#you are no better than the alleged misogynists you complain about

[prince-of-goths]

bitches be like 'uhm, men aren't policed for their feelings' and then belittle them for their feelings and whine about men opening up to them

[shinynewboots]

Just a Taste (Adam x fem!reader)

AN: Hello friends! I, like many, have fallen victim to Hazbin Hotel and I am so happy to be here. I could not resist writing about Heaven's favorite misogynist! This was written within 30 minutes in a blur and like my second time writing smut so I hope you enjoy! Probably a bit different of an ending than you would expect but I guarantee Adam has his own religious/morality-based trauma he's got to work through.

1.2k words

Warnings: 18+, Minors DNI, light smut, dubious consent, fingering, porn without plot, Adam being a misogynist, not proofread

Part 2

You were a sinner. A sinner sentenced to Hell for petty crimes, but a sinner nonetheless. Since the days of the latest extermination, Hell had found itself in a somewhat of a peace. The angels had been slain and driven off for a while at least and Adam, the First Man and Leader of the exterminators, had been killed (allegedly, it had been by a one-eyed maid with a proclivity for stabbing).

However, you knew this information was not alleged as you had seen Adam since his death. Not many knew he had reanimated into Hell as a sinner, as he had attempted to keep a low profile. You had not seen him in all high angelic glory, but you had imagined he likely looked similar before his untimely demise.

You had found him hidden out in an abandoned building, a crazed look of disbelief in his eye similar to other sinners who had first descended into Hell. There was a denial many sinners held, yourself included, about how you had ended up in this place. What had been your final sin to tip the scales towards damnation?

You had decided to take pity on the unknown sinner at the time and offered for him to stay at your humble apartment. He made his identity known quite soon after meeting. He wasn't what you expected; he was a dick. He was also very broody. Had he been this broody and dickish as an angel?

You could not deny that he was handsome, even as a sinner. His hair was thick and brown, constantly in a state of effortless shag. His eyes were a piercing gold color that betrayed his heavenly roots. The only thing that seemed to have changed were the black horns that protruded from his head.

"This fucking sucks," He muttered. He seemed to be in one of his moods again.

"What is it this time?" You asked, choosing to humor him in his misery.

"Same old shit, Y/N. I can't believe I got stuck with all these motherfuckers stupid enough to get stuck in hell."

"Motherfuckers, huh?" You deadpanned, joining him as he sat on the couch. Adam looked you over and shook his head.

"Except you, you're kind of okay I guess."

"Kind of okay, asshole?"

Adam shrugged.

"You know you don't have to stay here," You offered, anger rising in your throat.

"And go where, Y/N? I stick out like a sore thumb and most overlords are just salivating at the chance to kill me again."

"The Hotel the Princess has, the one that rehabilitates Sinners?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "No fucking way, those bitches are the reason I'm even stuck here in the first place."

You shrugged back at him. "Then it sounds like you better stop complaining."

He narrowed his golden eyes and turned to face you head-on on the couch. "Or what?"

You rolled your eyes and moved to leave the couch. You were stopped by a clawed hand grabbing onto your wrist, pulling you back down into Adam's lap.

"What the fuck," You growled, trying to free yourself from his grip. His hand grew tighter around your wrist while the other grabbed your chin and pulled you closer to him.

He stared at you, his golden eyes aflame with something you could not recognize.

"Might as well get a taste if I'm already in hell," He whispered, covering his mouth with yours. Your eyes widened, the situation taking an unexpected turn. His kiss was soft, softer than you had expected him capable of. It was almost hesitant. As if your lips were a new terrain that he must scout, lest there be dangers in his path. His hand that had held your wrist now found itself tangled in your hair.

You wondered how long it had been since he had kissed someone.

Adam grew confident in the kiss and thus grew more hungry. His eager lips consumed yours and you felt his tongue force its way into her mouth, exploring most tantalizingly. His free hand found its way around your waist, pulling your body close to his. A fire burned in your belly as you felt a soft moan escape your lips.  

Your confidence grew as you snaked an arm around his neck and pulled him closer. He almost grinned into your mouth, his deep breathing utterly intoxicating.

"Fuck," He groaned, biting at your lip with his sharpened canines. You felt blood hit your mouth, which was quickly licked away by Adam, who looked at you as though he were sampling the finest heavenly wines. You could feel wetness seeping from your cunt, thoroughly turned on by the twist in tonight's events.

Adam grabbed your body and pulled him on top of you so that you now straddled him. You could feel his erection through his robes, which seemed to twitch with every movement.

"Nothing to say ,Y/N?" He asked as he licked up the bone of jaw until he managed to reach your ear. He licked at the lobe for a few seconds before deciding to take a bite.

"Fuck," You hissed, the sting of the bite shocking you. He chuckled, the sound deep in your ears. What was happening? How did this even happen? First, he had been his usual asshole self and now this?

You felt yourself involuntarily buck your hips against his straining member, the sensation deliciously hitting you. Adam groaned and moved a hand so that it now rested over the heat of your core. His thumb found your clit through your pants and rubbed teasing circles over the area. You could feel the warm wetness of arousal soaking your pants.

"Adam," You exhaled, your control of the situation non-existent. He froze, pulling back his hands from your body as though he had been burned by fire. He stared at you with wide eyes.

"What in the fuck, bitch?"

"Adam?" You questioned, too stunned to acknowledge the slur. You still straddled him and could feel his cock pulsate against your core. His eyes were alight with rage. Unsure, you quickly jumped off from him.

His face had a mixed emotion of rage and... fear? A sheen of sweat had made its way onto his brow and he looked a bit like a child whose hand had been caught in the cookie jar.

"You tempted me," He let out, his breath quickening. You tilted your head in confusion.

"What? You kissed me," You bit out. The fucking audacity. He seemed to not hear you as he shook his head.

"Every day I stay here, the harder it is to stay on the path," He muttered, rising from the couch in a panic. His wings furled around him like a security blanket.

"Adam what are you talking about?" You asked, louder this time. He seemed to look right through you as he ran his hands through his hair. Hesitantly, you reached out and placed your hand on his wing. He froze, golden eyes looking at your hand.

"Don't fucking touch me." He exclaimed, pulling away from you. He left the room in a panic, his wings wrapping around him tighter as he left. You were soon left alone in your apartment hot, bothered, and wondering what in actual heaven was wrong with Heaven's golden boy.

Worst of all, in spite of all the slurs and rude names, you could not help but pity the fallen angel. However skewed his moral code might have been, he still seemed to have one. Maybe you were just one more thing in a long line of sins that he had committed.

What in the fuck was wrong with you?

[ecoamerica]

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[maddy-ferguson]

women will literally accuse women and esp lesbian circles of "not unpacking ""man-hating""" alleged ""misandry" sweetie xo" getting offended ppl aren't appropriately uplifting how "men are amazing and awesome and attractive and i won't be shamed for thinking so" as if appreciating men is a real counter opinion than blame whatever gave women of every sexuality instance to be jaded weary cautious and tired and who'll complain every now and then and continue on with her life until she dies putting up with patriarchy. just welcome to the "woke" internet where misogyny's over and "man-hate" "shamed for not hating men" is worth springing to defences for

yeah i've only seen people talk like men's rights activists and think they're being unbelievably progressive on tumblr it's kind of fascinating. like i can see how seeing people hate on men could mess with people and stuff but you can't demand men appreciation posts that's literally the whole world outside of idk your tumblr dash (or even on your tumblr dash because fandom misogyny from people who think they're not misogynistic at all is really something). men get praised for "babysitting" their own kids like be serious? it's very let men be masculine

i don't think being like men are soooo gross and we hate them is actually constructive and it can definitely veer into transphobia (you'll always be a man/"a male" and thus a danger to women/why would you ever want to become a man they're the enemy and the bane of society etc) and homophobia relatively quickly?

but the way people ON TUMBLR ""combat that"" is often so off to me like if the most basic feminist principles offend you then i'm not really sure where to go from here. i remember seeing a post that was like "men aren't your enemy. they're your friend/brother/father/colleague/neighbor" with a lot of notes and like i don't know how to tell you this but that's literally who's most likely to harm a woman, the men she knows?😭 and obviously not every system of oppression is exactly the same but would you say the same thing to someone criticizing white people like...just very weird

i think women who are attracted to men and dating them making jokes about how they only tolerate being attracted to men because they have no choice and especially the whole i'm bi so i love every woman and only find 1 in a 1000 men attractive (very often said while in a relationship with a man) thing is obnoxious and annoying for like everyone who has to hear it lmao but also when women who date men make jokes about it (not about them being ugly or unattractive or whatever but about them being bad partners in general) it's like. what else are they going to do like you said they're gonna endure patriarchy for the rest of their lives and as girlfriends/wives/mothers they go through the most it's very bleak? idk. it's not like you can date a better man yourself out of patriarchy

of course men aren't a all as bad as the worst guy you can imagine and they're not all out to get you or whatever but saying things like "men don't all benefit from the patriarchy rich men benefit from the patriarchy but jake, 23, is not oppressing you" is like. kind of insane. jake, 14, was oppressing me like have you never interacted with boys in school😭 and it's not like it was entirely their fault we all have to outgrow misogyny it's just you know society etc but some of them never outgrow it lmao and just...the takes you see on feminism on tumblr are astounding i hate it here

[argumentativeartisan]

Hi welcome to me complaining into the ether again

So I’m gonna start this by saying anything i mention about anyone in this is alleged until proven in a court of law and all of this is my own opinion. Do I realistically need to be worried about big bad gaming companies coming for me, a literal nobody? No, am I gonna cover my ass anyway? Yes. 

If you're boycotting Hogwarts a legacy because of JKR being a) transphobic, b) racist/ antisemitic or c) any other probably vial reason to dislike her, that. fine. But if you’re willing to let literally the metric fuck ton of other equally bad or even worse people/companies slide on by, I can’t get behind you. and it feels a little misogynistic to hold a woman accountable but not the scores of men doing it too. But it’s not necessarily misogynistic to be fair. 

Lets be clear, I don’t like Rowling, not anymore. I do  still like Harry works and I think it’s entirely valid to like things from problematic people. You can like Kanye’s music and still recognize that he’s a dickhead yatzi, you can like Hp and recognize JK is a transphobe. 

That all being said, Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t deserve what it’s getting. Firstly, you aren’t giving Rowling money, not really, they probably licensed the rights to make a game with her IP and paid her then. Or because WB owns the rights to the movies, they just did it and gave her a cut/ offered royalties. And even if she does get some of the money, as far as bigots go, she’s the least harmful, she gives most of her money away to domestic abuse charities, she literally lost her billionaire status from donating so much. So, not a good person, but the money found it’s way to a good cause at least.

Secondly, I 100% see the issue with the whole goblin rebellion thing and how they are fantasy Jews in a lot of media, but lets not pretend that’s a Rowling issue, it’s something the fantasy media community needs to address as a whole. Because it is very common to purposely or accidentally create pseudo Jewish characters in fantasy. Tolkien did it too, the dwarves were a Jewish stereotype. It’s an issue and we need to fix it, but it’s not a Rowling-invented issue. Even after all that you still hate the game because of the IP creator, that’s all fine and good, but for one I hope you aren’t one of those absolute troglodytes bullying streamers because they played a fucking game and for two you better  be giving the same energy to Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Konami and more, because guess what besties? They’re fucking up peoples lives! A lot more than Rowling’s twitter rants, that’s for sure! 

Between brutal crunch to make the next shitty live service made to get you addicted and drain your wallet, the abhorrent sexual assault allegations and firing hundreds of people while the upper management rolls around in money pools, they’re absolutely screwing us, their workers and eventually themselves, If your mad about about Hogwarts Legacy but you don’t give a damn about the list of offenses that other companies are currently commuting or already got away with, I don’t wanna here it. You don’t get to stand up on a high horse and pretend you’re better than everyone for dogging on an internet bigot while giving your money to literal sex offenders and thieves 

[commentaryvorg]

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 8 - The Singer’s Secret

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison. 

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Hitoshi “Neon” Hanamura ~ Neon

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Since the dub constantly varies which character reads out the title card for each episode, I have to side-eye the fact that it’s Marcus and not Yoshi reading out the title card for Yoshi’s episode.

