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still-single · 2 years

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new HEATHEN DISCOS for you to listen to

Took a lot of shit from randos over doing Blaze posts about my radio show. Looks like that isn't even possible anymore, so you lucky fucks get to soak it all in now for free. 14 hours of music and talk here. Settle in.

HD 304 8/14/2022

HOUR 1

Conjunto Primitivo – Vagando

Phantasia – All the Flowers

Baston – Neptune

Bohannon – Let’s Start the Dance III

Paul Johnson – Construction Work

Minami Deutsch – Grumpy Joa

Golomb – Western Threshold

Double Wig – Broken Cup

Hammer – Forever Tonight

Lil Keke – Graped Up and Dripped Out (Textasy Jungle Remix)

Dichroics – The Invisible Floor

Kokoroko – Ewa Inu

Killing Joke – Wardance

HOUR 2

Regina Leather – Communicazione Due

The Sound Vandals – Extasy (Body & Soul Mix)

Stephen Mallinder – Galaxy

Lincoln – Benchwarmer

Scupper – Superbike

The Movers – Oupa Is Back

To Damascus – Behind Me Closer

208L Containers – Holograms

Ace of Spit – Lonedell Wild Flower

Siobhan – Calamity

Space Art – Nous Savons Tout

Angels and Images – Hold Me Tight

Ty Segall – Don’t Lie

Civic Center – Rival the Sun

The Leather Nun – No Rule

HOUR 3

Green Screen Door – Brooding Giants

Manufacture – Passion for the Future

International Music System – Nonline

Crystal Grass – Crystal World

Pankow – Gimme More (Much More)

Th Blisks – Alaska

Love Nation – Love Nation Theme

Dummy – Mono Retriever

Orchestre Massako – Temedy

RRR Band – Rock for Birds

Squarepusher – North Circular

I AM – Confessions of the Heart

HD 303 8/7/2022

HOUR 1

Naujawanan Baidar – Koh Har Qadar Boland Bashad Baaz Ham Sar-e Khod Rah Darad

Party Dozen – The Worker

Lifeguard – Fifty Seven

Joseph Jarman/Don Moye – Ode to Wilbur Ware

Charles Stepney – That’s the Way of the World

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 – February

Killing Joke – Complications

Death Bells – Intruder

Workforce – Skin Scraped Back

Norma White – I Want Your Love

D’Arcangelo – Spacing Out

HOUR 2

Surface of the Earth – Causer Gird

My Bloody Valentine – To Here Knows When

Kirlian – Pulsingers Dream

Unique 3 – Weight for the Bass (Digi House Mix)

Barry White – It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me

The Movers – Oupa Is Back

Cupol – Kluba Cupol

Soho – Hippychick

The Cure – So What

Curleys – Florida Fights Back

The Sods – R.A.F.

Circus Lupus – Cat Kicking Jerk

Magazine – My Tulpa

Machine – There But For the Grace of God Go I

Nick Macri & Mono No Aware - … Without Jumping Out of Your Skin (for Tracy Pew)

Vision 3D – Hypnose

HOUR 3

Oogbogo – A Side

Judy and the Jerks – Scorpion

CB Radio Gorgeous – Asking for a Friend

Foxy – Get Off

Moss Icon – What They Lack

Unrest – Cherry Cream On

Hard Corps – Sacred Heart

Sam Prekop and John McEntire – Ascending By Night

T.U.M.E. – One on One

Pharaoh Sanders – Summun Bukmun Umyun

1990s – (My Baby’s) Double Espresso

Gang Starr – Step in the Arena

HD 302 7/31/2022

HOUR 1

Sonic Youth – Cotton Crown

Unwound – Honourosis

Polvo – Gemini Cusp

The Telephone Numbers – The Ballad of Doug

Nick Macri & Mono No Aware – How to Be in the Body…

Double Wig – Gone Circling

Sub Skin Cables – Closer to Myself

The Sleepers – Walk Away

Stephen Mallinder – Hush

Hard Corps – Respirer

400 Blows – Strangeways (Revisited)

The Great Unraveling – Left with Only Out

Minami Deutsch – Fortune Goodies

Hüsker Dü – Eight Miles High

HOUR 2

Teenage Fanclub – Every Picture I Paint

1990s – What’s Up with the Midnight Me?

Blank Realm – Falling Down the Stairs

Ray Barretto – Mercy, Mercy Baby

The Soft Boys – I Got the Hots

Slovenly – At Sea

Michael Beach – Out in a Burning Alley

Civic Center – Actualization

Public Image Ltd. – The Question Mark

U-Roy – Natty Kung Fu

Bernie Worrell – Insurance Man for the Funk

Galcher Lustwerk – Been a Long Night

Ron Trent – Cycle of Many

Slumber Party – I’m an Example

HOUR 3

Space Opera – Outlines

Terry Reid – Sea of Memory

Linton Kwesi Johnson – Song of Blood

Jackie Paris – Run for Your Life

Georgie Red – If I Say Stop, Then Stop!

Sam Prekop and John McEntire – Ascending at Night

Bomb the Bass – 10 Seconds to Terminate

Sparks – Amateur Hour

DAF – Mein Herz Macht Bum

Grace Jones – Warm Leatherette

Eric Copeland – Antibirth OST (side A)

HD 301 7/17/2022

HOUR 1

Sam Prekop and John McEntire – Crossing at the Shallow

Velocette – Stumm

Prince Charles and the City Beat Band – Jungle Stomp

Le Mystere – Opus 303

Busta Rhymes – Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check

Two Shell – Ghosts

Oogbobo – New State

VISION 3D – Blv Cbd

CB Radio Gorgeous – Devil

Thin Lizzy – The Hero and the Madman

Anthony Moore – Useless Moments

Sex Tourists – He Said

Jay & Yuta – Be More Kind

Wire – Being Sucked In Again (5th Demo)

Lower Tar – Brothers Pt. 1

Season of Life – 4:08

HOUR 2

A Certain Ratio – Do the Du

Doctor’s Cat – Feel the Drive

Night Communication – Nocturne Seduction

A Guy Called Gerald – Voodoo Ray

Bohannon – Cut Loose

Ndikho Xaba and the Natives – Makhosi

Miss Lie – Claustrophobia

Baby Ford – Flowers

Severed Heads – Never Fall in Love/Nazi Beach Party

Syamese – Absorbia

Mordicai Jones – All Because of a Woman

Terry Reid – Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

High Mountain Hoedown – Pickin’ Berries

Funk Factory – Rien Ne Va Plus

Reg King – Merry-Go-Round

Flanger Magazine – Falls Fountain Removed

The Velvet Underground – Ocean (Live 1969)

HD 300 7/10/2022

HOUR 1

The Fall – And This Day

Gene Clark – No Other

Bernie Worrell – I’ll Be With You

Unrest – Imperial

Psychic Ills & Gibby Haynes – At Long Last

The Mice – Not Proud of the U.S.A.

Chain of Flowers – Death’s Got a Hold on Me

The Dils – I Hate the Rich

Flux of Pink Indians – Tube Disasters (JD Twitch Re-edit)

Tetsu Arrey – Go

Slices – Floodlight

Slug – Aurora F

Roller – Au (Yellow)

HOUR 2

Vision 3D – Rien a Dire

Portray Heads – Puppet

Kraus – Dear Giulietta

Poesie Noire – Pity for the Self

Liars – Pillars Were Hollow and Filled with Candy So We Tore Them Down

Sprung Aus Den Wolken – Junge Menschen

2 Body’s – Astoria

D’Arcangelo – Godsonix

Urge Overkill – Now That’s the Barclords

1990s – Diamond Drag

Cult Objects – When Will a Fire Come?

18th Dye – Play W/ You

Shizuka – Lunatic Pearl

Lelly Boone – When Will I Be Loved

Ron Trent presents WARM – Melt Into You

Charles Stepney – That’s the Way of the World

HOUR 3

Loose Ends – Slow Down

The Cure – Close to Me (Closer Mix)

Depeche Mode – Shake the Disease

Photon – Doin’ Our Thang (Radiant)

Time Machines – Psilocybin

Dump – International Airport

Slug – Swingers

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thequietuptown · 4 years

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I fear the violence that's going to revolve around the election.

Hello, my friend,

The current political climate is rough, to say the least. I definitely share this fear. 2020 has been a weird year. With the pandemic and social distancing, mass shootings haven’t been front and center like they have been in years past, but they are still happening. Instead we have the deserved civil unrest of the new civil rights era and protests against systemic racism and oppression. It’s hard to fault the attention that we pay to all of the negativity, especially when some of the powers that be are fueling those fires, rather than seeking to quell the flames.

I always feel a certain icy current of fear whenever I am attending a large gathering of people, especially at political events like protests and pride parades. I feel myself being hypervigilant, but more often than not, that feeling is only at its height when I am first arriving. It’s not just because I can see the security measures in place or because I feel like there’s safety in numbers. It’s because the events that I find myself at are ones where the outpouring of love is so prominent. There’s a lot of hate in the world. There are also plenty of things to be legitimately angry at, but I see the love, too.

We need to train ourselves to look for the love in the little things. A 102-year-old woman cast her vote recently in Chicago my dropping her ballot off in a mailbox in full PPE. She was born before women had the right to vote in the United States, and she cast her vote because she knows her civic duty. We are from a different era. All my life, I have attended events in a building with armed guards. I have experienced this same complex mixture of needing and wanting to be with my community to celebrate, to mourn, to get dressed up and eat the ritual foods and knowing that there was a danger we might be attacked, but even in this small act, I think a lot of people feel a solidarity with her for not letting fear get in the way, regardless of her political views.

It cuts to my core that I have new company in this fear that so many people in the United States already experience. Knowing that a joyful or peaceful gathering could be attacked at any moment because of hatred is terrifying, but I also think about the privilege I have held that this fear has only really started coming to the forefront of my mind in the past three or four years. It’s why I have committed myself to being available to people who need to talk. It’s why I have chosen to fight for civil, social, and legal rights of all people.

Fear is a completely reasonable and perfectly valid response to a knowledge of past massacres and seeing warning signs in the political climate. We are all right to be afraid of further violence, but fear is both a terrible and awesome teacher. Fear doesn’t really care whether or not you learn from it, but it has the potential to crack us wide open and let all kinds of learning rush in. Fear can change our paradigms or cement them. It can set us free or add another lock to our prisons. We have to make the choice if we are going to harden our hearts and turn inward, or let the fear guide us to identify the problems in our lives and work to correct them.

I will be honest that I want everyone to turn out to vote in some capacity. I want us to have a reason to celebrate. I want people to notice that they are afraid, and take a deep breath and go anyway, or to encourage their friends and families to go anyway or join them. I want to see a huge show of solidarity; I want to see millions of people in the street, wearing masks and keeping at least six feet apart, unless they are showing symptoms. I want the message of love to be so loud, that the hate knows it will not take hold.

We are at a pivotal moment of our history. People of color, queer, and trans people are fighting for their lives, right now. It is absolutely a scary time to be alive, but please know that you are not alone.

With love and hoping for courage, friend.

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

Should schools reopen? (NYT) Across the political spectrum, there have been calls for the reopening of U.S. schools this fall. And understandably so: Remote learning went very badly in the spring. An autumn without in-person school would leave students further behind and leave many parents without child care again. The good news is that the experience in other countries suggests that it may be possible to reopen schools. Germany, Denmark and others have done so without causing big new virus outbreaks, as President Trump noted yesterday. But those other countries have taken two steps that the U.S. has not. One, they have first reduced the overall rate of new infections to low levels: Germany reported 35 new cases per million residents over the past week; the U.S. had almost 1,100. Two, some of those other countries have allocated new money for schools, as I heard after surveying some of my Times colleagues around the world. Hong Kong is covering the cleaning costs for its schools, Bella Huang told me. South Korea is helping schools open day care centers from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or longer, Su-Hyun Lee, who’s based in Seoul, said. Germany is subsidizing laptop purchases for low-income students, to help them combine remote and in-person learning, according to Christopher Schuetze in Berlin. And Italy has sent money to schools to pay for more teachers, student desks, masks and other equipment, Elisabetta Povoledo, a reporter in Rome, told me. The U.S., by contrast, is suffering through by far the worst coronavirus outbreak of any affluent country, and the federal government has done little to help schools reopen.

United Airlines warns 36,000 workers they could be laid off (AP) United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees—nearly half its U.S. staff—they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus pandemic is hurting the airline industry. The outlook for a recovery in the airline industry has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travelers. Airlines say they must shrink to match falling travel demand. American Airlines executives have said they could have 20,000 more employees than the airline will need this fall.

