#wsj online

[slutforpringles]

The WSJ leaking the identity of Christian Horner's victim/accuser is a disgusting, gross and dangerous invasion of privacy, and every single twitter/social media account amplifying these claims should be ashamed. Less than an hour online and already the online weirdo brigade are stalking Red Bull female employee's linkedin pages, posting private information all over social media and doxxing them.

I hope those women manage to get their private info offline asap, and am incredibly sorry for the extremely misogynistic crap that they are about to face. Also hope whoever is responsible for leaking the victim's identity is held to account, even tabloids managed to keep her safer.

[chosetherose]

*WSJ Link*

There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift.

By Allie Jones

April 18, 2024 at 8:00 am ET

Taylor Swift was celebrating the end of the Australian leg of her Eras Tour in late February when a bit of unpleasantness sailed out from Down Under and landed on the home page of TMZ. The New South Wales Police Force was investigating a 71-year-old man for allegedly assaulting a 51-year-old man at a wharf north of the city, according to their media unit. Per TMZ, the septuagenarian was Scott Swift, Taylor’s father and a key member of her management team, and the younger man was a photographer. 

The story had all the makings of a public relations nightmare: (1) Celebrity family member allegedly behaves badly while (2) disembarking from a luxury yacht, resulting in (3) a police investigation. To make matters more complicated, Taylor was reportedly present for the alleged altercation—hiding under an umbrella, TMZ said. Though the man didn’t require medical treatment, the police said, there was video footage. Would this be the end of the pop star’s marathon run of fawning press? 

Not if Tree Paine could help it. 

Swift’s longtime publicist first released a statement that did not refute TMZ’s story, exactly, but offered some exculpatory evidence: “Two individuals were aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor, grabbing at her security personnel, and threatening to throw a female staff member into the water.” Subtext: Scott Swift was simply protecting his daughter and another defenseless woman from a couple of rogue aggressors. He was not charged. 

Around the same time, as if by magic, People found a video of Scott passing out sandwiches to young female fans at one of the Sydney shows and published it along with fan commentary. “Isn’t he the sweetest and cutest,” one cooed.

Online, Swifties clocked the People story as good old-fashioned damage control. As a chorus of fan posts put it: “The devil works hard, but Tree Paine works harder.” (In late March, the New South Wales Police Force media unit said that the North Shore Police Area Command finished its investigation and that it is taking no further action.)

The public often sees Paine expertly attending to Swift’s needs, from smoothing out Swift’s red carpet dresses to leading her past scrums of paparazzi.

The average celebrity publicist does not have fans. But Paine, the 52-year-old redhead seen trailing Swift at awards shows and rubbing shoulders with Gayle King in the Eras Tour VIP area, has become a Swiftverse cult figure in her own right. Fans post reverently about her PR machinations and share videos of her expertly attending to Swift’s needs: smoothing out Swift’s dress on the red carpet, leading Swift right past a scrum of reporters whose questions have not been approved, subtly offering Swift what appeared to be water at the Video Music Awards—a night when the star was filmed dancing in a manner that suggested inebriation.

Swift has trained her followers to look for meaning in her every gesture, outfit and Instagram caption. Paine’s own work—the stories she chooses to respond to, the narrative she puts forward in the media—has become part of that lore. 

And Swift and Paine are creating a lot of lore lately. Swift spent the fall cheering on her new boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as he sailed to Super Bowl victory, and dropped by the Grammys to pick up album of the year for Midnights and announce her new album in an acceptance speech for yet another award. The Tortured Poets Department, which fans speculate is at least partly inspired by her breakup with the British actor Joe Alwyn, drops this month, and Swift will promote it while balancing her public relationship, continuing her sold-out international Eras Tour amid growing criticism of her private jet usage and brushing off baseless conspiracy theories that she is secretly working as a Democratic operative to swing the 2024 election for President Joe Biden. 

In a long career of riding high, Swift has hit the stratosphere. It’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Back in 2014, Swift’s world domination was not yet assured. That March, trade publications reported that the pop star’s publicist of seven years, Paula Erickson, had submitted her resignation. Fairly or not, during Erickson’s tenure, Swift developed a reputation for being both boy-crazy and unwilling to joke about it. See: Swift’s string of high-profile relationships with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles; her alleged wedding-crashing with Conor Kennedy; her humorless response to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s joke at the 2013 Golden Globes about her dating life. (“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” she told Vanity Fair when asked about the incident.) Erickson declined to comment for this story.

Paine, who had been working as the senior vice president of publicity in the Christian and Country divisions of Warner Music Nashville, came on board and quickly flipped the script. She launched her own firm, Premium PR, and signed Swift as her first and only client. “There isn’t a publicist in NY, LA or Nashville that wouldn’t jump at an opportunity to work with someone as talented as Taylor Swift and her management team,” Paine told Page Six at the time. 

That year, Swift moved from Nashville to New York, went full pop with the release of 1989 and began flaunting her friendships with a gaggle of famous women, known colloquially as The Squad. The public started to forget about the time Swift, age 22, allegedly bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 

Now that Swift has hit the stratosphere, it’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Throughout this transformation, Paine refused to let rumors about her client fester. The very week her hiring was announced, she began issuing public rebuttals to the tabloids. “Never believe the National Enquirer,” she tweeted about an apparently false story that Swift declined to record a duet with Randy Travis. Ten years later, the gossip about Swift has changed, but Paine’s approach has not: She recently called out the anonymous gossip account Deuxmoi for causing “pain and trauma” by posting false rumors about Swift secretly marrying Alwyn before the two broke up. 

