#i cannot even find an alternate word for the r word... its *that* bad...

[hotpocket-fucker]

Man, people who:

-Hate Harry Potter but suck J.K's cock for her stupid tweets

-AND those who love HP but squirm at J.K's shitass opinions

Are both so goddamn retarded and spineless my god I cannot even BEGIN...

#i cannot even find an alternate word for the r word... its *that* bad... #and if you ask me... i hate both equally :) #so much so i wish hp series was written during the time the library of alexandria was burning :) #anti harry potter #admin bs #read another book

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[chuuya-centric]

down CATACLYSMICALLY 🤕

character: chuuya nakahara

genre: fluff, smut

warnings: gn afab reader, no pronouns used, alcohol mentions / use ? unorganized as FUCK — read at your own risk 🚶 these r also much longer than i originally intended 🤒🤕 they get kinda bad at the end bc im lazy asf and just wanted to be done with these im sorry yall LMAOO

↬he he i he he i i hhnhshgghfgg

↬lord please god passionate+romantic sex with this man is all i ask you for please ill never ask for anything ever again 🙏🙏🙏

↬now i would like to start this with a disclaimer by saying chuuya is usually vv rough and passionate and would manhandle your ass 😁🤞 however these hcs will be like 🧍 slow ................. and passionate ??? not gentle per se but just romantic amd uhm very much "love making" if u will 💯

↬sensual ?? i think ????

↬hhndhsgh ik we're all horny and just wanna be used like a ragdoll but please hear me out yall

↬emotional and passionate sex !!!!!!!!! this usually happens whenever chuuya gets drunk (bc i think he is a v emotional drunk, and if he's w his s/o i think he gets vv sentimental / touchy-feely

↬ofc if you say no or reject his advances he wont do anything other than cling to ur side but if u dont do anything to stop him you will 100% be in his bed by the end of the night 🔥🔥

↬starts out as him havin a lil too much to drink nothin new yk and then he gets more touchy / physically clingy than usual 🧎

↬a lil off topic but he would absolutely fight anyone who tried to flirt w you / anyone who looked at u the wrong way LMAOOO not saying u have to babysit him but 🧑‍🦯🧑‍🦯 taking him back home would be the smart thing to do as to avoid bar fights

↬but back on track i think chuuya would refuse to leave your side 💀 he would be all over u so unless ur into like hardcore pda u fr better take him home 💀💀

↬he's a horny menace 😕👎

↬okay so blah blah blah yall r back home now what ? now he rlly starts getting emotional 🚶 he's just so grateful to have u in his life and he loves you so much and what if he's not good enough for you ???? how could u love someone like him ?????? what if— please just shut him up with a tender kiss 🤒☹️ tell him u love him very much

↬he............hhbbgdgshhhh i was talking to @chuuyasbf ab this but dhshsbhhhhhh we came to the conclusion that he'd like smother u in kisses oh my fucking god 💔🙏 like he'd just cover your mf face in kisses and i— bursts into tears

↬now by this point this is where he'll start communicating his feelings thru actions rather than words so please expect a very heated makeout session (that leads up to the best sex of ur life 😏)

↬"he just goes “oops, missed a spot *kiss* oops, theres another one *kiss*" - @chuuyasbf and i honestly could not agree more please 🧎🧎 hhnbbhghghh

↬but back to the makeout session it started after u shut him up w that kiss yk and u were both just sitting on the couch, originally basking in the others presence, before the words just started flowing so ofc u gave him a lil kiss n told him he was enough and that u loved him so so much and he pulled you back for another n another til u were sitting on his lap w his tongue in ur mouth

↬and things progressed n progressed n next thing yk he's got you intoxicated (his kisses r life changing ok 🤨🕶️🤏 even if he were sober it'd just be hjndhdghgggh) but like yall know when ur grinding against them n they buck their hips up a lil ? yeah <33

↬HE'S SO HANDSY OMFG ESP IF YOURE SITTING IN HIS LAP 🙏🙏🙏 after he's pulled you as close to him as humanly possible (im talkin chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip — he is a very intimate person and greatly enjoys physical touch argue w the wall ab it) his hands go from finding purchase on ur hips and guiding your movements to pulling at ur hair to feeling u up to running his fingers up n down ur back to helping you take your shirt off. he cannot for the life of him keep his hands to himself

