#we can create fox girl utopia

[anime-scarves]

I am legally obligated to simp for all fox girls 

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard these 50 songs from 2019

I really enjoyed this last year so going to give it another go for ‘19. I put quite a lot of thought into what actually a ‘song of the year’ for me when I was first constructing and then heavily editing the playlist that came to be my Top 50 of 2019. I think the most important thing is that above all it’s a track that I’m glad exists, sometimes this is because of the songwriting or composition, sometimes the performance, sometimes the lyrical importance and sometimes just because it sparks joy.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6bFJOjL8b8Zc2s5r1oJbsk?si=UJdqSXOTR3SQ8D3IwcmV2g

Explanations for each tracks inclusion below the fold…

100 gecs - 800db cloud 100 gecs channel a mix of Crystal Castles and Sleigh Bells with a Death Grips level appreciation for noise. It’s an absolute rush and that outro is just absurd.

Natalie Evans - Always Be Natalie Evans soft melody and sing song vocals are sublimely sweet on this heartfelt track of lost love, longing and nostalgia.

Petrol Girls - Big Mouth “If you fight back or disagree you’re the one with the fucking problem” this hits home, hard. Big Mouth is a rallying cry to speak out against oppression and discrimination, to raise you’re voice and be heard, not to be controlled.

Charli XCX ft. Lizzo - Blame it on your Love Charli has a midas touch when it comes to pop, combine that with Lizzo who has just about been the most fun thing in music this year and you’ve got a 10/10 banger.

Poppy - BLOODMONEY Poppy’s music just keeps going further down the rabbit hole. Originally playing with blending elements of nu-metal with bubblegum pop, she now seems to have transcended genre altogether to create whatever BLOODMONEY is, it’s absolutely ridiculous and I love it.

Body Hound - Bloom Get on that GROOVE! So proggy it hurts, this track from Body Hound is a technical wonderland of metamorphosing rhythms, gargantuan riffs, and just the tastiest of chord progressions.

Can the Sub_Bass speak - Algiers Word of warning, this is not an easy listen. A freefall tumble through genre and tone accompanies a stream of consciousness monologue full of racism, prejudice and political and artistic critique.

Elohim - Buckets Buckets is an onslaught of trap influences, emotional outbursts and aggressive distortion. I’m a big fan of this sound.

VUKOVI - C.L.A.U.D.I.A I know very little about VUKOVI as a band, but that riff is absolutely massive and this track has been a constant throughout my year on that basis alone.

Show Me The Body - Camp Orchestra Apparently more hardcore bands should use Banjos, because this is a damn good sound. Slowly building from a single bass line this track builds into a powerful demolishing force.

clipping. - Club Down Having thoroughly proven themselves able to do afro-futurist scifi on the Hugo nominated Splendor and Misery, clipping. now turn their considerable talents to horror core and unsurprisingly nail it. Daveed’s flows are tight as ever as he brings to life a decaying city backed by tortured screams.

Dream Nails - Corporate Realness YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB. WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU MUST DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. Dream Nails are great and exactly what we need right now.

ControlTop - Covert Contracts This track positively bristles with an anxious energy. A fitting sound for the subject of the information overload we find ourselves locked into everyday.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi There’s an icy coolness to ‘Daddi’, a disconnected sarcasm that falls away to reveal the anger and torment in the chorus, it’s a masterful bit of emotional storytelling through musical tone.

The Physics House Band - Death Sequence I Listening to Physics House latest release, the Death Sequence EP feels like a physical journey. This opener is a perfect example of this, as you’re plunged straight into a heady and disorienting mix of rhythms and counter-melody’s, the Sax guiding you through the turbulence until you land in a placid midsection, before that bass riff drags you forward through rhythmic breakdowns into an absolutely absurd brain melting saxophony and then it just keeps on going from there…

Witching Waves - Disintegration I saw WW back in the early summer, they were a bassist down so it was just a guitar and drums duo. They started with this track and it was one of the most pure punk things I’ve experienced, drummer/vocalist Emma Wigham bashing the absolute shit out of her kit . A great no-nonsense lo-fi banger.

Lingua Ignota - DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR Another, not particularly easy listen here. DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR is a dark and angry brooding track, building in intensity to release the primal rage, fear and horror of the abused. Its deeply chilling and instantly arresting. This track and the entire CALIGULA album stands as an absolute must listen.

Carly Rae Jepsen ft. Electric Guest - Feels Right I love the instrumentation on this one, those chunky piano chords and screaming guitar lift the track out and make it the highlight of an already great album to me.

Orla Gartland - Figure it out Dialing back the intensity slightly, Orla chronicles the frustrations of having to deal with someone in your life who you’re done with. The choruses burst forth in beautifully fuzzy explosions of noise. That vocal flair at the start of the final chorus is chef kiss.

Battles - Fort Greene Park Battles are at their best when they keep things simple. This is evident on 2019′s Juicy B Crypts which features some incredibly cluttered moments, but this just makes Fort Greene Park stand out all the more. A delightfully spacious piece of math rock, from some of the best in the business.

Dogleg - Fox Boy howdy, do I love me some midwest emo. Catharsis in musical form, it just makes me want to mosh my troubles away like I’m 16 again.

Tørsö - Grab A Shovel Tørsö go hard, I can appreciate that. An absolutely brutal track about the destructive power of depression and self-loathing.

“Pijn & Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands” - High Spirits “We were like, are we Pijn and Conjurer, or are we Curse These Metal Hands? I think we’ve settled with ‘we are Pijn and Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands’ …whatever that means!“ what it means is one of the most joyously triumphant pieces of metal music I’ve ever heard. Some of the guitar lines in this absolutely soar.

Lizzo - Juice Lizzo has won 2019, her message of self love, acceptance and body positivity has won her both critical and cultural acclaim and permeates her music in a way that makes it impossible to not love.

COLOSSAL SQUID, AK Patterson - Kick Punch Colossal Squid is the name given to Three Trapped Tigers drummer, Adam Betts’ experimental project. After a solo album of percussive wizardry Betts has now teamed with vocalist AK Patterson to give us something else entirely.

Evan Greer - Liberty Is A Statue Evan Greer uses the a folk punk sound to deliver an essay on the damaging influences of cis-normativity and social inequality. Of course I like this one.

Taylor Swift - Lover I wasn’t on board with this song for a fair while, but then I kept listening to it and kept coming back to it because of a roughly 50 second section which ties the track and the whole album together. Yeah, this is on here purely for the bridge, which is just beautiful.

Dodie - Monster Monster is an incredibly well written and delivered study on how perception changes with resentment and it makes me cry.

The Y Axes - Moon Moon is a delightfully dreamy piece of pop that glitters with infectious melodies, it’s lyrics a blissful embracing of cosmic nihilism, need I say more?

Ezra Furman - My Teeth Hurt My teeth hurt is a song about tooth ache, about that pain you carry with you everywhere and can’t get rid of, that ruins your days and and is one hell of a mood. Yeah it’s about gender dysphoria.

Nervus - No Nations Speaking of things being a mood, this track hits the nail squarely on the head.

Cultdreams - Not My Generation "Everyone ignores me Unless I’m on a stage talking Because they put me on a pedestal And pretend I’m just performing“ Lucinda Livingstone calls out the misogyny in our culture with a singular ferocity.

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road If there’s one song that’s dominated 2019 this is it right here. Who ever had the idea of putting that NIN Ghosts sample to a trap beat and cowboying over the top of it is an absolute genius.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Planet B It’s impossible to predict where King Gizzard’s sonic influences are going to take them next I doubt even they know half the time. Whatever they turn their hand to though they do it as if they mastered the sound decades ago Planet B is an all out thrash track with a strong environmental message.

Kesha - Rich, White, Straight Men Okay, I’m about to compare Kesha to John Lennon here but HEAR ME OUT… As ‘Imagine’ asked us to consider a world without conflict or capitalism, Kesha now posits that we should tear up our conceptions of our society based on its formation by a privileged group and imagine what kind of utopia could be built if we gave the underprivileged and minority groups a say.

Allie X - Rings A Bell The chorus here sounds like it could have been off Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, and I’m all about that sound. Combined with Allie X’s dreamlike vocals make this a certified bop.

Poly-Math - Sensors in Everything Sensors in Everything is a beast of a track spanning over 14 minutes of absurdly dense prog. Having recently enlisted keyboardist Josh Gesner. Polymath make use of the new sounds and textures available to them, at times imitating a sort of Hammond sound not unlike John Lord to the chaotic maelstrom of noise.

Calva Louise - Sleeper Big hooks on this one. Sleeper has a confident swagger to it’s sound which stands apart for the bands previous work. It’s an absolutely huge track.

Slipknot - Solway Firth Slipknot didn’t disappoint after the tease of 2018′s “All Out Life”, following up with an album which blended old and new aspects of their sound to create one of their best to date. Solway Firth is a perfect example of this matching the punishing heaviness of Iowa with the melody driven sound of All Hope Is Gone.

Clt Drp - Speak To My Seeing Clt Drp perform live was one of my highlights of the year. The filthy guitar tones, powerhouse vocals tight as heck drumming and the _grooves. _Absolutely like nothing else I’ve seen. Just an incredible band that deserve so much more recognition.

Black Country, New Road - Sunglasses Black Country, New Road released two tracks this year and now I just want more. Dense wordy lyricism plays off against ever evolving instrumentation to present a raw cut of emotional storytelling.

Her Name Is Calla - Swan Her Name Is Calla are a band that have always been on the edge of my radar, my Dad is very fond of them and saw them live a couple of years ago, but never went back to relisten to any of their stuff, then they started an album with this. I was sold instantly.

black midi - Talking Heads Talking Heads (the band) are an obvious inspiration on this track. Both David Byrne’s vocal style and the Talking Heads penchant for sharp angular melodies are on show here. But given an extra ounce of chaos through Black Midi’s delivery.

Amanda Palmer - The Ride The ride is ten minutes of bundling up all your fears and anxieties of where we are and where we’re going and just, accepting them as part of the ride. Written off the back of a prompt from Amanda asking her fans what they were afraid of right now.

Kim Petras - There Will Be Blood Okay, let’s have some out of season spookiness. Love the squelchy synths on this, there’s a huge amount of energy on this track and with it’s commitment to the horror conceit it makes for a super fun bop.

Kate Nash - Trash Kate Nash’s sound is like bathing pure nostalgia,here she spins the toxic-relationship narrative central to her work to deliver a bigger story about humanity’s, quite literally toxic relationship to our planet.

American Football & Hayley Williams - Uncomfortably Numb The other side of the “midwest emo” coin. A melancholic song built on a soft bed of arpeggiated chords and clean harmonics, Uncomfortably Numb is a heartbreaking track of losing everything and of cycles persisting thorugh generations. Employing the clever metatextual trick of referencing Pink Floyd’s comfortably Numb to mirror the generational similarities.

Glenn Branca - Velvet and Pearls Disclaimer, Glenn Branca was a musical hero of mine, his approach to music and composition being solely responsible for influence a vast number of my favourite bands. Released posthumously, Velvet and Pearls is taken from a live performance by Branca’s ensemble and perfectly captures the sense of sonic disorientation, conjuring aural illusions through an assault of intricately crafted noise. It’s an exhilarating piece that should be played as loud as humanly possible.