Paine became even more visible to fans in 2020, when she appeared in Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Wearing white shorts and blue nail polish, she clinked white-wine glasses with Swift as the singer-songwriter anxiously prepared to post her first political statement on Instagram. Swifties have since turned Paine into something of a meme: Online, they joke that Swift’s “Out of the Woods” lyric “the monsters turned out to be just trees” is a reference to the publicist and that a redheaded Eras Tour backup dancer is Tree-coded. They have decided that in the inevitable Paine biopic, the publicist will be played by Amy Adams, and that she will win her first Oscar for it. 

The fan obsession has been fueled, in part, by how little Paine has shared publicly about herself. Her Instagram is private. The last time she sat for an interview was 2012, when she was a VP at Warner and appeared in Nashville Lifestyles’ “Most Beautiful People” issue; she posed for a photo in front of a shiplap-covered wall wearing a peasant blouse and made the astonishing revelation that she was “trying to enjoy life.” I cannot report whether that is still true; Paine declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Born Trina Snyder, Paine grew up in Costa Mesa, California. She was still going by Trina when she was initiated into Pi Beta Phi at the University of Southern California in 1990, according to the women’s fraternity’s official publication, The Arrow. 

Like her client, Paine is a Nashville transplant. In her early career, she worked her way up at a variety of L.A. record labels—World Domination, Maverick and Interscope, whose roster included Snoop Dogg, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. She launched her own guerrilla-marketing company, worked for the Academy of Country Music and eventually joined Warner Music in Tennessee. 

In 1998, she married Lance Paine, a businessman and onetime president of the Nashville candy brand Goo Goo Cluster, in Las Vegas, according to public records. (Lance also served as president of the company owned by HGTV’s Property Brothers.) The Paines have one teenage daughter, and according to the society pages, they have spent some nights mixing with locals at Nashville charity galas. 

Paine has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift.

But mostly, Paine works. She has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift and sending emails to journalists with surprising velocity whenever she disagrees with a story. “Once I started working in media, I would always hear about people getting emails from Tree Paine, or maybe, people being afraid of getting emails from Tree Paine,” says Hunter Harris, a self-described “Painiac” and the writer of the entertainment newsletter Hung Up, which regularly chronicles Paine’s engagement with the press. (Harris has also contributed to WSJ. Magazine.)

In the past 10 years, Paine has guided Swift through some of the more tumultuous moments of her career: her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; her trial accusing a former DJ of sexual assault; her battle against her former label, Scooter Braun and private-equity giants for the control of her master recordings. At almost every turn, Paine presents Swift—arguably the most famous woman on the planet, a billionaire with a private jet—as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard. 

It has, for the most part, worked. In the process, Paine has become one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. 

Getting any kind of journalistic access to Swift has become a fool’s errand. The star sits for few magazine interviews, and in between, Paine does her best to ensure that no information about Swift that Swift has not expressly chosen to share with the public becomes available. One magazine writer recalls the slightly fraught process of interviewing another artist on one of Swift’s stadium tours a few years ago. As a condition of the interview, the writer had to agree that anything they witnessed or discovered about Swift while spending time with the other artist before a show would be off the record. Paine was clear: No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it. 

When writer Emily Kirkpatrick reached out last year to seek Swift’s comment for a profile of the actress and musician Suki Waterhouse for the fashion website Ssense, Paine surprisingly acquiesced, with the caveat that Swift’s quote be printed in full—no edits, no line breaks. (Kirkpatrick, annoyed, accepted the terms.)

This is an understandable sticking point for Paine. The Kardashian-West debacle revolved, in large part, around a truncated recording of Swift. Before the rapper released the single “Famous,” which contained lewd lyrics about Swift, they spoke by phone, where he asked her to promote the track on Twitter. For years, a snippet of the call released by Kardashian painted Swift as a liar who publicly rejected the lyrics but privately approved them. When someone released the full call online—a friendly heads-up but one in which West never shares the final lyric (“I made that bitch famous”)—Kardashian tried to save face. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…,’ ” she tweeted. But Paine never said that exactly. She tweeted a rejoinder: “I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing. P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”

The biggest year of Swift’s career has also been her most public yet. There’s the tour, the new album, the NFL boyfriend, the constant tabloid coverage of her relationship with the NFL boyfriend, the never-ending paparazzi strolls with her famous friends at sceney New York City restaurants. There have been stumbles: Swift forgot to thank Celine Dion, who presented the album of the year award, when accepting her Grammy. (A photo of the two singers hugging circulated online later.) She’s still taking heat for her private jet. She dated Matty Healy. 

But the sheer volume of information about Swift that pours, ceaselessly, out of every tabloid and news outlet from the Daily Mail to the New York Times typically washes away negative stories as soon as they are published. There are fans who speculate that Paine sent Swift to Kelce’s regular-season game against the New York Jets in October so that internet searches for “Taylor Swift jets” would return cheery images of Swift dancing in a VIP suite with Blake Lively instead of stats about CO2 emissions. 

Swift is at a point in her career, however, where she could completely disappear from view and still generate more headlines than just about any other person on earth. Scientists at Caltech and UCLA recently published research proving the existence of “Swift quakes” (seismic activity caused by fans dancing and jumping at concerts). Ancestry.com shared on social media that Swift is a sixth cousin, three times removed, of poet Emily Dickinson. The New York Post talked to experts to guesstimate how much Kelce has spent wooing Swift so far (more than $8 million, allegedly). 