↬in reality he'd shift you onto his thigh before making ur neck his next target for his kisses (and hickies)

↬when you start whining for more and saying his kisses aren't enough, thats when he'll sober up enough to be snapped back to reality n to carry you to his room 🧎 or so you thought 😚

↬confused, u didn't get the hint until he bounced his leg, once, twice, oh— and even after you'd understood what he wanted you to do, he'd grab ur hips and completey take control of the pace n grind u against his thigh almost agonizingly slow, all while leaving some awfuy dark hickies on ur lower neck n a handful on ur collarbones

↬ofc theres some muttered praise and "i love yous" as well. he'll tell you how good you look, getting off on his thigh like this

↬he'll take u back to his room only after you've cum against his thigh 🧎🧎 consider it a warm up LMFAOO

↬when he finally does get up from the couch, he'll probably use his ability to help stablize yall a little 💀 (he had a lil too much to drink pls dont clown him)

↬whereas he'd normally toss u onto the bed, this time he took his time to set u down gently before settling down in between ur thighs and— hey wait a damn minute when did this mf find the time to get your pants off huh—

↬aye speaking of which i think chuuya is rlly big on eye contact regardless bc its honestly just vv intimate to him 🧐🚶

↬yall know when they like ............. when theyre like caressing / holding your thigh n looking up at u n they kiss ur inner thigh while maintaining eye contact or whatever ...................... <33

↬i think his praise kink especially shines thru when he gets drunk bc he will take his mf time covering you in kisses and hickies all while showering u in praise n telling u how beautiful u r and ab how much he loves you

↬he knows his words usually tend to be / sound harsh, but at the end of the day he loves you sm more than words will ever be able to convey :((

↬def tries to make up for that (when he's drunk 🙄 emotionally inarticulate ass 🚶) by showering you in praise and doing his best to be tender and gentle

↬and to be fair he'd be content w smothering u in praise and kisses for the rest of the night n probably would if u let him 🧎🧎 please snap this mf back to reality by yanking his hair n whining for more

↬in which case he will be happy to oblige 😚 he's def the type of person to get off on his partners pleasure so that being said this mf will make sure u cum on his tongue at least twice before properly fucking you

↬whenever hes drunk he tends set a rather slow pace but dont let that fool you 🧎 the entire thing is so fucking intimate oh my lord you will be seeing stars by the time he's done w you

↬his thrusts r much deeper n more precise than usual and he puts one of ur legs on his shoulder and has the other pressed up by ur head it really just enhances everything yk ?? 😁���� (mating press kinda ??????? not exactly but)

↬he ends up alternating between leaving (more) hickies on ur neck n shoulders and actually kissing you as well (your lips r gon be bruised asf by the end of it all sorry 🔥💯)

↬even drunk he loves to overstimulate you omfg 🤤 loves seeing you get all teary-eyed from the pleasure (even better if u actually cry 😏🕶️🤏) bc to him it shows that he's done a good job

↬aftercare w drunk chuuya is a lil sloppy tbh 😕 probably immiediately passes tf still inside u after pressing like a final kiss to ur forehead LMFAOOO

↬but dw he makes it up to u in the morning !!!!! after taking care of his hangover first tho 💀 once he's feeling better himself, he'll def offer to draw u a bath and, lets pretend he has the day off here, after that all he rlly wants to do is cuddle for the rest of the morning

↬do not bring up how clingy he was last night LMFAOOO his face will get so red so fast (unless ofc thats ur goal in which case go right on ahead 😚😚😚)

↬please do, however, kiss his forehead and tell him that u love him n that he did a good job last night

#bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bsd #bsd x reader #nakahara chuuya #chuuya nakahara #chuuya x reader #chuuya nakahara x reader #city.journalist #nero.after.dark #cotton.candy.clouds #gn.afab.reader #gn.reader

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 03/04/2021 (Lil Nas X’s “MONTERO”, Mimi Webb, Russ Millions & Tion Wayne)