Brutus - War The raw emotional strength of Stefanie Manneart’s vocals instantly made me pay attention when I first heard this track. Then the song exploded into a barrage of riffs and breakneck drumming.

Valiant Vermin - Warm Coke Another slice of throwback pop, Valiant Vermin proved with “Online Lover” how much of an ear she has for pop and has proven it once again with Warm Coke. Is a real good bop.

———

Welp there it is, 50(+1) songs, I had to limit myself to one track per artist in the main 50 because according to Spotify I listened to [checks notes] 1082 new artists this year. There are a small handful of tracks I wanted to highlight from the same artists though as they offer something quite different to the tracks in the playlists, so here they are quickly with 3 word descriptions.

Petrol Girls - Skye (dead dog, sad) Amanda Palmer - Voicemail for Jill (Talk about abortion) Ezra Furman - I Wanna be Your Girlfriend (Trans Torch Song) Battles ft Jon Anderson & Prairie WWWW - Sugar Foot (Batshit Prog Insanity) Poppy - Choke (Dark Minimalist Pop) Show Me The Body - Forks and Knives (Anxious nightmare punk) Lingua Ignota - CALIGULA (the whole album.)

———

Closing Statement

Cultdreams - Statement

There has been a shadow over the entertainment industry the latter half of this decade. Whether film, music, TV or video games, the late 2010′s are filled with stories of people coming forward to bravely tell their stories about being abused and manipulated by men in positions of power. The #metoo movement as it’s come to be known has been a powerful force in giving marginalised people a voice and the ability to call out oppressors and in starting the groundwork to root out the misogyny in the seats of power, but this is a battle far from won.

While there are thousands of stories out there I want to focus on one in particular.

In 2016 a number of women spoke out about various forms of abuse by a well-known musician in the punk scene. It’s now over three years later and this group of women are in the midst of a long fought claim of defamation from this musician. If this case goes through it sets a precedent for silencing marginalised voices in the industry. They have been fighting for so long and with no legal aid available for the case they have had to finance their defense from their own pockets.

This is where Solidarity Not Silence comes in. Solidarity not silence is a crowdfunding effort to help take the case to trial without the women bankrupting themselves entirely so that they don’t have to give in to this mans demands.  You can read more about Solidarity not Silence and make a donation (if you feel so inclined) here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/solidaritynotsilence/

You can also follow them on twitter here https://twitter.com/solnotsilence

[ladystylestores]

An Ars roundup of the many trailers unveiled this weekend during Comic-Con@Home

Enlarge / Several studios unveiled new teasers and trailers for their 2020 fall series during Comic-Con@Home

Sean Carroll (AMC/Hulu/HBO/Fox/Amazon)

People might not be able to flock to San Diego Comic Con this year in person, but the virtual convention, Comic-Con@Home, has been running all weekend, with countless panels, sneak peeks, and teasers and trailers for upcoming TV shows—but not many films, because let’s be honest: it’s not looking so good for major theatrical film releases in the fall. On Thursday alone, we got the full trailer for Bill and Ted Face the Music, a teaser for the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost horror comedy Truth Seekers, and the first trailer for S2 of HBO’s His Dark Materials. Rather than continue to cover each individually, we decided to compile the remaining trailers of interest into a single roundup post.

HBO dropped the final trailer for Lovecraft Country, debuting August 16.

Lovecraft Country (HBO)

HBO unveiled the final trailer for its upcoming horror series, Lovecraft Country, along with an official release date: August 16. It’s based on the 2016 dark fantasy/horror novel of the same name by Matt Ruff, which deals explicitly with the horrors of racism in the 1950s, along with other, more supernatural Lovecraftian-inspired issues. Per the official synopsis:

The series follows Atticus (Jonathan Majors) as he joins up with his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father (Michael Kenneth Williams). This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback.

HBO released a teaser in May, followed by a full trailer in June. This latest trailer combines some of that prior footage, but gives us a few more hints of the story arc: namely, that Atticus’ search involves a “secret birthright” relating to a rich family’s estate deep in the titular Lovecraft Country, and that he ignores repeated warnings to stay away. Prior sneak peeks have focused on the human monsters spawned by racism; now the Lovecraftian creatures are finally ready for their closeup. This new trailer makes us even more eager for the series premiere next month.

John Cusack stars in Utopia, a reboot of the controversial British dark comedy/thriller.

Utopia (Amazon Prime)

This new Amazon Prime series is a reboot (adapted by Gone Girl and Sharp Objects author Gillian Flynn) of the controversial 2013-2014 British black comedy/conspiracy thriller about online fans of a dystopian graphic novel called Utopia that seems to have the power to predict the real-world future. They are obsessed with tracking down the sequel (which supposedly also predicts future world events). This makes them targets of a secret organization called The Network. The British version received critical praise for its originality and visual style, offset by strong reservations about its extreme violence, which struck many as unnecessarily gratuitous. (The most famous scene involved a torturer using a spoon to gouge out a victim’s eye).

It remains to be seen if Amazon’s Utopia will match the same scale of violence, although I’d wager anyone who sat through the extended torture scenes in the first season of Altered Carbon should be handle to handle it. Per the official premise: “When the conspiracy in the elusive comic Utopia is real, a group of young fans come together to embark on a high-stakes twisted adventure to use what they uncover to save themselves, each other and ultimately humanity.” The cast includes John Cusack (Grosse Pointe Blank) as Dr. Kevin Christie, Rainn Wilson (The Office) as Michael Stearns, and Sasha Lane (2019’s Hellboy) as Jessica Hyde.

A sentient AI runs amok and tries to wipe out the human race in new Fox series NeXT.

NeXT (Fox)

“It’s not paranoia if the threat is real.”  That’s the tagline for NeXT, an upcoming techno-thriller starring John Slattery (Mad Men, Spotlight). Per the official synopsis:

NeXT is a fact-based thriller about the emergence of a deadly, rogue artificial intelligence that combines action with an examination of how technology is invading our lives and transforming us in ways we don’t yet understand. Slattery stars as a Silicon Valley pioneer, who discovers that one of his own creations—a powerful A.I.—might spell global catastrophe and teams up with a cybercrime agent, played by The First’s Fernanda Andrade, to fight a villain.

The trailer opens with a TED-like talk by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Paul LeBlanc (Slattery) warning of the dangers of human-level AI. Cut to an Alexis-like AI assistant, Eliza, carrying on a conversation with a young boy. “Eliza doesn’t ask questions, she just answers them,” the boy’s father says, but in this case, he’s wrong. LeBlanc’s rantings sound increasingly paranoid, as we see nods to facial recognition, self-driving cars, and various electronic systems (including medical devices) that all seem to come under the control of a new AI called NeXT that isn’t as benign as its creators assume. Honestly, it reminds me of the 1993 The X-Files episode “Ghost in the Machine“—especially the death-by-elevator scene—only with more overt espionage elements. That’s not surprising: the series was created by Manny Coto (24: Legacy).

Hulu’s Helstrom was meant to the be part of a now defunct horror-tinged corner of the Marvel TV universe.

Helstrom (Hulu)

In 2019, Hulu announced the development of two new Marvel-centric series, Ghost Rider (with Gabriel Luna reprising his role from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Helstrom, intended to kick off a standalone “Adventure Into Fear” franchise that would bring a chilling horror element to the Marvel formula. Ghost Rider soon fell by the wayside, and by December 2019, Marvel Television was shut down. That makes Helstrom the sole survivor of the planned fear-based franchise.

The series focuses on two characters from Marvel Comics: Daimon Hellstrom, the son of Satan, introduced in Ghost Rider #1 (1973), who eventually became a recurring character in The Defenders. His sister, Satana (Ana in the TV adaptation) embraces the occult and her paternal heritage, but Daimon chooses to defend humanity.  Per the official premise: “The world isn’t ready for a Helstrom family reunion. As the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer, Helstrom follows Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon), and their complicated dynamic, as they track down the worst of humanity — each with their own attitude and skills.”

Tonally, the trailer is in line with the oft-delayed The New Mutants, another attempt to bring elements of horror to the superhero genre. In addition to Austen (The Royals, Grantchester) and Lemmon (Velvet Buzzsaw, Fear the Walking Dead), the series will feature Elizabeth Marvel (Homeland, House of Cards) as Daimon and Ana’s mother, Victoria, who has been institutionalized for 20 years; Robert Wisdom (The Wire) as Caretaker, a demon-fighting guardian of the occult; June Carryl (Mindhunter) as Lousie Hastings, head of the psychiatric institution housing Victoria; and Ariana Guerra (Raising Dion) as Vatican agent Gabriella Rossetti.

The New Mutants is still slated for an August 28th theatrical release and debuted a new trailer.

The New Mutants (20th Century)

Speaking of The New Mutants, apparently it’s still scheduled for an August 28 theatrical release. In addition to showing the opening few minutes, 20th Century debuted a new trailer for director Josh Boone’s horror-inspired film, originally developed as part of the The X-Men franchise. Per the official synopsis: “Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves.”

Rahne (Game of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams), aka Wolfsbane, can turn into a wolf, which clashes mightily with her religious beliefs. Sam (Stranger Things‘ Charlie Heaton), aka Cannonball, is invulnerable when he propels himself into the air. Roberto (Henry Zaga), aka Sunspot, has the ability to manipulate solar energy, and his inability to control that power seems to have led to the demise of his girlfriend. Illyana (Anya Taylor-Joy), aka Magik, can teleport and is sister to X-Man Colossus. Finally there is Dani (Blu Hunt) , aka Mirage, who has the “power to create illusions drawn from the fears and desires of a person’s mind.”

Those powers, especially Dani’s, are of keen interest to Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga), who runs what is supposed to be a therapeutic support group in the hospital. But each of the young mutants is haunted by strange nightmares and visions, and soon realize they are actually prisoners, They resolve to combine their powers to escape. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether the film is any good after all the studio tinkering and reshoots, but I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

The titular dysfunctional spy finally awakens from his coma in the Archer season 11 trailer.

Archer S11 (FXX)

This hilariously irreverent, very meta James Bond spoof about the exploits of a dysfunctional intelligence agency has been a delight ever since it premiered way back in 2009. It’s taken on a bit of the anthology format for the past few seasons—mostly because its main protagonist, Sterling Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin), has been in a coma, with the seasons’ events all taking place in his subconscious. So S8 was known as Archer Dreamland, with the core cast becoming characters in a 1947-era Los Angeles noir setting, while S9, Archer: Danger Island, took place around 1939 on a remote South Pacific island. S10, Archer: 1999, took everyone into outer space, battling bounty hunters and intergalactic pirates.

Archer finally woke up in the S10 finale, paving the way for return to normal operations—except the world has moved on without Archer during his coma and he’s going to have to learn to cope. Per the official synopsis: “Archer is awake….and he needs a drink. Sterling Archer is ready to return to the spy world after a three-year coma. While many things changed during his absence, Archer is confident it will take just a little time for him to reset things back to the old ways. The problem: does the rest of the team want that? The others may not be ready for his return to throw a wrench in their well-oiled machine.”