Marcus: “And now it’s eatin’ time!”

I am amused by the variation on Marcus’s “it’s fightin’ time” catchphrase. Gotta find something to replace the very-Japanese itadakimasu, and this sounds less awkward than a lot of things would in a very dorkily Marcus way.

Reporter:  “We won’t name names, but only because we haven’t discovered who she is… *yet*.”

The dub appears to be leaning into the seediness of this whole gossip thing even more than the original, which I guess is fair, since it was already pretty seedy to begin with.

Megumi:  “What’s the meaning of this?”

Miki:  “How did you, the meekest of us all among DATS members…”

Megumi:  “…Manage to snag Hanamura Neon?”

~~~~~

Megumi: “You’re dating Neon?!”

Miki: “That ring a bell, Miss Keep-Secrets-From-Her-Friends?”

Megumi:  “We read all about it in the newspaper!”

I actually somewhat prefer Megumi and Miki’s angle in the dub. Instead of being jealous and putting her down as if she doesn’t deserve to date a celebrity because she’s too “meek” or whatever, they only appear to be upset that she didn’t tell them this because they consider themselves someone she’d share this sort of thing with. (Whether they actually are that is another matter; Yoshi never seems especially close with these two. But at least that is a less tiresomely misogynistic thing for them to be being unreasonable about.)

Megumi:  “We’ve been getting phone calls one after another since morning!”

Miki:  “We’re also getting loads of hate mail from Neon’s fans!”

Megumi:  “They’re demanding to know who Fujieda Yoshino thinks she is!”

~~~~~

Megumi: “We’ve been getting phone calls all morning long asking for Yoshi to give interviews!”

Miki:  “Not to mention the mail from Neon’s fans. My papercuts have papercuts!”

Megumi: “Everyone wants to know who ‘Yoshi’ is!”

Neon’s other fans are also apparently being a little more reasonable in the dub. Rather than being jealous and hateful (“who she thinks she is” very much carries connotations of them acting like she’s too ordinary to deserve to date a celebrity), they instead seem to be suddenly treating Yoshi like a celebrity as well. Even though jealousy and hate is definitely the way a fanbase would be likely to act to something like this in real life, I do not mind at all that the dub is toning this part down.

Yoshi: “…and I wore a hat. That’s a foolproof disguise!”

Apparently Yoshi subscribes to superhero universe logic if she believed that that was ever going to work. She had a hat and sunglasses; totally couldn’t have possibly been recognised.

Thomas then pulls up the photo that was taken of Yoshi after she took her hat and sunglasses off, amusingly implying that that’s the only reason she got busted and she totally would have been fine otherwise.

Thomas: “Your name, phone number, even your favourite music… Hmm, showtunes.”

Based on his tone, Thomas appears to be judging Yoshi for her taste in music, which doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing he would do. The dub just threw in that quick gag without thinking about if it fit the character.

Also, if, according to the dub, the information published about her included her phone number, why isn’t Yoshi herself the one getting all the phone calls and not her workplace? The dub does not mention her workplace being one of the details that was made public about her, so why Miki and Megumi have been swamped with letters and phone calls about this is a mystery.

Agumon:  “What’s an undercover investigation?”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Under what cover?”

Oh hey, dub, remember how Agumon shouldn’t know a whole bunch of human terms because he only recently came into the human world? And hey, look, you can make jokes with that, too, rather than making jokes with things that it doesn’t make any sense for Agumon to be saying!

Tohma:  “So if we carelessly break in, we’ll be kicked out before we know it.”

~~~~~

Thomas:  “So if we rush in, the Digimon will know that we’re after him.”

Gaomon: “And he’ll run.”

The dub actually gives a much better excuse for why the building’s hi-tech security system means they can’t just rush in: not because the security guards will kick them out, since they should be able to pull DATS authority on that, but rather because it’ll alert Keramon than they’re coming. Good job, dub, fixing a plot hole!

Unfortunately, despite the dub’s attempts to remove Miki and Megumi’s jealousy of Yoshi and turn it into them just having wanted the gossip, which I appreciated, the dub can’t really change the part where they jealously complain that they weren’t the ones to get to (fake) date Neon. Their animations for that are too extreme to really be interpreted as anything else.

Yoshino:  “Neon is my childhood friend.”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “I knew Neon when we were children.”

Yoshi doesn’t mention the fact that he was specifically her friend. Their conversation later in the episode is still going to clearly establish that they were indeed on friendly terms back then, but I feel it’s a bit of a shame that their friendship isn’t something Yoshi outright mentions here. Her friendship with him is obviously quite important to her and to how she approaches investigating him; it makes sense that she’d want to bring it up.

Yoshino:  “He’s completely different than before. He was shorter than me, and he was fat. When he debuted, I didn’t recognise him at all.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “He’s so different than he used to be. He was just a shy little boy back then. I would never have guessed that he’d become such a success story.”

I am very disappointed at the dub leaving out the part where he used to be fat, because that’s an important detail that makes it significantly easier to imagine that he was probably bullied back then. Yoshi doesn’t mention that she literally didn’t even recognise him as a singer, either. The dub’s take on this is focused more on his personality and less on his image.

Under normal circumstances, that shift in focus might be a good thing, but in this particular context, image is an even more relevant thing in the celebrity world than personality is. And image also tends to be more important in terms of how likely a kid is to be bullied. This is watering down the interesting parts of Neon’s character and it makes me sad.

Yoshino:  “Hitoshi!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Hi, Neon!”

Another very significant change: apparently, Neon just is his real name in the dub? Or, if it’s a stage name, Yoshi doesn’t care and is happy to call him by that rather than by whatever name she knew him by as a kid. Neon having an ordinary real name and Yoshino insisting on using it (and him not liking her doing so in public) was a neat aspect of the original that helped showcase the vast contrast between who he used to be and who he is today – again, kind of the whole point of Neon’s character – so I’m very sad that the dub loses this, too.

(The dub also hasn’t mentioned his surname and just calls him “Neon” at all times. Which really doesn’t actually matter at all, because the connotations of the surname Hanamura that I talked about in the original post would obviously be lost on a Western audience (unless they changed his surname to a Western one with similar connotations – now there’d be an actual reason to give a Japanese character a Western name, for once!). But I am disappointed about it for a very silly reason anyway, because Neon’s English voice actor happens to also voice one of those other Hanamuras that I mentioned in that post (who incidentally happens to be one of my favourite fictional characters, which is probably the only reason I care about this), and it would have been a hilarious coincidence for him to have voiced two Hanamuras. He still sort of did anyway, but only sort of.)

Neon:  “I told you not to call me by my real name.”

Yoshino:  “What does it matter?”

Neon:  “You haven’t changed at all.”

~~~~~

Neon: “Hey, wanna blow off work and come to the beach with me?”

Yoshi: “Sorry, I can’t. Too much to do.”

Neon:  “Oh well, I guess it’s your loss then.”

Because Neon doesn’t have an ordinary real name in the dub, we also lose the exchange that told us some interesting things about Yoshino and Neon’s characters and how they see each other and their relationship, replaced with completely meaningless fluff. (Inviting her to blow off work and come to the beach with him is a significantly more usually-romantically-coded thing than anything else they actually do in the episode.)

Masaru:  “Is this really a mission?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You do know this guy’s a criminal.”

Miki & Megumi: “Alleged criminal!”

Marcus: “Gimme a break!”

Instead of being exasperated by relationship nonsense, Marcus is instead really sure already that Neon’s a criminal and writing him off as not worthy of respect as a result. Miki and Megumi are being totally reasonable to point out that it’s only allegedly for now.

Masaru:  “But Yoshino…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Yoshi, he’s hiding a Digimon.”

Marcus is way more sure and making a much bigger point of this than Masaru.

(Masaru may have already basically decided as well that Neon’s probably the culprit, but even if he had, I don’t think he’d really have cared. He’s not here for the crime-solving and human-focused side of things – so long as he gets to fight that Digimon, that’s all that matters to him!)

Yoshi and Neon have basically the same conversation about carrots as in the original, but it doesn’t have quite the same meaning without the detail that Neon used to be fat, implying that Yoshino was probably encouraging him to eat them to try and help him lose weight.

Yoshino:  “I was exercising parental love because I wanted you to eat healthy and get bigger.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Hey, I was just making sure you grew up big and strong by eating your veggies!”

The one real difference here is the lack of her mentioning parental love, which is a shame because I liked it emphasising the idea of Yoshino the mom friend. Perhaps they removed that because they’re trying to make this relationship seem more actually romantic. I also liked the idea that it really wasn’t that romantic in the original, at least on Yoshino’s end.

Yoshino:  “I remember you were never able to do anything on your own…”

Neon:  “Thanks for the meal.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “This has been so much fun. It’s really a shame that you have to work tonight.”

Neon: “Wish I didn’t.”

Another really meaningful and interesting line about Neon’s kid self (and his subtly telling reaction to it) gets removed and replaced with more fluff. This isn’t even the dub accidentally losing meaningful bits because they’re missing the point; this is clearly them removing these interesting parts on purpose. Why. Neon’s character was one of the most compelling things about the original episode. All they’re doing is deliberately making this episode significantly less good.

Chika:  “Neon is so cool!”

Masaru:  “What part of him?”

~~~~~

Kristy:  “Oh man, that Neon is so cool!”

Marcus: “Yeah, right.”

Marcus sounds so weirdly bitter here, like he really has firmly decided that Neon sucks and doesn’t deserve anyone’s admiration because he’s A Criminal. Why the hell does he care so much? Masaru was just bewildered as to what the big deal about him was in a way that had nothing to do with the suspected Digimon-harbouring.

Chika:  “Obviously, the part where he tries so hard to protect his girlfriend!”

~~~~~

Kristy:  “Do you think I’ll ever date someone who’s as cool and sweet as Neon?”

Kristy also does not specify that she admires Neon for trying to keep his girlfriend out of the limelight, which I appreciated Chika doing.

Kristy: “Just have him make it out to ‘Superfan Kristy the Most Beautiful Girl in the Whole World’.”

Geez. Kristy: still noticeably more of a brat than Chika.

Masaru:  “Look, Chika, you wouldn’t like it if other people were prying about who you like or date, right? It’s the same with Yoshino. That’s to say nothing of the fact that you’re demanding his autograph just because he’s a celebrity…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Look, you wouldn’t like it if people kept prying into the private details of your life – I mean, if you had any. Well, Yoshi’s the same. Besides, Neon is probably sick of signing autographs for annoying fans.”

Marcus is technically giving the same sort of advice here, but my god, he is being way more of a dick about it than is necessary. The dub is ruining Masaru’s adorable fatherly-advice moment and turning it into a Marcus Is A Jerk™ moment instead and I don’t like it one bit.

Kristy: “You think I’m annoying, Marcus…?”

And so in this version, Kristy is actually pretty within reason to get upset, because her brother was being a dick. (Though she was also being slightly more annoying and bratty about the autograph thing than Chika was in the first place.)

Promotional video: “Hey everybody! Have you heard the new song by pop sensation Neon? Download it today, and tell all your friends, too!”

The dub version of the “promotional video” actually has a voiceover and therefore is vaguely more believable as an actual promotion than just a weird silent two second loop. Fixing another minor plot hole, dub, well done.

The dub completely cuts out the security guard who confronts Masaru at the door, probably because they didn’t want to include the part where Masaru assaults the guy. This is despite the fact that in the original episode, Masaru implicitly gets in trouble for this later when the guy wakes up, and otherwise generally comes across as having acted very rashly and unreasonably for this whole situation. But nah, apparently we can’t have our kids’ show protagonist do a bad thing, not even when the story presents it like it was kind of a bad thing to do.

Marcus: “Open the door, I’m here to protect you!”

Masaru never actually mentioned that he’s here to protect Yoshino, even though the possibility that she was in trouble is most of the reason why he came. Marcus making an explicit point of this is him making things a lot more about himself than Masaru did, like him coming here is mostly him wanting to seem like the Big Hero, rather than him genuinely just being worried about his friend.

Yoshino:  “Masaru! What are you…?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Marcus, what are you doing?! You’ll blow it; Neon’s here! Go away!”