So, we have a #1 debut, and that’s pretty much the only story here in the UK Top 75 as we get a filler week before Demi Lovato, Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Tjay run in and cause havoc. As for now, “Wellerman” is replaced at the top by Lil Nas X’s controversial “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)”, spending its first week at #1 after making pretty sudden gains assisted by the video and alternate versions – the mid-week projection had this at #15. Elsewhere, we just see the fall-out from Bieber. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

It’s a quiet week – only seven new entries, and none from Rod Wave, 24kGoldn or AJR as I had predicted. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some stuff to talk about within the chart, or particularly off of the chart, as we have a fair few drop-outs switching their places with returning entries. In particular, we have Justin Bieber’s “As I Am” featuring Khalid being swapped out for “Anyone” at #25, as well as drop-outs for “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence – slightly premature, I’d think – and all of Lana Del Rey’s songs from last week. We also “Anxious” by AJ Tracey, “Heat” by Paul Woodford and Amber Mark and “Toxic” by Digga D exit the chart, but the only real notable loss was “34+35” by Ariana Grande ending its 21-week run on the chart. Returning to the Top 75 in its place – which I cover – we have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers of course at #73, as well as “Midnight Sky” by Miley Cyrus at #72, “You’ve Done Enough” by Gorgon City and DRAMA at #70 (really hope this one becomes a hit) and “Don’t You Worry About Me” by Bad Boy Chiller Crew at #66. In terms of climbers and fallers, we do have some notable gains and losses. For songs travelling down the chart, we have “Patience” by KSI featuring YUNGBLUD and Polo G tanking a sharp drop in its third week to #18, “Streets” by Doja Cat shaking off the video gains at #22, “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo continuing to collapse at #27, another sharp drop for HVME’s remix of Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps” down to #34 probably due to ACR, which was probably the fate for “Get Out My Head” by Shane Codd at #46. The same probably can’t be said for Drake’s losses, as “What’s Next” is at #40, “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross is at #41 and “Wants and Needs” featuring Lil Baby stalls at #55. We also see falls for “Money Talks” by Fredo and Dave at #50, “Bringing it Back” by Digga D and AJ Tracey at #51, “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix on its way out at #57, “Headshot” by Lil Tjay featuring Polo G and Fivio Foreign down to #61 off the debut (although it’ll rebound thanks to the album as soon as the next week rolls around), “Ready” by Fredo featuring Summer Walker at #62, “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu featuring Drake at #63 and “Day in the Life” by Central Cee at #69. Where it gets interesting are our gains, such as outside the top 40 with “What Other People Say” by Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer which could very well get even higher next week thanks to the album. We also have “Track Star” by Mooski at #53 off of the debut and a couple of tracks entering the top 40 for the first time, those being “Heartbreak Anniversary” by Giveon at #39 and Majestic’s remix of “Rasputin” by Boney M. at #38. Elsewhere in the top 40, we have “Let’s Go Home Together” by Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan at #13 and two songs marking their first week in the top 10, those being “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #10, a song continuing to sour on me, and “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S, an EDM song at #8 that I initially mocked for its soulless repackaging but has honestly got me pretty hooked since. I’m excited to see how this one does. For now, however, let’s get on with our new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#64 – “Cloud 9” – Beach Bunny

Produced by Joe Reinhart

Beach Bunny is a power pop band who last year released their album Honeymoon on Mom+Pop and it’s basically a modern r/indieheads staple in that it’s an accessible, airy pop-rock record fronted by a woman. It’s not anything unique, really, or different if you look further into it but that’s fine because there’s a lot of vaguely “indie” or music snob releases pushed out every year that miss the charts entirely. It’s a different story, however, when a year later, it gets viral on TikTok and streams its way onto the chart. In that case, we have “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny, a pretty simple but sweet love song about a guy who just makes her feel a lot better about herself in times where she can’t pick herself up from the rut she’s in. Again, it’s a simple track but enhanced by the wonderful and unique vocal performance from front-woman Lili Trifilo and some pretty great production making sure no guitar lick is missed in this mix, especially in that chorus which is such an ethereal blend of the electric guitar dubs. I would argue that this actually should end at that second chorus even if it ends feeling abrupt as the transition to the final chorus feels a lot less cathartic than it does awkward, especially if the bridge is going to be a simplistic, quirky instrumental meander that doesn’t go far enough to be a guitar solo and hence feels kind of like a worthless addition. As is, this is a pretty great song still, just not the most fully realised once it loses that initial tight surf groove, though I’ll let it pass if we’re going to get rock this good on the charts again. I know this won’t really get more traction for Beach Bunny – or power pop for that matter – but more of this, please.