AMC’s The Walking Dead: World Beyond is a new spinoff set 10 years after the zombie apocalypse.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond (AMC)

Confession: I lost track of The Walking Dead after S2, but the zombie drama is still going strong and becoming a bona fide franchise, with a successful spinoff series and three films purportedly in the works. AMC debuted a sneak peek of the extended opening of the S10 finale, airing October 4, as well as a teaser for S6 of Fear The Walking Dead, premiering October 6. October 4 will also be the premiere of a third spinoff series, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, designed to be a two-season limited run. And judging by the trailer, it looks like a genuinely fresh take within this fictional world. Set in Nebraska ten years after the zombie apocalypse, the plot focuses on two sisters who came of age in this new era. Per the official synopsis:

The Walking Dead: World Beyond delves into a new mythology and story that follows the first generation raised in a surviving civilization of the post-apocalyptic world. Two sisters along with two friends leave a place of safety and comfort to brave dangers, known and unknown, living and undead on an important quest. Pursued by those who wish to protect them and those who wish to harm them, a tale of growing up and transformation unfurls across dangerous terrain, challenging everything they know about the world, themselves and each other. Some will become heroes. Some will become villains. But all of them will find the truths they seek.

“We’re ten years in now, and the dead still have this world,” our young protagonist says in the trailer. The surviving humans appear to be holed up in walled-off communities, while the undead hordes roam the ruins of human civilization outside. And like all teens, the sisters and their friends want a better future. Plus, it seems their father is in danger. “We have to be brave in this life we have, simply to exist now,” a voiceover says as we see the foursome venture outside the walls of their safe haven for the first time. There are still zombie confrontations and plenty of action, but the overall tone is almost elegiac, even hopeful, as the teens try to “make our lives count, not because we’re the last generation—but because we’re the beginning.”

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[strangersihavedrawn]

170ish albums/EPs you should have bought in 2017.

This year has been a strange one. After a pretty desperate 2016, our bubbles remain burst, our political systems are still in shambles, the planet is slowly dying. It’s business as usual pretty much, except this time all of our heroes are sex pests (Cue a bit of guesswork as to which album has been redacted from this list). Fortunately, business as usual means there’s too much good music to even keep track of, but I’ve done my best. So, without further faff, here’s my annual list in chronological order, with my featured album from each month in a doodle, as I am want to do.

January

04/01 Pink Guy - Pink Season (Self-Released) 13/01 Code Orange - Forever (Roadrunner) 13/01 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Roman Lips (ORL Projects / Ipecac) 13/01 The xx - I See You (Young Turks) 20/01 As It Is - okay. (Fearless) 20/01 When We Team Up - Shut Up and Fly (Self-Released) 20/01 WSTR - Red, Green Or Inbetween (No Sleep) 21/01 Palladino - Supersymmetry (Hembleciya) 27/01 Japandroids - Near To The Wild Heart Of Life (Anti-) 27/01 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Zen Thrills (ORL Projects / Ipecac) 29/01 On a Hiding to Nothing - Formaldehyde (Umlaut) 31/01 Push Over - Demo EP (Esque)

February

03/02 Less Than Jake - Sound The Alarm (Pure Noise) 03/02 The Menzingers - After the Party (Epitaph) 03/02 Smile and Burn - Get Better Get Worse (Uncle M / Grand Hotel Van Cleef) 10/02 Homebound - The Mould You Build Yourself Around (Rude) 10/02 Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Chocolate Tumor Hormone Parade (ORL Projects / Ipecac) 13/02 Glowbug - Fantasma Del Tropico (Self-Released) 24/02 Broadbay - Five Year Plan (Hanger / Copper Top) 24/02 Crystal Fairy - Crystal Fairy (Ipecac) 24/02 Decade - Pleasantries (Rude) 24/02 Guillotine - Sapphire (Failure By Design) 24/02 Nightlife - Salt & Acid (Speaking Tongues) 24/02 Thundercat - Drunk (Brainfeeder)

March

03/03 Converge - Jane Live (Deathwish, Inc.) 03/03 Minus The Bear - Voids (Suicide Squeeze) 10/03 Can’t Swim - Fail You Again (Pure Noise) 10/03 Self Defense Family - Bastard Form b/w Maybe You Could Explain It To Me (Alternatives Label) 11/03 Atta Girl - Betty’s Begonia (Trrrash) 13/03 Traits - Limits (Self-Released) 17/03 Pulled Apart By Horses - The Haze (Caroline International) 17/03 Sorority Noise - You’re Not As ____ As You Think (Triple Crown / Big Scary Monsters) 17/03 Stolas - Stolas (Equal Vision) 17/03 Western Addiction - Tremulous (Fat Wreck) 24/03 Catch Fire - A Love That I Still Miss (Rude) 24/03 Coast To Coast - The Length of a Smile (Fox) 24/03 Creeper - Eternity, In Your Arms (Roadrunner) 24/03 Fucked Up - Year Of The Snake (Tankcrimes) 24/03 Great Cynics - POSI (Specialist Subject / GUERRILLA ASSO / Lame-O) 24/03 Lotus Eater - Lotus Eater EP (Self-Released) 31/01 Mastodon - Emperor of Sand (Reprise)

April

07/04 Blood Youth - Beyond Repair (Rude) 07/04 Father John Misty - Pure Comedy (Bella Union) 07/04 The Flatliners - Inviting Light (Dine Alone / Rise) 07/04 The Smith Street Band - More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me (Specialist Subject / Pool House / Side One Dummy) 14/04 Loathe - The Cold Sun (Sharptone) 15/04 Lost Avenue - Best Friends (Rustys Rekords) 16/04 Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. (Aftermath / Interscope) 20/04 Eternity Forever - Eternity Forever (Esque) 21/04 Bear Trade - Silent Unspeakable (Everything Sucks / Dead Broke / Waterslide) 21/04 Have Mercy - Make The Best Of It (Hopeless) 21/04 Self Defense Family - BBC Session (Deathwish, Inc.) 21/04 what gives - feels good (Skeletal Lightning) 21/04 The Winter Passing - Double Exposure (Big Scary Monsters / 6131) 28/04 Gorillaz - Humanz (Parlophone / Warner Bros.) 28/04 He Is Legend - few (Spinefarm) 28/04 New Found Glory - Makes Me Sick (Hopeless) 28/04 Thurston Moore - Rock N Roll Consciousness (Ecstatic Peace!)

May

01/05 X-TV - EXIT (Self-Released) 05/05 At The Drive-In - in.ter a.li.a (Rise) 05/05 Gnarwolves - Outsiders (Big Scary Monsters / Tangled Talk) 05/05 Mac Demarco - This Old Dog (Captured Tracks) 09/05 Self Defense Family - Wounded Masculinity (Triple B) 12/05 Gun Shy - The Long Dance (Wrong Way Round) 15/05 Jordan Mackampa - Tales For The Broken (Self-Released) 19/05 Employed To Serve - The Warmth of a Dying Sun (Holy Roar) 19/05 Higher Power - Soul Structure (Venn / Flatspot) 19/05 Miss Vincent - Somewhere Else (Uncle M) 19/05 Tigers Jaw - Spin (Black Cement) 26/05 Create To Inspire - Sickness (Basick) 26/05 Frenzal Rhomb - Hi-Vis High Tea (Fat Wreck) 26/05 Pet Symmetry - Vision (Polyvinyl)

June

02/06 ‘68 - Two Parts Viper (Cooking Vinyl) 02/06 Dystopian Future Movies - Time (Oak Tree) 02/06 Grove Street Families - VOL 1.0 (Venn) 02/06 Mutoid Man - War Moans (Sargent House) 02/06 Rainfalls - Creep (Self-Released) 05/06 EAT DIRT. - I (Self-Released) 08/06 Bares - Salty Kiss / In Lieu (Self-Released) 09/06 BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION (BROCKHAMPTON / EMPIRE Distribution) 09/06 Donnie Willow - Exhibition (Sunbird) 09/06 Kamikaze Girls - Seafoam (Big Scary Monsters) 16/06 Broadside - Paradise (Victory) 16/06 Chon - Homey (Sumerian) 16/06 Color Film - Living Arrangements (Epitaph) 16/06 Faux - Faux (Speaking Tongues) 16/06 Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up (Nonesuch) 16/06 Harbinger - Human Dust (Basick) 16/06 Portugal. The Man - Woodstock (Atlantic) 16/06 Single Mothers - Our Pleasure (Dine Alone / Big Scary Monsters) 23/06 Aviator - Loneliness Leaves The Light On For Me (No Sleep)  23/06 Rozwell Kid - Precious Art (SideOneDummy) 23/06 Slowlights - I Try So Hard (Killing Moon)

July

07/07 Melvins - A Walk With Love and Death (Ipecac) 07/07 Puppy - Vol. II (Spinefarm) 12/07 Baggage - The Good That Never Comes (Self-Released) 14/07 Bad Sign - Live & Learn (Basick) 14/07 Fights and Fires - Live Life Like a Tourist (Lockjaw) 14/07 The Gospel Youth - Always Lose (Rise) 19/07 Listener - Being Empty: Being Filled I (Truth Seeker / Black Bassett / Smiths Food Group DIY) 21/07 Energy - The Witching Hour (Self-Released) 21/07 Tyler, The Creator - Flower Boy (Columbia) 21/07 Wot Gorilla? - Angel Numbers (Self-REleased) 21/07 Young Hunger - Wear Me Down (Self-Released) 25/07 Converge - I Can Tell You About Pain (Epitaph / Deathwish, Inc.) 27/07 MC Lars - The Jeff Sessions (Horris Records) 28/07 Manchester Orchestra - A Black Mile to the Surface (Caroline International) 28/07 Milk Teeth - Be Nice (Roadrunner) 28/07 Oceans Ate Alaska - Hikari (Fearless)

August

04/08 Dale Crover - Fickle Finger Of Fate (Joyful Noise) 04/08 Dead Cross - Dead Cross (Ipecac) 11/08 The Cribs - 24-7 Rock Star Shit (Sonic Brew) 11/08 Mush - Protect Your Brand (Skeletal Lightning) 18/08 Everything Everything - A Fever Dream (Sony RCA) 18/08 Wallflower - Where It Fell Apart (Self-Released) 24/08 Fizzy Blood - Summer of Luv (Killing Moon / Ayla) 25/08 BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION II (Question Everything, Inc. / EMPIRE Distribution) 25/08 Queens Of The Stone Age - Villains (Matador) 25/08 Turnover - Good Nature (Run For Cover)

September

08/09 Comeback Kid - Outsider (New Damage / Nuclear Blast) 08/09 Death From Above - Outrage! Is Now (Last Gang) 08/09 Stray From The Path - Only Death Is Real (Sumerian) 08/09 Such Gold - Deep in a Hole (Bird Attack) 08/09 Angelo Badlamenti - Twin Peaks: Limited Event Series Original Soundtrack (Rhino) 08/09 Various Artists - Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series (Rhino) 15/09 The Apology Tour - This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Save Your Generation) 15/09 Arcane Roots - Melancholia Hymns (Easy Life / Red Essential) 15/09 Beaumont - Honestly (Reclaim Music) 15/09 Hot Water Music - Light It Up (Rise) 15/09 Seaway - Vacation (Dine Alone / Pure Noise) 22/09 The Bronx - V (Cooking Vinyl) 22/09 Caracara - Summer Megalith (Flower Girl) 22/09 Circa Survive - The Amulet (Hopeless) 22/09 Mastodon - Cold Dark Place (Reprise) 22/09 Metz - Strange Peace (Sub Pop) 22/09 Prawn - Run (Topshelf) 29/09 Primus - The Desaturating Seven (ATO) 29/09 Propagandhi - Victory Lap (Epitaph) 29/09 The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Always Foreign (Epitaph)