If Swift released The Tortured Poets Department with zero fanfare, it would probably still hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But she chooses to feed the beast—with black-and-white Instagram posts, snippets of possible lyrics, a pop-up poetry library, so many vinyl editions—and, with Paine’s help, make her own news.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

do you know where to find all the tpn official arts outside of the manga? I also want to know where to find the artbook content so I was wondering

I'll have to open this up to @1000sunnygo but my understanding is Art Book World is *the* quintessential collection of TPN art outside of Demizu's character birthday drawings and other pieces on twitter created post-2020 (I have a little incomplete collection of them in my Posuka Demizu tag, with these being my personal favorites of the trio).

Highly recommend purchasing if you have the means and access, not only for the art but also the insightful interviews.

All the art is sourced and divided into sections based on the source.

(Volume 13 frontpiece rough. 🥺 And the volume 14 cover rough is very cool.)

If you're looking for the original raw covers of WSJ featuring TPN, here's a link to them on WSJ's wiki.

If you mean the promotional anime art that typically is put on clear files and turned into acrylic stands, as far as I know no one has ever compiled them all together in one single-page gallery for browsing outside of online shops selling them. (My small tag of it is here.)

On tumblr there's @just-like-playing-tag's compilation lamenting how TPN Committee can't be bothered to understand Emma's character and preferences because marketing that she's a girl takes precedence.

Offsite, the closest you'll probably get is TPN wiki's collaboration page listing, though as I've mentioned before don't confuse tlieilt_625p's art with official promo art. I still have no idea why their stuff is in the wiki gallery pages; it just serves to confuse more people.

For example, the TPN x Princess Cafe collaboration:

Their style is insanely close to the official art on a quick glance, but the heads and limb lengths and widths are a bit off.

My favorite promo collaboration art is probably with Megane Flower glasses (cute comic focusing on it by @kewstiny) just because I'm always a sucker for characters who normally don't wear glasses wearing glasses and vice versa, but also for reasons addressed here.

We are ignoring that Gilda, Sonya, and Vincent would have been more fitting for this promo because they aren't as recognizable for marketing. 😔🙏 Fucking crying over Emma either gluing or duct taping the frames to her face or just like...holding them for the shot vkldlf

Honorable shoutout to this collab though

Whippin' this out on a date like "relax, babe, I got this"

[centrally-unplanned]

AI Art discourse is so hyper-priviledged from the “freelance artist” perspective that creates a ton of false ideas about how art is consumed and produced. I hear this “art without the intent of an artist behind it is meaningless” argument being so dominant and it is just laughably wrong in so many contexts. Most visual art is for-a-purpose! I do not care about the ‘intent’ of the illustrative diagram of capital stock flows in my econ textbook, or the logo for a kombucha company, or the banner image for a WSJ article. They do a job, setting tone or creating a brand or communicating information. 

So much art actually does, like, no job! Those images on say finance articles, its just like...walls of text are scary? So you need to give your eyes a break? But they are fucking cowards and won’t put pics of hot anime chicks in the middle of their discussion of the carried interest loophole so they pretend by making the image ‘topical’ its adding value. That is all it does! Intent of the artist isn’t relevant in the slightest.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch the reality of making big, commercial art. if you are doing say animation in modern toolsets like Toonz they have automated in-betweening tools; you draw keyframe A, keyframe B, you need frames in between to smooth the motion, and the program draws the inbetweens for you. That is AI art! Its been used for years now. Advances in AI  will make that more powerful, you can get better results, draw less frames, etc as that improves.

In animation so much art is made that isn’t in the final product - concept sketches, early layouts, etc. These don’t exist to be ‘intent of the artist’, they are tools to guide a production process. You could absolutely use AI tools to improve the effiiency of that process, its what we *currently* do, its been the history art & technology for the last 3 decades. This kind of art is what the majority of money and time in the art world is spent on - freelance ‘online’ art is just a piece of that world.

This isn’t a statement to invalidate the whole debate or anything (or shitting on freelance artists, I love them). I tend to be ‘pro’ AI art, as much as that framing makes any sense at all (it doesn’t), but there are a ton of other aspects to this debate that are more complex. For example, we have legally decided you can’t copyright art styles, which, fine, I agree, but that does sit in tension with a company being able to legally claim IP ownership of a tool built out of those art styles. Maybe those tools should be open access, the legal regime isn’t built for this scenario - or like the entire scenario of modernity, it all sucks. 

But regardless, in the complexity of this debate I think some really idealized conception of ‘art’ are being bandied about without a lot of evidence to back them up.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The space for dissent against Putin has been steadily contracting in Russia since he invaded Ukraine. This marks another sharp change. Why did Putin choose to kill Navalny now? That's easily answered. After Trump spoke in South Carolina denouncing NATO and stating preemptively he would not defend a NATO country from a Russian invasion, indeed inviting the invasion, and Johnson blockaded assistance to Ukraine, Putin decided he had all the cover he needed to do whatever he wanted. And Navalny's death was high on the list of things he wanted. Anyone who thinks Trump's remarks and Johnson's conduct have no consequences is simply deluding himself.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s death Friday at a Russian prison camp in the Arctic silenced a man who was arguably the most influential remaining critic of President Vladimir Putin and the authoritarian state the former spy has methodically built on the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Putin, who has effectively run Russia for 24 years and is seeking to extend his time in office for another six years in elections set for next month, now strides the Russian political stage with almost no visible challengers. Many of those who have opposed him have ended up in prison, or dead.

Since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has introduced laws to punish critics of its military campaign, muzzled independent media, branded pro-peace authors and artists as “foreign agents” and denied Russians the ability to publicly express opinions about the war. Authorities have unleashed a wave of repression to ensure compliance. Many ordinary citizens have been swept up in a crackdown and handed fines and lengthy jail times for what authorities view as discrediting the army or spreading misinformation about Russia’s stalled military campaign. A 72-year-old woman who questioned Russia’s conduct in the war in Ukraine online was sentenced recently to 5½ years in jail.