Pandemic Plunges Puerto Rico Into Yet Another Dire Emergency (NYT) As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, shutting businesses, killing the vulnerable and crippling economies, Puerto Rico has taken one of the country’s hardest economic hits. The pandemic has plunged Puerto Rico into its fifth dire emergency in three years, one that the government has struggled to manage. Thanks largely to hurricane reconstruction, Puerto Rico’s economy had been inching toward recovery after a devastating 2017 storm and the bankruptcy of the island’s government the same year. A civic uprising paralyzed the island last summer and led to the ouster of Governor Vázquez’s predecessor. Then a series of earthquakes shook the south side of the island in January, damaging homes and buildings, sending thousands to live on the street, and closing schools across the island. As of last week, despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that everyone should be washing their hands frequently during the coronavirus pandemic, the governor announced that because of a severe drought, parts of the island would have running water only every other day for the foreseeable future. Experts say this latest economic crisis has been even more difficult than the one that followed Hurricane Maria. On an island that already had the highest poverty rate in the United States, at least 300,000 Puerto Ricans have filed unemployment claims linked to the pandemic—out of a civilian labor force of 1.05 million—and many others are ineligible for aid because they are part of the island’s large informal economy.

Trump forgoes insults of past, calls Mexico cherished friend (AP) President Donald Trump, who has denigrated Mexican migrants and threatened the U.S. ally with crippling tariffs, welcomed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the White House on Wednesday, called him a cherished partner and claimed the countries’ economic and security ties were reaching new heights. Trump’s warm words were in stark contrast to the days when he called Mexicans “rapists” and railed against migrants entering the United States illegally. López Obrador had cordial words for Trump, too, saying that while they have disagreed, it was better to find common ground and avoid slinging insults. The meeting was billed as a celebration of economic ties and the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

Fugitive Mexican governor apprehended (Foreign Policy) César Duarte, a former PRI party governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, was arrested in Miami on Wednesday, more than three years after he fled his home country after being accused of embezzling $4.2 million in public funds. On top of the corruption allegations, Duarte is alleged to have stolen hundreds of cows originally imported to his state to replace thinned-out herds following a damaging drought. Duarte now faces extradition to Mexico.

Anonymous letters providing solace in the pandemic (BBC) Medellin--When the letter arrived at Daniel Guzmán's doorstep, it provided him with a glimmer of hope during one of the hardest moments of his life. "Keep going, when this is all over, you will walk out of the house with your head held high and your heart willing to give the best of you," it read. It was signed simply "Niña Peregrina" (Spanish for "Wandering Girl") Niña Peregrina's was one one of hundreds of letters that have been exchanged by complete strangers in the Colombian city of Medellín during the country's months-long quarantine. The anonymous letter exchange is part of a project by a network of libraries in the city. Called "Love In the Time of Coronavirus", it is inspired by Gabriel García Márquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera. The novel tells the story of a couple who fall in love in their youth but who are forced to stop courting when the girl's father finds out about their secret relationship. For the next five decades they exchange love letters using pseudonyms. When the libraries in Medellín closed as part of the measures brought in to curb the spread of coronavirus, Bibiana Álvarez decided to play with the idea that García Márquez had laid out decades before. She and other community leaders put out a call for residents to send in anonymous letters of friendship, love or support. Whenever the team receives a letter, they decorate it and then send it on to someone who has also sent in a missive. The recipient is chosen at random and neither recipient nor writer are told each other's identity. "Writing has been incredibly powerful, [it acts] as a sort of catharsis, they can burn off steam, and they feel that they're not alone," she says.

Greece says it’s ready to reimpose restrictions (AP) Greek authorities say they are ready to re-impose public and travel restrictions next week, warning that safety guidance for the coronavirus is being frequently ignored. Stelios Petsas, the government spokesman, said authorities were “determined to protect the majority from the frivolous few,” adding that the government was likely to announce new restrictions if needed on Monday. Greece, which imposed strict lockdown measures, has kept infection rates low. But cases have crept up since restrictions were lifted and international travel resumed in recent weeks.

Hungary to review rules on travel to neighbours after COVID-19 spikes (Reuters) Hungary will on Thursday review rules on travel to neighbouring Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia where numbers of coronavirus cases have been rising, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said. The landlocked country lifted most of its lockdown restrictions and opened its borders to travellers from European Union states and neighbouring non-EU members in June. Austria issued travel warnings for Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova on Wednesday because of the worsening coronavirus situation in those states.

Demonstrations in Serbia (NYT) Thousands of Serbs demonstrated for a second consecutive night on Wednesday in response to President Aleksandar Vucic’s management of the coronavirus crisis and wider concerns over the state of democracy in Serbia. The protests were the first major pandemic-related unrest in Europe since the start of the crisis, and were met by a violent police response that some analysts said they had not witnessed in Serbia since the rule of Slobodan Milosevic, who governed Serbia during the 1990s.

Russia detains governor, accusing him of murdering entrepreneurs (Reuters) Russian security forces on Thursday detained a regional governor who staged an election upset against the country’s ruling party in the Far East in 2018 and accused him of organising the murder of several entrepreneurs 15 years ago. Russian security forces on Thursday detained a regional governor who staged an election upset against the country’s ruling party in the Far East in 2018 and accused him of organising the murder of several entrepreneurs 15 years ago. Furgal would be charged shortly, the agency said in a statement. He could face up to life in prison, if found guilty of the allegations dating from 2004-2005 that also included attempted murder. The agency did not detail the alleged crimes, but said four members of an organised crime group had already been detained and that people involved in the murders had provided evidence against him.

No Steps Forward, One Step Back? (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Donald Trump this week suggested that North Korea could be open to another face-to-face summit to advance the long stalled nuclear talks that were supposed to be a hallmark diplomatic achievement of Trump’s presidency. But on Thursday, his top envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, returned from a visit to Seoul largely empty handed: There are no public signals that the North Koreans would return to talks. The hot and cold nature of the talks is emblematic of North Korea’s longstanding strategy of opening up diplomatic channels with South Korea and the United States, and then abruptly closing them off and ratcheting up tensions to extract more concessions. Meanwhile, new satellite images show a flurry of activity at a previously undeclared facility in North Korea potentially used to produce nuclear warheads, as CNN reports. Some veteran North Korea watchers predict that the country will begin a new round of saber-rattling before the U.S. election cycle wraps up.

No screaming here (Foreign Policy) Japanese thrill-seekers have been urged by the operators of a Tokyo theme park to refrain from screaming on recently reopened rollercoasters, lest it hasten the spread of the coronavirus. The ban on screaming is part of a set of voluntary guidelines agreed upon by Japanese theme park associations as parks reopen across the country. Hoping to model good behavior for its guests, a video posted by the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park features two of its executives riding the popular Fujiyama rollercoaster in total silence. It ends with a plea to “Please scream inside your heart.”

Australia suspends Hong Kong extradition treaty, tells citizens to consider leaving (Washington Post) Australia suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong and offered an immigration pathway for residents fleeing the city, after several Western countries aligned with Washington, including Canada and Britain, introduced similar measures to confront China’s security crackdown in the city. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the measures on Thursday, the Australian government also issued a stark new travel advisory asking its roughly 100,000 citizens in Hong Kong to consider leaving the Asian business hub, citing the risk of arbitrary detention. Australia’s immigration move—which came after Britain, Hong Kong’s former colonial ruler, unveiled a sweeping immigration offer last week—welcomed highly skilled workers and talented entrepreneurs in particular, Morrison told reporters.

Severe bread shortages loom for Syria as fresh U.S. sanctions grip (Reuters) Syria could face severe bread shortages for the first time since the start of the war, another challenge for President Bashar al-Assad as he grapples with an economic meltdown and fresh U.S. sanctions, a U.N. official, activists and farmers said. Any major disruptions to Syria’s bread subsidy system could undermine the government and threaten a population highly dependent on wheat as rampant inflation drives up food prices. “There is already some evidence of people cutting out meals,” said Mike Robson, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Syria representative. “...If the currency continues under pressure, imports will be difficult to obtain and the months leading up to the 2021 wheat harvest may see real shortages.”

Virus projects renew questions about UAE’s mass surveillance (AP) Efforts by the United Arab Emirates to fight the coronavirus have renewed questions about mass surveillance in this U.S.-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms. Experts believe the UAE has one of the highest per-capita concentrations of surveillance cameras in the world. From the streets of the capital of Abu Dhabi to the tourist attractions of skyscraper-studded Dubai, the cameras keep track of the license plates and faces of those passing by them. While heralded as a safety measure in a country so far spared from a major militant attack, it also offers its authoritarian government means to track any sign of dissent. “There is no protection of civil liberties because there are no civil liberties,” said Jodi Vittori, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies the UAE. The UAE’s surveillance state can offer the parlor trick of finding your car at the massive, multistory parking garage of Mall of the Emirates, home to an indoor ski slope. But multiplied across the cameras watching public spaces, buses, the driverless Metro, roadways, gas stations and even all the emirate’s more than 10,000 taxi cabs, authorities in effect can track people in real time across Dubai. In the run-up to the pandemic, Dubai police launched a new surveillance camera program powered by artificial intelligence called “Oyoon,” or “Eyes” in Arabic, which will begin checking temperatures of those passing by, as well as making sure people maintain a social distance of 2 meters (6 feet) from each other. Dubai police also are experimenting with thermal helmet cameras for officers to check passers-by’s temperatures.

Egypt tries to silence its critics in the United States by jailing their relatives (Washington Post) Reem Desouky, an American from Pennsylvania, was unfairly jailed in an Egyptian prison. Mohamed Soltan, an activist in Northern Virginia who helped get her released in May, was himself once a prisoner in Egypt’s jails. But while both are now free and on American soil, the Egyptian government has continued to menace them, pressuring them to remain silent by harassing and threatening their relatives living in Egypt, say victims and human rights groups. Desouky’s brother is in jail without charge to ensure she does not describe her 10-month-long ordeal to the outside world or criticize the Egyptian government, she said. Five of Soltan’s relatives were forcibly taken by security forces from their homes last month, and his imprisoned father was interrogated. That came after Soltan filed a lawsuit in the United States against former Egyptian prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi, accusing him of overseeing the torture Soltan endured in prison. Human rights activists say that relatives of more than two dozen political opponents, human rights workers, pro-democracy activists, and journalists living abroad have been arrested in Egypt, their houses often raided by security forces. Family members have also been slapped with travel bans or hauled into security offices for interrogation, the activists say.