Yoshi gets a longer line here – they’re probably filling in time lost from cutting the security guard – but in the process I can’t help but think that Neon should have heard the “you’ll blow it” part, since he shows up at the door just a second later. Which in fact would have been Yoshi blowing it and not Marcus.

Masaru:  “Don’t play dumb! This was all part of your scheme!”

Neon:  “Wh-What are you doing? Who are you?!”

Masaru:  “What are you plotting, using that Digimon?!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Don’t play dumb; I know what you’re up to!”

Neon: “What do you mean? Who are you?!”

Marcus: “Just confess and tell me what you have planned in that mind of yours!”

So, despite Marcus having been significantly more convinced than Masaru ever was that Neon is definitely hiding a Digimon, he’s… not bringing up the Digimon for some reason now that he’s actually confronting Neon, even though Masaru did. What the hell.

The dub cuts the moment of Yoshino slapping Masaru, albeit not very convincingly, since there’s still a shot of him briefly looking like he’s just been slapped, and then a visible mark on his face a shot later.

Yoshino:  “How dare you suddenly intrude into other people’s houses! How about you consider *not* being a nuisance to others for a change!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Who do you think you are, barging into somebody’s house just for a measly autograph?! I don’t care how big a fan you are, you better learn some manners, kid!”

I do enjoy Yoshi putting on even more of an act here, trying to make it look like Marcus is some crazed fan desperate for an autograph. Though I’m not sure that angle entirely matches with Marcus’s behaviour of grabbing Neon and demanding that he confesses what he’s up to. Then again, Neon is going to figure out people are onto him from this either way, so I guess it doesn’t matter how convincing Yoshi is or isn’t.

Masaru:  “Hey, wait! I said wait! What was that for?”

Yoshino:  “You’re ruining my undercover investigation.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “What was all that for, Yoshi?”

Yoshi:  “To stop *you* from blowing my cover and all of my hard work.”

I enjoy Yoshi being more pointedly annoyed about this with her emphasis that he’s ruining her hard work. She has a right to be.

Masaru:  “What the hell, I was just worried about her.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Well, I’m so sorry for trying to save you!”

Marcus! This is not about you! Masaru wasn’t trying to make this about himself; he was just worried about his friend – but Marcus is making this all about him Being The Hero and him being the one to save her.

It’s not that I don’t hypothetically enjoy characters who have issues along those lines, but that should not be the point with Marcus here. The dub isn’t going to go anywhere interesting with this because it wasn’t a thing in the original, so instead this just sticks out as another thing making Marcus more self-absorbed.

The security guard showing up here now is still there in the dub, even though they cut Masaru knocking him out earlier.

Sampson: “Keramon’s making it seem like Neon’s selling more songs than he is.”

[…]

Kudamon: “The more popular people think he is, the more albums they buy.”

They have an interesting point here not brought up in the original, that even if Keramon is only making Neon look more popular by messing with the figures, that’s going to result in actually making him more popular. In the original, it was unclear exactly what kind of manipulation Keramon had been doing (until the obvious stunt last night) and I sort of vaguely got the impression that it’d been actually making people download his songs even if they never wanted to. Then again, that might be obvious enough that people would have reported it, so perhaps things were always meant to be how the dub is explaining them to be here. Good job to the dub again for making that clearer. (…Or so I thought; hold this thought.)

Thomas: “Clearly, Neon’s making a fortune through fraud.”

I don’t especially like the dub adding this, though, because Neon should not be doing this for the money. He’s doing this for the popularity. Admittedly Thomas is only speculating and wouldn’t know better, but him stating it like this makes it seem like this is the correct conclusion to make about Neon’s motives.

Neon:  “To think that you were one of them…”

Yoshino:  “It’s prohibited to give a Digimon refuge!”

~~~~~

Neon:  “I just can’t believe you were a part of this. I trusted you!”

Yoshi: “Yeah, that’s why you told me all about your illegal Digimon!”

I enjoy Yoshi actually somewhat responding to the accusation of betrayal by pointing out that he was hiding something from her as well. Though I also do think Yoshino’s response of completely avoiding the topic says something interesting in and of itself.

Neon:  “Don’t order me around!”

~~~~~

Neon: “Don’t you judge me!”

While the “don’t order me around” perhaps touched on Neon’s past of not being able to do much on his own, “don’t judge me” would also potentially touch on his past of being bullied. However, I can’t help but think that’s more by luck than judgement on the dub’s part, since they went and deliberately removed so many of the other hints of Neon’s past even being like that in the first place.

Neon:  “He distributes my songs around the world and manipulates music charts…”

Wait, so Keramon actually does forcibly distribute the songs even to people who don’t want them, and not just fake the figures so that people will be more likely to check out what the fuss is about?

Yeah, actually, this line is basically exactly what Neon said here originally, so I guess that is what was meant to have been going on after all. Sampson and Kudamon must have missed that part when they were discussing things earlier.

Yoshino:  “Hitoshi, stop this!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You have to stop this. Fraud is a criminal offence!”

Though the lack of her being able to call him Hitoshi is a bad thing again, I do appreciate Yoshi pointing out that fraud is a crime. Even aside from DATS’s rules that nobody’s allowed to have a Digimon unless they’re a DATS member, Neon has still been breaking the regular law anyway, and the original didn’t really emphasise that very much.

They cut out the moment of Keramon grabbing Yoshi by the neck, but they do still show her being held like that in a shot a second later.

Neon:  “No way! Keramon is my partner!”

~~~~~

Neon: “Keramon is my partner just like your Digimon! I wouldn’t betray him any more than you’d betray them!”

Dub-Neon is very deliberately making the parallel to DATS’s Digimon rather than only accidentally invoking it by happening to use the same word – but it really isn’t a parallel he should be making deliberately. Keramon is not a person. It hasn’t spoken or expressed its own desires or sense of self at all; it’s just giggled creepily and done as he’s ordered it to. There is no actual meaningful bond of friendship here for Neon to care about not wanting to betray.

I think the dub added this in because the dubbers actually think that it’s basically the same deal going on with Neon and Keramon as with DATS and their partners. But it really, really isn’t.

Neon:  “Thanks to him, my songs are played throughout the world! He’s making me famous!”

~~~~~

Neon:  “He made me rich and famous!”

Famous, yes, but the money is not the point, dub. Neon in the original never mentioned money as being part of why he’s doing this.

Also, the past tense implies that it’s only because of Keramon that Neon became famous at all. Which I really doubt is supposed to be the case, because there’s no sense given at any point that Neon just burst into the public eye out of nowhere within the past month since he’s had Keramon. He must have been already doing reasonably well on his own merit before he started using fraud.

Masaru:  “What’s this crap about him making you famous?! It’s not through your own efforts! If you wanted to change yourself through your music, then do it using your own merit!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Your whole career is a giant lie! You haven’t actually achieved anything! That Digimon of yours did everything for you; you’re nothing but a phony!”

…But it seems the dub really wants us to think that it’s only because of Keramon that Neon got anywhere at all and he was never genuinely good enough to deserve any amount of success whatsoever. I think the dubbers might have missed the point of this as well and believed that that was actually what was going on in the original episode.

And of course, because of this, we lose the interesting nuanced moment of Masaru being really good and pointing out that Neon should have kept working at this using his own merit. Instead we just get Marcus boringly shooting him down completely.

Yoshino:  “Stop!”

Lalamon:  “Stop!”

~~~~~

Yoshi:  “No pictures!”

Lalamon: “Give me that camera!”

Lalamon demanding the camera further emphasises the point of Yoshi choosing to do this instead of fight, and it gives more of a vague impression that maybe she really does take the camera and wipe the pictures offscreen, even though we won’t be seeing it. I approve.

Neon:  “Everyone needs to quit making fun of me!”

~~~~~

Neon:  “My career’s ruined now, and you’re gonna pay!”

Unsurprisingly, after everything the dub has already removed about Neon’s interesting aspects, they also remove probably the most interesting line – the one that very strongly hints he used to be bullied and that this has all been about him breaking away from that in a way that gradually became more and more desperate and obsessive to the point of illegality.

Instead, dub-Neon is somebody who wanted to be rich and famous just because, apparently had genuinely no actual talent or merit to base that on whatsoever, and just faked his entire success story (which the dub expects us to think he could have believably done within a month) using Digimon-driven fraud. That’s just… boring.

It also makes it significantly less interesting and meaningful why Keramon evolves in response to these words, though I suppose a burst of vengeful anger at them for ruining his fraudulent career is still reasonable enough to do it.

Masaru:  “Change places! Let’s go, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “We’ll take ‘im! It’s fightin’ time!”

I am mildly sad at the loss of the sense that Masaru sees this as him tagging in for Tohma and being equal teammates with him, rather than trying to grab all the glory himself.