[WSJ]

[all-hallows-street]

Theory: Who was conspiring with Nick?

In season 2 of the All Saints Street donghua Nick's goal is to take the Demon King's powers from Neil. His first attempt by making a deal with Demon King directly fails (S2E02) and he would later get a call from a shadow figure (S02E04). That is how we learn that he was not working alone; someone was helping him find a method to absorb the Demon King's power.

As of now (Season 4) nothing has been revealed about this figure even if they still appear in the opening and Nick has turned 'good'. Because the Demong King story line is wholly original to the adaptation, there is no hint as to who this person might be in the manhua either. That can't stop me from speculating. I have three theories right now as it who could it be. Spoilers for two yet to be introduced manghua characters.

First Suspect: Will Bovil

First, I'll start with my least likely suspect. Will was introduced in Chapter 386; his black horns indicate that he is from a noble lineage of demons. He is very powerful, probably the most powerful out of all the demons in the series right now. He and his family could easily be rewritten to be connected to the Demon King (who coincidentally has a black color scheme) in the adaptation.

Outside of this tenuous connection there is also the note that Nick receives being written in ochre yellow. The eye color in the official illustrations is flexible. Most of the time all demons will have a yellow eye color, but in the most recent 7th anniversary illustration Will and his brother have the most intense yellow shade eye color that matches with the note. An even weaker connection is that the scheme for the clubs line (The one with Will as king) in the 6th anniversary deck is yellow, admittedly for the 7th anniversary the color scheme is now purple.

The weakest point of this theory is that none of the actions taken by the shadow figure fit Will's apathetic character at all. He isn't one to seek power, or anything outside of being with Sasha really. It would be too OOC and while the adaptation has significantly changed some characters (Damao being the biggest example) I think it could be a step too far to make Will a villain.

Second Suspect: Witt 'Iron Fang'

Iron Fang is a commoner vampire introduced in Chapter 412. He befriends Lynn online to scam him, but Ira stops him and turns him in to the police because Iron Fang is an international smuggler. Iron Fang is the closest that we have to a straight up 'bad guy' in 1031 WSJ. One of the most recent fantasy AU comics (Ch 780) makes him a confidant that betrayed the king Lynn to usurp his throne. If anyone could be a villain in the adaptation is him.

As he is a smuggler it would also explain how he got the book and later on the 'wand' to extract the Demon King's powers. Iron Fang also displayed a disdain towards angels, giving him a motive for why he would want to awaken the Demon King: destroy the current peace between evil beings and angels.

The biggest point against it being Iron fang, is that he was introduced too close to when the anime was being released. March/April 2020 was the first strip where he appears. Season 1 was released in April 2020 with season 2 releasing in October, but obviously the donghua was being worked on way before that. However, Iron Fang could easily retroactively be made to be this shadowy figure even if back then they had no idea who this character would be. Which leads me to...

Third Suspect: New character

The dongua has created a few, admittedly nameless, characters. Mostly the supernatural league leaders are all original and of course the Demon King himself. I can see out suspect being a new character, maybe someone to contrast with the Demon King. Previously I was rambling about the demons' yellow eye color matching a note, but you know what group is also associated with yellow/gold?

I think an angel villain would be an interesting twist, but I'm just a humble reader and this is just my opinion. Right now, anything is possible, and I trust the team behind the adaptation to cook up something good.

Thanks for reading my insane ramblings and if all my theorizing turns out to be MatPat levels of wrong you are free to make fun of me for like a month.

[greenhappyseed]

Hi, okay, I have to weigh in on this vote to ban TikTok happening in the U.S., because I’m seeing misinformation on Twitter. Here’s the deal: TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and TikTok sends your personal data to China. Why is that a problem? Well, private companies in China aren’t exactly “private” in the way Americans think of them. It’s very easy for the Chinese government to influence Chinese companies…including ordering the company to change its algorithms (…and yes, access any personal data). If, say, China wanted to spread misinformation, sow chaos in the U.S., and disrupt the 2024 U.S. presidential election the way Russia did via Facebook in 2016, the Chinese government has the personal data AND control of the platform to do it. The PLATFORM is actually more important than the personal data. China doesn’t need to exploit Facebook when they’ve got TikTok. The only way to reduce the risk to zero is to ban TikTok in the U.S. https://www.wsj.com/tech/tiktok-pledged-to-protect-u-s-data-1-5-billion-later-its-still-struggling-cbccf203 (WSJ has its paywall BS, but the same point is made elsewhere across the internet). This idea has been kicking about in the U.S. for several years, and I can find articles going back to 2021-22 expressing the same concern. But of course, it’s coming to a head now that it’s actually 2024 and we’ve got another fucking election involving Trump.

Do not be deceived: The TikTok ban has little to do with personal data and absolutely NOTHING to do with Palestine. It is NOT a move to “hide the truth” about Palestine from you, as the ban idea predates October 2023. You can still use Twitter, Discord, Instagram, YouTube, BlueSky, etc. (or just look up your preferred news sources online). Also, any law designed for the purpose of stopping information on a particular topic would violate the First Amendment and the law would be overturned by a court.