#52 – “You All Over Me” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) (Remix) (feat. DaBaby) (Part 2) (Radio Edit) – Taylor Swift featuring Maren Morris

Produced by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner

Sadly, this does not feature DaBaby and is not the remix, radio edit or sequel to any previously released song. Jokes aside, I guess brackets are the next big comeback for pop music, which goes hand-in-hands with remixes and re-releases, hence why Taylor Swift is dusting off this leaked Fearless-era cut for a new recording with country singer Maren Morris, who you probably know from her contributions to Zedd’s “The Middle”. Now whilst Swift is a great songwriter, I do often find myself frustrated by how she treads common ground all too frequently without establishing much different with how a song is structured or how it emotionally connects. This is true not just lyrically but especially sonically as of recent, as despite being written in 2008, it has too much in common with the less interesting cuts off of folklore for me to really care that much. That’s especially if Taylor’s going to undercut the clean acoustic guitars with flourishes of harmonica and crow sound effects, showing some genuine intrigue here before refusing to let any of that develop past a couple stray melodies or notes further back in the mix. I’m trying really hard to be compelled by these re-recordings and re-releases of her back catalogue as I do consider myself a fan, but it’s tough to pay attention when any new compositions we get sound like folklore leftovers with Maren Morris only put to use as decoration, much like HAIM on “no body, no crime” – and we already got an album full of folklore leftovers. I’m not a fan of this, sorry – I can see the appeal, and I do think this has enough of a country tinge to it to make it at least somewhat interesting – but this goes in one ear and immediately out of the other.

#48 – “Tonight” – Ghost Killer Track featuring OBOY and D-Block Europe

Produced by Ghost Killer Track and Kenzy

Screw the formalities and screw the analysis because D-Block Europe are back to add another D-Block to their EU collection – and since they’re Londoners, their only – and that’s Paris, and contrary to the British nature, we’ve let French rap chart in the top 50 out of the fact that they collaborated with two of the most comical rappers in British history. They’ve also linked up with producer Ghost Killer Track, also from France, as this is ostensibly his song even if he intends not to prove himself with this dull piano-based beat and oddly-mastered bass and percussion, which are really just DBE staples. Unfortunately, past the initial comedy of that first line in the chorus, neither Young Adz or Dirtbike LB deliver any stupid lyrics or funny inflections, instead just resorting to being as boring as they can in their constant flexing as possible. I guess the French guy here, OBOY, commands a higher energy in his verse if only through his comical “no, no, no” ad-libs, but he’s the only French speaker in an otherwise basic British trap song that I just cannot see the appeal in when we’ve had song after song from these guys for three years now. This won’t be the last we see of cookie-cutter UK rap this week though so brace yourselves for that.

#47 – “Last Time” – Becky Hill

Produced by LOSTBOY

It’s almost as if the charts are trying to send me off to sleep as here we have Becky Hill, a singer hedging the line between a non-presence and mildly annoying, which is arguably more frustrating than downright infuriating as her slightly smokier voice does not sound bad, just lacking in texture in every way, especially if the multi-tracking is going to be this minimal on a royalty-free deep-house beat produced by Getty Images with a pretty worthless drop, a generic and simple melody of piano stabs for major chords, and a whole bunch of reverb on the vocal take... but it still ends up feeling dry as there’s nothing here to quench that thirst for a tighter, bass-heavy house banger or even a more ethereal, dreamy trance track, deciding to stick to a healthy medium of boring and utter garbage. Yes, that was a singular sentence. I’m not awake enough to form a cohesive sentence less than 40 words long, and this new Becky Hill track is just worsening that if anything. Speaking of...