Neon:  “Even the memory of when we met again?”

~~~~~

Neon: “Even the stuff about you and me?”

In the dub, Neon makes this just about losing what their relationship is now and nothing else. I liked the sense that, after all the fraud had been uncovered and he’d basically given up, original-Neon was mostly sad to lose the memory of seeing her again, his childhood friend who was there for him during that tough time and could be proud of how far he’d come.

Overall differences

This episode has quite a few significant differences, with a lot of them being bad, but at least there’s a small handful of good ones too, for once.

Let’s start with the good ones. This episode’s dub actually has a couple of small fixes to some minor logic issues the original had. They explained that they can’t break into Neon’s building because the high security meant that Neon/Keramon would see them coming and run, which made a lot more sense. Then they gave the promo video a voiceover, making it a lot more believable as a promo video than some weird silent two-second loop.

Yoshi also has a few minor good bits: leaning more into the story that Marcus is a crazed fan when he shows up at the door, pointing out that fraud is a crime. I also appreciate that they attempted to tone down Miki and Megumi’s harshness towards her at least a little.

But onto the bad stuff: the really huge glaring problem with the dub of this episode is Neon. Neon’s character was the big saving grace of this otherwise not especially interesting episode to me in the original, and none of what makes him that way is present in the dub. All of the hints of him being weak and helpless and probably-bullied as a kid are watered down into him simply having been kind of shy, there’s no hints of him remaking his image (no mention that Neon is a stage name; for all we know in the dub, that’s somehow his real name), and way too much emphasis put on him doing this for money, not just fame. If Marcus is to be believed, he had absolutely zero talent and got where he was entirely through Keramon’s meddling, which is extremely unrealistic to have happened in a single month without anyone questioning it and is also way, way less interesting. Dub-Neon is just some boring flat villain greedy for fame and fortune, rather than an interestingly messed-up character.

And it’s really strange to me that this character assassination is so complete and consistent that it must have been deliberate? The dub writers consciously decided to remove everything that made this episode’s focus character interesting. Why in the world would they choose to do that.

Then there’s this episode’s treatment of Marcus, which is standard fare at this point but still frustrating enough that I am always going to talk about it when it happens in any significant amount.

He’s more insistent that Neon’s harbouring a Digimon from the start despite the lack of proof, but then, bizarrely, doesn’t bring up Digimon when he breaks in even though Masaru did. He makes the breaking-in part a lot more About Himself by making a point that he’s here to save Yoshi, which is a very different thing than Masaru coming there in case Yoshino needed saving but not actually caring whether she knows it or not. Marcus is also more of an unnecessary dick to his sister in the bit where she’s asking him for Neon’s autograph. And the interesting nuance that Masaru had in his speech to Neon, about putting in effort and changing yourself through your own merits, is lost in favour of this new boring narrative where Neon apparently had zero talent and deserved none of his fame in the first place.

Oh, and the bit where Masaru attacked the security guard was cut, because I guess your kids’ show protagonist isn’t allowed to attack a responsible adult, even when the narrative presents this as a bad thing that he shouldn’t have done and implicitly gets in trouble for.

[aion-rsa]

Best Serial Killer Movies of the ’90s Ranked

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Someone must have left the freezer door in the morgue open, because grisly reminders of the past are thawing before our eyes. You can see it this weekend with the release of John Lee Hancock’s The Little Things, a throwback to the days when movie stars hung out at crime scenes instead of in spandex, and it’ll be more apparent next month with the launch of Clarice, a television spinoff of 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. All the evidence points to only one conclusion: the serial killer thrillers of the ‘90s are back!

Not that we’re complaining. For a macabre minute or two, every Hollywood name appeared eager to play either the detective or the killer—the hunter or the obsessed, which often proved interchangeable for both characters. Granted that means there can be something formulaic about many of these movies. Yet they can also be bleak, hard-edged, and ambiguous. From our modern gaze, where the dominant studio conventions prefer reassuring morality tales and sunny lighting, these movies’ preference for shadows and discomfort in the mainstream is kind of startling.

So grab your magnifying glass and fortify your stomach, because we’re about to revisit some of the best (and worst) of ‘90s serial killer thrillers. (Also this list is strictly for the decade when the genre was at its height and it excludes slasher movies like Scream, which may feature serial killers but were not exactly adult-oriented thrillers.)

12. Eye of the Beholder (1999)

Eye of the Beholder is a tonal oddity that only passingly flirts with the conventions of ‘90s serial killer thrillers, all while it tries to pay homage to (read: rip-off) Alfred Hitchcock. But any credit it deserves for deviation—including making Ashley Judd’s central femme fatale the killer—it loses in execution. As a muddied, impenetrable tale about an intelligence officer (Ewan McGregor) who spies on and falls in love with a serial killer, Eye of the Beholder is a scattershot of bad ideas that run the gamut from ludicrous to misogynistic.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but this movie will close the lids over your pupils inside of 30 minutes.

11. Nightwatch (1997)

It feels a little mean to rag on Ewan McGregor back-to-back, but maybe serial killer movies just aren’t his genre? That could be at least one takeaway from an ill-advised double feature of Eye of the Beholder and Nightwatch, the latter of which is a remake of a 1994 Danish film that I’ve not seen… and probably won’t since both the original film and American remake are directed by the same man.

McGregor plays medical student Martin here, a kid who gets an after school job by becoming the night watch security at the local morgue. But as a series of grisly prostitute murders pile up, Martin realizes he needs to figure out who the killer is—that or continue to be framed by the necrophiliac fiend who keeps coming by the morgue for one last liaison. It’s exactly as skeevy as it sounds. Do yourself a favor and go your whole life without hearing Nick Nolte sing “This Old Man” while climbing onto a corpse.

10. Natural Born Killers (1994)

The movie that Quentin Tarantino disowned, Natural Born Killers is a seedy mess based on a Tarantino script that was heavily rewritten by Oliver Stone, David Veloz, and Richard Rutowski. The concept itself is a seemingly inevitable escalation of the “bad romance outlaws” archetype that’s been floating around Hollywood since at least 1950’s Gun Crazy, and which was then made iconic by Bonnie & Clyde (1967).

But whereas those films relied on bank robbers living fast, Natural Born Killers descends into a seeming final form with Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) as giddy serial killers who are eventually out for maximum carnage. Technically the pair are supposed to be presented as victims of traumatic child abuse—and who are then wrongfully glorified by the media. But Stone’s sloppy and tanked vision lacks the discipline to achieve anything beyond its maliciousness. Early sequences imagining Mallory’s abusive childhood like it’s a television sitcom, and later psychedelic visions of Robert Downey Jr.’s opportunistic news reporter as the Devil, do little to divorce the film from its shallow self-satisfaction in close-ups of heads being shot.

The movie came under controversy in the years after its release for inspiring alleged copycat killers as well as school shooters. It feels irresponsible to blame media for actual violence, but it’s still quite an indictment that Stone’s attempt to criticize media glorification became a favorite for many a disturbed individual with a gun.

9. Kiss the Girls (1997)

When studying competent, middle of the road Hollywood thrillers, Kiss the Girls is a solid place to start. As a decently made bit of studio convention, the movie is anchored by strong elements like Morgan Freeman as James Paterson’s literary hero, Alex Cross, and Ashley Judd as Kate, the victim who survives a masked killer’s attempt to abduct her into his harem.

Moments like Kate’s escape sequence through the North Carolina wilderness are effectively filled with adrenaline, and Judd particularly gives the salacious piece conviction. However, it is salacious to a fault. Even if the movie toned down the source novel’s even more lurid misogyny, the film studies Kate and the other victims with a lascivious male gaze, blurring sex with violence, real world horror with leering entertainment. Right down to its title, the film can be rightly criticized as Hollywood glamourizing another story about violence against women. Whether that damns the whole movie depends on the viewer, but it certainly keeps it low on our list.

8. The Bone Collector (1999)

Marketed with a hell of a tagline about there being thousands of taxi cabs in New York City that’ll get you home—and one that won’t—The Bone Collector is almost comically slavish to the clichés of ‘90s moviemaking. The wrinkle here is that after a faux cab driver begins abducting his victims off the street, the crime psychologist who must stop him is entirely stuck by his bedside. Due to a tragic accident, Denzel Washington’s Lincoln Rhyme is paralyzed from the neck down. Yet he is still able to catch serial killers by communicating in the earpiece of police officer Amelia Donaghy (an entirely unconvincing Angelina Jolie).

Read more

Movies

Lost Girls Review: Netflix Takes on the Long Island Serial Killer

By Rosie Fletcher

Books

The Last Book on the Left Takes on the Grim History of Serial Killers

By Alec Bojalad

Together the pair stay one step behind the mystery killer’s tracks as he executes a series of increasingly gruesome and ridiculous murders. It’s preposterous, and in some ways a forerunner for Saw with the satisfaction it takes in absurd death traps, but Washington is effortlessly compelling, even when he never leaves his apartment. As a bit of absurd Hollywood fluff, right down to the ultimately lackluster unmasking of the killer, it can be entertaining, even if you’ll deny it afterward.

7. Copycat (1995)

More potent than I remembered, Copycat is a genuinely well-crafted Hollywood thriller that may not reinvent the wheel but takes it out for a damn good spin. In the driver’s seat is Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Helen Hudson, a criminal psychologist who is an expert on serial killers until one follows her into the bathroom after a guest lecture. He nearly hangs her from the ceiling. Following that white-knuckled opening, the film jumps years ahead and Helen has become agoraphobic and afraid to leave her home.

Yet when a local series of murders reveal the pattern of a predator imitating the methods of his favorite “celebrities”—one crime scene is like the Boston Strangler and another emulates the horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer—Helen is pulled out of retirement by a no-nonsense detective (Holly Hunter). The winning chemistry between Weaver and Hunter—who are refreshingly free from the studio-mandated romantic subplots in some of the other movies on this list—and the blunt force power of their performances aid this sincerely disquieting flick. A needlessly convoluted third act aside, the movie still works as a warning about the danger of fanboys a generation early.

6. Fallen (1998)

Denzel Washington appears again thanks to this clever supernatural spin on the serial killer genre. At the beginning of Fallen, Washington’s John Hobbes appears on top of the world. The serial killer he chased for years (Elias Koteas) is about to breathe deeply in the gas chamber. Yet after the lever is pulled, and with Koteas singing the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side” until his last breath, a funny thing happens: the murders continue.

In fact, more than just the killings, strangers in the street sing “Time is On My Side” in Hobbes’ ear, and he soon realizes that he faces a devil of a killer whose been operating since the beginning—quite literally since the villain is a demon who was once an angel that fell with Lucifer. It’s a bizarre premise given strutting confidence thanks to Washington’s performance, as well as good supporting work by John Goodman and Donald Sutherland. Twenty years later and its ending still sticks with me.

5. The Exorcist III (1990)

If you haven’t seen The Exorcist III, we know what you’re thinking: “Really?!” Yes. In fact, this isn’t even an exorcist movie; it should’ve been titled Legion like the 1983 novel it’s based on. Alas writer-director William Peter Blatty was forced to use the title and do reshoots that added an exorcism in the climax. Still, this supernatural thriller which involves a serial killer back from the dead is far better than it has any right to be.

Following the character of Lt. Kinderman from the 1973 masterpiece, the middle-aged gumshoe is now played by George C. Scott instead of the late Lee J. Cobb, and he possesses Scott’s usual love for contrasts between the restrained whisper and a bombastic howl. He also makes a sympathetic, secular detective forced to face the horrors of Hell when a series of murders committed against Catholic priests appear to be the work of the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif), a serial killer whom Kinderman sent to the chair more than 10 years ago.

Read more

Movies

The Exorcist III is a Classic and Better Than You Remember

By Jim Knipfel

Movies

The Exorcist Is Still the Scariest Movie Ever Made

By David Crow

Somehow the fiend—plus Kinderman’s long dead pal Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller)—appear to now be living in the same body of a John Doe kept in a mental asylum. With an unrelenting atmosphere of dread, palpable tension, and more of Blatty’s intellectual struggle with concepts of faith and evil, the film is more high-minded than its hacky title suggests. It also features one of the best jump scares in movie history.

4. Summer of Sam (1999)

The only movie on this list directly based on an actual serial killer’s crimes, Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam is a serious-minded joint. However, it’s only partially about the murders perpetrated by David Berkowitz, aka the “.44 Caliber Killer,” aka the Son of Sam. Rather the film focuses on the effects a serial killer has on the culture of New York City during the sweltering summer of 1977, and how it affects young lives trying to make it in the big city.

Influenced by Lee and his co-writers Michael Imperioli and Victor Colicchio’s memories of growing up in 1970s New York, the pic is a love letter to a grim moment in history when the city was about to explode with murders, blackouts, crime, and disco. All of this is digested from the vantages of Vinny (John Leguizamo), a philandering hairdresser guilt-ridden for cheating on his wife (Mira Sorvino), and his childhood pal Ritchie (Adrien Brody), who’s left the old neighborhood behind to join the fledgling punk rock scene.

With a greater interest in how a serial killer affects the culture and institutions of a city on edge than being a traditional crime drama, Summer of Sam is a bit of a forerunner to David Fincher’s far more polished Zodiac from a few years later. With heavy-handed dialogue and a plot too big for Lee to fully get his arms around, even at 142 minutes, Summer of Sam can be uneven and messy. But it has the sweaty incorrigibility of a long night out, and of revelries half remembered like from a fever dream.

3. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