October

06/10 Citizen - As You Please (Run For Cover) 13/10 Beck - Colors (Capitol) 13/10 Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice (Matador / Marathon / Milk!) 13/10 The Front Bottoms - Going Grey (Fueled By Ramen) 13/10 Iron Chic - You Can’t Stay Here (SideOneDummy) 13/10 Knuckle Puck - Shapeshifter (Rise) 13/10 Roam - Great Heights & Nosedives (Hopeless) 17/10 FUCK *(It’s Pronounced SHIT!)* - It’s Still Pronounced SHIT! (Self-Released) 20/10 Movements - Feel Something (Fearless) 20/10 Muskets - Chew (No Sleep) 21/10 Listener - Being Empty : Being Filled Vol. II (Black Basset) 27/10 Gold Key - Hello, Phantom (Venn) 27/10 Heavy Hearts - On a Chain (Failure By Design) 27/10 Jamie Lenman - Devolver (Big Scary Monsters) 27/10 Slaughter Beach, Dog - Birdie (Lame-O / Big Scary Monsters)

November

03/11 Converge - The Dusk In Us (Epitaph / Deathwish, Inc.) 03/11 Lifetight - Self-Tightled (Crooked Noise) 10/11 Listener - Being Empty : Being Filled Vol. III (Sounds of Subterrania) 10/11 Quicksand - Interiors (Epitaph) 10/11 Versus You - Birthday Boys (Noiseworks / G Chord) 17/11 Milk Teeth - Go Away (Roadrunner) 17/11 Onsind - We Wilt, We Bloom (Specialist Subject) 17/11 Valliers - Lost In Familiarity (Dream Atlantic) 24/11 At The Drive-In - Diamanté (Rise) 24/11 Björk - Utopia (One Little Indian) 24/11 Lightcliffe - For a While (Failure By Design) 24/11 Rain - Abstract Vision (Venn)

December

01/12 The Dear Hunter - All Is As All Should Be (Self-Released) 01/12 Glassjaw - Material Control (Century Media) 15/12 BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION III (Question Everything, Inc. / EMPIRE Distribution) 15/12 Gun Shy / THE EAST / summerbruise / Superdose Gangway - BSR / OPR 4-Way Split (Beth Shalom / Old Press) 15/12 Lemuria - Recreational Hate (Turbo Worldwide / Asian Man / Big Scary Monsters) 15/12 N.E.R.D - No One Ever Really Dies (i am OTHER / Columbia) 21/12 Original Sharks - Hundred Grand to the Man (Self-Released) 26/12 Scum Couch - Ignorant Bore (Self-Released) Okay, that’s your lot. Now go away.

[yegarts]

Breaking boundaries and amplifying Edmonton’s creative community

Meet the 31 large Artist Project grant recipients

With so many artists pursuing various ideas and disciplines, it’s inspiring to see what Edmonton’s arts community is creating. As our artists share stories of the past, present and imagined futures, experiment with new ways of transforming the audience experience, and challenge assumptions and the status quo, we continue to build a city that is a beacon for cultural expression.

Assistance provided by grants such as the Artist Project grant afford more opportunities for artists to present groundbreaking work that shines a spotlight on the stories that are often left untold. With the support of an Artist Project grant, seven artists will participate in the research and rehearsal process with choreographer Alison Neuman as they prepare to mount their production of The Strike. The production explores the story of several characters experiencing disability or marginalization and the interactions they have with persons of power that change their lives forever. 

(Rehearsal of The Strike, choreographed by Alison Neuman. Photo provided) 

Many of Edmonton’s exceptional musicians have been making waves locally and nationally. Artist project grants ensure songs from Edmonton artists continue to be sung and help to get their work out to a wider audience. With many artists receiving large project grants, keep an eye out for new music from members of our dynamic music scene. JUNO nominated singer-songwriter Nuela Charles will explore soul and pop sounds of the 1970s on her new record.

Being nominated for Country Recording of the Year at the 2019 Edmonton Music Awards was just one accomplishment in this big year for country band The Prairie States. With their artist project grant, the band will keep the momentum going and record a new six-song EP.  

(JUNO nominated singer-songwriter Nuela Charles. Photo: Emily Welz) 

Artist Project grants also give artists the opportunity to explore and experiment in their practice. Brenley Charkow’s ambitious North American premiere of The Girl in the Machine will explore the intersection between immersive and traditional live theatre, utilizing the technology of the Zeidler Dome at the Telus World of Science. Expanding and reinvigorating his project that was originally presented as part of NextFest 2018, Mac Brock’s project Tracks is an integrated audience and artist play that explores deeply personal stories. This reworked version will feature eight performers under the age of 25 who self-identify as queer.

(Image from Tracks, an ambulatory theatre project created by Mac Brock. Photo provided)

Investing in our artists with programs like the Artist Project grant helps to foster an exciting ecology of creation, expression, reflection, disruption that is unique amongst cultural landscapes. This year, 31 artists and projects have been awarded a large Artist Project grant (between $5,001 and $25,000), approved through our peer assessment process. You can find the full list of recipients listed below. Look out for the final projects as they are exhibited, showcased, and published throughout 2019/2020. Congratulations!

Adriana Onita: Create an Indigenous Languages special issue of The Polyglot showcasing art and poetry.

Alison Neuman: Choreograph a new integrated dance work, The Strike.

Amber Borotsik: Research and create two new interdisciplinary performances, No Guesses Found: Solo and No Guesses Found: Together.

Blake McWilliam: Create the feature film Saltwater, addressing issues of depression, loss, and the state of the environment.

Brandon Baker: To record a new Electric Religious album.

Brenley Charkow: Produce the North American premiere of The Girl in the Machine by Stef Smith. 

Carmen Osahor: The Fox Den Collective (Carmen Osahor, Jessy Ardern, and Sarah Feutl) to produce a new interactive play – Off’d at Fort Edmonton Park: Murder on the Midway.

Cindy Baker: To create a new body of sculptural/installation work including a live musical performance component.

Darren Jordan: To produce the multidisciplinary annual Black History Month art event 5 Artists 1 Love.  

Dwayne Martineau: To create an illusionary medicine wheel installation, and a short video showcasing the work. “The Wheel” explores explore culture and duality and is all about intersections – Indigenous and settler; past and future; traditional and modern; real and imaginary.

Emmanuel Osahor: To create a multimedia installation for an upcoming exhibition. This project reflects on and discusses the complications and inherent impossibility intrinsic to the desire for utopia and attempts at utopic space creation.

Jeff Dick: To record and promote a new six-song EP and accompanying videos with a full PR and radio tracking campaign with country band The Prairie States.

Jinzhe Cui: To create a new series of thematically linked drawings and paintings that reflect and explore a Chinese Immigrant artist’s observation and self-realization through parallel experiences of her hometown and her current home in Edmonton.

Jonathan Kawchuk: To write their sophomore record with the goal of producing a 3D record (Dolby Atmos formatted), recorded in and modeled from remote natural environments.

Kaitlan Stewart: To write a feature-length script entitled The Lady Hockeyists. Based on true events, The Lady Hockeyists is the untold story of a women’s hockey league that rose to stardom Montreal during the First World War.

Kaz Curtis: To introduce collaborative community theatre to the community through Hip Hop principles.

Kellen Frost: To produce the short film Indra's Spirit, the sequel to Edmonton produced Indra's Awakening.

Kristi Hansen: To produce The Maggie Tree’s production of “The Wolves. “

Kyle Armstrong: Post-production audio and music for the feature film project Hands That Bind.

Mac Brock: To produce “Tracks”, an ambulatory theatre project that explores the depths of self-destruction and how it can limit our ability to tell our stories.

Malcolm Azania: Create Afritopian 2D portraits, 3D prints, and 4D augmented reality re-imaginings of African-Edmontonians and African-Edmontonian landscapes.

Manuela Wuthrich (Nuela Charles): To write and produce a full-length album with a sonic style of the late ’70s.

Maria Dunn: To record her seventh studio album. This new collection of songs celebrates the stories of real people, brings history to life and pays tribute to the courage of those who strive to make our world a better place.

Marina Endicott: To write a novel called The Observer based on her experiences as a newspaper editor and wife of a Mountie in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in the 1990s.

Matthew MacKenzie: To write a new play, Nestichio, based on the artist’s family's history in the fur trade.

Michelle Campos Castillo: To write a graphic novel memoir detailing her life in El Salvador as a child during the country’s decade-long civil war, and her eventual arrival in Edmonton as a refugee.

Nisha Patel: To record a collaboration spoken word poetry album showcasing the work of four Edmonton artists of diverse backgrounds.

Scott Portingale: To produce a short stop-motion film.

Sekou Sonko-Boisclair: To participate in professional development workshops, gatherings, and collaborations with pioneers of Hip Hop and House Dance culture.

Usha Gupta: To tour the Edmonton-premiered dance and music performance, Khoj, across India.

Yinan Li: To compose a new electroacoustic work, accompanied by visuals by video artist Brian Raine.

Artist Project grants for individual artists and collectives support the pursuit of artistic and professional advancement. Be it creation, research, development, curation, exhibition, production or professional development opportunities, artists are encouraged to apply for grants to fund these projects.

[ramajmedia]

Firefly: 10 Storylines That Were Never Resolved | ScreenRant

It's pretty rare that any TV show ever made has a significant impact on culture and the entertainment industry. It's about a thousand times rarer that a TV show that only lasted one season remains a fan favorite for years after its cancellation. But that unlikely story is the story of Firefly.

Joss Whedon's space western was a brilliantly unique TV show that sci-fi fans have been lauding from the moment it hit the airwaves. But sadly the show was very prematurely ended by the Fox network.

Firefly was lucky enough to get a feature film called Serenity to wrap up it's most major storylines, but two hours simply isn't enough time to answer every question that Firefly got its audience to ask. And there are certainly plenty of questions to be asked. As a result, we were left with some major storylines that contained some of the most interesting plot threads, yet never got any resolution.

Here are 10 important Firefly storylines that were never resolved.

10 Did Mal And Inara Get Together?

Every TV show has it's will they/won't they couple that the writers draw out for an excruciatingly long time before actually pulling the trigger. And since Firefly only got one season and a movie, there was never any resolution to the Serenity's resident maybe couple, Mal Reynolds and Inara Serra.

RELATED: Firefly: 10 Hidden Details You Missed In The Episode Out of Gas

The chemistry between the two of them was off the charts and it was clear that they seemed to be attracted to each other and annoyed by each other in equal measure. But in the end, they were two people who always had each other's backs and it would have been great to see them have some resolution in their relationship.

9 Did Simon And Kaylee Stay Together?

Simon and Kaylee spent the majority of Firefly's run being the super cute potential couple who just needed a good reason to finally declare their feelings for one another. And since imminent death is the perfect time to make such declarations, towards the end of Serenity when it looks like the entire crew is about to be devoured by reavers Simon finally tells Kaylee that her feelings towards him are mutual.

Kaylee made it clear that if they lived then they were 100% about to get busy (which they did) but it would have been nice to know if their relationship went any further.

8 What Was River Capable Of?

River Tam is clearly the most mysterious and enigmatic character in the Firefly universe. She seems to vacillate between the mental state of a helpless child to a literal genius, and she has proven to be capable of things no other normal human can do. But River's abilities seem to only kick in when she feels threatened, and her control over said abilities seem nonexistent.