#headlines #news

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gffa · 5 years

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More details from Dooku: Jedi Lost: - Dooku’s biological sister (Jenza) says she learned about the Jedi from a documentary about them on the HoloNet! - The planet of Serenno is probably named after the house that rules it and has been for ages. While I think it sounds like the family uses mononyms, if he was going to have a full name, it would be Dooku Serenno. - “Legend has it” that the planet was once part of the Sith empire but Jenza’s great-great-great-great-something-grandfather led the charge against them. When Dooku was like, “Whoa, I thought it’d be the Jedi who did that!” his sister says, “Like a Serennian would let someone else take the credit!” “If you believe the stories--and my father does, passionately--grandaddy Serenno fended them off single-handedly. And the other houses submitted to his authority.” So, dump an entire salt shaker on that, but it’s certainly interesting in terms of furthering the whole unreliable narrator aspect of this story and in giving us detail about House Serenno. - When Dooku sees an ancient dragon statue of mystical importance on Serenno, he halfway hears it in his head even before he reaches out. When he touches it, there’s a huge quake all around them, but worse is that there’s a screaming roaring in his head--another instance of how being Force-sensitive can really kind of suck in this galaxy sometimes! - Count Gora is furious when he hears Dooku’s name, screaming in front of him (at Yoda, who just rescued Dooku and Jenza from the quake collapsing rubble on top of them) that he never wanted to see him, that “He’s not my son!” An interesting turn of how biological families aren’t always so great in the GFFA. Later, we find out (via Yoda) that Count Gora immediately contacted the Jedi when he realized what Dooku was, but had left him outside the castle walls, no clothes, no shelter, nothing to identify him. There were spine-wolves in that forest, Dooku later finds out from research, if he hadn’t been found, he could have been killed. Yikes, some people REALLY hate Force-sensitives in this galaxy. When Dooku comes back for a funeral (and because he desperately needs to comfort Jenza), Gora stumbles over him and attacks him physically, calling him a “freak”. (By this point, Dooku’s definitely losing perspective and objectivity because of his desperate need to stay connected to Jenza and the whole funeral affair ends in a GIANT CLUSTERFUCK.) - Man, Dooku is a real shit in this! He’s so determined to prove himself, no matter that nobody’s asking this of him, that he’s furious when Sifo-Dyas points out that he’s not the one lifting the rocks up off them. Some embarrassment about being wrong (because it’s Yoda rescuing them) is understandable, but he’s definitely crossing the line about how pissed he is that he was better than everyone else. He comes back around later, there’s a decent person still in there right now, especially when he’s joking around with Sifo-Dyas, but his first instinct always seems to be an arrogant rage. They’re all out to get him, he’s better than all of them, that his reaction is “I could have been so much more!” when finding out that he was royalty instead of just a common person. He works through it each time, so Yoda’s concerned, but it’s not like That Kid’s A Walking Minefield, because the whole point of what the Jedi teach is that it’s not a one-time-and-you’re-done mastering of yourself, it’s a lifelong process, and there will always be a back and forth on this. - Yoda says that he’s worried about Dooku, he senses a lot of confusion there, and that they need to focus on him, rather than Count Gora being a dick to everyone. Later, he visits him in the infirmary and apologizes, saying he was wrong to take him to Serenno. (Which makes one wonder why he did anyway, presumably, because he thought that the connection to his home culture was important?) - Dooku gets a parcel while at the temple, it’s just handed to him and nobody intercepts this or anything, which seems to imply that it’s fine. - It’s not really said if Jenza was “stolen” because he’s from the Serenno family or because he was a Jedi or even because he’s the Separatists’ leader, it could be any of them. - Man, if supplementary material wasn’t so obscure, Dooku/Sifo-Dyas would be a HUGE pairing, they are SUPER bantery and adorable. - Ky saying all the things Asajj said about his corpse are a lie, and that she cried over his death. Dooku saying the Jedi just left them on Rattatak, they could have come for her at any time~, but they didn’t~, Ky’s voice telling her not to listen, that she knows that’s not true. MY HEART IS BREAKING FOR ASAJJ ALL OVER AGAIN. - The holos on the walls of Dooku’s personal cabin on his airship remind Asajj of Rattatak and she’s surprised to find she still misses the dustball that was her home. I AM HAVING SO MANY ASAJJ FEELINGS. - One of the holos also talks about the Lost Twenty, confirming that they were Jedi Masters who became disillusioned, Yoda says. Interestingly, this knowledge isn’t really hidden, it’s available as soon as someone asks and Yoda says it’s a good question. The scene is, of course, wrapped up in unreliable narration to a degree, because it’s a scene of Asajj watching a holo of Dooku telling his sister about his day, and already he’s been established as being kind of real snotty and arrogant, there’s a sense of snobbery and disillusionment himself towards his surroundings (the narration of the scene has a brief moment of showing giving up wealth for the life of a Jedi is a HDU sort of thing, those were my riches!), but I think it’s reasonably reliable to assume that the basic details are right. Someone asks what happened to them, did they fall to the dark side? The other Master and Yoda say, no, not all of them, some of them became leaders, others taught. But most just vanished. “Remember them, we must. Honor them, we must. Learn from our failure.” “Our failure?” “To keep them where they belong. But, the past they are. The future, you are.” And it’s clear that, given that they’re allowed to leave and the examples we have in canon of Jedi leaving are treated warmly by the Jedi Order (until they go full Sith, obv.) and Age of Republic - Count Dooku shows us that they don’t keep tabs on them, that Yoda doesn’t mean they’re wrong to leave, but that the Jedi should honor the memory of them and keep working to understand those who begin to disagree, to work to make themselves a better place for all of their people. That if those Jedi felt they had to leave their home and people, they should be remembered and not just dismissed as “Oh, they didn’t understand.” But that they should work to make sure everyone feels like they belong. - THE EVIL BACKGROUND MUSIC EVERY TIME DOOKU OR SIFO-DYAS STARTS DOING SOMETHING SHADY IS HILARIOUS. - GOD, DOOKU, WHAT A DICK. He’s so mad that Yoda’s just sitting in the garden and meditating and not talking to him and it’d be easy for the reader to go OMG WTF YODA, except then Dooku (who is relating this to his sister) is INCENSED because HOW DARE YODA TREAT HIM THIS WAY, HE’S THE BEST, MASTER SINUBE SAID IT HIMSELF, HE WAS THE BEST STUDENT HE HAD, HOW DARE YODA IGNORE HIM, IT’S AN INSULT!, and you realize, oh, shit, Yoda is doing something about this, not just that he’s stepping in when he senses Dooku’s confusion, but taking on an active role to try to help him, because Dooku is real full of himself and Yoda’s trying to help him address that underlying problem. But doing so through the way the Jedi teach and the way George Lucas believes is the best teaching method--by forcing the student to start thinking about what’s going on here. Not to just “drill and kill” rote answers into Dooku, because that’s not going to work, but to guide him to critical thinking skills. UGH, I LOVE THE LITTLE FROG MAN. - Whoa, there’s some really interesting connections to the political unrest in the galaxy that led up to the Clone Wars, about how the “brave new Frontier” of the Outer Rim isn’t telling you about the organized crime that’s on the rise out there, and it’s touching on SO MUCH of what’s covered in Star Wars: Propaganda and reminded me SO STRONGLY of this passage from the book:

“With eyes toward expansion into the uncharted reaches of the Outer Rim, the traditions of the Core became passé. Opportunity beckoned from beyond the borders of the Mid Rim worlds. The congested planets of the interior were saturated with messages of promise lying outward, a reversal from long-held notions that Coruscant represented the icon of advancement. Republic wordsmiths and artists collaborated to create a sense of civic duty, of manifest destiny, and of deep obligation to spread the Republic banner from Rim to Rim. “For the well-settled and wealthy elite of the galaxy’s most crowded centers, such notions were quaint but uninspiring. It was the citizens of the Inner Rim, those who had been crowded out of opportunity in the Core, who answered the call for new life in the frontier of the Outer Rim. The Core Worlders became more enamored with the fleeting distractions of fame and fashion, transitory fascinations with sophistication that left little room for messages of faith or tradition that the Jedi exemplified. The lack of representation in the galactic mindshare undoubtedly fixed their future, as dark forces were on the rise that would poison the public sentiment toward the Jedi in the decades to come.” (--Star Wars Propaganda by Pablo Hidalgo) As always, if you want to get an overview of how the politics of the galaxy shaped everything, from the Republic before the Clone Wars all the way to the First Order, that book is excellent and an amazing read.

#count dooku #sifo dyas #yoda #meta #novels #dooku jedi lost #dooku jedi lost spoilers

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highwiredazeken · 3 years

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THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF AMERICAN TEETH

American Teeth is the sonic alter ego of Elijah Noll, who collaborates alongside producer Colin Brittain (All Time Low, A Day To Remember, ONE OK ROCK, Papa Roach) and this meeting of the minds has resulted in quite a journey into the realm of pop punk and beyond. Hailing from Portland, Maine but currently based in Los Angeles, American Teeth recently signed to Fearless Records and plan to release his debut album later this year. With singles such as Barred Out and One Of These Days already making a lasting impression on all types of music fans, American Teeth is slated to open the Aftershock Music Festival in Sacramento and has other live shows in the works as well. Highwire Daze recently interviewed Elijah Noll find out a whole lot more about the up and coming American Teeth and their absolutely exhilarating, imaginative songs! Read on…

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in American Teeth and how long you’ve been doing this project. I am the singer, writer, co-producer of American Teeth. I started the project – we’re coming up on two years in June actually. So, it’s a fairly new project that came out of a session that I had with my now frequent collaborator Colin Brittain – who’s a great producer. We had a session with Munky from KORN actually – that was kind of put together and we really ended up hitting it off the two of us and started writing songs for fun – and that’s kind of how it all started.

How did you wind up signing with Fearless Records? That was after a couple of different meetings – Colin and I together ended up going around meeting a couple of different record labels – Fearless was one of them. Colin actually knew Andy Serrao the President of the label – so we ended up popping in there after one of our meetings in the area out here in LA.

You’re originally from Portland, Maine. What was the music scene like in Portland, Maine and were you involved with any bands up there? The music scene was definitely small. I was more involved as a fan of the emo scene up in the area. I don’t know if you know the band Sparks The Rescue – I went to some of their shows. We had a few venues like The State Theater. The Cumberland County Civic Center was kind of like our arena-type venue. I specifically remember seeing My Chemical Romance and Green Day there, which were pretty pivotal moments for me at the time. I used to play mostly house parties in kid’s basements and stuff like that. I definitely didn’t explode on the Portland, Maine scene. I was more kind of a fan within the scene.

And now you’re all the way across the country in Los Angeles which has a legendary music scene. What did you think of the music scene out here prior to the pandemic? I think that it’s actually growing because of the ability to connect virtually and all of that. I feel like people are just more driven to connect whether it’s through Zoom or Facetime. You could just do a quick meetup to see if it’s worth working together. It’s different than when shows are happening, but I do a lot of stuff on the writing side of the music scene out here, so I’ve been able to really connect with a lot of people – not only in Los Angeles but all over via Zoom. I’ve personally found that my network has expanded pretty quickly throughout this strange time.

What has it been like to write and release new music for American Teeth in the middle of a pandemic and all this social unrest in the world? It’s definitely helped fuel my creativity and the creation process around that. As far as releasing, it’s been interesting because it’s really kind of this thing where you’re putting it out and you don’t get to go play it live like you usually would. Like you’re just putting it out there. I’m focusing more on getting the song out and really making sure that I’m creating visuals that match the story I’m trying to tell or the vibe that I want people to feel. And I’ve been getting into TikTok too which has been an interesting journey.

Let’s talk about your new song One Of These Days and what inspired the lyrics for you. That song is essentially about acceptance honestly. It’s about waking up and just feeling terrible right off the bat. A lot of times when I’m feeling down or I’m going through a bad day, I’ll try to deny that that’s happening, or try to convince myself “It’s fine. I’ll be fine…” and just push through. But I found recently with some trial and error that sometimes often when you just accept that you’re having a shitty day, and allow yourself to feel that, you can move past it quicker. It’s really kind of the meaning behind the whole thing – let go and accept that you’re having a shitty day – and by doing that, most of the time you’ll be able to move forward that way.

You have another song called Barred Out that you did with Twin XL – Cameron Walker who used to be in Weatherstar and The Ready Set. How did that collaboration come about, and tell me a little about that song? Yeah, that was a fun one! That one came out of a co-writing session that we had with Cameron. I brought him in with the intention of doing some stuff for American Teeth. And while we were writing, he was singing the pre-chorus part that he’s featured on. Colin and I heard him singing on it and he just killed that performance of it! I got up on the mic and sang the same thing, and it just didn’t feel the same. There was something about his take that felt really natural and perfect for it. And we told him if you want to be on this track, it would be a great way to cross our worlds. And he was down and that’s how it all kind of came together. It was pretty natural.

You also did something with the band Dreamers called Still Not Dead. Tell me how that came about. That was actually another situation where there was another co-writing situation with Nick from Dreamers and I and Colin. That day the intent was to do a Dreamers song, so I wasn’t intending on being on the song. But it was the day a little over a year ago that Kobe Bryant passed away – and Nick had just gotten back from a trip from his hometown in Seattle – unfortunately one of his childhood friends had committed suicide, so he was coming back from that funeral. It was really a dark day for everybody in general. I’ve had plenty of loss and death in my life, including my dad when I was like 12 – and a lot of family members over the years. So, we just kind of decided that we were going to write a song about how we were feeling in that moment. It was kind of like glaringly obvious that that’s what we needed to get out. So, we kind of each told our story about our experiences with death and loss – and wanted to put a bit of a spin on it that was hopeful in a way – like a celebration of life amongst all of the loss.

Your producer Colin Brittain – he’s worked with bands such as All Time Low, Papa Roach, 5 Seconds Of Summer – the list is crazy! What is it like working with him? It’s really fun – we have a good thing. He’s so incredible. His track record shows how talented he is. I think that when you bring both of our talents together, we have something that I feel is really unique – and we just have so much fun creating together.

Providing live shows actually start to happen, what are you looking forward to the most about your appearance at Aftershock later in the year? It looks like you’re playing the same day as My Chemical Romance… Yeah, it’s crazy man! It’s a dream honestly. I think about Aftershock frequently, and I can’t wait. Performing is my all-time favorite piece of music, and being an artist I just can’t wait to jump around on a festival stage. It’s going to be so amazing!

If you could open for any band either now or from the past, who would it be and why? I would say that number one would be The 1975. I’m a really big fan of that band, and I think the band has really developed this awesome fan base that I would really love to perform for. My Chemical Romance is one of them, but I happen to be technically opening the stage for them, so that’s going to be Step 1. Step 2 would definitely be being a direct opener on a My Chemical Romance tour. That would be just completely insane. I’m a big fan of Gerard Way and his artistry and his creativity – and I just think that would be so cool!

If the music of American Teeth was a donut, what kind would it be and why? Oh, that’s a good question because I love donuts. This isn’t my favorite donut, but I think this represents us the best – a rainbow sprinkle chocolate donut. The sprinkles for me represent the many colors – the many dimensions of the sound that American Teeth has. And maybe it has a soft cream filling because the music a lot of times has a hard outer shell, but there’s a softness and warmth in the middle.

What do you hope the rest of 2021 brings for American Teeth? A lot more live shows – I want to manifest that now. More live opportunities and the ability to connect with real people in person – and to meet new people that way. An album is happening this year, and that’s exciting. And I’m also experimenting with some visual stuff with creating little, short films and things around the music – so definitely more of that as well.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

American Teeth on Facebook

#american teeth #elijahnoll

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gracesclassblog · 4 years

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Social Media & Participatory Culture

Participatory culture is defined as "a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another" (Jenkins, Puroshotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2009). Overall, a participatory culture is one that encourages contribution and expression, while also creating and sharing relevant information. Information that is considered relevant is decided by each user, which is why participatory culture theory relates to social media. Social media is a participatory culture because it cannot exist as it does without user contribution. If there was to be no user contribution, social media would return to being just a form of standard media, where information is presented to be taken in, not interacted with.