The rare serial killer movie told entirely from the perspective of the killer, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is disarmingly creepy. Despite its glossy awards bait sheen, there is a cold-blooded streak that runs deep to the heart of the piece, likely due to Patricia Highsmith’s source 1955 novel. Starring Matt Damon fresh off his Good Will Hunting golden boy sheen, the film uses its casting to disorient and ultimately disturb.

Like Highsmith’s book, the film is not structured like a traditional thriller. It instead favors a detached ambivalence about its seemingly nebbish hero as he agrees to become an errand boy for the rich by traveling to 1950s Italy in order to retrieve a silver spoon cad (Jude Law) for his father. But the more time Tom Ripley (Damon) spends with Law’s Dickie Greenleaf, the more he grows envious of Dickie’s lifestyle, his wealth and confidence, and maybe even his affection for socialite Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). There is a subtle—too subtle due to ‘90s Hollywood conventions—homoerotic undercurrent throughout the film as Ripley slowly works up the courage to take his first life. It won’t be his last.

Read more

Movies

Knives Out: When Murder Makes You a Better Person

By Natalie Zutter

Movies

Seven: The Brilliance of David Fincher’s Chase Scene

By Ryan Lambie

Highsmith wound up publishing four subsequent sequels to The Talented Mr. Ripley, but unfortunately no more were made with Damon. Perhaps because this was too unsettling for an ongoing franchise.

2. Seven (1995)

While watching David Fincher’s masterful Seven, the thing that immediately stands out is the oppressive nihilism that permeates throughout. There were decades of neo noir before this detective yarn about the hunt for a serial killer, but none demonstrated such an overbearing sense of despair before the opening credits were even concluded. And perhaps what makes it unshakable is how welcoming the film is toward bleakness; it succumbs long before the gut-punch finale.

Telling the story of an old cop days from retirement (Morgan Freeman) and a hotheaded rookie detective (Brad Pitt), Andrew Kevin Walker’s script has an economy of pace that still impresses despite its cynicism. Very quickly one murder becomes two, then three, and soon four. Yet none of the atrocities are reveled in by Fincher’s blocking; they’re off-screen mutilations which leave psychic damage on his two leads and, eventually, us. The deaths also quickly establish a pattern that their serial killer is targeting seven souls, each intended to embody one of the seven deadly sins.

The movie is a classic now for its climax where the killer “John Doe” (a reptilian Kevin Spacey) turns himself in and leads the cops into the darkest pit, but it’s the entire package that makes this one linger more than 25 years later. At the end of the film, Somerset quotes Hemingway by saying, “‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” I’m not convinced his film does.

1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

As the film that kick-started the idea that serial killers could create their own film genre, The Silence of the Lambs still remains the best of its kind. Blessedly unaware that it was creating conventions for countless copycats, the film tells its psychological drama with simplicity and clarity. Whereas other films on this list bask in their bleakness, there is a dogged optimism and even perverse warmth to this Jonathan Demme adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs novel. And that’s of course largely attributable to the casting of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster.

As Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins is of course monumental. It’s a performance that turned a quinquagenarian into an overnight movie star, and became Hopkins’ calling card as he returned to the not-so-good doctor’s well one too many times. Still, he’s undeniably enthralling as Hannibal, a cannibal psychologist with superhuman powers of observation and mental menace. Even so, Foster is often overlooked by critics for her own contributions as the FBI trainee who’s proverbially fed to the incarcerated Lecter—a pretty face to get the serial killer to consult pro bono on the crimes of another mass murderer. It’s just one more example of casual sexism faced by Clarice that gives Foster as much to play as Hopkins.

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Culture

David Fincher’s Zodiac: The Movie That Never Ended

By Don Kaye

Movies

The Little Things Ending Explained

By David Crow

Surrounded by the slights and prejudices of men—be they in law enforcement or straight jackets—Clarice is constantly underestimated. She finds an intellectual rapport with Hannibal, but she pulls herself out of the darkest night, and the screaming of the lambs, without assistance. Her perseverance matched by Hannibal’s darkly seductive qualities is the juxtaposition that makes Silence of the Lambs one of the finest films of its decade.

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[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[itshistoryyall]

Part Three: Rule of Three

Photo Credits: here

In this next part I want to talk a little about some important texts for the context of this project. One of them is the Canon Episcopi, a 10th century medieval canon law. For anyone who doesn’t know what “canon law” is, it is basically a written guideline authored by some church authorities and used to govern the church, its clergy, and its patrons. It’s important to highlight this text because it gives us a clear idea of what surviving pagan cultures looked like in Medieval Francia (modern France), but not in the way you might expect. As mentioned above, a lot of what we know about the past is just really good detective work, and this is one of the instances where a document helps us understand far more than what was originally intended. It’s a cohesive set of ideas that suggest how the church should treat several circumstances regarding their local pagans, and as usual, it wasn’t preaching tolerance. In summation, it called anyone who believed in anything other than Christianity an infidel.[1] Pagans still existed, and still do to this day, in fact, but the Church used a heavy hand when dealing with them most of the time. Often, they used their own beliefs against them and merged popular Christian anecdotes to help assuage people who were not happy with the idea of conversion to a new religion. I think that the author of the overview for this document said it best when they said that,

“new Christians [did not] simply cast aside old beliefs…conversion was a dynamic process…[and] elements of indigenous religious practice were frequently mixed, often deliberately, with Christian belief and ritual…Certain practices can be said to have ‘survived’ the process of conversion…After all, nearly every Christian ritual had some sort of pre-Christian antecedent or model.”[2]

They just simply couldn’t kill them all or threaten everyone with violence in order to bring them to their knees before the Lord, and so, they got creative.

           Canon Episcopi calls anyone who believes in the mystical arts a liar and, what I’m most interested in is it’s mention of, “wicked women, who have given themselves back to Satan…[who] in the hours of the night…fly over vast spaces of earth.”[3] You just can’t get more witchy than that folks, and don’t worry, I know that this was written in like 900CE, but I should also mention that it was referenced in another important document—Corpus Juris Cononici, a canonical law that remained intact beginning in the 12th century all the way until 1917. I’m not going to attempt the math there, but it’s too damn long and we can all agree on that. So, now we know our Collective Catholic Opinion (CCO for the rest of this project),[4] is that we don’t like pagans, and with the introduction of this new text, witchcraft is now a pagan practice. This was originally, a really good detail to hammer out in canonical law because it typically kept the Inquisition from meddling in matters of alternative religions, UNTIL (you knew that was coming, I already warned you in Part 1) Canon Episcopi was thrown out by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 (not the same Innocent One as before, but damn did we not learn a lesson?). Anyway, the most innocent pope of all time decided that witchcraft was to be forever tantamount to devil worship which was what gave inquisitors permission to go after pagans and those accused of practicing witchcraft—great.[5]

           So, that brings me to my next document of importance, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Latin here, in case you aren’t a weird Disney fan, is where we get the word ‘maleficent’ and thus the name for one “Mistress of Evil”…moving on.[6] This book was written between 1486 and 1487 and can also be referred to as “The Hammer of Witches,” a direct translation of the original Latin. It was written by some German Dominican monks—'Dominican’ here, refers to the Dominican order of Preachers founded in France by the Spanish priest St. Dominic, so, not the islanders as I was originally very confused about. Recall from earlier that the first instances we see of witch trials occur in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, so you can see how this thing is gaining speed. There were other texts along the way that were written in regards to witchcraft, but there was a really important invention that made this one unique—the printing press. It spread like wildfire, and there were more copies of this document than any other, and it so precisely aligned with the mounting witch-craze, the Inquisition, and the Corpus Juris Cononici, that it almost seems planned. Am I a conspiracy theorist, you ask? Maybe. After researching this project, I’m beginning to wonder, myself. Let’s indulge.

           In 1481 Pope Innocent VIII (I’m so surprised), heard about those German monks who were in the middle of writing about these witches, and they complained to him that the authorities weren’t properly looking into the accusations. This actually prompted the Pope to issue one of those papal bulls we all know and love, titled, Summus Desiderantes Affectibus, translated—Desiring with Supreme Ardor. It wastes no time getting right to the point, those who were practicing witchcraft were to be henceforth considered heretics, and doling out the full support of the Church and the Faith to inquisitors to prosecute these cases as they saw fit. Three years later, the monks published their instruction manual for other sympathizers. This document was separated into three parts. The first was addressing skeptics and assuring them of the reality of the situation and suggesting that not believing in the existence of witchcraft was another form of heresy. The second part included proof that real harm was caused by magic, and the third part was made up of guidelines for investigating, arresting, and punishing witches. It was used by Catholics and Protestants alike, and while it was never made official by the Catholic Church, it was most assuredly referenced. It was not continuously in print; however, but was re-printed and widely distributed in areas “as needed,” meaning that when prosecutions started ramping up in some areas, the press would begin to print and distribute more.

           I’m gonna delve pretty deep into this document because it’s really important that we know where some of this information comes from in reference to future prosecutions, tortures, and accusations of presumed witches. The manual directly mentions that witchcraft is found amongst women most predominantly and uses the idea that both good and evil manifests in women more powerfully than in men. It specifically singles out midwives because of their aptitude for contraception and pregnancy termination—see, you guys thought this anti-abortion culture was new…it’s not. It made wild claims that midwives ate babies, or offered them to devils, and elucidated pacts made with the Devil, sex with incubi, possession, and, I’m not quite sure how to word this, the act of vanishing penises (That’s the best I can do here. I tried some other stuff and believe me it was much worse). The part I love most is that most of the references used to substantiate these claims come from some of the great Greek philosophers and writers like Homer and Socrates, who were big, giant, probably gay,[7] pagans. I can’t love that more, guys…it really doesn’t get better than two homophobic, misogynistic, intolerant religious zealots getting their entire bibliography from some gay pagans. Finally, what the document describes as “quarrelsome women” could not be considered witnesses to witchcraft, and it excuses this by alleging that this is to prevent friends, families, and neighbors from bitter fights.

           To determine whether or not someone was a witch, they could be examined physically. Any corporeal evidence might include marks on the body, physical objects that were concealed on the body, or not weeping while being tortured or when presented in front of a judge. When checking for these “marks,” women were stripped of their clothing (by other women), their hair was shaved—this could be a small amount or all of it depending on where that pesky devil’s mark was going to be found. Often, this mark could be a mole, a flea or insect bite, a birth mark, or a speck of dirt. Anything passed, really, and once these marks were found they needed to make sure that there were no other instruments of witchcraft on a person in order to execute them. The manuscript mentions that if these items are not removed, there would be an inability to burn or drown the witch, and the same goes for if she was still under the protection of other witches. The practice of drowning or burning an accused witch to prove her innocence began, and although the accused was never around to celebrate her liberation afterwards the practice persisted, nonetheless. While determining the guilt of these witches, a confession was paramount in determining the outcome of a person’s wellbeing after the trial.

           Accused witches could only be executed by the inquisitors or authorities of the church if they confessed themselves, but, remember that the church had already authorized torture as an acceptable method of questioning at this point and could be persuaded into confessing by any means necessary. Often, they would confess quickly under the pain of torture, and were said to have been abandoned by the Devil. Conversely, those who held out, were under the Devil’s protection and more closely bound to him, and torture was viewed as a form of exorcism. Confession under torture was not enough; however, and they had to confess again while not being tortured for it to be a valid confession. If the accused continuously denied the accusations the church was not permitted to execute her, but they could eventually turn her in to local authorities who were not beholden to the same restrictions.

After a confession, the accused could be offered the option of repenting against all prior acts of heresy and perhaps be granted the avoidance of a death sentence, but later when I pull out the statistics, you’ll see precisely how rare that option was. They were also likely to allow a witch to avoid a death sentence if they snitched on other witches, but typically the investigations into those that were implicated by the original witch were presumed to be innocent until a thorough investigation could take place. Prosecutors also did not have to reveal that the removal of a death sentence did not mean that they could not imprison them indefinitely. Judges that presided over these trials were given specific instructions on how to ward themselves from wayward spells of the spurned witches on trial, and to ensure that they had the full cooperation of those amongst the court and spectators, there were specific instructions that allowed those who were uncooperative to be excommunicated from the church or even labeled heretics themselves if their obstruction was persistent.