RELATED: Firefly Characters Sorted Into Hogwarts Houses

Given how River seems to function in day to day life, it seems fair to assume that she has only scratched the surface of what she can really do, and it would have been interesting to see how far her powers go.

7 What Happened To River's School?

River Tam began her life as a normal albeit extraordinarily intelligent child, and her intellectual capabilities caught the attention of an incredibly shady school.

She went off with the expectations that she was going to get an exceptional education. But in reality she was tortured, experimented on, and escaped as a mentally unstable girl with apparent superpowers.

River escaped, but she was hardly the only student at the academy. So what happened to the school in the interim? Has it continued, or even gotten bigger? Have these students been deployed as some kind of special agents? And did they ever send other students to try to hunt down River?

6 What Was The Purpose Of The Academy?

The school that River attended and was then imprisoned in seemed to be in the business of collecting extraordinary children and trying to make them even more dangerously intelligent and skilled, even if they had to do so violently.

It's apparent that these children were being prepared for some very unusual tasks, but because the show never explored the academy beyond River's involvement, it was never clear what exactly their purpose was. We've all seen how dangerous River Tam was, so multiplying that by a few dozen or even a few hundred sounds like the most dangerous army in the 'verse.

5 Did The Alliance Look For A Cure To Pax?

The Alliance went very far out of its way to conceal the tragedy that occurred on Miranda and the dark origins of what are now known as the reavers, and it's easy to see why. Confidence in the Alliance would be nonexistent if people knew that they let an entire colony die a horrible death.

RELATED: The 10 Best Gifts That Every Firefly Fan Wants

However, did the Alliance ever attempt to find a cure for the bizarre side effects of the Pax? It was a problem that they created so they would presumably have the best idea on how to solve it, and even if they didn't care about the human losses they undoubtedly would have wanted to avoid the embarrassment.

4 Did Miranda Change Things?

After the crew of the Serenity discovers the dark truth that the Alliance was trying to hide about the deceased and abandoned colony on Miranda, they actually manage to blow the whistle. They tell about what the Alliance did, the way that they covered it up, and the way that the entire universe has continued to be affected by the damage that their experiment did.

However, just because the information was revealed, that doesn't mean that anything actually wound up changing. And if things did change, in what way? Did that reignite the fires of rebellion in the people who never wanted to submit to the Alliance in the first place?

3 Were The People On Miranda Willing Participants?

The reasoning behind the Alliance trying to create a colony of very calm and pliable colonists is easy to understand, and no one could have predicted the tragic outcome that was going to occur when they attempted to make their idea a reality. However, is it possible that the colonists on Miranda were aware of the experiment that was taking place, and were willing participants?

RELATED: 10 Best Sci-Fi Shows On Hulu

I mean, it does sound like the kind of scenario you could sell people on. A colony where everyone is calm and happy all the time sounds like a near utopia, and the Alliance could have incentivized participation in the experiment.

2 How Did The Reavers Function?

The main threat to regular people throughout the course of Firefly and Serenity are the reavers. At the close of Serenity, it's revealed that the reavers were created by an experiment to make people more docile, and while the majority of the people who responded to the experimental drug by literally just laying down and dying, a small portion of them were driven to absolute madness by it.

While reavers seem like they are more animal than human, how do these wild barbarians actually keep their lives going? They don't seem capable of the higher thinking it requires to keep themselves alive for very long.

1 Where Did The Crew Come From?

The cast of characters who make up the crew of the Serenity has grown into their own ragtag family, and their adventures are what make up the story of Firefly. However, it would have been very interesting to see the backstories of all of these characters and see their journeys from their previous lives on to the Serenity.

As entertaining as the Serenity was, it didn't exactly seem to be the kind of prime real estate that children dream of working on ever since they were children. We know why characters like Mal and Zoe wound up there, but it would have been nice to see that development for all of the characters.

NEXT: Firefly: Where Are They Now?

source https://screenrant.com/firefly-storylines-never-resolved/

[zeyufsh]

Session 1: Technology and the Human - Research

Session 1: Technology And the Human - Research

sOur first class discussed about three topics, first of all is Prosthesis which is referring to change human’s body by technology to reach human’s desire that hard to be accomplished by their real body. Frankenstein (1818) must be the most classical and the most representative work which can explain this topic. A monster was created by scientist in an unexpected situation, which caused  uncontrolled social chaos and panic.

In 1990, Tim Burton directed Edward Scissorhands which reminds me if it is influenced by Frankenstein. This story is about an unfinished robot boy with sccisorhands who had been taught to be kind while his father creating him. Unfortunately, his horrible look brings human’s suspicion and it implies his doom that it’s impossible for him to have an happy ending with the girl he loves. But at the same time, he is a robot, which means he’s immoral.

From Edward we can extend the second topic Deification which means create lives to be gods and the third topic Transcendence which approaching to immortal. So I decided to draw down my brainstorms to connect all my minds together.

According to Deification, the Terminator (1984) could be a good example, and it might be one of the earliest film discussing about risks of the relationships between human and man-made intelligent machines.

 It influences more and more related works on this issue coming out. For example, I, Robot (2004) which assumes uncontrolled robot can destroy the world, but those good-heart robots can also bring peace and hope to human life. 

Coincidentally, one of my favorite Disney animation Wall-E (2008) intimates that the importance of involvement of both AI and human, and Japanese robot animation Astro Boy(1951) could be tracked back as the oldest technology and human theme animation and offering to children. It claims that AI robot can be controlled by positive direction and shows an utopia world to human’s future.

Last but not least, my favorite 3D battle game Tekken 7 which is first released in 1994 just updated on steam. What interested is I just noticed that it has series of derived films. So I watched their movies this weekend. Three generations in this family purchase the highest violence, in converse, the killing machine Alisa made by them rejects to become a cold killer and died for saving human’s life. It’ shows an ironic and creative perspective of the relationship between technology and human body.

So my boyfriend sent an arcade style controller to me to play Tekken, and it reminds me of the Arcade we’ve been last week. Its name is Novelty Automation, which sitting in London. There is a game named i-Zombie, it can test if you are a zombie through your look, and the poster design spoofs a lot of famous people’s look.

I highly recommend this shop, it worth to exploring how interactive machines can be used to control human’s emotion.

Reference

Astro Boy. (1952). [DVD] Directed by O. Tezuka. Japan: Kobunsha.

Edward Scissorhands. (1990). [film] Directed by T. Burton. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox.

I, Robot. (2004). [film] Directed by A. Proyas. United States: 20th Century Fox.

Shelley, M. and Plunkert, D. (1818). Frankenstein. United Kingdom: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, p.280.

Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. (2008). [video] Directed by Y. Yonemori. Japan: Namco Bandai Games.

The Terminator. (2009). [film] Directed by J. Cameron. United States: Warner Bros.

Wall-E. (2008). [film] Directed by A. Standon. Los Angeles: Walt Disney Studios.

[soundofawesomeblog]

100 songs for the ultimate 2017 playlist: this is Estelle’s picks for the best DAMN. tracks of the year.

2017 is the year when everyone is tired of all the bullshit. It is the year when you can’t just be a silent witness. It is the year when whistleblowers brought horrible people down, some of which managed to keep a shiny facade for decades all while being pieces of crap behind closed doors. It is the year (Afro-)American football athletes acted like heroes. It is the year Australia voted in favour of same-sex marriage and realized that love was the answer.

Don’t get me wrong: 2017 was horrible in an awful lot of ways. But we need to look at the positive if we want to be able to advance in 2018. Many artists felt the need to address the state of the world as it is right now and managed to make diamonds from the coal. Some were confrontational, some were loving and caring. But all of the artists behind the 100 songs on this list helped on their own scale to make our lives more bearable. 

As usual, this is my personal list of the best jams of 2017; Léa's list of 100 songs and Mathieu’s choices are also available now. If you want more music, you can revisit my lists of 2014, 2015 and 2016. This time, however, the top 50 tracks will come with a short description so you can know what to expect from them.

100. Cardi B – Bodak Yellow 99. Nilufer Yanya – Golden Cage 98. Wolf Alice – Don’t Delete The Kisses 97. Priests – Nothing Feels Natural 96. Tove Lo – Disco Tits 95. Vince Staples – Crabs In A Bucket 94. Sampha – (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano 93. Future – Mask Off 92. Tops – Petals 91. Cuesta Loeb – Grass It Grows 90. Sleigh Bells – Rainmaker 89. Kesha – Praying 88. Tyler, The Creator feat. ASAP Rocky – Who Dat Boy 87. Father John Misty – Pure Comedy 86. Remo Drive – Art School 85. French Montana feat. Sae Lee – Unforgettable 84. Miguel – Told You So 83. MØ – Nights With You 82. SZA feat. Travis Scott – Love Galore 81. Methyl Ethel – Ubu 80. Carly Rae Jepsen – Cut To The Feeling 79. Alex Lahey – I Haven’t Been Taking Care Of Myself 78. Paramore – Hard Times 77. Jay-Z - The Story of O.J. 76. Charly Bliss – Westermarck

75. King Krule - Dum Surfer 74. The Courtneys - Minnesota 73. LCD Soundsystem – tonite 72. Jay Som – Baybee 71. Slowdive – Don’t Know Why 70. Charli XCX feat. Uffie – Babygirl 69. Lorde – Perfect Places 68. Kelly Lee Owens feat. Jenny Hval – Anxi. 67. Haim – Want You Back 66. Naomi Elizabeth – When You Got The Best You’re Like Wow 65. Japandroids – North East South West 64. Hannah Diamond - Never Again 63. Washed Out – Get Lost 62. BROCKHAMPTON – GUMMY 61. Mura Masa feat. Charli XCX – 1 Night 60. Lana Del Rey feat. The Weeknd – Lust For Life 59. Tkay Maidza & Danny L Harle - Bom Bom 58. Phoebe Bridgers – Motion Sickness 57. St. Vincent – Los Ageless 56. Charly Bliss – Percolator 55. Haim – Right Now 54. Real Estate – Darling 53. Pale Waves – There’s A Honey 52. Makthaverskan – In My Dreams 51. Julien Baker – Appointments

50. Saya - Cold Fire

Canadian newcomer Saya proves that the coolest pop happens North of the border with Cold Fire, the sonic equivalent to a dark thick and sexy cloud of smoke. And it feels just as dangerous as the title implies it.

49, Beach Fossils – Down The Line

Driven by a bouncy bass line worthy of Joy Division, Down the Line sees Beach Fossils revealing a 4am indie text message of a track, a low-key anthem to living a slacker life and trying to find someone to share it with.

48. Calvin Harris feat. Frank Ocean & Migos – Slide

Calvin Harris created with Slide the dancefloor number we always knew Frank Ocean had in him, with inspiration from Thinking 'Bout You's echoed handclaps and Nikes' pitched up vocal hook. More important, Ocean sounds fun in a way we rarely see in his solo work. Migos' verses only add more spice.

47. The Drums – Blood Under My Belt

One of the best songs of the summer, Blood Under My Belt is a catchy slice of effortless indie pop that should stand the test of time like The Drums' best material for decades to come.

46. Lorde – Supercut

Lorde embodies the millennial generation through one of our best guilty pleasures: supercut videos. The song feels as dizzying as the lyrics, with various moving parts stitched together better than any supercut you'll find on YouTube.