Personally, I am motivated to participate online because it is a way to stay connected with others and share stories. I love seeing what my friends are doing, especially during the distance of a pandemic. Online, I share photos of me and my friends, short videos of interesting things happening in my life, and re-share funny or important information. I am also the Director of Social Media for a University of Minnesota student organization, the Sport Management Association. For that social media, I create content for our members, share meeting information and follow-ups, and interact with other users. This professional use of social media combines my personal passion for social media, and my professional passion of sports.

Through his reference to Spider-Man, Jenkins says in his TedTalk that this generation has more power in their hands than any other generation before (Jenkins, 2010). This is because of the participatory culture created by social media. Before social media, news was only interacted with in post-publication. Now, however, a user themselves can be the one sharing breaking news. This is a major development in how users participate with media, because there is no longer a gap in power of who can share news.

This also relates to the idea of the speed of activism. While rapid news sharing can be mostly beneficial to users, "with instant messaging services like Twitter, news can be disseminated so rapidly that it bypasses normal editorial control, potentially leading to incorrect and misleading reports" (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013). This means that false information could be spread faster than it could be proven wrong, which can cause major user doubt and unrest. One way to solve this would be to enforce ethical standards on social media, but would bring up the other issue of social media, which is censorship. Hinton and Hjorth bring up important talking points about user retaliation to censorship in China. While censorship could help regulate truth on these platforms, the strict censorship of media in China and other countries ultimately results in users finding other ways to influence the participatory culture.

Participatory culture theory asserts that users control the narrative, and in the case of social media, this is especially true. Users and platforms work dependently to support social media standards, but it is clear users can survive the ages without these platforms, while the platforms themselves cannot.

#ci3342 #SocialMediaLearning

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gduncan969 · 4 years

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Has the Church Lost Its Purpose

Matthew 16:18 “..and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

If you’re like me, you are probably pretty fed up with Covid-19 and all the ever-changing rules and regulations thrust upon us in our government’s efforts to control it—by controlling us! When will we get past this and back to normal is the question uppermost in many minds but no one is giving any definitive answer and by the looks of it, whatever answer there is, is still a long way off. So we stumble on trying to remember to put our masks on, squirt our hands with another dose of hand sanitizer and then go home to watch the riots and mayhem in the city streets of downtown USA. Where is all this headed and how does the Church fit into this scenario? The Shorter Westminster Confession tells us the chief end of man is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever” but in these days of closed, or partially “open” churches where singing is forbidden and masks must be worn, the question is: “What is the chief end of the Church of Jesus Christ?” and we can also tack on a second question: “Why does our government think the Church is non-essential when the casino’s and liquor stores are open and the rioters and protesters are given a free hand to assemble?. How we answer these questions very much depends on our view of the Church’s purpose in this time of world pandemic and social unrest. All of us who have committed our lives to Jesus Christ already know that the Church is the body and bride of Christ whom the Lord Himself will return to earth to “present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:27). It is not an organization but an organism which Jesus continues to nurture and grow through the revelation of Himself by His Spirit (Matthew 16:18) and that this present age will come to an end at the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9) when the old earth and Heaven will pass away and a new Heaven and a new earth will be created. These are great, all-encompassing statements describing our final destiny to “be ever with the Lord” but there’s a more pressing question that demands an answer at this current moment: “Has the Church lost its purpose in the middle of this Covid-19 pandemic in its compliance with government closures and restrictions, its social distancing rules, job losses, political uncertainty and a host of other issues like suicides, drug abuse, etc.? How is the Church meeting these situations and challenges? One thing for sure is it has not been able to carry on as usual. There is nothing “usual” about being forbidden to assemble together with fellow believers in our homes and churches, about being forbidden to praise God together in song or about having to wear a mask and distance ourselves from one another to avoid all physical contact during our services, but if these are the only things we miss then the “new normal” is really little more than an inconvenience. Perhaps this is the reason most churches around the world have so easily accepted the mantra of the media and the government “It’s all for the common good” and agreed that the Church must do its part along with the rest of humanity to curb the spread of this deadly virus that supposedly is threatening to engulf the entire world in a holocaust of death. Who would dare gainsay such common sense? (I think it was Albert Einstein who declared that common sense is very uncommon!) Let’s re-examine what the Church is and what it represents and then decide what its true purpose is.

Post Modernism

To the post-modern world in which we now live where your “truth” and my “truth” are equally acceptable and tolerable, the Church of Jesus Christ appears to most as little more than a social gathering of like-minded people enjoying each other’s fellowship on Sunday mornings in buildings called churches where we sing praises to God accompanied by an organist or pianist or even a full blown band with drums, guitars and sometimes even laser lights and smoke generators to create the “right” atmosphere. We listen to sermons from the bible about how to be good and afterwards go to the local restaurant for lunch. Beyond that, the world is largely uncertain as to what the purpose of the church is and what it actually does and most are content to leave it to itself with no desire to get involved, especially if (not always when) it talks about things like “sin”, a word no longer acceptable in polite company. Is it any wonder that governments have deemed church gatherings to be “non-essential” and almost all churches have quietly agreed to their banishment “for the common good” because the bible tells us to be “subject to the authorities” (Romans 13:1) while forgetting that Peter resisted those same authorities because “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)? Objections from the Christian community to church closures has been tepid at best and supportive at worst. This is understandable from a point of view that sees church meetings as an unnecessary opportunity for the virus to spread. This may have been OK for the purpose of “flattening the curve” but those days are long past and the current fear of a second and possibly a third wave of the virus is making the long-term outlook for a return to normalcy very uncertain indeed! There’s now plenty of evidence to show the damage being done to the Church by its obedience to these rules.

The Church is Suffering Damage

The harm done to the church by its complicity in its own closure is appearing in the form of a dramatic drop in attendance. A Barna Group poll in the US taken in May of this year shows that one third of “practicing Christians” (I take that to mean those who attend church regularly) have completely quit attending any church—either on line or in person—and half the millenials (young people) have done likewise! Barna’s latest poll, announced this week carries the headline: “1 in 5 Churches Facing Permanent Closure Within 18 Months Due to Covid-19 Shutdowns.” The reason for this is quite simple: one in five churches do not have enough income to keep their doors open even as the restrictions have been eased and partial services allowed! These figures lead me to ask, “What kind of commitment to the local body of Christ do those have who so soon walked away?” This is not encouraging news but my real concern is not church finances or even church attendance, it is the failure of many in the Church to recognize what the Church is, a living body, spiritual in nature and determined in its purpose to reach a dying world with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ who died for it, rose again to empower it with His Spirit and is coming again to receive it to Himself at the end of the present age. Each born again believer is a member in particular joined to every other member by the “joints and ligaments” (Colossians 2:19) that connect us to the Head, Jesus Christ and to each other. The “joints and ligaments” are the relationships between us and the Head that hold the body together and these suffer damage when members cannot assemble together to pray together, worship together and minister to the world around them together. It is very difficult to maintain real relationships through a mobile phone. It is impossible to visit the sick at home or in hospital to lay hands on them or anoint them with oil. It is impossible kneel by the bedside of a dying saint to hug them one last time or wrap your arms around a grieving saint from six feet away and it is impossible to encourage anyone with a smile while wearing a mask. These are not trivial issues, they go to the heart of Christian ministry. How many church members have and will forsake the faith and wander off into the world because their church was obedient to their civic duty and closed its doors? Church gatherings are far, far more than a social event, they are a critical function of the Church to further the gospel in the lives of believers and unbelievers alike. I was not saved by watching a video but by attending a meeting where I went forward before thousands of others to commit my life to Christ. Yes, of course God uses videos to reach others but He doesn’t leave us there, alone in our basement wondering where do I go from here. He joins me to the rest of His body in personal, human, on-going contact with other believers. If the Church is not meeting, lives are being lost!

The Lord is Shaking His Church

Why has the Church been so afraid to disobey the government and so unafraid to disobey the Lord who has told us to “forsake not the assembling of (y)ourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25); to “lay hands on the sick” (Mark 16:18); to gather together to pray and sing; to baptize; to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Can you ever imagine Jesus saying to the leper, “Sorry, I can’t touch you because I may get what you’ve got and besides, it’s against the law for me to touch you”? What kind of gospel is that? It is the gospel of fear, not love, of weakness, not strength. Father Damien of Molokai was a Belgian missionary to the lepers in the Pacific who willingly lived among them and became one of them for the sake of the gospel. Countless others have done likewise throughout the history of the Church and have “counted it all joy” (James 1:2). I believe the Lord Jesus is using this present pandemic to shake His Church awake from its slumber. He is removing the old normal and replacing it with a whole new church experience of the power of the Holy Spirit at work through its members to reach the world. The old order with the pastor and the platform team doing all the work while the congregation waits to be led (and entertained?) will be replaced with God’s order as described in 1 Corinthians 14:24 - 26 showing how the early church ran its services: “if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you. How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation.” The world wants evidence that the gospel we preach is real and the only way to show it is real is to do as Paul did, “not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:4). How exciting and challenging it will be to go to church knowing that the Lord wants to use you in the service to bring something besides your bible and your tithes, (although many bring neither). If you feel you don’t have a psalm, a teaching, a tongue, a revelation or an interpretation to offer and if you feel you are unable to demonstrate the Holy Spirit and His Power, then go to Jesus and ask Him first to baptize you in His Holy Spirit and then open your mouth and let Him fill it as He gives you the utterance. Expect the Lord to give you something to add to the service besides your presence and your praise (but first pray that the elders will make room for your ministry and wait until they do). This may seem all too far-fetched but it is clearly biblical and in the coming time of testing for the Church, clearly necessary.

The days ahead are filled with uncertainty but God is faithful and we will not be deserted by Him or left to figure it all out by ourselves. He loves us intensely and will carry us through as long as we hang on to Him. More than that, He will reveal how great His Power is in us if we will but trust Him to use us for His glory. That’s the kind of Church He is building. If you are still uncertain as to the purpose of the Church, pray for God to reveal this to you that you may function as a healthy member. I sense that God is about to judge the earth but first He will judge His Church and cleanse it from every spot and wrinkle. “He that endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13) and as I said in my last blog, endurance may not be pleasant but it is necessary to get through what lies ahead. The initial acceptance of the closures by the churches is understandable in human terms but given the great damage being caused to the Church (and to society) as it continues, this issue must be faced prayerfully and determinedly. If the Barna polls are correct---and I believe they are---we must decide whether to continue in obedience to man or God!

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megacircuit9universe · 4 years

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Times Change

WED JUL 08 2020

Trumps numbers... approval rating, and polling numbers in all the states that could possibly matter this November... are so bad right now that Trump has threatened media outlets, including FOX News, for posting the latest numbers, which he says are all fake.

He’s also been ranting on Twitter about how the upcoming election is going to be rigged, and doing speeches, such as on July 3rd at Mount Rushmore, in which he’s ranting about how liberals and Democrats are enemies of the state, including teachers, and the media, and that they’re all conspiring to end America and bring forth a scary dictatorship where conservatives will be persecuted and punished.

His little pal, Tucker Carlson, over on Fox... is running with that ball and helping to plant the seeds in the dysfunctional brains of his audience, that if Trump loses, it will be because the election has been rigged by a vast liberal conspiracy.

Well... if by, rigged, they mean... influenced by a level of Presidential incompetence so astronomical that nobody in the country can’t see and feel it quite painfully... and if by, conspiracy, they mean... a vast majority of voters have agreed to use their voting powers to vote him out of office... then, sure!

But what this all says... the warlike paranoid rhetoric against not just all races (it used to be just Muslims and South Americans) but all US citizens who would dare to oppose Trump... coupled with the cries of a rigged election to come...

...is that he know’s he’s going to lose.

And they know... he’s going to lose (his junta).

So, the best plan they can think of at the moment is to try and foment violence if he loses... in an attempt to intimidate the rest of us into backing down.

Don’t you vote him out, or we will unleash our army of brainwashed morons to take to the streets with guns and torches blazing. We will throw the biggest tantrum the world has ever seen.

But, after everything else we’ve been through so far... we’re not simply desensitized to the threat of more upheaval... in the case of this threat, we’re like, bring it on!

People are already in the streets standing up to walls of fascist cops in riot gear every night. You think anybody’s scared by the idea of a bunch of red hat idiots coming out of the woodwork with their shotguns and assault rifles? We have shotguns and assault rifles too!

This is America... everybody has a gun!

We don’t use them on the cops, but if Backwoods Bob, or KKKarl wants to show up in attack mode, because they’re pissed off about the outcome of the election... shooting their asses in self defense is justifiable homicide, so let’s go!

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court and the Pentagon have already shown conclusively, in the past month, that they have zero loyalty to Trump.

BLM has brought together a huge coalition of not just white and black people, protesting and fighting side by side, but also Native Americans, Arab Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asian Americans, Jews, Amish, Wiccans and other Pagans, atheists, scientists, gay, straight, lesbian, trans, even some Christians, and yes, a not trivial number of Republicans.

Gen X was always there for the fight, along with a few Boomers, and a few Silents, but now Millennials are finally on board, as is... everybody’s celebrated new heroes... Gen Z!