Pope Innocent VIII’s bull acted as a metaphorical magnifying glass over the ant that this situation was in Switzerland and Germany, but to conflagrate things further, in 1501, Pope Alexander VI[8] issued a new papal bull, the Cum Acceperimus,[9]that extended the reach of prosecutions for witches to Lombardy and officially broadening the reach into Italy. I think it’s important to point out that this particular pope was a Borgia, and for those of you who haven’t seen The Borgias on Showtime, the Borgia family is basically the Kardashian/Jenners of the Medieval world—so many scandals and orgies, one can nary keep up. Beginning in 1500 and all the way through 1560, historians consider these few decades to be the peak of trials in Europe, and in order to focus more in-depth on this aspect we’ll be ending this part here, but it may be worth mentioning that this oddly severe belief in superstition beginning with the Malleus Maleficarum, may have been one of the many sparks that stoke the flames of the Protestant Reformation in Europe.[10]

[1] See Canon Episcopi for a full quote, but this is in direct reference to a bible verse from John 1:3 that makes mention of God being the maker of all things and suggests that those who believe that other entities may have done so are “infidels.”

[2] (Traces of Non-Christian Religious Practices in Medieval Pentitentials, n.d.)

[3] Direct quote from the Canon Episcopi and shortened for clarity and pointed reference.

[4] Please don’t talk to normal people about the CCO, it’s not a real organization, and outside of this context it’s probably very offensive to modern Catholic practitioners and I am not looking to get cancelled on Twitter

[5] (encyclopedia.com, 2019)

[6] Maleficent is defined by Webster’s as, “doing evil or harm; harmfully malicious,” and the original Latin form is maleficentia.

[7] the ancient Greeks were partiers and lovers, man

[8] Not a safer name than ‘Innocent,’ it turns out.

[9] DON’T YOU DARE GIGGLE AT THAT NAME

[10] It’s important to note here that history doesn’t have a large grasp on one specific event that might have been what caused this leap, but it was more likely a combination of quite a few different things, but it is my own humble opinion that torturing people certainly wasn’t a good way to rally support for the Catholic Cause™

[eichy815]

Seeing Pink?

Originally Published on August 27, 2015 on Eichy Says

For ages, misandrists within our society have been trying to find ways to "prove" that men categorically have life "easier" than women.  And, in certain areas of human culture, women do indeed face greater institutional sexism:  employment discrimination, child-rearing, and electoral politics are a few examples.

Among the most common statistics is how American women earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by American men.

But a new buzzworthy topic of sexism in news stories has been the so-called "Pink Tax" -- the statistical reality that women, on average, pay more than men do for personal grooming and hygiene products.

Feminist researcher/journalist Elizabeth Plank comments on this phenomenon by observing:

Companies also charge more because they know that female consumers will buy these products, due in no small part to savvy marketing teaching consumers that certain products are just for women or men, but not both.  As a result, women may not consider purchasing a product targeted towards men as an option, even if it costs less.

Plank conducted an experiment where she, along with a male counterpart, each shopped at the same store -- with Plank purchasing only "women's products" while her male research partner purchased equivalent products marketed to men.

After shopping for "female-vs.-male" incarnations of body wash, razors, deodorant, shaving cream, and wrinkle cream, Plank ended up paying 14% more than her male counterpart did.

On average, it's estimated that women will pay approximately $1,400 more than men per year for products that serve identical purposes.  Part of this trend is facilitated by the practice of stores displaying "men's products" and "women's products" in separate areas, to make price-comparing more difficult for the average shopper.

Yet, Ian Parkman, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Portland, points out how men tend to be creatures of habit whereas women may experiment more often -- valuing the "experiential" aspects of shopping, or being more likely to want to treat themselves.

Clearly, these cultural differences may contribute to price differences between "men's products" and "women's products" that are perceived to be unfair.

However, sometimes the sexism is blatant.  For instance, Old Navy was publicly exposed when caught charging higher costs for plus-sized women's clothing compared to plus-sized men's clothing.

Similarly, dry-cleaning costs are estimated to be 73% higher when you compare a shirt marketed to a woman with one marketed to a man.

But, as pointed out by Steven Horwitz -- the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University -- a lot of subjectivity can go into some consumer-based comparisons.

After all, says Horwitz, women's haircuts are frequently more complicated than those received by men.  Men are less likely than women to get their hair permed, straightened, or highlighted -- and those males who do choose more complex hairstyles will absolutely pay more than those of their "bros" who opt for a buzz-cut or a simple trim.

In that same vein, dry-cleaning costs might be higher for some women's clothing because the fabric worn by females is more intricate than that worn by males.

Neutrogena makes the claim that its facial moisturizer is priced 10% higher for a women's version than a men's version due to packaging, formula, and retailer's discretion.  The company's honesty might be suspect...but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.  

And are cosmetics really a necessity?  The truth is that women are far likelier to wear makeup, eyeliner, lipstick, or blush than men are.

Women may claim they are doing this to "please" their husbands or boyfriends (or potential significant others)...but that strategy is purely a social choice on the part of those females.

Ladies -- if a man (or a lesbian or bisexual woman) is less likely to want to date/marry you due to the absence of cosmetics etched upon your skin...then is he/she REALLY the type of person you want as a romantic partner?

If your answer is yes, then that's your choice.  Don't take it out on the rest of us.

So, yes, clearly there are companies exploiting women due to their willingness to pay more for hygienic/grooming products.  Yet, rarely do we hear any rational solutions for rectifying this disparity.  Even if male and female salaries were exactly the same for equal work 100% of the time...the price-gouging of "female-vs.-male" products would still persist.

Basically, we just hear females decrying the "Pink Tax" (again, proposing no feasible strategies to alleviate it) -- and then standing up on soapboxes while declaring to the men of America:  "You'd better appreciate how we're spending so much of our money to look good for you!"

Back to the practical arguments:  some razors are better equipped for leg-shaving than for face-shaving.  Women are more likely to use razors for getting rid of leg hair.  Men are more likely to use razors for getting rid of facial hair.

If you really like a certain special lady, but whether or not she shaves her legs is a deal-breaker for you...then you could be missing out on a great relationship.  Bitch and moan at your own risk.

If you really like a certain special gentleman, but whether or not he shaves his chin/cheeks is a deal-breaker for you...then you could be missing out on a great relationship.   I'll repeat:  bitch and moan at your own risk.

So what's the solution?

Well, a very slowly-but-gradually growing trend is the availability of “unisex” products.  Gender-neutral deodorant.  Gender-neutral soaps.  Gender-neutral grooming products.  Gender-neutral razors.

But these products are rare -- and exorbitantly-priced online.  In order for it to be profitable for more stores to carry gender-neutral products, there needs to be greater consumer demand for them.

As an alternative, you can shop for bathroom and beauty supplies at "bargain outlets" such as The Dollar Tree or The 99 Cent Store.  Most of the soaps, razors, body washes, shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers, deodorants, and compact cosmetics available in these stores are inherently gender-neutral...and cheaper than the equivalent products sold by mainstream retailers.

If you're a consumer who values bells n' whistles or frills, that's fine.  Just don't expect everyone to view you as a martyr for shelling out the extra cash to buy them for yourselves.

And yes, that can include those higher-priced items that this "Pink Tax" makes reference to.

Sorry, ladies -- if you want the extra flowery scents or pretty colors, you're going to have to pay more for them. 

Complaining about it is akin to women who (rightfully) criticize "beauty" magazines that exploit female bodies by prominently displaying their scantily-clad bodies...yet, many of those same women who are doing the complaining proceed to turn around and also still CHOOSE to buy those magazines.

If I don't like the food at a restaurant (or disagree with the restaurant's political activities), then I'm simply not going to dine there.

This shouldn't be some symbolic quest to wear one's sash of victimhood.  It reminds me of people who brag about how they ditched their cable subscription in favor of relying exclusively on Netflix, Hulu, or other online streaming services.  Great, so you're saving money after having been "ripped off" for years upon years...what do you want, a statue erected in your honor in front of DirecTV's headquarters?

If I choose to run the air-conditioning in my home (rather than opening a window to cool down the house), then I have no place complaining about my electricity bill.

If I choose to run the furnace in my home during the winter (rather than cuddling up in a toasty blanket), then I have no place complaining about my gas bill.

If I choose to buy an expensive bottle of sparkling cider (rather than making myself a homemade sparkling drink using filtered water, some club soda, and a dash of citrus), then I have no place complaining about my higher grocery bill.

If I choose to have bacon or tomatoes added to my classic grilled cheese sandwich, then I have no place complaining about my higher restaurant bill.

However, I do agree with the idea of public price-relief for at least one consumer-based item where women are being gouged in the checkout line:  as proposed by feminist author/blogger Jessica Valenti, tampons and sanitary napkins should be free -- either covered by insurance the same way Viagra is for men, or subsidized by the government somehow.  After all, women have no choice when it comes to enduring menstrual cycles...so they shouldn't be financially punished for it.

Nevertheless, to embrace some inflated doctrine of "neofeminism" -- alleging that women are "doing men a favor" by spending more of their hard-earned money on pricier fashion/beauty commodities -- is a ridiculous notion.  It's completely eschewing principles of personal responsibility and good judgment.

It's also a slap in the face to women who are the victims of actual gender-based discrimination or crimes: domestic violence (notably in heterosexual relationships), sexual harassment from males (or from petty females inflamed with jealous or spite), salary inequities, misogynistic child custody laws, and educational segregation.

Finally, framing this "Pink Tax" as a severe form of institutional misogyny is presumptuous on its face -- as it assumes that women should somehow continue to be expected to adhere to social norms of "beauty" and "grooming" that not all women may actually feel comfortable embracing.

Instead of whining about disproportionate commercial prices for women within a heterosexist, neofeminist existing framework...why not shift the discussion altogether, to de-stigmatize social expectations for girls and women who don't want to slather themselves with cosmetics, perfume, or designer fabric?

Given all of the serious injustices faced by women in the modern world...those who are crusading against the "Pink Tax" would be wise to reevaluate their priorities.  

[goarticletec-blog]

Google Maps is the new social network

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/google-maps-is-the-new-social-network/

Google Maps is the new social network

What is a social network, anyway?

To a consumer, a social network might be a place to share memes, cat photos and selfies.

But to a business, a social network is a place to bolster and defend branding, share product information, interact with customers and participate in relevant conversations with the world.

Businesses have websites. So why do they need to be on social? Because social is where the customers are, and where customers go to praise or complain about companies to each other — or to find out information about products and services.

Which raises the question: Which social networks should businesses and enterprises invest their time and money in?

The trouble with Twitter and Facebook

Twitter isn’t an ideal place for businesses to engage with customers and others.

Journalists and celebrities will tell you Twitter is the only social network that matters. But that’s because the site is mainly used heavily only by journalists and celebrities. (And haters, spammers, propagandists and bots.)

In fact, Twitter reported the loss of some 9 million users during the third quarter. (Which isn’t really true; they weren’t “users,” but mostly fake and bot accounts.)

Twitter now has 326 million active users worldwide.

It’s also something of a bad neighborhood for business.

Unlike Facebook, porn and other unsavory content is allowed on Twitter. And the site is a notorious magnet for haters, racists, misogynists, terrorists, trolls and spammers.

Worst of all, and unlike Facebook and other social sites, you can’t delete the comments that appear under your own posts. If you post something, and the conversation is hijacked by malicious users seeking to ruin your reputation, there’s nothing you can do about it.

As a business on Twitter, you’re just a target.

Facebook is even less appealing for businesses.

In recent days and, it seems, increasingly over time, Facebook just keeps getting horrible press, with the company blamed for manipulation, tracking, abuse, dishonesty and incompetence.

The most recent PR black eye came in the form of a scathing New York Times investigative piece alleging that Facebook officers first ignored, then concealed, the truth about Russia’s disinformation campaign on Facebook before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg this week disputed the report and defended her actions in a Facebook post.

The article also alleged that Facebook hired a PR firm called Definers Public Affairs to spread misinformation on behalf of Facebook. A company blog post this week denied Facebook tasked Definers to write fake articles and said Facebook fired the firm this week.

That blog post also references an anti-Facebook organization called Freedom from Facebook, which is pushing the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a recent breach of 30 million user accounts and also for the breakup of the company, arguing that “the FTC should spin off Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger into competing networks.”

Summarizing the broad complaint of Facebook critics generally, the organization’s web page says:

“Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have amassed a scary amount of power. Facebook unilaterally decides the news that billions of people around the world see every day. It buys up or bankrupts potential competitors to protect its monopoly, killing innovation and choice. It tracks us almost everywhere we go on the web and, through our smartphones, even where we go in the real world. It uses this intimate data hoard to figure out how to addict us and our children to its services. And then Facebook serves up everything about us to its true customers — virtually anyone willing to pay for the ability to convince us to buy, do, or believe something.”

As a result of its declining public esteem, advertisers are starting to openly question whether Facebook has lost its “compass,” according to a piece published this week by The New York Times.

So if Twitter and Facebook are bad for business, what’s the alternative?

Here comes the ‘good’ social network for business

Businesses need social networks to bolster and defend branding, share product information, interact with customers and participate in relevant conversations with the world. But which one?

Increasingly, the answer is: Google Maps.