Is this ban hypocritical of the U.S.? Yes, a bit. This is similar to what the EU says about personal data transfers from the EU to the U.S. To oversimplify, the EU alleges that EU citizen personal data isn’t safe in the U.S. not just because of corporate greed, but also because the U.S. government can subpoena that data under normal U.S. legal processes. It’s fair to criticize the U.S. for this. Then again, I don’t think there have ever been allegations that the U.S. government has tried to disrupt a European government or election the way Russia did in the U.S. in 2016. Also, to be snarky, the governmental bodies in the EU haven’t figured out how to use Microsoft Office without violating their own privacy laws. Like they can’t successfully apply their own laws to themselves. Last week this case was, I think, the third or fourth case the EU has brought against itself for GDPR violations. https://www.edps.europa.eu/system/files/2024-03/EDPS-2024-05-European-Commission_s-use-of-M365-infringes-data-protection-rules-for-EU-institutions-and-bodies_EN.pdf As a result, the EU comparison sounds similar at first, but doesn’t really materialize into a strong parallel to the national security concerns that U.S. legislators have about TikTok.

Look, the ban is clearly a protectionist move, and yeah we can debate it for all kinds of reasons, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking the ban is meant to stop TikTok from having “the truth” that the government or “mainstream media” is “hiding” from you. That’s some paranoid Fox News bullshit logic, and being young and leftist doesn’t make you immune to it. PLEASE read about what happened with Russia and Facebook in 2016 so you’re not repeating the same mistakes.

[peachymetimmy]

"He's lovely," Francesca, who also acted in the commercial, told E! News of Timothée at the WSJ. Magazine 2023 Innovator Awards Nov. 1. "He comes to dinner sometimes at my parents' house. So it's cute, it's nice."

[acaseforpencils]

Lynn Hsu.

Lynn tells us about her methods for making her wonderful cartoons featured in The New Yorker and many other publications this week!

Bio: I worked as an architect for many years before changing paths to become a cartoonist and writer. While working as an architect, I dabbled in printmaking, painting, and humor writing, often collaborating with sketch comedy groups at ImprovBoston. When the theater shut down during the pandemic, I started cartooning, which I found therapeutic and fun, as it combined my love of drawing with humor writing. Online classes taught by Emily Flake, Amy Kurzweil, and other talented people, were incredibly helpful and inspiring. In 2022, I sold my first cartoon (below) to The New Yorker and soon after, my first Daily Shouts piece.

Find this print here! 

My work has also appeared in publications such as Alta Journal, Air Mail, Weekly Humorist, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, WSJ, and The American Bystander (cartoon below). 

Find this print here!

While I mostly focus on humor, I occasionally write darker stories for horror and sci-fi magazines like Space & Time. Currently, I reside in Boston with my husband, twin boys, and dog, Mochi, who provides emotional support when my work is rejected

Once I have a list of ideas and rough sketches, I draw the cartoon on my Samsung Galaxy Book 2-in-1 convertible laptop. It has a small built-in pen that comes with it. My preferred app is Clip Studio Paint, which is a less expensive alternative to Photoshop. I’m still experimenting with different brushes and washes in my work. For my posture, I use an adjustable stand by Lpoake. For my sanity, I often work on the porch so I can get some fresh air and vitamin D. Mochi keeps me company and nudges me periodically for attention.

Tool I wish I could use better: Watercolor. I love painting with oil and acrylics, but I struggle with washes and hope to improve. 

Tool I wish I existed: A magic chair that heals back and shoulder pain (and also teleports you to any location in the world). 

Tricks: Not a fancy trick, but I’ve been using Google Keep to jot ideas down in an organized way when I don’t have my sketchbook with me. I can access this list via phone, tablet, or computer.

Misc: Getting feedback on your work is invaluable. Sometimes, I’ll draw a cartoon and think it’s hilarious, but then I show it to my husband, who doesn’t understand the caption or the sketch. I’m fortunate to have found a group of supportive cartoonists with whom I can share my work and exchange comments on a regular basis. Online classes and workshops are also great ways to learn a new craft and meet other amazing artists, writers, and humorists.

Links: 

Here’s my website: lynnihsu.com 

I post cartoons on Instagram:@loopyline 

For New Yorker cartoon prints: Conde Nast Store 

---

If you enjoy this blog, and would like to contribute to labor and maintenance costs, there is a Patreon, and if you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee, there is a Ko-Fi  account as well! I do this blog for free because accessible arts education is important to me, and your support helps a lot! You can also find more posts about art supplies on Case’s Instagram and Twitter! Thank you!

[dorka]

Munkatarsam: google display, paid search es youtube felelos. Egy platformot hasznal: google. Setup: o megmondja az ugynoksegnek, mit csinaljanak.

Ugyanaz a job title mint en

En: linkedin, facebook, twitter, xing, content publishing and syndication (3 publishers), abm display (demandbase, rollworks), programmatic ads (invibes, inskin, cdn, plus one test/Q), online ads (wsj, wired) es ad-hoc digital ad management. Ket ugynokseg + direct ad management (50-50%).

Nagyon remelem hogy a fizetesem minimum a ketszerese az ovenek.

[itsyveinthesky]

The New York Times walks back flawed Gaza hospital coverage, but other media outlets remain silent

Still shocked how October 18th was one of the biggest journalistic failures in living memory by the likes of the NYT, WSJ, BBC, Reuters and others. Sources most people look to for truthful reporting that undergoes ardeous fact checking before publication.

Most news organizations seem eager to sweep last week’s negligent coverage of the Gaza hospital explosion under the rug, moving on from the low moment covering the Israel-Hamas war without admitting any mistakes.

While The New York Times and BBC — both of which faced enormous scrutiny for their coverage of the blast — have in recent days issued mea culpas, the rest of the press has remained mum, declining to explain to their audiences how they initially got an important story of such great magnitude so wrong.

On Monday, I contacted the major news organizations that amplified Hamas’ claims, which immediately assigned blame to Israel for the blast that it said had left hundreds dead. Those organizations included CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera, and The Wall Street Journal.