Which brings me back to Tik Tok...

Tik Tok has been instrumental in bringing the above mentioned coalition together... though it took SARS CoV2 to be the catalyst that mobilized us against racism, fascism, and Trumpism, here in 2020.

As social media platforms go, Tik Tok has outmatched all of its predecessors... who were all, in their own ways, very impressive... from MySpace, to YouTube, to Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter and Vine.

It has old roots, being a merger between Musical.ly which has been around since 2014, and what began as Douyin back in 2016. 2018 was the year that what we now know as Tik Tok, was born, and quickly rose to the top of the app charts.

It inherited a huge user base of teenagers, but also filled the gap left behind by Vine, which died in 2016, and Tumblr, which was dealt a critical blow in late 2017, when it was sanitized of all explicit material.

Ignored completely by the mainstream, Tik Tok was also blown off fairly aggressively by established YouTubers as a platform of vacuous content, of no interest to anybody above the age of 15, other than pedophiles.

But when Covid19 hit the world stage in early 2020, forcing everybody on the planet to shelter at home, and grapple with boredom... Tik Tok went mainstream in a big way.

It was the only social media app left, where it was acceptable not to wallow in depression and political defeatism (Twitter), not to be out shopping, globe trotting, or partying (Instagram) and not to be making long form videos in a professional studio with 100K subscribers and a Patreon (YouTube).

This is when most of the millenials, GenXers, Boomers, and even Silents began to get on board... to have a go at finding their own niche in the Tik Tok universe.

And this brings us to the key to Tik Tok’s popularity... its algorithm.

Well, its algorithm, coupled with an elegantly simple interface, and perfect upper time limit for videos... just over a minute.

It takes only ten minutes, scrolling through Tik Tok videos, liking the ones you like, for that algorithm to start visibly tailoring your feed to what you want more of. And over the course of just a day or two... doing this, and following whoever you’d like to see more of, even when they aren’t going viral on the For You page... you can quickly cultivate an addictive feed that you’re happy to scroll through for hours.

Some say it’s just a sinister ploy to keep you on the app, in order to steal your data but... all social media apps do that. Tik Tok simply does it better. It’s algorithm is superior to Twitter, Facebook or even YouTube, allowing you to tailor your feed on the fly in real time... if times are changing that fast... which they have been.

So, why the long love letter to Tik Tok now?

Well, this week, it’s suddenly in peril. It’s been banned in India, could soon be banned in America.. and after losing those two massive markets... could just die.

It began with China passing a law last week that, for national security reasons, it needed to have access to all app data collected by all apps based in China... which includes Tik Tok, which is owned by a Chinese company known as ByteDance, headquartered in Hong Kong... the province which has been in a struggle to maintain what little autonomy it has left from the Chinese mainland for several years now.

India... which was recently embroiled with a border dispute with China that resulted in a military skirmish, immediately banned Tik Tok, for fear of their citizens data falling into the hands of Xi Peng.

But Tik Tok has an American CEO, who, in a move to save the app from getting banned in America, announced that the Hong Kong headquarters would be moving overseas.

That didn’t do much to calm the Trump administration, however... who have only just pieced together that Tik Tok was truly behind the disastrously low attendance of his recent Tulsa rally... and also a key social media channel for BLM and other anti-Trump movements to organize and coordinate (and one they can’t penetrate and manipulate, as they did with Facebook and Twitter four years ago).

So now, both Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo have gone on record saying they’d like to ban Tik Tok in the United States.

It’s not clear yet if this ban will actually happen, though it seems likely.

It’s even less clear how a ban in both India and the US will affect the fortunes of Tik Tok.

VPNs will make it possible for users in both countries to continue using Tik Tok, so... over the short term, it will remain accessible... at least to those hardcore devotees who have come to rely on it.

But, barring a massive sea change in the general popularity of VPNs... which is not out of the question, in these increasingly authoritarian times around the planet... the loss of most of the two biggest markets could cripple Tik Tok.

People say, What about supply and demand?

Well... the most likely fate would be for Tik Tok to be bought out by a non-communist company, say a US company like Google, or Amazon.

That’s been the trend for over a decade now. Yahoo bought Tumblr. Twitter bought Vine. Facebook bought Instagram, etc. But more often than not, in these cases, when the hugely popular platform gets bought for billions by the big corporation... the big corporation drops the ball and drives it into the ground.

YouTube being bought by Google is probably the least dismal of these examples, but YouTube is nothing like what it was back in the early twenty teens, when it was a platform for anybody with a web cam in their bed room to talk to the world, and get famous.

But then again, this IS 2020...

Tik Tok has redefined the entire dynamic of social media, at the same time that SARS CoV2 has drastically altered the global economy... meaning that the twenty-teens model of both things, and how they work together... could well be out the window by now.

And this brings us, in tonight’s final analysis, to a fundamental truth that Trump, for all his diabolical plotting to game the 2016 campaign process... has failed to plan for.

Times change.

Twitter was the shit back in 2016, wasn’t it? What a brilliant move for a dark horse boomer candidate turned President to troll the shit out of it every goddam day for years on end, right?

Well, he’s killed Twitter now. The whole universe, as it was in 2016, has disintegrated... in no small part thanks to Trump’s abuses, neglect, and incompetence.

But also just the march of history... climate change, global pandemic, technological breakthroughs, economic upheaval, civic unrest, etc.

They like to say those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.

I say... those who ignore the future, get eaten by it.

Tempus Edax Rerum.

Time consumes all things.

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lapenpalclub · 4 years

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Snail Mail Is Getting People Through This Time

Letter writing has helped people meaningfully connect during this period of isolation, grief and unrest.

Snail Mail is Getting People Through This Time by Tove Danovich for The New York Times

Brianca Hadnot’s high school students in Houston started writing letters the day after George Floyd was killed.

“They felt unheard,” Ms. Hadnot, 30, said. “They can’t vote.”

As protests gained momentum around the country, she worried about them attending and possibly being tear gassed or shot with rubber bullets. Writing, she said, was another way the students could take action against police brutality.

“A letter is one of the most undervalued but important ways of expressing yourself,” said Ms. Hadnot, who teaches sophomore literature and writes under the name Brianca Jay. “It doesn’t have to be perfect or written with the best grammar and semantics and flowery prose. It just has to be you.”

The students, with help from other community members, have written 75 letters so far, addressed to elected officials including local legislators and the president of the United States.

Snail mail has taken on fresh resonance in this period of isolation, grief and unrest. Sympathy cards are selling out as the coronavirus’s toll continues to rise. Constituents are mailing in primary election ballots and addressing handwritten notes to local officials with compliments and complaints. (In some cities, they may also be sending letters to the police.) Many more are writing postcards to friends and loved ones, and calling for the United States Postal Service to be saved from its dire financial straits.

First-class mail has been a declining category for the Postal Service for over a decade. It will be a few months before the service publishes statistics on mail volumes for April and May, but it did see “significantly higher product sales” of items including stamps in April, according to a representative. A Postal Service survey whose results were published in May found that one in six consumers had sent more mail to family and friends during the pandemic.

Kenzie Myer, 21, said that she wasn’t a letter writer before the pandemic, which forced her to leave a study-abroad program in London and return to her home in Pennsylvania.

“I came back and hadn’t seen any of my friends from my home school,” Ms. Myer, a rising senior at Arcadia University, said. “I started sending them letters.” Most of them open with a disparaging line about her “garbage handwriting,” she said, then become more personalized.

For a friend whose 21st birthday passed in lockdown, she wrote about how she couldn’t wait to celebrate in person. For her partner, who lives in Australia, she writes “a lot of sappy stuff” and smears the page with roller-ball perfume. She posts her correspondents’ responses on her bedroom wall near her desk.

“Even though I can’t see the people that I love, they’re sending love back my way,” Ms. Myer said.

Justin Hodges, 46, moved to Chicago three years ago and soon received a postcard from a local candidate. “This was not some soulless mass production,” he said. “Someone took the time to spell my name correctly and draw stars and hearts. It’s more personal.”

Eventually Mr. Hodges, a former flight attendant and now self-described “stay-at-home cat dad,” started writing postcards for her campaign as a volunteer and then for an organization that encourages people in swing states to vote. Over the last month, he has written 500 postcards that will be sent to Wisconsin voters closer to the general election in November.

The coronavirus has made many people realize just how important the Postal Service is, Mr. Hodges said, even as it feels like it’s under siege. “We’ve gone to this online society, but letters encourage voter turnout and civic engagement. They’re warm and personal — tangible.”

When Laura Stanfill, 44, is ready to send out her weekly batch of letters, she and her 12-year-old daughter walk to the mailbox near their home in Portland, Ore. “We’ve made this ‘just the two of us’ walks. We wear our masks, and she complains about her mask and we talk,” she said.

On April 13, Ms. Stanfill’s best friend of over 30 years died of complications from Covid-19. She sent out sympathy cards. “Then I wanted to send more,” said Ms. Stanfill, who is a writer and the publisher of Forest Avenue Press. She started collaging cards with paper scraps and magazine clippings and sending them to friends, family and acquaintances alike.

“All this letter writing and card making is a way forward in my grief,” Ms. Stanfill said. In addition to the cards, she’s also exchanging “letters” with a pen pal by filling up a single notebook passed back and forth across the country. “We’re centered at home, and to be able to share something and send something to a person we can’t see feels really important.”

That sentiment seems to bridge generations. In Los Angeles, Ronan Bowie, 4, has enjoyed receiving riddles from his grandmother in Tucson, Ariz., by mail. “We’d have to wait a few days for the answer to arrive,” said Ronan’s father, Soren Bowie, 37. “That got him excited about the mail in a way he’d only been with packages before.”

Ronan started exchanging letters with his best friend from school. “I miss you” may be the only text in these letters, which are full of a lot of drawings and stickers. “They see each other on Zoom sometimes,” said Mr. Bowie, who is a writer. “But for a child, I think there’s something much more tangible to a thing you hold and have to find a place for in your house.”

“People’s worlds are really small, and the ways they used to connect with people aren’t really working,” said Christianna Wincek, 35. “When I was working full-time, mail was a chore,” she said, full of bills and things she didn’t want to deal with. “When I started spending the bulk of time at home, mail became an event.”

Ms. Wincek, a textile designer, has been home in Portland and unable to work since December because of chronic illness. That’s when she started writing letters: to friends and to people in assisted living facilities through a nonprofit called Letters Against Isolation.

Letters have also become part of an effort at home schooling for Katie Case, 41, who lives just outside of New Orleans and runs a real estate agency. She posted on Facebook asking people in her network to send their addresses if they wanted a letter from her son Henry, 4, who punches them out on the typewriter he asked for as a Christmas present last year. Most of them are short and written on Post-it notes or pieces of paper only a little bigger.

Ms. Case writes a companion note for each of her son’s letters, noting that between the small pieces of paper and typed words, “it looks a bit like a ransom letter.” In a letter to Ms. Case’s family friends who live by the beach,” Henry wrote simply: “Do you love sea monsters?” To a nearby friend whom Ms. Case described as her son’s “lady love,” he wrote: “You are lava girl. I am a talented electric rattlesnake with fire. I love you.”

People have sent thoughtful replies to Henry, who so far has shown less interest in receiving mail than sending it. “I’m saving them all, obviously,” Ms. Case said. “I think one day he’ll realize what a special thing this is.”

#sendmoremail #write more letters #savetheusps #SaveUSPS #USPS #correspondence #letter writing #handwritten correspondence

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waveridden · 7 years

Text

FIC: my life and thousands more

The Adventure Zone. Lucretia-centric, set between Stolen Century and Gerblins. 2.6k. content warnings for canonical character deaths.

[title lyric | ao3]

Lucretia keeps tabs, afterwards, on Merle and Magnus and Taako. It’s the least she can do, after everything. She keeps track from a distance and she never intends to visit, she really doesn’t - she doesn’t have the right to forge any kind of relationship, and she’s well aware of it. And while she refuses to feel guilty about what she did, she doesn’t exactly feel good about it either, so the distance is a luxury that she forces herself to afford.

But then - there are rumors that make their way up to her, about some kind of unrest in Raven’s Roost. And it could just be politics, but it could be a relic, and besides, an excuse to visit is an excuse to visit.

And so she goes to Raven’s Roost. She walks through town, through shops, down the Craftsmen’s Corridor, turns and finds herself in a town square. There’s a woman, standing on the edge of a fountain, shouting; Lucretia can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd surrounding her. And there are soldiers posted all along the edge of the square, but the woman ignores them all, brandishing her fist in the air.

There is no relic here. Lucretia can tell as much. But she owes it to Magnus to be sure that he’s safe, and she wants to hear what’s going on in the world besides. So she steps closer to the woman.

“-can’t treat us like this,” the woman shouts, and the crowd yells back their agreement. “We pay our taxes! We treat this city with love, and he tries to tell us we haven’t done our civic duty! But no more! We can’t live under Kalen anymore!”

The soldiers begin to stir. Lucretia reaches into her robes for a wand - a spare she hadn’t expected to need, but she’s glad she has it with her.

