guidelines, and every one of your users—from folks rocking a JioPhone on a rural mobile network in India to people on a high-end gaming laptop wired to a 10 Gbps fiber line in Silicon Valley—will thank you.

Request with Intent: Caching Strategies in the Age of PWAs published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[amonsaiqaxiv]

                                                                                GROWTH & GRATITUDE

When Heavensward launched I was in a pretty awkward point in-game. I wasn’t entirely too invested in XIV or in MMO’s in general. The group I played with was a mix of old-school MMO WoW veterans and die-hard FF fans. I wasn’t exactly mechanic savvy nor too enthralled in the lore behind this game. I was put in a weird spot, to say the least. I couldn’t help but feel out of place with both the friends I had and the giant community sprawled out before me. It took...countless fucking hours of throwing my head against content, seeking guidance from other players, and fighting against my own ignorance to get comfortable playing this game.  Around that time, I had also stumbled across the XIV community here on Tumblr through a friend. Our community is a vast fucking place and I felt extremely overwhelmed at first. Like, I can barely interact with people in-game as it is, man. I had no clue how things worked on this end. However, one thing I was quickly able to latch onto were screenshot edits. I’d had....many...many years of experience with this concept back when I was roleplaying (on Myspace of all things). It was after this little rediscovery that I found my niche here and the rest of it is pretty self-explanatory. Fast forward two(ish) years later and things have changed. I love this damn game guys, I really do. Being able to experience new content, striving to improve both job and player skill is such a damn thrill for me. I’m confident in what I can offer as a player and I’m constantly excited for new opportunities to grow.

As for this blog, oh man...I never in a million years expected this to be where it’s at today. I really just used this blog to selfishly post screenshots and fuck man....the response has just been so overwhelmingly wonderful. 

Look, I’ve never been particularly good at expressing my feelings, ESPECIALLY not through writing. Things come a bit more naturally through speech but most of the time? I keep to myself outside of my small circles and even then I tend to internalize my anxieties onto myself. It’s tough conveying my thoughts into words since my mind tends to race around. However, despite these difficulties, one thing that’s always come naturally to me is the ability to express gratitude. I am so damn thankful to those of you who have had a hand in helping me grow both as a player and as a member of this community. So before we trudge off into expansion, I wanted to draft something up to commemorate the time I’ve spent with each of you:

Thank you to everyone I’ve met within or because of @theriskbreakers : @sylvan-rain @onwesterlywinds @crimson-bull @thefateofivalice @a-kelping-hand @moonlifter @safestsephiroth @thecat-inthehat @afflatus-solace @reflectionsofacreator @quartercirclejab @the-goggles-lizard @wandererspaean @ivaan-ffxiv @tovakiin @zulak-rah @jenesislabariel @twelvesavethequeen @wyranimh @cogflox @varae-ver-you-are (I’m sure I’m missing tons more, sorry.)

Seriously, guys, it’s been a while since I first stumbled through the Sandsea’s doors but it’s been a blast. Thank you for always making things feel at home despite the fact that RP isn’t really my thing. Whether we’re blitzing through content or goofing off in chat it’s been wonderful and I can’t wait to see what Stormblood has to offer for us.

Thank you to my raid static for 3.X: @khojin-arulaq @sessionzeroart @evrett

Though frustrating at times, raiding with you all was overall an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. It’s such a unique feeling when shit got challenging and we still managed to pull through. I’m grateful to you guys for what we did and value the friendships we made throughout. 

Thank you to @zenathered @kukurubean @foewreckem @korpokkur-kid @yaianse (and the whole turtle crew really) as well as @fatewalker @nyxastra @coeurlfist for being great enough to show off how awesome people on other servers can be. It’s been fun befriending each of you either through tumblr or whenever you nerds decide to log onto your respective alts. 

Thank you to @ladyrivienne @ferai-caolann @lavenderrpurr @manawalls @alannah-corvaine @abalathian @qarajin-borlaaq for being some of the downright best art motivation I’ve got. I’m pushing myself to improve constantly whenever any of you create something. It’s inspirational and that drive to improve you’ve given me is a debt I could never repay. 