Did these outlets stand by their initial reporting? Was there any regret repeating claims from the terrorist group? Since the explosion, one week ago Tuesday, Israel and the U.S. have assessed that the rocket originated in Gaza, not Israel. Additional analysis from independent forensic experts, including those contacted by CNN, have indicated that the available evidence from the blast was inconsistent with the damage one would expect to see from an Israeli strike.

But if there was even a morsel of contrition from news organizations that breathed considerable life into Hamas’ very different version of events, it hasn’t been shown. A spokesperson for The WSJ declined comment. Meanwhile, spokespeople for the AP and Al Jazeera ignored my inquiries.

Reuters, which initially reported that Israel had struck the hospital, citing a “civil defense official,” stood by how it covered the unfolding story, conceding no blunders in the process. A spokesperson told me that “it is standard practice for Reuters to publish statements and claims made by sources about news in the public interest, while simultaneously working to verify and seek information from every side.”

“We make it clear to our readers that these are ‘claims’ made by a source, rather than facts reported by Reuters,” the spokesperson for the wire service told me. “In the specific instance of the fast-breaking news about the attack on the hospital in Gaza, we added precise details and attribution to our stories as quickly as we could.”

CNN went even further. Not only did the outlet amplify Hamas’ claims on its platforms at the outset of the story, but its initial rolling online article definitively stated — with no attribution to any party — that Israel was responsible for the lethal explosion. The story was later edited, but the error was never acknowledged in a correction or editors’ note. While it is common for news outlets to update online stories as new information becomes available, when errors are made, standard practice is to acknowledge them in formal corrections. A CNN spokesperson declined to comment specifically on the online story when reached Monday.

In response to my larger inquiry on the network’s broader coverage, the CNN spokesperson pointed me to the forensic analysis it published over the weekend indicating the explosion was inconsistent with an Israeli strike. Like Reuters, CNN admitted no fault in its coverage of the blast.

Which makes what the BBC and The Times have done in recent days stand out. While the rest of the press has sought to move on from the journalistic fiasco, the British broadcaster and Gray Lady have charted a different course.

The BBC said in a statement posted online last week, “We accept that even in this fast-moving situation it was wrong to speculate in this way about the possible causes and we apologise for this, although he did not at any point report that it was an Israeli strike.”

And The Times published a lengthy editors’ note on Monday, confessing its early coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”

“The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was,” The Times added.

Bill Grueskin, a renowned professor at Columbia Journalism School, told me Monday that he believes that each outlet that gave credence to Hamas’ version of events should put out similar notes explaining to their audiences precisely how things went awry behind the scenes. (I should note that Grueskin didn’t believe that The Times’ note went far enough, questioning, among other things, why it took almost a week to issue its mea culpa.)

“The notes should be signed; they should provide a more detailed understanding of how their newsroom managed to not just get it wrong at the first moment but why it took so long to scale back; and they should be more explicit about what they got wrong since most readers can’t be expected to recall all the details,” Grueskin said.

Indeed, one of the crucial differences between newsrooms and less reputable, unreliable sources of information is that newsrooms issue corrections and accept fault when it occurs. When news organizations err, it is expected that they own up to their mistakes.

Grueskin pointed out, however, that “newsrooms often find it easier to correct a misspelled middle name than a collapse in verification standards on a major, breaking-news story.”

“It’s easier to address a simple, common mistake than one that goes to the heart of how a news organization is built to handle breaking news in a contested environment,” Grueskin added.

That might be true. But it doesn’t mean that it should be acceptable.

Analysis by Oliver Darcy

Updated 12:32 PM EDT, Thu October 26, 2023

[hondacivictrucknuts]

WSJ:

“I got to 300 applications and then I stopped tracking,” says Stephanie Lubin, who was laid off from her role as diversity head at Drizly, an online alcohol marketplace, in May following the company’s acquisition by Uber. In one case, Lubin says she went through 16 rounds of interviews for a role she didn’t get, and says she is now planning to pivot out of DEI work.

I’m starting to like the Biden economy.

[newstfionline]

Friday, April 5, 2024

Vocations (WSJ) Graduating high schoolers are flocking to the trades, with the number of students enrolled in vocational-focused community colleges up 16 percent as of last year. The percentage of students studying construction trades is up 23 percent and the percentage of those working in HVAC and vehicle maintenance is up 7 percent. Enrollment growth is vastly outpacing four-year college programs as a whole, which saw enrollments creep up a paltry 0.8 percent.

As obesity rises, Big Food and dietitians push ‘anti-diet’ advice (Washington Post) Jaye Rochon struggled to lose weight for years. But she felt as if a burden had lifted when she discovered YouTube influencers advocating “health at every size”—urging her to stop dieting and start listening to her “mental hunger.” She stopped avoiding favorite foods such as cupcakes and Nutella. “They made me feel like I was safe eating whatever the hell I wanted,” said Rochon, 51, a video editor in Wausau, Wis. In two months, she regained 50 pounds. As her weight neared 300 pounds, she began to worry about her health. The videos that Rochon encountered are part of the “anti-diet” movement, a social media juggernaut that began as an effort to combat weight stigma and an unhealthy obsession with thinness. But now global food marketers are seeking to cash in on the trend. One company in particular, General Mills, maker of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has launched a multipronged campaign that capitalizes on the teachings of the anti-diet movement. It has showered giveaways on registered dietitians who promote its cereals online with the hashtag #DerailTheShame, and sponsored influencers who promote its sugary snacks. The company has also enlisted a team of lobbyists and pushed back against federal policies that would add health information to food labels.