The woman doesn’t pay the soldiers any mind. “Raven’s Roost deserves to be free! We all deserve freedom from tyranny!”

“That’s enough, Waxmen,” one of the soldiers says.

“We deserve freedom!” Waxmen shouts one more time, and the crowd roars their agreement so loudly that Lucretia almost doesn’t notice as Waxmen steps down from the edge of the fountain and slips into the crowd. It’s almost impressive, how quickly she goes from revolutionary to citizen. Lucretia watches her as she moves through the people, tying her hair up as she goes, pushing her sleeves back down. Small changes, but enough to throw off anyone who had just seen her. Enough to buy her time.

Waxmen breaks free from the crowd and slips out of the square, moving towards Craftsmen’s Corridor. One of the soldiers starts after her, sword in hand, and Lucretia decides - well. She can’t let a revolution end like this.

She catches up with Waxmen easily. “That was quite the speech, Miss Waxmen,” she says, voice low.

Waxmen glances at her, one eyebrow arched. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Oh, I’m just an inspired traveler passing through.” Lucretia moves her robes enough to show Waxmen her wand. “You can help me by letting an old wizard walk you home.”

“I’m being followed,” she guesses. Irritation flickers across her face, and she picks up her pace, but she sighs. “I won’t say no, if it makes you feel better.”

“It does,” Lucretia says. It’s nice to be doing actual good, not just bureaucratic good from afar. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your first name.”

“Julia.” She doesn’t slow her stride as she turns down Craftsmen’s Corridor. “And I didn’t hear yours, either, o travelling wizard.”

Lucretia opens her mouth, unsure of what’s going to come out of it until the exact moment she says, “Tesseralia.”

“Tessa Ralia,” Julia repeats. “I hope you heard something worth hearing today.”

“I’d say I did,” Lucretia answers. “You’re inspiring these people. I’m afraid I’m not so familiar with what’s going on in Raven’s Roost, but it seems like you’re doing good.”

Julia smiles at that, there and gone in an instant. “That’s all I can ask for. It’s nice to hear it from someone else, though.” She stops in front of a shop with a sign that reads Hammer and Tongs. The soldier from before is nowhere to be seen. “Thank you, Tessa.”

“Thank you, Julia,” Lucretia says. “May your war end well.”

“And yours.” Julia takes a look at her and laughs; Lucretia can’t imagine how her face must look. “Oh, come on, I can tell a fighter when I see one. Whatever you’re doing, I hope you do it with honor.”

Lucretia doesn’t know where the honor is in anything the Bureau of Balance has done, but she forces herself to nod anyways. “Thank you.” And she turns to leave, and-

“Jules!” someone shouts, and Lucretia can’t process the horror and the joy she feels before she sees Magnus, leaning out the window of the Hammer and Tongs. “Do we have company? Does she wanna come in?”

“Fiancees. Always excited,” Julia says dryly, and Lucretia can’t breathe. Of course. If anyone could love Magnus the way he deserved, it would be a spirited revolutionary. “Did you want to come in, Tessa? I’m sure we could scrape together dinner for one more.”

“I’m afraid I must be on my way,” some part of Lucretia answers, the one that makes her a director rather than a record-keeper. “But I wish you both well.”

Julia smiles warmly. “Thank you. Safe travels.”

“Juuuules,” Magnus whines. “Is she coming in?”

Julia turns back to Magnus. “Tessa has to be on her way, love,” she says, and starts towards the door. “She’s only passing through.”

And Magnus - god, of course, Magnus turns to Lucretia. “Tessa! Thank you for keeping my beautiful, perfect fiancee company tonight.”

“Mags,” Julia laughs.

Magnus disappears from the window only to open the door a heartbeat later. He’s still looking at Lucretia. Not scrutinizing, not recognizing. Just looking at a stranger. “Do you need anything? Supplies for the road?”

“I should be good,” The Director answers. “But thank you for the offer.”

“Of course.” Magnus waves at her. “Safe travels!”

“Thank you,” The Director says, waves back, leaves. She gets to the far outskirts of Raven’s Roost before she uses her bracer to summon a sphere from the Bureau. And Lucretia waits until she’s safely inside to bury her head in her hands and sob.

Lucas insists that she accompany him to Neverwinter on some kind of a supply run. She thinks more because he wants her there than out of any necessity, and that alone is touching enough that she agrees. She lets him talk to her about wires and conductors and things that were far enough over her head when it was Barry talking, let alone when it’s Lucas who’s miles beyond her.

And it, like with Magnus, is a complete accident when she hears it: Merle laughing. She turns to it instinctively, whirling around, searching the people in the street.

“Uh, Lucretia?” Lucas says, and she snaps back into herself. He’s looking at her oddly. “You okay?”

“A little tired,” she admits, because Lucas would accept no less than the truth. “I thought I heard something.”

“Bad something?”

There’s no good answer to that. Would it be so bad, seeing Merle again? Could it possibly be good?

Luckily, before she can answer, Lucas groans. “Ugh, I left my wallet on the counter, I’ll be right back.” And he slips into the store they came from, leaving Lucretia in the crowded Neverwinter street.

She takes a slow, deep breath. And then she hears it: Merle saying, with a clear laugh in his voice, “Okay, fine. But don’t tell your mom.”

“If we can’t tell Mom, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” another voice says, dry in the same way Merle’s is. And Lucretia turns a little further and there they are: Merle and two kids, a girl on one side and boy on the other, both gazing up at him the way a child looks at a father.

“It’s just candy,” Merle scoffs. “What’s she gonna do, make you un-eat it?”

The girl, the older of the two, smiles. “I guess she can’t do that,” she says, long-suffering. The boy doesn’t say anything: he is, Lucretia realizes with a start, looking directly at her. It only lasts for a second before his eyes pass to the next stranger in the crowd. Merle doesn’t look twice at her. And why would he? Lucretia cut herself out of his life so neatly that there’s not even scar tissue.

“God,” Lucretia whispers. Someone might hear her. She doesn’t think she particularly cares. Her stomach is rolling with something too selfish to be called guilt. “ God. ”

“Got it!” Lucas says from her side. He’s holding his wallet in his hand, and a shopping bag that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Did you buy something?” Lucretia asks, startled.

Lucas immediately averts his eyes. “Maybe? There wasn’t a line.”

Lucretia shakes her head. Merle and the kids are gone when she dares to look where they were standing. “Maybe I should be in charge of your wallet,” she jokes. “It’d save you some money.”

Lucas barks out a laugh. “Yeah, maybe,” he agrees. “Let’s go, we need to get to the apothecary before sundown.”

“Let’s go,” Lucretia echoes, and it still feels raw as she leaves.

Maureen buys her an official licensed Sizzle It Up! cookbook for her birthday. Lucretia, thankfully, laughs until she cries, rather than the other way around.

She hears about Raven’s Roost first. It’s unavoidable. A Regulator comes back to the base one day looking sorely shaken and says that the city burned to the ground, and that the revolutionary leader Burnsides barely survived. That he was the only one.

Lucretia looks through her journals that night, the ones that she keeps under two different locks. Magnus’s escapades could’ve filled half a dozen journals on their own; combined with everyone else’s stories, there are nearly twenty books to look through before she finds the one she’s thinking of.

Cycle 43, it reads, in crisp script at the top of the page. The war is still raging on this island. Magnus has declared himself the protector of the daycare. He says that it’s a shame that nobody else has bothered taking care of the children, that he’ll do it himself if he has to. It’s incredibly fitting of him. He says there’s no point in finding the Light of Creation if everyone on this plane dies while we’re searching for it.

And then, scrawled below, almost illegibly:

Hi Lucretia I’m sorry I stole your journal but thanks for making me sound like some kind of a hero! It’s cool. :D But protecting people who need it isn’t heroic. It’s just the right thing to do. <3 -Magnus

She has it memorized by now, every word, every letter, the way he hooks his g’s. She reads it again, and again, and again.

Julia Waxmen was a hero. She was a protector. And she certainly isn’t still alive.

“Am I protecting you?” she asks, maybe aloud, maybe not quite. There are teardrops on her sleeve; she was careful, once she realized she was crying, about not letting them on the pages. “Am I?”

When she hears about Glamour Springs she immediately scrawls the right information on a paper and runs to Fisher’s chamber, as fast as she can. Johann isn’t there, it would be so easy to fix this, nobody would know-

Taako would know, says a voice in her head that sounds uncomfortably like Lup’s. If you ever brought him here and inoculated him like he planned, he would remember what happened. You can’t do that to him.

“I’ve done too much already,” Lucretia whispers. “I’ve meddled so much, what’s one more? Feed this one to Fisher and move on, he can move on-”

Lucy, not-quite-Lup sighs.

“This was supposed to be the right thing,” she says. She holds up her hand to Fisher’s tank, and he lifts a tentacle, star-sparkling in the ichor. “Do you miss them?”

Fisher lets out a low, mournful note.

“So do I,” Lucretia says. “Will they forgive me?”

Fisher sings out one more time. It’s a different note than the last one. Lucretia can’t tell if that’s supposed to mean a different answer, or if it means that she’s talking to a fish because none of her friends know her anymore.

She looks back at the paper in her hand, now crumpled. She doesn’t know what could’ve happened in Glamour Springs. Taako doesn’t make mistakes while cooking. He had, once, just once, a couple of cycles in. Merle had gotten food poisoning and Taako had complained relentlessly about it ruining his perfect record, old man, why’d you have to go and get sick? And he’d taken care of Merle, figuring out how to make and transmute medicine, and Lup had been the only one to cook for the rest of the cycle. And now forty people are dead and Taako - he must be dying too, he must be swearing off cooking or travelling or something. It makes Lucretia sick.

“It was supposed to be better like this,” she tells Fisher, who sings out one more time.

She returns to her quarters and burns the paper and thinks, over and over, this was supposed to be better. But maybe there is no better. Maybe this is as good as it could’ve been.

It’s a sentimental day. She knows this because she’s looking at the portrait - the real portrait, the one with the seven of them together. There are things about it that she’s not sure anymore if they’re mistakes or if she’s misremembering - the exact curve of Lup’s smile, the shape of Barry’s glasses, the way Merle looks when he’s laughing. The light in Davenport’s eyes.

“Oh, Captain,” she sighs, almost punched out of her, and then, she hears a noise from behind her. When she turns Davenport is there, stock-still

“What?” he says. His eyes are filled with tears. “What is that? What is that?”

Lucretia waves a hand, and the portrait goes back to normal. “Davenport,” she says sharper than she intended. “Are you-”

“Couldn’t see.” He clutches at his head, and Lucretia is in front of him in a heartbeat, hands hovering. This is her captain, this is her ward, this is her friend and she’s not sure what he is in this moment. “I couldn’t- why couldn’t I- Davenport, Davenport-”

“Shhh, shh.” Lucretia lowers one hand to stroke against the back of his head and he crumples against her with a sob. “Davenport, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Blank,” Davenport says, his shoulders lurching. “Blank, empty, empty, couldn’t see-”

It hits Lucretia in an instant. He couldn’t look at the portrait because he couldn’t remember any of it. Maybe there were pieces he could see, just enough to know that he couldn’t see them. Just enough to know something was very, very wrong.

Davenport keeps hiccupping against her. She pulls him closer and breathes deep. “I’m sorry,” she says again, and the worst part is she’s not even sure if she is.

She starts locking the door when she looks at the portrait, after that.

The three of them are standing in her office for the first time, looking up at her like she’s a stranger, and one they’re afraid of at that. Lucretia thinks, you used to be my closest friends. Lucretia thinks, I have shaped you all and I am sorry for it. Lucretia thinks, I can’t accept their employment, I can’t ask them to work for me, I can’t ask them to stay.

And she opens her mouth, and asks just that.

#taz fic #taz lucretia #waveridden.fic #i wrote this on a plane and when i got off my suitcase was gone so the editing on this is probably out of whack but. yo #the adventure zone

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s-o-a-p-ing · 4 years

Text

2 TIMOTHY S.O.A.P.

CHAPTER 2

Monday 9/14/20

Here's where I was led this morning...

SCRIPTURE:

Soldiers don’t get tied up in the affairs of civilian life, for then they cannot please the officer who enlisted them.Avoid worthless, foolish talk that only leads to more godless behavior....Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living, faithfulness, love, and peace. Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.Again I say, don’t get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach, and be patient with difficult people. 2 Timothy 2:4, 16, 22-24

OBSERVATION:

How this seems to apply to everything going on "in the world" in the world today - Maybe it's me, but this speaks so much to red/blue/MAGA/QAnon/Critical Theory/climate crisis/civic unrest/media bias/conspiracy theories/deep state/Russian interference/China virus/hoaxes and all the rest of the turmoil and pandemonium being sent to distract and dispirit from all sides - except One...

APPLICATION:

It's all right there:Don't get tied up in the affairs of the world;Avoid worthless, foolish talk;Run - flee - from youthful lusts and desires;Pursue righteous living;Pursue faithfulness;Pursue love;Pursue peace;Be kind to everyone;Be patient with difficult people - not just those on the "other side" but within my family and in the office and in the traffic lanes and check-out lines around to me...