Thank you to @sins-of-allag @ayyymeric @aether-eyes @dayst-ffxiv @lauranis @lunae-lux  @xaruun @invisiblebounds-ffxiv @fair-fae @lance-of-fury @tetenuko @tiergan-vashir @freshorenjuice @aethericseafarer @nightmaze @necrologos @sequoiaofeorzea @gaeliseeker @nalukaixiv @pygmaioi for a myriad of reasons between all of you. Thank you for being super supportive of both myself and the blog. For lending out a helping hand (or keeping my head out of my ass) and just for being good friends in and out of game.

Thank you to @mahnsturr @raelcsart @yalakid @dantroziman @doorway-through @fainfaineant for all the fun I’ve had with each of you in GRIMM. Thank you for all the great art of Amon and thank you so much Rae for taking care of my Alex’s ass. <3

THANK YOU TO MY MOTHERFUCKING DISCORD: @haila-wetyios @luma-lee @naveiasue @lyriahkarnelle @sharlayan-scholar @desertsaffron FOR PUTTING UP WITH ALL THE UNADULTERATED BAT-SHIT CRAZY NONSENSE THAT OCCURS IN THERE EACH DAY. It gets absolutely fucking wild sometimes in Unlimited Chat Works and I am fucking blessed that you guys still manage to put up with my bullshit. Whether we’ve been friends since the beginning or you’re just now realizing how crazy we are in there thank you. I love you guys with all my fucking heart and I have so much fun every single day in there with each of you. 

Thank you, @koidrakevice you fucker for so, so, much. For all the times we’ve spent late at night theory-crafting, grinding, researching, just...playing XIV. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t gotten me back into the game. I’ve grown so much because of you and being able to do content our way with you and Douglas is genuinely the thing I look forward to the most in Stormblood. Thank you, buddy, for being one of the best friends I’ve ever had and for playing XIV with me. It means more than you know and more than I’ll ever fucking admit because fuck you. 

Thank you always, @fishtailsushi I love you the world over and playing XIV together with you is something I’ll remember for the rest of our lives. You’ve grown so much in this game and in many aspects, you’re a far better player than I am. Thank you for continuing to stand with me and in making memories with all of our crazy friends. Thank you for pushing me to do better and supporting me through all of my doubts in-game and in real life. I love you poop, and thank you.~

Finally... thank you to everyone who’s been a part of the journey thus far. I’m not sure where things will end up in Stormblood, but I can promise you that I’m going to continue to improve, both as a player and a member of this crazy community. So if you’ve made it this far, take to heart that regardless of our differences, we’re all in this together. Fuck whatever discourse may pop up and just try to have fun and focus on all the good around you because as you can see, this place full of love, you’ve just got to open yourself up to it.-

Take care, and I’ll see you in Stormblood.

Patrick Amon.

[jackmonkeygames]

http://bit.ly/2Hrzxu3 http://bit.ly/2S3N4fv

I remember as a kid reading books like Orson Scott Card’s Memory of Earth and Stranger in a Strange land and being more fascinated by the Alternate Relationships than the actual science fiction aspects of the book. What I found truly interesting was the fact that unlike the spacecraft and the alien worlds the alternate relationship styles could be implemented now. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I am Polyamorous (What did I just out myself ?) I am going to speak mostly of Polyamory as this is what I know. (Others are welcome to leave comments )

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about Alternate Relationships in both Science Fiction media and RPG games. And to be clear I consider Homosexual relationships to be a normal part of life! I’m writing this blog post for someone who is just now opening their eyes beyond heterosexual monogamy.

Scifi testing the waters for Alternate Relationships

Something that I have noted is that TV and movies (Mostly Science Fiction) will slowly hint at alternative Relationships (Being anything other than Heterosexual Monogamy). Most of the time this takes the form of one of the Villians or anti-heroes being involved in one of these relationships (Healthy or not is a whole different blog post ) I am not sure If I am happy with the idea of the Villians spearheading this concept. However, I have noted the same thing happened with homosexuality during the early 90s and has time has passed homosexuality became more and more normalized (As it should be). More and more heroes started to come out as homosexual. It seems like the writers of the TV/Movies/Books start off with villains because its ether easier to accept a villain has an alternative relationship than a Hero. I’m expecting to see a lot more Polyamory in media shortly Starting with the villains and slowly moving to more heroes.

Why is this good?

When you are reading science fiction you are already open to new ideas. Your brain is caught up in the new worlds, new concepts. So the idea of a new style or relationship just adds to the world building. So the idea that someone has two husbands is not as crazy when they are traveling through space.