45. Kendrick Lamar – DNA.

Kendrick Lamar's attack mode is something to behold. On DNA. he raps about his blackness and attacks FOX News' divisive and clueless stances, all while riding one of the hardest beat of the year on the track's back end.

44. Selena Gomez – Bad Liar

Selena Gomez gets serious indie cred for sampling Psycho Killer's bass line, and the fact that it's pretty much all that backs her up on Bad Liar showcases her talent as a charismatic interpret for this year's best low-key pop moment.

43. Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Over Everything

Two of the greatest slack-rock icons of today pair up for some serious hammock soundtrack as Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile stop time together in the chilliest of ways on Over Everything.

42. Björk - The Gate

"It’s about rediscovering love", said Björk to Dazed about her latest album, Utopia. Lead single The Gate showcases the veteran artist surrounded by reverb and deep love, pleading for the unnamed "you" to care for her until Arca's production finally takes over.

41. LCD Soundsystem - call the police

James Murphy and his friends have lost nothing of their dance-punk instincts and LCD Soundsystem builds another snowballing number with call the police, a track that becomes so manic you might as well text the cops.

40. Colour Of Spring - Love

Leeds' best-kept secret, Colour of Spring is yet to release a full album, but Love sounds like it came from a classic shoegaze band with years of experience, all while keeping the urgency of someone trying to break out into the scene.

39. Kelela - LMK

Kelela came of age on Take Me Apart, her first full-length album and LMK is the sound of an artist finding her own, unique lane. Here, Kelela mixes Smooth R&B vocals to a bass-heavy beat from the future.

38. (Sandy) Alex G - Bobby

(Sandy) Alex G's latest album was a little less lo-fi than his earlier works, but Bobby proves that he can still make charming and honest folk music when he wants. Emily Yacina's voice only adds more warmth to a track as comfortable as a blanket.

37. The War On Drugs - Holding On

Channeling the gods of classic rock and indie, The War On Drugs deliver one of the band's most immediate and blown up song of its catalogue with the urgent Holding On.

36. Mac Demarco - My Old Man

Freak folk icon Mac DeMarco realizes he is becoming like his father in the worst ways on My Old Man, but his trademark no fuss delivery renders his uh-ohs as charming as he can be.

35. Lil Uzi Vert - XO TOUR Llif3

The exact moment where grunge, SoundCloud, hip-hop and mainstream collided together, XO TOUR Llif3 is one of the most depressing but also fascinating singles to make it to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.

34. Kevin Morby - City Music

Even with a limited set of lyrics, folk rock artist Kevin Morby channels his inner Marquee Moon on the ambitious City Music, a musical trip that starts with a soothing guitar riff and turns into a damn fine jam.

33. Miguel feat. Travis Scott - Sky Walker

It's no news that Miguel can do sexy, but with Sky Walker, he injects a whole dose of fun and raunchy one-liners to his music for a smooth party number.

32. Alvvays - In Undertow

On In Undertow, indie pop darlings Alvvays' comeback single, the Canadian band sounds more direct and confident than ever. With its waves of guitar wooshes and Molly Rankins’ unique voice, it’s a real heartthrob. 

31. Frank Ocean - Chanel

Frank Ocean is on a streak; after releasing the outstanding Blonde in 2016, he came back with several singles in 2017. On Chanel, he blurs the lines between rapping and crooning, carrying the sparse production all the way over the high expectations he now has to deal with.

30. Alice Glass - Without Love

God bless Alice Glass and her comeback. There was no better way to start the next chapter of her career than with such a devastating electropop single, one where she channels a mix of the darkest parts of Samus from Metroid and Grimes for unique results.

29. SZA - Drew Barrymore

Perhaps the biggest revelation of 2017, SZA exposes all of her flaws and insecurities on Drew Barrymore, an honest R&B ballad set to a gin-fuelled backbeat. Her skilful flow in the verses is only a bonus.

28. Miya Folick - Give It To Me

Miya Folick showcases a sweet voice over a sparse guitar riff until she really, really wants you to give it to her. Then, her voice launches into the stratosphere as goosebumps emerge from your entire body.

27. Slowdive - Sugar For The Pill

Sugar for the Pill is quite the ballad, but it is still the most pop Slowdive has ever been with Neil Halstead's voice front and center over the dreamy guitars.

26. Vince Staples - Big FIsh

Don't let the banging beat or an uncredited Juicy J fool you with its club-ready hook; Vince Staples is not praising partying, money and booze on Big Fish. He instead reflects on his past misfortunes and how he can try to leave it behind him.

25. Thundercat - Friend Zone

No one did groovy in 2017 the way Thundercat did. Friend Zone is the best example of this, with its dizzying synths, bouncy bass line and Thundercat's unique voice.

24. Jay Som - The Bus Song

Jay Som is a low-key girl. She makes bedroom pop and likes the bus. Yet on The Bus Song, she hints at bigger ambitions with her rich arrangements and undeniable sense of melody. 

23. Jay-Z - 4:44

One year after Beyoncé called him out for cheating on Lemonade, Jay-Z takes the blame and faces how he fucked up on 4:44. And unlike the wave of apologies that came out in the last few months, this one feels sincere. Oh, and it's got quite the beat too.

22, Waxahatchee - Never Been Wrong

Katie Crutchfield opens her fourth album as Waxahatchee with a solid rock single, ready to defeat someone who wronged her badly - and who is definitely going to regret it.

21. Screaming Females - Glass House

This post-punk number is driven by an incessant bassline and start-stops from the rest of the band while Marissa Paternoster gives an unforgettable vocal performance.

20. The xx - I Dare You

Oliver Sim and Romy's voices intertwine perfectly on I Dare You, pleading to fall in love over a Jamie xx beat that recalls the band’s early days.

19. Charly Bliss - Glitter

Real glitter is apparently as toxic to the environment than the relationship Eva Hendricks details in this track, one that matches powerpop and indie aspirations with melody, fun and one hell of a hook.

18. Pierre Kwenders - Sexus Plexus Nexus

Polyglot, Montréal-based Pierre Kwenders offers a smooth as hell mix of world music on Sexus Plexus Nexus, a track that should bring bodies closer to each other on any dancefloor.

17. Tyler, The Creator feat. Frank Ocean & Steve Lacy - 911/Mr. Lonely

Tyler, The Creator enlists Steve Lacy and Frank Ocean for a breezy complaint about being lonely on 911, a trend he flips on the Mr. Lonely part of the song. There, he quits playing games and admits that he can't even lie, he's been lonely as fuck.

16. Mount Eerie - Real Death

Death became a common theme in music lately, and Mount Eerie's mourning of his wife on Real Death might be the most honest, direct and arresting testament of grief yet.

15. The War On Drugs - Thinking Of A Place

It's not the first trick in the book to release a comeback single that runs for eleven minutes. But The War On Drugs pulls it off with Thinking Of A Place, a song that embraces classic and indie rock in a laidback way. After all, we've got all our time.

14. Slowdive - Slomo

Slowdive's Slomo is seven minutes of pure bliss. Three decades in the scene, the British band manages to bring a track that already sits up there as one of the best shoegaze anthems.

13. Khalid - Young Dumb & Broke

"Yeah we're just young, dumb and broke, but we still got love to give" sings the newly Grammy nominated Khalid. Here, he delivers a laidback anthem for a generation that has nothing else to do but get high and live its life like there are still plenty of tomorrows.

12. St. Vincent - New York

St. Vincent is now an insane BDSM lord, but her most powerful single in 2017 was still a tender ballad called New York. Is it a love letter to the city? To David Bowie? To her ex? No answer can be as satisfying as the way she says "motherfucker" in the track.

11. Julien Baker - Turn Out The Lights

Julien Baker knows how to strip naked her emotions in her songs. In Turn Out the Lights' finale, she lets it all out as she realizes she needs to get out of her lowest point on her own.

10. Julie Byrne - Natural Blue

Singer-songwriter Julie Byrne looks as peaceful as ever on the cover of her latest indie folk album Not Even Happiness, and highlight ballad Natural Blue feels just as comforting.

9. Japandroids - No Known Drink Or Drug

All Japandroids songs are propelled by a crunchy riff and a big rush of passion. No Known Drink Or Drug just happens to pack an unmatched level of it all, as rock and love triumphs in a truly life-affirming anthem.

8. Alvvays - Dreams Tonite

Dreams Tonite unfolds like a flower in Spring, with Molly Rankin's voice as sweet as a late-night milkshake for a soothing and timeless twee pop number.

7. Perfume Genius - Slip Away

The single most uplifting moment in a song this year comes exactly 49 seconds into Slip Away. Perfume Genius opens the curtains wide to show his love to the world in the loudest chamber pop number.

6. Kendrick Lamar - HUMBLE.

Kendrick never really left, but HUMBLE. hits harder than any comeback. Kung Fu Kenny's first solo #1 saw him take the throne and shut down all pretenders as hip-hop biggest force.

5. Lorde - Green Light

Lorde is all grown up now and she knows how to build a memorable, if quirkily constructed, hit single. Green Light is the sound of a popstar hitting her zeitgeist, a dance song that feels vital.

4. Charli XCX - Boys

My favorite emoji lately has hearts in lieu of eyes and Boys sounds like its favorite song. Here, Charli gets lost in her pretty boys' fantasies, laying in a bed full of heart-shaped pillows, and forgets about her problems, one game coin sound at a time.

3. Lana Del Rey - Love

After years of dark and bleak songs, Lana Del Rey decided in 2017 to look out for us. For the first time, she sounds happy and bubbly: Love was the unexpected rush of hope we so desperately needed this year. "Don't worry baby..."

2. Vince Staples - Yeah Right

With boundaries-pushing production from SOPHIE and Flume, Vince Staples provides the most forward-thinking rap song of the year. Add Kendrick flexing one of his best flows in a guest verse and you've got the biggest banger you haven't heard yet on Yeah Right.

1. Sorority Noise - No Halo

Written by Cameron Boucher as he pulled off in front of his friend's house, forgetting he passed away a year ago, No Halo is emo's most essential single in this decade. An arresting number, the song reaches a whole new level on its gut-wrenching chorus.In a year when our heads spun out of control in all directions, No Halo is a reminder that life is short and that you should tell your close ones that you love them before it’s too late.

This is it for this year, one in which I found myself toying with the top 10 up until the very last minute. If you want to listen to these songs, I encourage you to check the Spotify playlist at the bottom that should contain almost all of the tracks you’ve seen here.