Biden Administration Presses Congress on $18 Billion Sale of F-15 Jets to Israel (NYT) The Biden administration is pressing Congress to approve a plan to sell $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel, as President Biden resists calls to limit U.S. arms sales to Israel over its military offensive in Gaza. The State Department recently sent an informal notice to two congressional committees to start a legislative review process for the order, a first step toward the department’s giving formal authorization for the transfer of up to 50 of the planes. The deal, which would be one of the largest U.S. arms sales to Israel in years, would also include munitions, training and other support.

At least 241 people have died in El Salvador’s prisons during the ‘war on gangs,’ rights group says (AP) At least 241 people have died in El Salvador prisons since the start of President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs” two years ago, according to the organization Humanitarian Legal Relief. Ingrid Escobar, director of the rights organization, said they received 500 reports of deaths in state custody, but they have confirmed about half, including two minors. In March 2022, Bukele announced a “state of exception,” waiving many constitutional rights to combat the gangs that have terrorized the Central American nation. Since then, El Salvador has arrested 80,000 people—more than 1% of the country’s population—throwing them into prison, often with little evidence of their ties to gangs and almost no access to due process. The prisons have been likened to torture chambers, with horrifying conditions.

Argentina’s Milei takes his chainsaw to the state, cutting 15,000 jobs and spurring protests (AP) Argentina said Wednesday that it had cut 15,000 state jobs as part of President Javier Milei’s aggressive campaign to slash spending, the latest in a series of painful economic measures that have put the libertarian government on a collision course with angry protesters and powerful trade unions. Presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni announced the job cuts in a news conference, portraying them as key to Milei’s promised shake-up of Argentina’s bloated public sector. Hundreds of defiant employees—some notified of their termination last week and others before that—stormed their workplaces in Buenos Aires and nearby cities on Wednesday, beating drums, decrying their dismissal as unjust and demanding their reinstatement. Milei campaigned for president while brandishing a chainsaw—promising to fix Argentina’s long-troubled economy by chopping down the size of the state. However, his efforts have hiked inflation, making it even harder for struggling Argentines to make ends meet.

Pressure in UK to suspend arms sales to Israel (BBC) More than 600 legal experts, including three former UK Supreme Court judges, have called on the British government to suspend arms sales to Israel. The letter argues the exports must end to "avoid UK complicity" in potential breaches of international law, such as the Genocide Convention, citing South Africa's case against Israel at the UN International Court of Justice. Israel rejects the claim of genocide as "wholly unfounded". Scrutiny of arms sales follows the killing of seven humanitarian workers, including three British citizens, in Gaza in an Israeli strike on Monday.

After terror attack, Russia sees U.S. role (Washington Post) In the aftermath of last month’s terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow, Russian officials not only have blamed Ukraine but also have repeatedly accused the West of involvement—even though U.S. officials insist they gave Moscow a specific warning that the Islamic State could attack the venue. If the U.S. warning was so detailed, it raises further questions about Russia’s failure to prevent the country’s worst terrorist attack in two decades. But rather than publicly confronting questions about their own actions, Russian security officials have disregarded the claims of responsibility by the Islamic State. Instead, they have insisted that U.S. and British intelligence were involved in helping Ukraine organize the strike.

The true toll of the war in Ukraine is measured in bodies (AP) The true toll of the war in Ukraine—and the odds faced by each side—can be measured in bodies. More than half a million people have been killed or seriously injured in two years of war in Ukraine, according to Western intelligence estimates—a human toll not seen in Europe since World War II. The question of who prevails is being increasingly shaped by which side can tolerate higher losses. By that measure, Moscow has the upper hand. Russia had 3.7 times more men of fighting age than Ukraine in 2022, according to World Bank data. That means that though Russia has sustained nearly twice as many casualties as Ukraine, according to Western intelligence estimates, on a per capita basis Russia’s losses remain lower than Ukraine’s. “Manpower is another currency,” said Nick Reynolds, a research fellow at RUSI. “The Russians with their industrial base and larger manpower can expend manpower and materiel at less cost.”

People jump into the sea to escape raging ferry fire in Gulf of Thailand (AP) Panicked passengers jumped into the sea to escape a raging ferry fire in the Gulf of Thailand early Thursday, and all 108 people on board were safe. The overnight ferry from Surat Thani province was about to arrive at Koh Tao, a popular tourist destination off the Thai coast, when one of the passengers suddenly heard a crackling sound and smelled smoke. Videos showed people hurrying out of the ferry’s cabin while putting on life vests, as thick black smoke swept across the ferry. It was later engulfed in fire. Rescue boats could not get close to the ferry out of fear of explosions. A passenger said people had to jump into the sea to be rescued.

Taiwan quake: Rescue efforts complicated by aftershocks, rainfall (Washington Post) Rescue efforts resumed at dawn Thursday to try to free more than 600 people who remained trapped after a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the east coast of Taiwan, as aftershocks continued to rattle the area around Hualien, the epicenter, and forecasts of rain raised concerns about more landslides. The efforts have been complicated by a large number of aftershocks—at least 324—in Hualien county, a scenic coastal region popular with tourists and hikers, and where the damage has been the heaviest. Taiwan officials said aftershocks of magnitude 6.5 to 7.0 were possible over the next three days.

World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés says Israel targeted staff in Gaza ‘car by car’ (BBC) World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder José Andrés has accused Israeli forces in Gaza of targeting his aid workers “systematically, car by car”. Monday’s strike which killed seven members of his staff was not a mistake, he said, repeating that Israeli forces had been told of their movements. WCK workers from Australia, Canada, Poland, the UK and the US were killed as well as their Palestinian colleague. Speaking to Reuters news agency on Wednesday, the Spanish-American celebrity chef said this was not a “bad luck situation where, ‘oops,’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place”. In a separate interview with Israel’s Channel 12 news, Mr Andrés said “it was really a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by everybody at the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”. Humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is in doubt after WCK—a key provider of aid to the territory—suspended operations. “America is going to be sending its Navy and its military to do humanitarian work, but at the same time weapons provided by America ... are killing civilians,” Andrés said.