Google Maps reaches a huge number of customers — more than is possible with the social networks.

Google Maps has more than a billion users. And while Facebook has more active users, that company will never let you reach them all because of its algorithmic control of who sees what. In fact, an update earlier this year had a devastating effect on organic reach on Facebook, and this was combined with a huge fee increase for advertising.

Facebook organic reach is now down to 1.2%. That means only 1.2% of your followers see the posts they signed up to see.

Google Maps is becoming an invaluable tool for marketing — and, increasingly, a better tool than social networks.

Whenever consumers want to find a storefront business, they increasingly do so using Google Search or Google Maps. Maps content is now automatically appearing in search engine results, so a strong showing on Google Maps gives you both Maps and Search. And Maps results are favored in results when the user is physically near.

Google Maps is not supposed to be a social network. But after recent changes, Google Maps now does most of the things businesses need from social networks.

Google this week announced a new feature that enables the public to message businesses directly through the Maps app. The feature will appear as a new “messages” button, which will be rolled out gradually to iOS and Android app users.

Customers can use the messaging feature to order products, ask questions about whether something is in stock or ask other customer service-related questions.

When users have a complaint, it can be handled directly and privately. Because the interaction isn’t public, spammers and haters won’t benefit from trolling.

Google is adding another social feature to Google Maps: the ability for customers and fans to “follow” business locations, which enables companies to update customers and prospective customers with offers, deals, events and other information. The feature is appearing as a new “Follow” button on businesses’ listings in Maps.

Unlike Facebook, which delivers your updates to only a tiny fraction of your followers — and a slightly larger fraction if you pay — Google Maps will deliver all updates to all followers front and center of the “For You” tab whenever they use Google Maps.

Imagine that! A “social network” that delivers all your content to all the consumers who follow you!

Businesses wishing to participate in either of these social features need to use Google’s “My Business” verification system and the app that goes with it, and of course also provide the back-end staffing and resource allocation to keep the listing responsive and up to date.

Google Maps even now facilitates social sharing — but only the sharing of information about businesses. A new group-planning feature enables users to create lists of businesses they’d like to visit, then share those lists with friends. They can then talk through the Maps app to decide which businesses they’d like to visit together.

Google Maps also offers opportunities no other social network does. For example, businesses can have the interior of their locations featured via the StreetView “Indoor Maps” program.

This feature will become increasingly valuable as StreetView becomes a virtual reality experience.

Google Maps is not a social network. But with recent updates, Google Maps now gives businesses most of the beautiful benefits of social networks — without any of the ugly downsides.

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[harryandmeghan0-blog]

Thomas Markle doesn't think 'stork has hit the air' to deliver Meghan royal baby - but "it will happen soon"

New Post has been published on http://harryandmeghan.xyz/thomas-markle-doesnt-think-stork-has-hit-the-air-to-deliver-meghan-royal-baby-but-it-will-happen-soon/

Thomas Markle doesn't think 'stork has hit the air' to deliver Meghan royal baby - but "it will happen soon"

Meghan Markle’s dad says his daughter has wanted children “for a long time” – and that one will likely be “in the making” soon.

In his first ever TV interview today, Thomas Markle, 73, said he expects Meghan will want to have kids with Prince Harry soon.

He told Good Morning Britain: “She’s wanted children for a long time and when she met Harry and she spoke how much she loves him, there’s got to be a child in the making, somewhere soon.”

He also said: “I don’t think the stork has hit the air soon but I think it will happen soon.”

Thomas stunned British viewers with his first ever live TV interview this morning – giving a range of views on the royal couple after weeks of silence.

He added: “As long as they’re happy and they have a great life and have some beautiful children and do good things in the world, I can’t ask for more.”

Meghan Markle’s dad says his daughter has wanted children “for a long time” (Image: UK Press)

Thomas Markle, pictured, expects Meghan will want to try for kids with Prince Harry soon (Image: ITV)

Meghan, 36, and Harry, 33, gaze at each other after tying the knot in Berkshire last month (Image: Getty Images Europe)

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Mr Markle also revealed his daughter, 36, cried when he told her he would not be able to make her wedding last month.

He said he broke the news to her in an emotional phone call just days before the ceremony in Berkshire on May 19.

He said both she and Harry were “disappointed”, but that they told him the “important thing” was for him to get better.

Mr Markle, who lives in Mexico, had been due to walk Meghan down the aisle in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

But he was unable to perform the honour due to ill health.

Mr Markle says his daughter cried when he told her he would not be able to make her wedding last month (Image: ITV)

He broke the news to her in an emotional phone call just days before the ceremony (Image: Instagram)

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He told the ITV programme he ended up watching the wedding from California, US, where he was recovering from heart surgery.

Recalling the moment he confessed he would not be attending Meghan and Harry’s big day, he said: “They were disappointed.

“Meghan cried, I’m sure – she did cry – and they both said ‘Take care of yourself, we are really worried about you’.”

He added: “I absolutely wanted to walk my daughter down the aisle.”

Mr Markle also revealed he was recovering well from his surgery last month, which saw him have three stents fitted.

Meghan and Harry are seen waving as they depart for their evening wedding reception via car on May 19 (Image: Getty Images Europe)

The happy couple tied the knot in front of a global TV audience of millions (Image: Getty)

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And he said he was “honoured” that the Prince of Wales took on the job of walking the Duchess of Sussex down the aisle.

“I can’t think of a better replacement than someone like Prince Charles,” he said.

Mr Markle’s operation came shortly after allegations surfaced that he had staged photographs with the paparazzi.

He told GMB he had apologised to both Harry and Meghan, adding: “I realised it was a serious mistake. It’s hard to take it back.”

Mr Markle was among those who watched Meghan and Harry become husband and wife on television (Image: Andy Johnstone for Daily Mirror)

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The retired TV lighting director confessed he had cried as he watched the ceremony on television, describing his daughter as “beautiful”.

“It was incredible watching her,” he said.

“I was very proud. I was very upset that it wasn’t me (walking her down the aisle) but the whole world was watching my daughter.

“I was very happy about that.”

He added: “The unfortunate thing for me now is I’m a footnote in one of the greatest moments in history rather than the dad walking her down the aisle. That upsets me somewhat.”

When asked about Meghan’s choice of husband, Mr Markle described Harry as “great” and “an interesting guy”.

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Thomas Markle on Good Morning Britain

The father said he was “honoured” Prince Charles took on the job of walking the Duchess of Sussex down the aisle (Image: PA)

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He told the programme he had held conversations with his now-son-in-law about US President Donald Trump and Brexit .

“Our conversation was I was complaining about not liking Donald Trump, he said ‘give Donald Trump a chance’,” he claimed.

“I sort of disagreed with that.”

When asked about details of the Brexit conversation, the father added: “It was just a loose conversation…

“I think he (the Duke of Sussex) was open to the experiment.”

Feminist Meghan has previously been a vocal critic of Trump.

When he was a presidential candidate, she famously branded him “divisive” and a “misogynist”. She also suggested before the 2016 election that she would leave the US if he won.

[menmakingapologies]

A LETTER TO READERS I have some explaining to do

Since I was a boy, all I ever wanted to be was a writer. That’s the irony of this week. I Can’t Breathe is the book I spent thirty years learning to write. Writers often speak self-referentially about “finding their voice,” but the painful and complex story of Eric Garner’s life and death is one I found had to be told without my voice, without linguistic cartwheels or jokes or any of the other circus tricks I learned to use to sustain my financial career over the years.

When you finally get to this place as a writer, there is an incredible sense of relief and pride. I felt that last week once I Can’t Breathe hit the shelves. But at the exact moment when I was finally disappearing from public view in the right way, I ruined it all by becoming an Internet scandal.

I issued a statement on Facebook last week that was meant to address both allegations of sexual harassment and misogynistic writing from my days at a Russian newspaper called the eXile in the late nineties.

As to the former, I continue to deny absolutely that I have ever sexually harassed anyone in any office, here or in Russia. No woman anywhere has ever accused me of anything of the sort, and I am confident that my former co-workers will report (many already have) that I have never exhibited anything like that kind of behavior, at work or elsewhere.

In that regard, I never spoke publicly about my departure from First Look Media and Racket, which was to be the companion site to the Intercept. I said nothing because of a non-disclosure agreement, which I believed prevented me from doing so.

It is true that there was a complaint made against me by a female employee at Racket. But that complaint had nothing to do with sexual harassment. Moreover, I was not fired due to this complaint, as the company following a thorough investigation cleared me in the matter. I left First Look instead because of an ongoing dispute with management, which felt, with some justice, that I was insubordinate.

The furor this week is over a passage from a book I co-wrote back in 1999 with Mark Ames called The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia.

In a chapter written by Mark, he is seen bragging about how “we” harassed women in the newspaper office, begging them for blowjobs and anal sex. As I said last week, the passage depicts behavior that is reprehensible and inexcusable. It is also, like a lot of things in the eXile, fiction.

Some Internet observers believe this denial is belied by the book jacket, which describes the eXIle as non-fiction. As to that, the publisher of the book, Grove Press, has issued a statement:

“The statement on the copyright page is incorrect. This book combines exaggerated, invented satire and nonfiction reporting and was categorized as nonfiction because there is no category for a book that is both.”

I don’t recommend reading the book, but it opens with an interview in one of Mark’s chapters with a fictional character named Johnny Chen. Chen is a fake person. He is, in fact, Mark Ames. And he is actually listed as a contributor right underneath the supposed smoking-gun disclaimer about the book’s non-fiction-ness. Even the book jacket, in other words, was spoofed.

This is not to defend the book, its message, or its use of language. I merely point out that it is not biographical reality.

The issue of the misogyny and hurtfulness in the book and the newspaper is more complicated and I apologize for it. In my Facebook statement last week, I tried to tell the truth about my feelings about the eXile years.

We wrote a lot of terrible things back then, for which I feel deep regret. Since leaving Russia memories of the paper’s gratuitous viciousness, its often demeaning and misogynistic content, and its generally mean-spirited tone over the years have haunted me.

I have regrets about many of the editorial decisions made in those years. I wish I could go back to my younger self and say, “What you are doing is wrong, stupid, and hurtful to women.” It pains me to think of one of my three young sons reading some of this material. As I wrote here last week, I am genuinely sorry for my bad judgment and insensitivity in those years.

An article on Huffington Post by NYU Russian Studies Professor Eliot Borenstein that suggested that this apology was insufficient, and helpfully offered a more elaborate version.

He added the following:

When it comes to Taibbi, Russianists have been experiencing a slow-motion shock of an entirely different kind: the gradual discovery over the past decade that Taibbi has somehow matured into one of the most acerbic and valuable commenters on the American political scene. How can this be the same man?

I understand the question, but to me the answer is simple. Writers often start out by writing terrible things, either to get attention or to imitate some other shocking or flamboyant writer from the past, whose personality was perhaps a better fit for that kind of approach.

As it happens, most of the great writers I grew up admiring were either outright insane people or defective as human beings in some other critical way in their private lives. But they somehow managed to produce great writing.

Moreover many of these voices shared a belief that producing good writing was more important than anything, more important than being good or bad, more important than achieving social justice aims, anything.

I remember very clearly as a young man reading Vladimir Nabokov denounce the “literature of social intent” as not only boring, but as an ugly characteristic of repressive states like the one he’d fled. And I remember Oscar Wilde telling me in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “All art is quite useless.”

As a confused and depressed young man for whom writing at an early age become a primary means of making sense of the world, I believed in all of this with the force of a newly religious person. So I committed to this carpe diem ethos, under which nothing matters but what you put on paper.

As I would later learn, the business of writing is more crucially about growing up in public. It can be incredibly painful and embarrassing, and it’s why so few people can stomach it in the most serious sense of the word, as a way of life.

Many people can hear the obvious things wrong with themselves. But to succeed in this profession you have to be willing to, at one time or another, hear people detail absolutely everything wrong with who you are. This is why, as hard as this week has been, I am not hiding from the questions, because I need to hear it all still – you never stop needing to hear it.

Borenstein’s proposed better apology contains a few lines that are very true, particularly:

The overall tone of the book is accurate, but some of the worst parts are exaggeration for effect; that is, I actively chose to make myself look like even more of an asshole than I was. I was also strung out on heroin all those years, though that does not excuse me. I deeply regret how I behaved, and have tried to be a better person since then, particularly in my interactions with women.

I could write such an apology, and add the other parts he felt were necessary – like making sure to point out that I’m not saying “it was a different time,” because the eXile book was “published in the same year that Gloria Steinem turned 68; everything people are complaining about now was reprehensible then.”

But there is a reason why I never formally apologized in this manner, even though I began to feel sick about having written certain things at the eXile a long time ago.