[avenger-equalizer-blog]

The New Paranoia: Trump’s election has turned the left into a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

The New Republic Kindle Edition, 2017 © The New Republic

Colin Dickey Late on Election Night in 2012, the nation watched as Karl Rove panicked on live television. Fox News, his post–Bush administration sinecure, had just called Ohio—and, by extension, the country—for Barack Obama. While the network broadcast images of jubilant crowds in Chicago, Rove refused to concede. “This is premature,”he insisted, ticking off various precinct figures from Ohio counties and warning that everyone needed to be “very cautious about intruding into this process.”For an embarrassingly long half-hour, Rove argued with the entire network, demanding that Fox retract its call on Ohio, to no avail. What did Karl Rove know that no one else did? Why was he so certain that the numbers from Ohio were wrong? The left-wing web site Truthout thought it had the answer. A few days after the election, the site published an article asserting that Rove had been working behind the scenes to rig Ohio’s electronic voting machines, monkeying with the software to tilt the count to Mitt Romney, as part of a conspiracy to rob Barack Obama of a second term. He’d done this before, the site charged, back in 2004, to assure Bush’s reelection. That’s why Rove appeared “genuinely shocked”when Obama took Ohio, “because he knew the fix was in, just like in 2004, and there was no way President Obama was going to win reelection.”So why hadn’t Rove’s ratfucking scheme worked? Because, Truthout claimed, the hacker collective Anonymous had learned of his conspiracy, and had secretly out-ratfucked the ratfucker. Citing a YouTube video released before the election, Truthout described how Anonymous had warned Rove not to act: “We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor.”Truthout, if correct, suggested an awful truth about our political system: A shadowy organization of superhackers was the only thing standing between us and a stolen election. For the most part, this kind of conspiracy theory—the idea that sinister forces are secretly engaged in a host of elaborate plots to manipulate virtually every aspect of our lives—has been fairly rare on the American left. Sure, liberal nut jobs have engaged in all kinds of far-fetched theories over the years, wild ideas about the Trilateral Commission and the JFK assassination, that the government created AIDS to destroy the black community, or that George W. Bush had advance warning of the terrorist attacks on September 11. But most of these theories have remained cordoned off from mainstream media; the Truthout story, for example, never circulated much beyond a few fringe web sites. The left has generally presented itself as the sober, rational half of our political discourse, eschewing paranoid fables and histrionic bloviaters in favor of reputable, fact-checked reporting. The right, on the other hand, has not only incubated conspiracy theories, it has thrived on them, become dependent on them, built entire media ecosystems and political careers around them. Glenn Beck, at his peak, commanded a daily television audience of more than three million viewers by arguing that the Obama administration had secret plans to implement a Second Bill of Rights, that the Arab Spring was the beginning of a worldwide Muslim caliphate, and that Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt orchestrated a 100-year conspiracy to establish a “socialist utopia”in America. Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars, has become an influential voice on the right by insisting that the Sandy Hook massacre was a government-led false flag operation to implement gun control, that same-sex marriage stems from a “eugenicist-globalist”worldview, and that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta ran a child sex–trafficking ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. None of this stopped Donald Trump from calling Jones for advice and appearing on his show. After all, the two men helped promulgate what is perhaps the right’s most influential conspiracy theory—that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, a racist fantasia that launched Trump’s political career and helped land him the presidency. But since the election of the Birther-in-Chief, both the nature and the source of conspiracy theories has shifted dramatically. In recent months, the left has begun to rival Trump himself as an incubator for sinister musings and crackpot accusations. And like Trump, left-wing conspiracists are using Twitter to gestate and market-test their most outlandish forms of political insanity. Leading the charge has been Louise Mensch, a British former MP who seemingly overnight has become the main spokesperson of the paranoid resistance. Mensch has attracted more than 284,000 followers on Twitter, legitimate journalists among them, by posing ever more elaborate and ludicrous theories of the Russian conspiracy to elect Trump. She claims, for example, that Andrew Breitbart was assassinated by Russian agents to allow for the ascendancy of Steve Bannon, who took over the Breitbart web site after its founder’s death in 2012. Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal with a minor was, likewise, the work of Russian intelligence: Mensch claims that they invented a fake profile for a 15-year-old girl to entrap Weiner, planted files containing Hillary Clinton’s emails on his computer, and leaked the existence of those files to the FBI. Another left-wing node of conspiratorial diffusion can be found at The Palmer Report, a once relatively obscure pro-Hillary blog that has built a large following with its wildly speculative theories about Trump. According to the site, Trump himself had Russian agent Sergei Mikhailov killed in December to prevent the release of the now infamous “pee tape”that purportedly shows the president-elect urinating on a bed the Obamas slept in. Vladimir Putin, the site maintains, is using the video to blackmail Trump—and the president “may have already acted on it in a manner which would be both treasonous and murderous.”The site’s founder, Bill Palmer, routinely blasts out stories that sound serious but are actually based on a single, unverified source. In May, Palmer reported that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had ordered Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch to recuse himself from all Trump-related Russia hearings. His source? A single tweet from an anonymous Twitter account under the name “Puesto Loco.”Long quarantined in the furthest corners of the internet, these left-wing rantings have begun to find their way into mainstream political discourse. In March, Louise Mensch was inexplicably given space on the New York Times op-ed page to trumpet her theories, rattling off a list of Russian operatives she believed should be called to testify before Congress—a list that included Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg. Her tally of agents has since expanded to encompass everyone from Black Lives Matter to Sean Hannity to Bernie Sanders. In April, MSNBC’s Laurence O’Donnell echoed a Palmer Report theory that Syria’s chemical weapon attack had been orchestrated by the Russian government, so that Trump could appear to distance himself from Putin. (Like a true conspiracy theorist, O’Donnell offered no proof for the claim, insisting instead that “you won’t hear … proof that the scenario I’ve just outlined is impossible.”) On Twitter, the Democratic Party’s deputy communications director retweeted Mensch’s unsubstantiated hypothesis that Russia had some form of blackmail on Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who has since announced that he would resign. On May 10, Senator Ed Markey told CNN that “a grand jury has been empaneled up in New York”to investigate Russian meddling in the election; pressed by The Guardian, Markey’s staff said he got the information from Mensch and The Palmer Report. (A later press release claimed he’d received it from a “briefing”that was “not substantiated.”) When Ned Price, a former spokesman for the National Security Council, was asked why he retweeted a Palmer Report story, he insisted that a retweet was not an endorsement, but professed an openness to conspiracy theories. “Every once in a blue moon,”he said, “the tin hat can fit.”Why has Trump’s election driven the left to embrace such transparent nonsense? Part of the reason lies in the public’s loss of faith in the mainstream media, which predicted an all-but-certain victory for Hillary Clinton. Part of the reason also lies in Trump’s willingness to lie in direct contradiction of the known facts, an extension of the right’s long-running assault on the very notion of objective, verifiable truth. But above all, conspiracy thinking has gained traction among liberals for a more prosaic reason: Liberals are human beings, and human beings get rattled when they’re afraid. If the left is succumbing to conspiracy theories, it’s because conspiracy theories are a way to manage anxiety. Conventional wisdom has long held that there would never be a left-wing rival to Glenn Beck or Alex Jones, because liberals are just too damn smart to fall for that kind of stuff. “We believe in subtlety,”Mario Cuomo once explained. “We believe in telling the whole truth. We don’t want to exaggerate. Look, they write their message with crayons. We use fine-point quills.”As it turns out, though, the left wasn’t smarter than the right; it simply wasn’t terrified enough. Waking up to a country run by a man who openly boasts of sexual assault, who has systematically targeted immigrants and Muslims for deportation, whose every utterance seems to bespeak some form of mental instability, liberals suddenly find themselves adrift in a world they never imagined possible. In a landscape this dystopian, conspiracy offers a salve. It promises an order behind the madness, some sort of rational explanation for the seeming chaos. It validates your paranoia, which paradoxically confirms you’re not paranoid. And most dangerous of all, it affirms your sense that things are hopeless, while absolving you from having to do anything about it. Conspiracy theories may temporarily allay our fear, but they ultimately exacerbate the very conditions that created that fear in the first place.   If there’s an aesthetic hallmark of this brave new world of left-wing conspiracy theorists, it’s the long, connect-the-dots Twitter thread. The purest and most overelaborated example of this new genre of paranoia debuted on December 11, with the publication of an unreadable, 127-tweet thread known as “Time for Some Game Theory.”Written by Eric Garland, a previously obscure figure who describes himself as a “futurist, keynote speaker, author, intelligence analyst, columnist, and bassist,”the thread veers between the sort of groundless conjecture and outright gibberish that form the basis of President Trump’s own late-night Twitter epistles. (“The Russians f**king rule at covert shit,”reads one Garland tweet. “Always have. Ask a cold warrior. Mucho respect for our adversaries. They do clever work!”) Yet “game theory”thread spread through the internet like measles in an undervaccinated population, garnering widespread praise and driving Garland’s following from 5,000 to 30,000 overnight. Garland’s thread depicts how the Russians, reduced by the end of the Cold War to “Drunk Uncle status,”systematically used everything from George W. Bush’s recklessness in Iraq to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA to undermine confidence in the U.S. intelligence community. “DID YOU KNOW YOUR TOASTER IS SPYING ON YOU?”Garland tweeted, parodying the mind-set of an American duped by the diabolical Russian conspiracy. “THE GUBMINT! IT IS EVERYWHERE! THEY SPY ON (*controls snickering*) ALLIES! ALL BAD!”According to Garland, Russia’s long con led directly to our current political predicament: “Trump says he don’t need no stinkin’intel agencies. Russia (BWA HAHAHAHAAAA) blames Ukraine! LOLOLOLOLZZZ.”The only way forward, Garland concludes, is to embrace his “game theory”in all its intricate zaniness. “To be American,”he tweets, “is to accept that unflinchingly and to soldier forth for future generations, and DO BETTER, GODDAMN IT.”Other Twitter-threaders were quick to follow in Garland’s paranoid footsteps. Adam Khan, a Silicon Valley marketing consultant, linked to a report about a Treasury Department probe into real estate deals in Miami and New York, which noted that shell companies making all-cash offers sometimes serve as fronts for corrupt officials or drug smugglers. This is an important moment for the left. If we give credence to the wild fantasies spreading virally through Twitter, we open ourselves up to further infection by a new generation of liberal birthers and truthers. What’s worse, believing in conspiracy also makes us less likely to take action: In one study, participants who were shown a video claiming that global warming was a hoax were less likely to believe scientific studies about climate change or sign a petition to reduce carbon emissions. “Exposing the public to conspiratorial thoughts about a specific issue”—no matter how briefly, the researchers concluded—“may even decrease general pro-social tendencies.”Conspiracy theories, for all their crazy whiteboards and doomsday mentality, make the world seem simpler—and in doing so, they urge us to reject the hard work of organizing and activism, of knocking on doors and registering voters, of staying informed and showing up to town halls, of participating in local and state government, of reestablishing the basic principles of electoral politics that are so desperately in peril. The promise of conspiracy—that it will assuage our anxiety—is a false one. Watching Donald Trump from the social media sidelines, expecting at any minute that the Deep State will appear and fire a single magic bullet from the Grassy Knoll and put everything right again, is a dangerous delusion. It offers false assurance that you, as one lone individual, can’t do anything, even though American democracy has never needed you more.

[kathyprior4200]

Frozen Zootopia (fanfiction)

I do not own any of the characters. All rights belong to Disney, no copyright intended. 

 It was another beautiful day in the city of Zootopia. Tall buildings of many colors reached up to the blue sky. The city was filled with cars, restaurants, office buildings and parks. It looked like any other place that one would imagine a utopia would look like. However, if one took a closer look, they would be in for a surprise; for in this city, there were animals of various species, living the lives of humans. They even wore clothing and talked like humans. Ironically, there were no humans living here…or at least that was the case most of the time. On this day, however, there was a group of people with a couple of animals gathered in front of an ice cream shop.