PRAYER:

Father God - I am so easily distracted and outraged at things that keep me in the world when I should be for the world where You have placed me... Forgive my selfishness about being right instead of pursuing Your righteousness... Thank You for Your Holy Spirit, given by Your Son Jesus, to lead me and give me the strength and power to overcome my own drives and passions and to take hold of Your Son's obedience and willingness to follow You plans for Your, and His, glory - In His Name... In His Name... His Name...

=====xiv=====

BENEDICTION:

From verse 1:

...be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus...

Yours in Him...

<))><

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Pelosi leads a surprise delegation to Jordan for ‘vital discussions’ on Syria crisis ( Being the true leader and public servant that Nancy Pelosi is, trying to solve disasters that Trump has created and while overseas her older brother has died😢. His obituary is below and Speaker Pelosi’s statement below.)

By Steve Hendrix | Published October 20 at 1:15 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 20, 2019 |

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a surprise congressional visit to Jordan over the weekend, highlighting her sharp disagreement with President Trump over policy in a Middle East roiled by Trump’s abrupt removal of U.S. troops from northern Syria and Turkey’s subsequent attacks on Kurdish enclaves.

“With the deepening crisis in Syria after Turkey’s incursion, our delegation has engaged in vital discussions about the impact to regional stability, increased flow of refugees, and the dangerous opening that has been provided to ISIS, Iran and Russia,” Pelosi said after meeting with King Abdullah II and senior Jordanian officials Saturday night.

Neither country released details of the talks before the delegation departed for the United States on Sunday morning. The trip came as a hastily brokered five-day cease-fire in Syria was struggling to take hold entering its third day.

[Trump’s withdrawal from Syria prompts rare public criticism from current, former military officials]

Pelosi had earlier called the cease-fire deal “a sham” that gave a pass to Turkey’s offensive at the expense of the Kurds, a key ally in the recent fight against the Islamic State in Syria. Coverage of Pelosi’s “middle of the night” meetings in the Jordanian press focused largely on concerns that Turkey’s assault will result in the release of thousands of Islamic State fighters, many of them from Jordan, from Syrian prisons.

“This visit comes at a crucial time of threats to stability in the region and the control of Isis,” said the daily paper Al Ghad.

Pelosi has been harshly critical of Trump’s move in Syria, which was greeted with dismay by governments throughout the region. Israeli security experts called it a “betrayal” of the Kurds, and many saw Pelosi’s sudden appearance in Amman as a globe-hopping slap at the president.

“I don’t think it matters what they talked about, what matters is that she came here to draw a line under his abandonment of the Kurds and the outrage it has caused,” said a former Israeli general, who asked not to be named because of his ties to the military.

Congressional visits, especially to conflict zones, are often kept secret for security reasons. The trips by congressional delegations, known in Washington as codels, have been known to create political waves.

Pelosi has made other international stops that underscored her differences with Trump, including a visit to the Irish border to decry possible damage to the country from Brexit, which the president has supported enthusiastically. In January, during the government shutdown, Trump revoked the speaker’s access to a military plane just as her delegation was preparing to depart for Afghanistan.

In Jordan, the state-run Petra news said Abdullah thanked the speaker for making the trip and for Congress’s long-standing support of his country. He “urged a political solution that safeguards Syria’s territorial integrity and the unity of its people, while guaranteeing the safe and voluntary return of refugees.”

Trump has faced a rare bipartisan backlash for his Syria move, and one Republican lawmaker, Mac Thornberry, traveled with Pelosi to Jordan. Thornberry (Tex.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, announced in September that he would retire at the end of his term.

The other members of the nine-person delegation included Rep. Susan A. Davis (D-Calif.), a member of the Armed Services Committee; Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.); and Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the head of the Intelligence Committee who is leading the impeachment inquiry against the president.

Congress is expected to vote on proposed sanctions against Turkey in coming days.

*********

"My brother Tommy was the finest public servant I have ever known. All his life, Tommy worked on the side of the angels. Now, he is with them." Speaker Nancy Pelosi @SpeakerPelosi

Pelosi Statement on the Passing of Thomas D’Alesandro III

OCTOBER 20, 2019

PRESS RELEASE

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement on the passing of her brother, former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro III:

“My husband Paul and our entire family are devastated by the loss of our patriarch, my beloved brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III.

“Tommy was the finest public servant I have ever known. His life and leadership were a tribute to the Catholic values with which we were raised: faith, family, patriotism. He profoundly believed, as did our parents, that public service was a noble calling and that we all had a responsibility to help others.

“Tommy dedicated his life to our city. A champion of civil rights, he worked tirelessly for all who called Baltimore home. Tommy was a leader of dignity, compassion and extraordinary courage, whose presence radiated hope upon our city during times of struggle and conflict.

“All his life, Tommy worked on the side of the angels. Now, he is with them. With his commitment to his family and public service, his life has truly blessed America.

“All who were blessed to know and to love Tommy mourn with his wife Margaret, his children Thomas, Dominic, Nicholas, Patricia and Gregory, and his grandchildren whom he adored, and are praying for them at this sad time.”

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Thomas D’Alesandro III, Maryland political prince who gave up the throne, dies at 90

By Bart Barnes | Published October 20, 2019 2:40 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 20, 2019 |

Thomas J. D’Alesandro III, the scion of a Maryland political dynasty who led Baltimore as mayor during the 1968 riots after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., left politics and decades later saw his sister, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pick up the family mantle, died Oct. 20 at his home in Baltimore. He was 90.

The cause was complications from a stroke, according to a spokesman in Pelosi’s office. In a statement, the speaker called her brother “the finest public servant I have ever known.”

Known as “Young Tommy,” Mr. D’Alesandro was the oldest son of Thomas J. “Big Tommy” D’Alesandro Jr., who had been one of Maryland’s dominant civic leaders in the mid-20th century as a state delegate, congressman and, from 1947 to 1959, the mayor of Baltimore. Pelosi, Mr. D’Alesandro’s youngest sibling and only sister, grew up to become a California congresswoman and twice the nation’s most powerful female elected official.

When Mr. D’Alesandro took the oath of office as Baltimore mayor on Dec. 5, 1967, it seemed like the fulfillment of a political prophecy that he might take over the Democratic fiefdom that his father had stitched together over three decades.

Mr. D’Alesandro’s four years as mayor began at a wrenching time for U.S. cities with large African American populations. Violent civil unrest had unfolded from the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles to Newark. Baltimore, Mr. D’Alesandro later reflected to NPR, was “a segregated city . . . a Southern city,” but he held out hope that its long-established black middle and professional class would help his metropolis avoid upheaval.

He had been in office only four months when King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968, triggered rioting in more than 100 cities. During that brief period, Mr. D’Alesandro had appointed African Americans to several city commissions and boards where none had previously served, and he took stands in favor of civil rights and integration that led to him getting booed at “I Am an American Day” parades.

He had a track record of personal commitment “to equality and civil rights,” said Matthew Crenson, a Johns Hopkins University scholar of Maryland politics.

In the early days after the assassination, Baltimore remained quiet while Washington, Chicago and other cities erupted in violence. “I was starting to feel it was too calm,” he told the Baltimore Sun years later, recalling the preparations that he began making for potential unrest, including meeting with police and local African American leaders.

But then, on April 6, late in the afternoon of a warm spring Saturday, someone tossed a brick through a plate-glass store window in a black neighborhood. Within hours, the city was engulfed in rioting, burning and looting.

It took all of Baltimore’s police force, 500 Maryland State Police officers, thousands of members of the Maryland National Guard and 5,000 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to restore order.

The riots left six dead and 700 injured. There were 1,032 fires, 4,500 arrests and 1,075 businesses looted; many of the stores never reopened.

After the riots, Mr. D’Alesandro presided over the enactment of a Baltimore civil rights bill guaranteeing access to public accommodations, won approval of an $80 million bond issue to build schools and created summer recreation programs that included mobile swimming pools and day camps for city youths.

Baltimore also suffered from loss of manufacturing jobs, labor strife and white flight, but, for years, observers speculated that the riots were principally responsible for driving Mr. D’Alesandro out of politics, an interpretation that he rejected. He told the Sun decades later that, while in office, he continued to map out his political trajectory, including a possible run for governor, before deciding against it.

He cited financial concerns among the chief reasons that kept him from seeking another term in 1971. He had five children to support, he said, and couldn’t do it on the mayor’s salary. “I was clearing only $695 every two weeks,” he told the Sun in 1998. “I couldn’t make ends meet.

Mr. D’Alesandro began to hint in the final year of his mayoralty that he would serve only one term. The decision still came as a shock when he made it official. “My father was devastated,” he told the Sun. “He thought I was crazy.”

He went into legal practice in Baltimore, away from the public spotlight, specializing in workers’ compensation and personal injury cases. He retired in 1994.

Thomas Ludwig John D’Alesandro III was born in Baltimore on July 24, 1929, and grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood near the city’s Inner Harbor. His mother, the former Annunciata “Nancy” Lombardi, was born in Naples, grew up in Baltimore and became a devoted political wife, helping organize her husband’s campaigns and representing him when he was unavailable to constituents.

In 1952, when Mr. D’Alesandro married Margaret “Margie” Piracci at the Baltimore Basilica, the Sun called it “Baltimore’s equivalent of a royal wedding,” and more than 5,000 people were present. The city fire department had to turn some away.

Big Tommy was his son’s best man. The pope sent his blessing, and President Harry S. Truman sent a silver tray. Little sister Nancy was a bridesmaid.

In addition to his wife and his sister, survivors include five children; a brother; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Mr. D’Alesandro graduated from Baltimore’s Loyola College in 1949 and from the University of Maryland law school in 1952. He served four years in the Army, won a seat on the city Board of Elections Supervisors and then, in 1962, on the City Council, where he served the next year as president. In his 1967 race for mayor, he crushed the opposition — lawyer and future Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos — in the Democratic primary. Mr. D’Alesandro easily won the general election in November. He was 38.

In addition to financial pressures, the social imperatives of politics weighed on him, Mr. D’Alesandro told the Sun.

“I never liked the social aspect of politics. I loved government. My father loved it all. He loved the people. He loved everything about it. Not me,” he said.

“My father would go into a funeral establishment,” he said, “visit the party of the deceased he had known. Then he’d visit every other alcove in the funeral home. He’d turn his visit into a political rally. I’d go into a funeral home, pay my respects to the one person I knew there, sign the book and leave. Nobody would know I was there.”

Mr. D’Alesandro toyed with the idea of running for governor, mostly because the job came with a bigger salary, but other Democrats stood in his way. Maryland House Speaker Marvin Mandel had been elevated in 1969 to finished the term of Gov. Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned to become Richard M. Nixon’s vice president. Kennedy in-law R. Sargent Shriver, a Maryland native, former Peace Corps director and U.S. ambassador to France, was also exploring a run.

“Mandel had the advantage of incumbency,” Mr. D’Alesandro recalled to the Sun in 1998. “He had a political base in Baltimore. Shriver had all that Kennedy money.” Mandel went on to serve as the state’s chief executive for much of the 1970s.

Mr. D’Alesandro became an occasional adviser to his sister, 11 years his junior, who carried the family’s political ambitions to a national level. Often asked to comment on the environment that shaped her, he spoke with admiration about her decision to start a political career in San Francisco, across the country from her home city. And he offered a bit of personal insight about her drive toward public service. “It’s not a choice,” he once told the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s just innate in her.”

*********

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clusterassets · 6 years

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New world news from Time: Meet 4 Crusaders Who Are Keeping the Dream of Democracy Alive

Around the world today, one in three people lives under an authoritarian regime, while many others are experiencing a decline in their democratic freedoms. But the slide towards autocracy has pushed millions to stand up and demand a say in how their lives are governed.

TIME spoke with four people who have fought to defend democracy in their countries, about what inspired them and what it takes:

Armenia: Nikol Pashinyan

Opposition politician who led the protests that toppled Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan in April and shortly after became the nation’s leader

It was love for my people that forced me to get out of my comfortable office as head of a parliamentary faction and spend about 20 nights in the woods, the streets, in a tent, in protest at the government led by Serzh Sargsyan. I had no personal motivations. All I wanted was to win freedom and happiness for my homeland and people. I said that if citizens took to the streets in the hundreds of thousands and power did not change, I would no longer engage in political activities. From the very first day, we kept saying we would not resort to violence against anyone, even if we were met with brutality. From the podium, I said we would be guided by a biblical verse: if someone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. We knew we would never retreat.

In the end, the people triumphed, and I will honor my commitment to ensure that the people’s victory stands. I am convinced that we will move forward in building democracy, fighting corruption, establishing an independent judiciary and rule of law, and protecting human rights and economic competition. For us, democracy is not a component of regional interests or foreign-policy orientation but a reflection of values and convictions. I believe Armenia will be one of the world’s strongest democracies.

Togo: Farida Nabourema

Blogger, activist and founder of the Faure Must Go movement, which opposes President Faure Gnassingbé

My interest in activism began in 2003, when I was 13 years old and my father was arrested at the headquarters of his party. When he was released from prison, I started joining him at political rallies and reading about all the atrocities that were committed under the dictatorship.