I have always believed that living forever with the dumb and failed things that you publish is how a writer apologizes. Ongoing embarrassment and loss of audience is the price of offensive work. You get readers back by growing and being better, not by apologizing. This merciless meritocratic system is a major incentive for literary restraint in most cases, especially in the Internet age.

So now, for instance, if people go back and look at the offensive things that I wrote 18 or 20 years ago, and decide never to read my columns in Rolling Stone or buy I Can’t Breathe, that is completely just. It’s how this business works.

The eXile did have a satirical idea, at least in the beginning. It was supposed to be an obscene send-up of the Americans who stood behind the crooked Yeltsin government. They arrived in droves in the nineties, consultants who wore benevolent faces as they imported neoliberal misery by day, but were monsters by night, romping in clubs and blowing fat fees on booze, drugs, and prostitutes.

The basic division of labor was that Mark would write about the nightlife side while I wrote about the daytime exploitation. My reporting in Moscow on the mob-style machinations of the Yeltsin government and the missives I sent in from the provinces were meant, I thought back then, to show the true face of the oligarchical society we Americans were helping create.

But as I reflected back years later, mostly what I was doing with that reporting was giving the eXile legitimacy as social criticism, when in fact we had pretty quickly become the very people we were supposedly satirizing.

We were mean and we turned Russia, a place we claimed to love, into our personal playground. As for the misogyny, that’s a darker topic that will likely require years more self-examination. Perhaps others can help me unwind it further. But I knew from the moment I returned home that it was an issue that would require years of reckoning.

As for Mark Ames and his columns: I will confess right now that I never confronted him about their misogyny. Our arguments ran in a different direction. In many ways, Mark and I were very different people. Among other things, he was an unapologetic libertine, while I was in a committed relationship throughout that period (though I failed at that as well).

But we had one thing in common, which is that we both desperately wanted to be writers. Our final split was more about how to accomplish that than it was about anything else. Mark felt we were on the right track at the eXile. I did not, and left.

When I returned to America, I began going through everything that we’d tried at the eXile – there was a lot of wincing during this time – and started down the long road of facing up to the failures of that period.

The eXile was where I learned to write. I tried everything in its pages: I tried being engaging, but also tried being vile and shocking. I tried autobiography as well as fiction. I tried juvenile pranks, but also serious journalism. I tried to imitate good writers (like Hunter Thompson and H.L. Mencken) and bad ones (like Jim Goad, the author of perhaps the only magazine ever more disgusting than the eXile, Answer ME!).

Stylistically I tried a me-first, look-at-how-cool-I-am style, tried another one that was more based upon being detached, reporting-heavy, and empathetic, and then spent a lot of time flailing in between.

In the cold light of day, away from the project, I read all of this again and found it horrifying, embarrassing, hurtful, and stupid. There was one day in particular when I had been away from it long enough to see this, and it was a long time before I could even look at an eXile again.

Nonetheless, some things I’d experimented with at the paper bled into my more modern work.

I’d written a “participatory” column called Working Here in which I got jobs doing all sorts of things — shoveling dung at the Moscow elephant cage, being a greeter in a clown theater, selling vegetables in a mob-run market, etc.

And for longer features I’d traveled all over the country following people around in weird corners of the Russian experience, working as a bricklayer, moonshine bootlegger, a monastery itinerant, and… well, it doesn’t matter now. But I wrote probably millions of words of this stuff.

People who read any of those articles now will find the tone and style the same as the articles and books I’ve written in the last few years. It took all those years at the eXile to learn that this unvarnished, on-the-ground reporting style was where I had something to contribute, while in other areas – like trying to be cool, or offering commentary on sex or gender relations, or being a public personality – it was clear I had nothing to offer to anyone.

This is why, if you scan YouTube, you will not find video of me hanging with actors, or partying at nightclubs, or really doing anything at all outside the confines of my job. I have a beautiful family, three young children and a brilliant and caring wife, whom I love boundlessly and as best I can. If you read my work you know the rest, because writing is pretty much the only other thing I do.

Apart from my family, my relationship with readers is the most important thing in my life, which is why I’m going against professional advice to try to explain the eXile days to those who may feel betrayed.

I understand these offenses might not be forgivable to some. If readers feel that you’ve violated their trust – by turning out to be something you seemed not to be – they will leave you, and that’s appropriate.

If on the other hand as a reader you believe that writers have the ability to evolve and grow, that’s different. I believe it. If my hero Raymond Chandler were alive today, would he still employ the offensive and hurtful language that can be found dotting otherwise beautiful books like Farewell My Lovely? I hope and believe he would express himself differently. I believe he could have been made to see the issues in his work. I’ve tried to.

Since returning home I’ve learned a lot from colleagues and readers over the years who reacted, sometimes with outrage, at certain uses of flamboyantly offensive imagery. Sometimes, I didn’t hear or want to hear the righteousness of what they said at first. But I tried to listen to everything and many times - I think particularly of a Rolling Stone copy-editor with whom I fought loudly over the cavalier use of a violent metaphor - I eventually changed in the right directions, even if it sometimes took far longer than it should have.

This has been my version of an apology, working for nearly two decades now to try to do the right work instead of the wrong work. I don’t know what else to do. If there are other apologies to make, I will make them, but I believe the most effective and sincere apology any writer can make is to try to use his or her platform in the right way.

I’ve done a lot of wrong things in my life. As a young man, I wrote and said some very dumb and hurtful things. I also made questionable decisions about my professional relationships. I’m sorry for all of this, and I’m sure as I look back I will continue to see, and be told, more reasons to be sorry.

But it was never more than that. I know the list of revealed harassers is growing, but I am not on that list, nor should I be. I belong to a much bigger group. I was young once, and a jerk. And I am sorry for that.

-Matt Taibbi, writer.

[dareread]

Meet Scott Yenor.

Yenor is a mild-mannered, bald, bespectacled professor of political science at Boise State University, a college known more for its blue football field and run-and-gun offense than for its history of philosophical debate. Yenor’s intellectual credentials are spotless: He has never received complaints from students or faculty about his classes or his papers. He’s a teacher and a thinker by trade, fully tenured.

But Yenor, you see, is also the devil.

At least, that’s the new public perception of Yenor at at Boise State. That’s because Yenor published a report in 2016 with the Heritage Foundation titled, Sex, Gender, and the Origins of the Culture War. The central thesis of the piece was simple and rather uncontroversial in conservative circles: that radical feminism’s central argument decrying gender boundaries between the sexes as entirely socially constructed has led directly to transgenderism’s attacks on gender itself as a social construct. As a philosophical matter, this progression is self-evident. Yenor’s report was academically worded and rather abstruse at times, filled with paragraphs such as this one:

For Beauvoir, the common traits of “immanent” women result from pervasive social indoctrination or socialization. Beauvoir identifies how immanence is taught and reinforced in a thousand different ways. Society, for instance, prepares women to be passive and tender and men to take the initiative in sexual relations. Male initiative in sex is “an essential element” in patriarchy’s “general frame.”

Yenor later translated his extensive report into a shorter, less jargon-y article for Heritage’s Daily Signal, titled, “Transgender Activists Are Seeking to Undermine Parental Rights.”

Again, his contentions were not merely consistent with mainstream conservative thought—they were self-evident to those human beings with eyes and the capacity to read. (Ontario, to take just one example, has recently passed a bill that could plausibly be read to identify parental dissent from small children seeking transgender treatment as “child abuse.”) Yenor’s rather uncontroversial article was then posted at the Boise State Facebook page.

That’s when the trouble began.

Leftist students took note of Yenor’s perspective. And they seethed.

Actually, they did more than seethe: they complained, they demanded that the piece be taken down, and they insisted that Yenor had personally insulted them. All of this prompted the pusillanimous dean of the school, Corey Cook, to half-heartedly defend Yenor’s right to publish. But then Cook backtracked faster than Bobby Hull defending a breakaway, saying:

Our core values as a School include the statement that “collegiality, caring, tolerance, civility and respect of faculty, staff, students and our external partners are ways of embracing diverse backgrounds, traditions, ideas and experiences.” As has been pointed out by several people in their communications with me, the particular language employed in the piece is inconsistent with that value.

Cook didn’t say exactly why Yenor’s writings had violated this inconsistently-enforced value. In fact, Cook’s attacks on Yenor violated this value far more significantly than Yenor’s original writing. But as shoddy as this statement was, other leftist faculty members thought Cook didn’t go far enough—even though he had pledged to “begin reevaluating our approach to social media.”

And so a knight arose to challenge Yenor’s nefarious, patriarchal dragon: Francisco Salinas, a man with the Orwellian title “Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion.”

Salinas believes that diversity and inclusion do not include perspectives disapproved by Francisco Salinas. Thus, he took up his fiery pen and wrote a post on the school’s website dramatically titled “Connecting The Dots.” Salinas explained that the Yenor controversy had preceded white supremacist rally and murder in Charlottesville, Virginia by a day. This was not, Salinas concluded, a coincidence. “Their proximity in my attention,” Salinas wrote, “is no accident.” How so? Let’s let Salinas sally forth:

There is a direct line between these fear fueled conspiratorial theories and the resurrection of a violent ideology which sees the “other” as a direct threat to existence and therefore necessary to obliterate. It is not an absolute succession and it is not a line without potential breaks or interruptions. Not every person who agrees with Yenor’s piece is likely to become an espoused Neo-Nazi, but likely every Neo-Nazi would agree with the substance of Yenor’s piece.

And so Yenor went from mainstream conservative thinker to neo-Nazi in the blink of an eye. Not just in the mind of Salinas, mind you—but in the minds of Yenor’s fellow professors and members of the student body, too.

A flyer suddenly began appearing around campus, reading “YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS SCOTT YENOR.” The faculty senate took up a measure that would initiate an investigation claiming that Yenor was guilty of some ethereal “misconduct.” Here’s what faculty senator Professor Royce Hutson wrote:

A large majority of the senators feel that the piece espouses deeply homophobic, trans-phobic,and misogynistic ideas. Additionally, some feel that the piece may be academically dubious to the point of misconduct. In response, the senate has created an ad hoc committee to draft a statement that repudiates the ideals expressed by Professor Yenor, without explicitly censuring Dr. Yenor, and reiterates the Senate's endorsement of the BSU's shared values as it relates to his piece.

Yenor was forced to hire an attorney. His fellow professors cast him out like a leper. In Yenor’s words, his colleagues engaged in “ritual condemnation and ostracization.”

If this reads more like a tragicomic Kafka novel than an honest discourse about ideas at one of our nation’s institutions of higher learning, that’s because it is. Except that it’s real: Yenor wanders the halls of an institution to which he has dedicated his life, condemned for a crime nobody will specify.

Unfortunately, Yenor’s experiences aren’t rare. Professors are now routinely hauled up before courts of inquisition in true revolutionary fashion for offenses contrived post facto for the sole purpose of ensnaring anyone who dissents from the current leftist orthodoxy.

Northwestern University’s Laura Kipnis—who isn’t even conservative—has been sucked into the maw of a Title IX case for having the temerity to write about “sexual paranoia” on campus and asking for evidence before condemning professors or students to the wilderness for mere allegations of sexual misconduct.

Professor Keith Fink found himself ousted from his part-time role at University of California at Los Angeles; Fink lectured on free speech and employment law from a conservative perspective. No real reason was given for UCLA’s failure to renew his contract.

Professor Bret Weinstein was forced to quit his position teaching at Evergreen State College after he refused to comply with a racist mob demanding that white professors not teach on a specified date.

Professor Nicholas Christakis resigned his administrative position at Yale’s Silliman College after he was abused by students who didn’t appreciate him telling them that they should get over their fears about diabolical Halloween costumes.

And people wonder why academia is leftist.

The suffocating leftism in American universities has arisen in large part because they are run by a self-perpetuating clique. To be excluded from such cliques can be professional suicide. And the price of admission is ideological conformity. Moreover, public pressure from students and outside media often prompts administrators to join in the chorus—better to be part of the mob baying for heads than to join a controversial thinker on the guillotine. The few conservative professors left tend to keep their heads down and pray for anonymity.

But that’s just the start of the problem. Decade after decade, the treatment of conservative professors has gotten worse as the leftist hegemony has grown stronger. And as older conservative professors have aged out of the population there are no sponsors for up-and-coming conservatives who want to join the professoriate.

As Yenor explains, “The process of getting a Ph.D. either makes conservatives into ‘careerists’—which means that they have to toe the line on sacred cows of the left—or conservatives at the undergraduate level see what academia would be for a career and decline to join.” So the self-perpetuating caste grows ever stronger. And louder. And more virulent. Anti-intellectual bullies like Francisco Salinas—enforcers of the revolution—exist on nearly every campus.

Conservatives tend to think that it can’t get much worse on campus. But it can. And it will.

The purge is on. When even Scott Yenor can’t be left alone in the middle of Idaho to write obvious truths about sexual politics, it’s a warning to every conservative professor in America that if they speak freely on intellectual matters they’re not doing their jobs—they’re risking their careers.