Something else to consider is that many of these relationships are only considered odd or bad because the majority of society deems it wrong. (Have to do with consenting adults). Exploring these concepts in science fiction is a good way to explore these concepts of our existing social structures. I like to say that the contrast is amazing. The idea that you can better appreciate your current relationship because you are reading about an alien relationship style. And do so with safety as nobody gets hurt from you watching TV or reading a comic. Alternate Relationships are a good way to ask yourself … why is this?

Example : Watching a movie about polyarmous triad. Discovering that you would not want your mate to go out with someone else can make you appcrate that your mate is devoted to only you.

Example 2: Watching a similar film you discover that maybe this is something that may work for you. You are not ready for it but maybe.

Why do relationships have to be Binary?

Why do we try to mate for life and fail 52% of the time

Why do we not have limited time allocated for relationships (three years)

Why do we think that monogamy is the only way?

Ask yourself these questions because when you do you will have a better understanding of yourself. I am not asking you to become poly or try to be gay, Bi or Transgender. What I am asking is that you understand who you are and why you are doing it. You be you !! but you can’t do that if you don’t ask the question. If you are in a happy monogamous relationship Fantastic!!!! Send us invites to your next Aniversary and we will celebrate with you

Examples of Sci-fi Alternative Relationships syles in current media

Little Vampires Final Scene (Hints at polyamory in the final scene …it is Disney after all)

Terran Empire Rep Final Season of Defiance had two husbands

The Teen Titans Starfire is Polyamorous

Sense 8 … no subtly and I am glad

Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series

Orson Scott Card Memory of Earth Marriages lasted for a year and a day.

Dr Phlox in a Polygamous marriage that was considered normal by his people

Polyamory and Alternate Relationships in Star-Fall actual play podcast

In the show, if you listen carefully you will note that there is a theme of acceptance at our game table. There are hints throughout the game where we make all kinds of relationships ok. There is even a plotline where the captain of a Warzodian customs patrol craft Eric Keys just had a wedding with two other people. (More about this plotline later) at Jackmonkeygames we are all about open and inclusive for all kinds of relationships. Our cast members truly reflect that! I have never felt so welcomed by any game group before.

Even the Church of the Illumination (Evil Villians) considers Homosexuality & Polyamory to be a normal part of existence. “Who do you think we are barbarians?”

Norkek and Hedda touch on the idea of Monogamy being a game.

Star-Fall the Comic will have a poly plot line that will extend across many chapters. The goal is to have a plot line that polyamory is part of the story but not the main focus. Sex and Relationship drama will not be the focus of the storyline as I want to focus more on science fiction. The relationship will be far from perfect and the characters will have to grow.

Star-Fall will also show some Alternate Relationships when discribing some of the planets. The idea that every planet is going to have the same relationship sytle is honestly unrlislitc.

Alternate Relationships in RPG Games

As a gamemaster I often do not focus on relationships at all. I have been in games where some of the characters have decided to get married to an NPC or once to each othr. However for the most part I avoid relationships in RPG games. The reason for this is that I want to focus on the story. That and the fact that sometimes relationships in game can overflow into the real world (or the other way around)

My main rule is to never force a realtionship on any player character. of any kind. Its just messy. You risk crossing a line with not just the player who is directly in the plot but some of the other Players. Alternate Relationshipsare basicly adding a multiplyer to the amount if trouble you can cause.

Now having a group of NPCs in an Alternate Relationship is fine as the players are not directly being effected by the plot line. Like a good sciece fiction movie or book the players can explore the concept from a distance. Like or dislike without effecting the game.

Consent is key!

Now if a player would like to explore a realtionship of any kind its always a good idea to talk to them about what they would like to see in the relationship. In Star-Fall we have a relationship between Arkady and Julia Fenter. This was a bit of a suprise to me as the gamemaster and allowed it because everyone seems to be enjoying the plot line.

I will discuss relationships and consent as a whole in another blog post.

Science Fiction Audio Drama

December 21, 2018

In "Worldbuilding"

Watching Bad Science Fiction movies to be a better Gamemaster

June 1, 2019

In "From the Game Master"

Funny RPG Podcast with Science Fiction theme

February 21, 2019

In "RPG Podcasts"

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