The same family has led Togo for 51 years. The first President ruled for 38 years, and after he died in 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbé was appointed. At least 400 people were killed in the unrest. That was the moment I said, “No matter what happens, you have to fight.” I started writing and attending rallies. In 2011, I founded a movement called Faure Must Go. For us, the end of the dictatorship is the only way. Right from the beginning, our goal has been to remove that government from power. We promote nonviolent actions—civil disobedience, boycotts, defiance—and believe we can weaken the government with them.

The first step in building a democracy is for citizens to have a very strong awareness of their oppression. In Togo, it took time, but finally people want change. Since August, there have been huge protests in multiple cities at the same time. Right now, they are banned in many cities, and hundreds of people have been arrested. We have never seen this kind of commitment before. I am convinced that the dictatorship will fall sooner than expected. People have shown they are willing to do whatever it takes for change.

Tunisia: Ouided Bouchamaoui

Received the Nobel Peace Prize for her role in nurturing democracy in Tunisia after the Arab Spring

In 2013, two prominent opposition leaders were assassinated in Tunisia. At the time, I was the leader of the employers’ organization, and we saw that Tunisians were frustrated. We were afraid that we would lose our revolution, our democracy, our independence. We had to do something.

We were one of four civil-society groups that stepped in, offering to facilitate talks between the coalition government and all the parties. Those talks ended with a new constitution agreed on by everyone. We became known as the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, and in 2015 we won the Nobel Peace Prize for our work.

Our decision to start the quartet was taken without thinking about the risks. For us, it was the only way to avoid civil war, and society rallied behind us. The government didn’t accept that people from civil society could be involved in political decision-making in Tunisia. But at that time, Tunisians didn’t trust politicians. When we intervened, as organizations with long histories, the people were with us.

Now Tunisia is a model showing that in Arab and Muslim countries, we can have democracy too and that women can have all their rights.

Nicaragua: Enrieth Martínez

A leader of the protest movement dedicated to the ouster of President Daniel Ortega, who is accused of creating a repressive dictatorship

Even as a student, I have seen the repression of many small protests against President Daniel Ortega and the government he has led since 2007. When the police used violence to crush a peaceful protest against cuts to social welfare on April 18, all that discontent just exploded. Students around the country barricaded themselves in their universities, and people have set up roadblocks to stop the police. This started as a peaceful protest, and we want to keep it that way. But they’re killing us constantly. At least 250 people have died. We’re up against this whole repressive machine—not only the state and its institutions, but also the brutal paramilitary gangs that the government controls.

I’m on the committee negotiating with the government, and it’s painful to know that, while you’re sitting at the table, your comrades are dying elsewhere in the country. When I read the news at the end of the day, it can make our achievements feel really small.

But we know the civic route is the best chance we have for restoring democracy. The government has allowed the entry of international bodies like the U.N., and accepted recommendations on stopping police repression and dismantling gangs.

They haven’t followed through, and we don’t know if they will. But we all feel very sure of what we want—and certainty can give you stability, even in the middle of a crisis.

July 12, 2018 at 05:19PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com

#Time #world #news #ClusterAssets #ClusterAsset #Cluster Asset Inc.#ClusterAssets Inc.

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conservativefreepress · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Conservative Free Press

New Post has been published on http://www.conservativefreepress.com/trump-administration/media-trots-mostly-peaceful-protests-lie/

Media Trots Out "Mostly Peaceful Protests" Lie Once Again

God help us with this media.

Apparently, with Donald Trump back in campaign form inside the civic center in Phoenix on Tuesday, the media was inspired to return to their campaign form. And part of what made their coverage of the 2016 election so intolerable was the way they incessantly covered for the violent leftists who protested at each and every Trump campaign stop. The phrase “mostly peaceful protests” achieved almost meme-like status for its sheer absurdity. The game, of course, was to tell viewers the BIG LIE: The majority of Trump protesters are loving, patriotic Americans…with just a sprinkle of unhinged lunacy thrown in for seasoning.

This was, of course, a warmed-over lie from the heyday of Black Lives Matter, but we won’t go there just now.

In any case, the media trotted that BIG LIE out again this week when covering the protests outside the Trump rally in Phoenix. Oh, look at all of these law-abiding, freedom-cherishing protesters, they told us as police rained tear gas and rubber bullets down on the rioters. And while we’ll admit that it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch, there were at least a hundred bad apples in this particular bunch. At some point, you’re not exactly describing the apples, you’re describing the bushel.

Kudos to ABC’s Cecilia Vega, who struck just the right tone when discussing the wild scene the next day on Good Morning America.

“It really feels like a matter of time, frankly, before someone gets hurt,” Vega reported.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push();

Indeed.

Oh, what’s that? Vega wasn’t talking about the lunatic leftists?

Of course not. This was her talking about Trump’s “incitement” of the crowd inside the arena. His words of clear, obvious truth about the lying media. THAT’S the problem, according to ABC News. Not the lying media, but the president’s CALLING OUT of the lying media. How very convenient.

Over on MSNBC, in addition to ignoring the violence outside the arena, Slate columnist Michelle Goldberg actually went as far as to accuse President Trump of wanting a violent outbreak.

“I mean, one of the truly sick things about this rally – and I think it’s one of the more morally shocking things that Trump has done – is he’s basically going there in the hopes of starting a riot, right?” Goldberg said on Wednesday night. “He’s basically going there in the hopes of sowing civil unrest because he spoke exactly a week ago he got himself in trouble by talking about, ‘Well, what about the violent left? What about the violent left?'”

THIS woman has the gall to talk about morals? To talk about “truly sick things?” Imagine having a mind so entangled with leftist hatred that THIS is how you see things? And then imagine being an MSNBC producer who decides that THIS is the kind of rhetoric they want on the airwaves.

Inside the rally, Trump said of the media: “They don’t want to make our country great again.”

Truer words were never spoken.

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pcinvasion-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on PC Invasion

New Post has been published on https://www.pcinvasion.com/stellaris-utopia-dlc-review

Stellaris Utopia DLC Review

DLC for Paradox-developed titles has traditionally been based around a particular region or theme. If you wanted to set up in India in Crusader Kings 2, you’d buy Rajas of India. Europa Universalis IV players who wanted more depth to trading could pick up Wealth of Nations. Utopia, the first major expansion for Stellaris, follows the thematic route (‘idealised’ forms of space empire; whether from the perspective of enlightened psychics, or purge-happy space fascists), but in a looser manner than its predecessors.

That’s partly because the ahistorical sci-fi subject matter lends itself better to abstract themes of power than specific regional histories, and partly because Paradox are still bolstering some of the weaknesses lingering from the game’s May 2016 launch.

Every piece of DLC for Paradox’s main developed titles is released alongside a free (usually substantial) update which adds features to the base game too. Where Utopia is concerned, the studio has tried to strike a balance between including unique, enjoyable features in the DLC, without withholding other key mechanics from the main game.

Ship colours now correspond to those of your empire, which is handy (and that’s a freebie).

Two of the features which I think will do most to revitalise Stellaris are actually free ones coming with the 1.5 ‘Banks’ update. The addition of proper political factions and ‘Traditions’ (more on those later) provide that familiar Paradox feeling of having to wrestle with your own internal problems as much as external threats; something the game had definitely been missing.

Several of the paid Utopia features are extensions of a free Banks feature, and even those which aren’t can be difficult to talk about in complete isolation. I’ll do my best to keep it clear which things are exclusive to the expansion, and what parts will be in all versions of Stellaris after 6 April.

The DLC features can be divided broadly into three categories: greater depth to species customisation and roles (which in part overlaps with the free stuff), expanded mid-to-end game species evolution options, and the building of Megastructures (both separate and unique to Utopia).

Everybody, for example, will get access to ‘Civics’. These are additional perks and quirks you add to your created race to make them feel a little more specialised. Things like Cutthroat Politics (+1 influence) or Mining Guilds (10% Minerals boost), and some of which (Imperial Cult) can only be picked with certain ethical pre-requisites. But only owners of Utopia have access to the unique Hive Mind government type and its special civics, or to ‘Fanatical Purifiers’; available only to those who really love genocide, and despise diplomacy.

As part of Utopia, you can now also Indoctrinate the hell out of pre-spacefaring race.

The difficulty presented to a reviewer by a DLC which is focused quite heavily on divergent and distinct species customisation is that running a full game with every new option is pretty much impossible. I settled for covering as many angles as I could by creating a race of deeply spiritual (for potential psychic powers) and overtly authoritarian (because slavery has been expanded to include distinct types in Utopia) bird people, who would beeline for the chance to build the new Megastructures and/or pierce the veil of reality. Preferably while cawing in triumph and preening themselves in a ritualistic manner.

Species customisation adds more flavour to what was already a pretty superb early game experience, but what Stellaris tended to lack was a compelling mid-to-late-game period. Unless you were poking at the edges to make your own entertainment (which usually just meant starting a war with somebody), that central era could often stagnate. Political factions and the Traditions mechanic (again, free features) help to mitigate this issue, giving you potential internal strife to deal with and further mid-term goals to achieve, respectively.

My spiritualist, authoritarian bird race ultimately liberated their ‘domestic servants’ (the polite way to frame slavery) and ended the associated caste system. I did this partly for role-playing reasons (a new imperial ruler had taken the throne, and I decided he’d be a reformer) and partly for practical ones (full citizens made better, happier workers and my economy was shifting). Immediately, the two existing political factions, a set of authoritarian traditionalists and some ultra-spiritual devotees of the imperial religion, were joined by a third, left-leaning, group desiring even greater policy reforms.

Looks like the Hierarchical Union are heading the way of the Whigs.

Throughout the next few decades, any policy or edict decisions I made had to be weighed against pleasing or irritating one or more of these factions. Juggling those choices, along with the impact it might have on the productivity of my colonies (which in turn made me delve into the murky world of government propaganda, and covert support for a favoured party), kept that period of time vibrant and captivating.

Traditions, meanwhile, are a reflection of your galactic priorities. Funded by a new Unity resource, which has its own buildings you need to plan around, Traditions are divided into seven categories with headings like Expansion, Diplomacy, or Domination. Each category has five associated aspects to unlock with Unity points, tied to buffs and benefits (the Expansion set, for example, make it easier and swifter to colonise new planets). Though not as immediately compelling as the faction system, Traditions and their attendant resource are another aspect of internal management around which to strategise.

With Utopia, they gain another layer of relevance. For every Tradition category you ‘complete’ in the DLC, your species gains an Ascension Perk. Some are powerful benefits like being able to clear almost any tile blocker on a colony world (bypassing a lot of research time). Others are intriguing and unique evolutionary goals for your species, like unlocking latent psychic abilities (very helpful for admirals who get a sizeable evasion bonus, or governors, who get a bonus to quelling unrest) or embracing a synthetic singularity.

Forget battleships, we’re going to Zen our way to supremacy.

My birdman psychic race eventually became so powerful that they were able to peer into the cosmic realm itself. That in turn enabled a little espionage-based revenge on a Fallen Empire who had previously beaten my fleets into submission and killed a former ruler. Gazing for too long into this Shroud, however, seems as if it may attract the unwelcome attention of unknown entities.

When they’re not turning your Stellaris species into mighty telepaths, Ascension perks are also used to unlock the secrets of Megastructures. Like a lot of this DLC they have both practical and flavourful elements. I wasn’t able to experiment with every different type, but the Habitats (which can be constructed a great cost around most planetary bodies) proved to be a terrific way of sticking another readily-colonisable ‘planet’ in a nearby orbit. What you lose in Habitat mineral investment costs, you probably can make up from other resources. Their solar plants can generate great amounts of energy, and the science labs give three of each science resource across the board.

Ringworlds (for which, sadly, I didn’t reach the necessary requirements) are such feats of engineering that they require an Ascension perk all of their own. Again though, as well as a sense of pride in your species’ achievement, the structures reward your investment. When complete, Ringworlds provide the equivalent space of a whopping four maximum size habitable planets.

My beautiful Birdman Sanctuary Habitat, ready to prosper.

The division of mechanics between the free Banks 1.5 patch and Utopia itself feels pretty much correct. Banks is doing the heavy lifting on features vital for a more dynamic Stellaris mid-game (radically reworked factions, Traditions), and adding quality of life tweaks like ship colours which match those of your species. That leaves Utopia to delve into areas of more optional luxury; specialised role-play options like Hive Minds under the new government system, new late game event chains linked to Ascension perks, and vast engineering projects to expand or consolidate your empire in ambitious ways.

At $20 it’s not exactly cheap, so to get full value you’re going to have to be interested in a significant majority of the DLC-specific additions. I had a fine time with everything I saw in Utopia, but it’s difficult to claim anything included in the paid expansion is as essential as the new (free) faction mechanics. That’s as it should be, really; and if you’re keen to mercilessly dominate the galaxy, enslaving all before you as consumable livestock, before uploading your species minds to synthetic bodies, then this expansion has all the tools you need.

#Stellaris Utopia

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