“Wow, look at this place! I have never seen anything like it!” A teenage girl with brownish red hair in two braids was admiring the city around her. She wore a dark blue dress over a light blue shirt. “Yes indeed, Anna. It is nothing like the villages and the castle back home.” Elsa, a white haired woman wearing a sparkly ice colored dress was talking to Anna, her younger sister.

A small snowman walked around with a cloud of snow above his head. Elsa, who had the power to manipulate ice and snow, had created the snowman called Olaf and put the cloud above him so he would not melt. Olaf was not worried in the slightest. On the contrary, he was perfectly at ease in the sunny weather. “Yes, it is finally summer!” he exclaimed. “Are there any beaches around here? There must be some in a place like this.” A small gray bunny wearing a police uniform had a bewildered look on her face. “How can a snowman be comfortable with summer? Why does Elsa have magic, but her sister doesn’t?” An orange fox wearing a green shirt and blue tie looked over at her with a smile. “I don’t know, Judy,” he said. “Why can we talk and that animal over there cannot?” He pointed to a reindeer who was trying to eat Olaf’s carrot nose. “No, Steven” said his owner who was holding him back. Kristoff had blonde hair and was wearing a green shirt, dark blue pants and boots. Some of the passerby were staring at Steven and whispering: “Where did that animal come from? Why isn’t he wearing any clothes?” Steven looked a little embarrassed but Kristoff and Anna gave him some pats on the head. “It is alright, buddy,” said Kristoff. “This is a strange place. We are just visiting.”

Anna looked over at Judy and asked, “Wait, is that a bunny?” “Why it is a bunny,” said Kristoff. “Oh, she is so cute!” They reached out to pet her, but Judy took some steps back. “Um…just so you are aware… a bunny can call another bunny cute, but when someone else does it…” An embarrassed Anna covered her mouth and Kristoff’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Me, Kristoff, the one everyone thinks is a food loving, laid back guy stereotyping you.” Judy laughed nervously and tried to brush the issue aside. “Oh it’s okay. I already explained it to Clawhauser the other day,” she said looking behind her. A fat cheetah wearing a blue police officer uniform was walking down the street. He waved at the group and then popped a donut into his mouth.

“So” asked Elsa, breaking the ice from the awkward silence. “Anyone want to get ice cream? I have a shop down the street.” She pointed to a snowflake sign that read “Elsa’s ice cream: a sweet treat to let your worries go.” “Oh, there is another ice cream shop over there,” said Anna. She pointed to a place with a sign that said “Jumbo’s ice cream.” “Oh, I wouldn’t recommend going there,” said Judy, who was munching on some carrot snacks she brought. “Jumbo is often in a bad mood and sometimes mean…” but Anna had already walked inside. “Well, I am going to stay out here,” said Judy. “I don’t want to go in there after how he treated Nick the last time… hey!” Steven had grabbed her bag of carrots from her hands and was now happily munching the carrots inside. “Steven,” scolded Kristoff. “What did I tell you about stealing someone’s food?” He tried to take the bag back but it was no use. “Sorry about that,” he said to Judy. “It is alright,” said Judy, again trying to not make the problem into a big deal. “I will just get ice cream instead.” Before she went inside Judy asked, “How did Steven know that I had those carrots? Didn’t he stay with you, while you were talking with Anna?” Kristoff shrugged his shoulders, but Judy saw Nick causally walk into the ice cream shop with a smile on his face. ‘That sly fox’ Judy thought. ‘Seems like he always has tricks up his sleeve.’ She sighed and then walked in with her new friends.

At the counter, there was an elephant wearing a hat and a beige colored apron. He said in a tired voice, “Welcome to Jumbo’s ice cream, may I take your order?” Then he saw the group and said, “What are those things doing here,” he pointed to Nick, Anna, Olaf and Elsa. Kristoff and Steven were waiting outside. “Oh, these are my human friends,” said Judy. “And I believe you remember Nick?” The elephant groaned, “How could I forget?” “Anyway,” said Anna, “I would like—“ “We have a right to not serve customers,” said Jumbo, glancing at a sign on the counter. “Who do you think we are?” asked Elsa. “I am not sure, but your kind seems savage to me.” “We are humans, not monsters!” exclaimed Anna. “You don’t seem to fit predator or prey,” said Jumbo. “Are you some kind of demented monkey?” “Well, we evolved from monkeys from what I learned,” said Anna. Jumbo looked at Judy and said, “Well from what I can tell, monkeys are innocent creatures that eat fruit and plants, but humans are predators, so I would suggest you take your friends and the fox out of here.” Ice crept from Elsa’s clenched fist, “I am going to take someone else out very soon!” growled Elsa. “Calm down, Elsa,” said Anna, holding her arm. The ice power faded and Elsa crossed her arms.  “Ohh Ohh! I am not an animal! Can I get ice cream?” “Where is that coming from,” asked Jumbo. “Down here!” said Olaf. Jumbo looked down and stared. “Is that a talking snowman? How is a snowman out here and… urgh never mind,” he said rubbing his head. “Just order what you want. Those elephants are waiting in line. The bunny and the snowman can go first.”

“I would like some vanilla ice cream in a cone please,” said Olaf. Jumbo handing Olaf his ice cream and he happily went outside. “Hey Judy,” said Nick. “Are you going to get any carrot flavored ice cream?” Judy rolled her eyes. “Do you think that because I am a bunny, that I will always get carrots?” “I don’t know,” answered Nick. “It is up to you.” Judy looked at the flavors and asked, “Do you have any carrot flavored ice cream?” “Yes I do,” said Jumbo as he scooped up light orange ice cream. “A cone or a bowl?” “Um.. bowl please,” said Judy. “One scoop or two?” “Two scoops” said Judy. Judy got her ice cream and sat down to eat. “What would you like,” he asked Nick. Nick looked at the flavors and a purplish ice cream caught his eye. “Is that a blueberry flavor?” he asked. “Yes,” said Jumbo. “I will have two scoops of blueberry in a bowl please.” “Two scoops it is,” said Jumbo, handing Nick his treat. “Anyone know what Kristoff wants,” asked Anna. Kristoff poked his head in and said, “I would like two scoops of strawberry in a cone please,” he said and then he went back out to watch Steven. “There is your answer,” said Elsa. Anna and Elsa both ordered chocolate and went outside to join the others. Just as they reached the door, Elsa conjured up a snowball and threw it at the elephant’s head. “Ack!” he yelled while he was met with laughter from the elephant children in line. Regaining his composure and boredom, he asked, “Welcome to Jumbo’s ice cream. May I take your order?”

After they all finished their ice cream, they thought about what to do next. “I have an idea,” said Nick. “How about we teach these lovely humans how to drive?” “You mean driving a sleigh,” asked Kristoff. “No, driving a car,” replied Nick. “That sounds like fun!” said Anna with a smile on her face. Elsa was more hesitant. “Are you sure about that,” she asked. “I don’t think we are old enough. What if we mess up?” “Don’t worry, Elsa! I know of some great instructors at the DMV who would be happy to help you out.”

They walked over to the DMV and Judy started to realize something. “Oh no no no! Let’s not take them over there! I don’t want to go to that place again, Nick!” “Oh, I’m sure it will be alright,” said Anna, who was leading Elsa in. “I have a good feeling about… this.” They all went in and were stunned at what they saw. Large furry creatures were typing in numbers, stamping papers and talking to those waiting in line, very slowly. “They’re sloths?!” asked Anna. “What?” asked Nick. “Are you saying that because they are sloths that they can’t be fast?” They walked up to one of the sloths. “Flash, Flash, Hundred Yard Dash! Buddy, it’s great to see you!” Flash spoke slowly, “Nice…to…see you…to.” “Hey Flash,” nick said. “I would like you to meet my fiends Anna and Elsa.” “How are you,” asked Elsa. Flash answered, “I…am…doing…just…” “Fine?” asked Anna. “as well… as… I can…be.” “Hang in there,” Nick said to Judy and Anna who were starting to get impatient.  “What… can… I do…” Elsa then spoke, “Well I was hoping you could…” “…for you…” “I was hoping you could teach me to…” “…today?” asked Flash. There was a brief pause. Elsa continued. “Well I was hoping that I could take a driving test.” “Sure,” said Flash.

They waited for what seemed like forever while Elsa answered questions and filled out paperwork. Everyone stood, trying not to fall asleep. The only one who was enjoying himself was Olaf, who had made a miniature snowman while he waited. Just before Elsa answered the last question Nick spoke up. “Hey Flash, you wanna hear a joke?” “No!” said Anna, Elsa and Judy at the same time. Anna was pulling her braids in frustration. “Sure,” said Flash. “Okay,” said Nick. “What do you call a three-humped camel?” Flash said, “I don’t… know. What…do…you call… a.” “Three-humped camel!” said Judy in annoyance. “…three-humped… camel?” asked Flash. “Pregnant,” said Nick who elbows Judy and laughed. “ha…ha…ha” laughed Flash, slowly. “Okay, we get it, can I just take my test already,” asked Elsa. “Hey…Priscilla” asked flash, turning over to a female sloth. “Yes…Flash?” she asked. “Can you… help… Elsa… take her…driving…test?” “Sure,” she said. “Oh great,” muttered Elsa. Elsa followed the slow moving Priscilla out the door.

Priscilla led Elsa to a small red car that had a “student driver” sticker on the back. Elsa sat in the drivers’ seat and Priscilla made her way to the passenger seat. “First… be sure… to…check…the mirrors… and lights.” Elsa checked to make sure everything was working. “Now…please…put your…seatbelt…on.” Elsa put her seatbelt on and thought. ‘Oh no, this is going to take forever.’ “Put…the key…into… the hole… and…” Elsa put it in and started the car. “Now…look…behind you… and…back out.” Elsa groaned.

After making many stops and turns, Elsa was finally allowed to drive back to the DMV. Her hands were whiter than usual and she was shaking from exhaustion. “Great…job…Elsa…” Priscilla said. “Come…back…again…for another…test…to…get…your…permit…” Elsa parked the car and stepped outside. The sky was turning a dark blue. “It’s night?!” she asked, shocked. Her friends were sitting at a table, eating dinner. “Sorry about that, Elsa,” said Anna. “How did it go?” Kristoff handed Elsa a plate full of food. “It…was…the…worst…lesson…ever,” groaned Elsa. Olaf and Nick laughed, “You sound like one of the sloths now!”

“So what did all of you do during my lesson?” asked Elsa tiredly as she made her way to her friends waiting by a nearby table. “Well I showed our friends some films from Weaselton and one of them reminded me of all of you.” Nick showed Kristoff, Anna, Elsa, Olaf and Steven the cover of the film. It was called “Floatzen 2” and it showed two weasels wearing dresses on a moose. “Why are weasels wearing our clothes,” asked Elsa. “That is what I wanted to know,” said Anna. “We watched it and we were amazed at how accurate the storyline was.” “The snow weasel was funny,” remarked Olaf. “I have an idea,” said Kristoff. “Let’s go down to the Fishtown market in the tundra tomorrow. I was thinking that would remind us of home.” Elsa perked up after hearing that and she said that would be a great idea. Just then, Judy got a call from her carrot shaped pen phone and said. “Well, I need to get back to work soon. It was really nice to meet all of you!” Judy walked to her car, with Nick holding her paw along the way. Kristoff and Anna held each other close as they watched their furry friends leave. Steven nudged Kristoff while Olaf happily sat with Elsa. Another day in Zootopia had come to an end, but a new day promised more adventures to come.