Gaza is going hungry. Its children could face a lifetime of harm. (Washington Post) Gaza’s children are going hungry. More than 25 have reportedly died of complications linked to malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization. Hundreds of thousands more face starvation as Israel continues its siege. Doctors and nutrition experts say the children who survive the lack of nourishment—and the ongoing bombing, infectious diseases and psychological trauma—are further condemned to face a lifetime of health woes. Malnutrition will rob them of the ability to fully develop their brains and bodies. Many will be shorter and physically weaker as a result. “At the simplest level, if you have impaired nutrition and growth, your brain stops growing,” said Zulfiqar Bhutta, a physician and the chair of global child health at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In the short term, even less sustenance will be available for the children of Gaza: This week, an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers led several assistance organizations to announce they would suspend operations.

African Elephants (CBS News) For any fans of ancient Roman history, elephant warfare is back on the menu. Unfortunately, it’s the 21st century, so no army of elephants will be marching into Europe anytime soon—instead, Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi has threatened to ship 20,000 African elephants into Germany following a public dispute between the two countries over elephant conservation. It all started earlier this year when Germany announced plans to restrict imports of hunting trophies from Africa. Botswana, which is home to around one-third of the world’s elephant population, quickly objected to the decision because Germany is one of the biggest hunting trophy importers in the world. Botswana has long struggled with its elephant populations, as overpopulation can bring the giant animals into conflict with people. Annual quotas for trophy hunting can be used to control populations while also providing much-needed economic support for local communities, but Western conservationists are more concerned about protecting the vulnerable animals. Masisi said it was easy for German ministers to call for conservation without “elephants in their backyard,” but added that he was “willing to change that.”

[elonmuskfansgossipblog]

The WSJ article: <<This piece is adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography, “Elon Musk,” which will be published on Sept. 12 by Simon & Schuster.>>

That was written by ChatGPT I swear to god. Isaacson or WSJ journos don't write like a child in secondary. It's ChatGPT style of writing, like a narration but written by a child, anyhow deffo not by a professional writer that's for sure. It would not be the 1st book written by ChatGPT which got published.

Maybe when Isaacson said he has been shadowing E everywhere, maybe it was ChatGPT digging Twitter and Internet and then hallucinating a narration as a biography from what it got online. Loool

Honestly, who writes like this: <<The way that Musk blustered into buying Twitter and renaming it X was a harbinger of the way he now runs it: impulsively and irreverently. It is an addictive playground for him. It has many of the attributes of a school yard, including taunting and bullying. But in the case of Twitter, the clever kids win followers; they don’t get pushed down the steps and beaten, like Musk was as a kid. Owning it would allow him to become king of the school yard.>>

What?! That's Bing. Deffo ChatGPT.

👀👀

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

#20yrsago Virtual casino added to Everquest https://web.archive.org/web/20040121154511/http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=5257

#20yrsago Left Behind deconstructed https://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html

#15yrsago WSJ invents fictional Net Neutrality scandal https://isen.com/blog/2008/12/bogus-wsj-story-on-net-neutrality.html

#15yrsago Arab shoe-tossing isn’t a gesture of friendly affection http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010871.html

#15yrsago No Limit Texas Dreidel https://moderntribe.com/products/no_limit_texas_dreidel_standard

#10yrsago Sassafrass: choral folks songs about space and Icelandic mythos https://memex.craphound.com/2013/12/14/sassafrass-choral-folks-songs-about-space-and-icelandic-mythos/

#10yrsago Bunnie Huang explains the nuts-and-bolts of getting stuff made in Shenzhen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwhe0RWDMvE

#5yrsago Facebook gave third party developers access to 6.8 million users’ private photos https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-photo-api-bug-millions-users-exposed/

#5yrsago Rudolph’s Revenge, by Mr Werewolf https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Q5vJ8

#5yrsago Augmented reality and machine empathy: another great sf story from Sarah Gailey https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/short-story-about-choice-age-wearables/577732/

#5yrsago The journalists Facebook installed as fact-checkers say the company is using them as window-dressing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/13/they-dont-care-facebook-fact-checking-in-disarray-as-journalists-push-to-cut-ties

#5yrsago Citing Brett Kavanaugh appointment, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye has quit the GOP https://calmatters.org/politics/2018/12/chief-justice-of-the-california-supreme-court-leaves-the-republican-party-citing-kavanaugh/

#5yrsago Every Mickey: a chimera made by combining every available online 3D model of Mickey Mouse https://web.archive.org/web/20181211171931/https://www.plummerfernandez.com/Every-Mickey

#5yrsago Yellow Vests stand for and against many contradictory things, but are united in opposition to oligarchy https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/14/yellow-vests-stand-for-and-against-many-contradictory-things-but-are-united-in-opposition-to-oligarchy/

#5yrsago Mass protests and parliamentary chaos in Hungary over “slave labour” law https://memex.craphound.com/2018/12/14/mass-protests-and-parliamentary-chaos-in-hungary-over-slave-labour-law/

#5yrsago Europe’s right-to-repair movement is surging — and winning https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k487p/protesters-are-slowly-winning-electronics-right-to-repair-battles-in-europe

#5yrsago After chaos, the EU’s plan to censor the internet takes a huge step backwards https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/facing-criticism-all-sides-eus-terrible-copyright-amendments-stumble-new-year

#1yrago This "inflation" is different https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/14/medieval-bloodletters/#its-the-stupid-economy