#21 – “Body” – Russ Millions and Tion Wayne

Produced by Gotcha Bxtch

Who’s Russ Millions? He’s Russ. No, not that Russ. British Russ – or Russ Splash, stylised as Russ splash on Spotify and nowhere else. This confusingly-named fellow appeared on the charts a couple times and possibly most famously with “Keisha & Becky”, a song also featuring Tion Wayne that is referenced on this very track. Sigh, I usually like Tion Wayne but even he can’t be bothered to delivery his usual brand of suave charm or sinister menace, instead opting for a more growling but ultimately completely monotone cadence that doesn’t flatter him or Russ, who one of my friends described as sounding like one of the aliens from Toy Story. This is a pretty by-the-numbers drill beat too, and it’s pretty safe to say that neither Russ or Tion Wayne here are going to bother with wordplay, even when they start pretty smoothly trading bars and Tion Wayne goes for a more unique chopper flow in the second verse. This is just not of any note. Once again, speaking of...

#17 – “Good Without” – Mimi Webb                        

Produced by Freedo

I assumed Mimi Webb debuted this high because of a talent show she won or something because I’d never heard her name but instead, she just happened to have a major label deal before her unreleased song just happened to go viral on TikTok and just happened to be supported by one of the women who just happened to be the biggest creator on the platform. Yeah, and this song just happened to be garbage, suffering from every possible millennial pop trope and then some, from the mix dressed rather too overtly in reverb, the ugly guitar pluck, a generic indie-girl voice that you swear you’ve heard before in one of those dreadful piano covers of popular songs they use in adverts, as well as this ballad being undercut by badly-programmed trap percussion. I can tell this label is trying to create somewhat of an Olivia Rodrigo phenomenon from this and I for one am terrified of the Poundland knock-offs to come. Screw this.

#1 – “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” – Lil Nas X

Produced by Roy Lenzo, Omar Fedi and Take a Daytrip

At least Lil Nas X will bring some passion into this chart week? Well, not really, as when I hear this I recall that Pitchfork review of his EP, a much-maligned critique that featured the ever-so pretentious questioning if Lil Nas X really enjoyed making and listening to music. It reminds me because I think I now fully get it – at least when Lil Nas X was making slap-dash pop rock with Travis Barker or meme-worthy country rap with Billy Ray Cyrus for less than two minutes apiece, there was something invigorating in the execution or at least in concept. That 7 EP is still not a bad debut at all, but this new single “MONTERO”, a long-anticipated record that went from constantly-teased demo to Super Bowl commercial to Satanic-panicked videos of Lil Nas giving Satan a lap-dance to own the conservatives, has the same remote dreariness to it as “HOLIDAY” did late last year. The acoustic, Latin-flavoured guitar loop reminds me of his much better track “Rodeo” from that aforementioned EP that used its energy for similarly lighthearted subject matter but with some genuine energy, a Cardi B feature and a lot less subtle moombahton creeping in. With that said, I can’t say Lil Nas X didn’t try, as his vocal performance, whilst largely insufferable and strained, gives some energy to an otherwise aggravatingly stunted beat, and makes it a lot more infectious than it has any right to be. Content-wise, the song is essentially about a full circle where Lil Nas X becomes increasingly desperate for a man who starts off lonely and in a bad place, and the irony is that Lil Nas gets more explicitly sexual and crazed due to a combination of the LA life-style surrounding him and the fact that he’s simply, for lack of a better term, “down bad”, despite the fact that this guy doesn’t seem particularly desirable. Lil Nas knows this, though, and acknowledges it in the pre-chorus where he outright says that this guy is living the cocaine-addled celebrity life, but not living it right without Mr. Bullriding and Boobies in his life. I’m happy about the video and the outrage it seems to cause not just within conservative spaces but also amongst the hip-hop community, particularly Joyner Lucas, and I’m pretty happy with how out and proud Lil Nas X is about his sexuality, even if it leads to lines like “Shoot a child in your mouth while I’m ridin’”. I’m just really not a fan of this song past its content, which could really be interesting but falls flat with this plucking production that wastes time in barely two minutes with humming interludes. It’s not bad at all, just not for me.

Conclusion

And that concludes our week, and wow, what a bad week this was for new arrivals. Admittedly, it’s a filler week so only “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name)” will probably last – or at least we can hope as even if I don’t like the song, I still have to give out an Honourable Mention to someone, and it may as well be Lil Nas X trying to put the effort in. Best of the Week easily goes to Beach Bunny for “Cloud 9”, far and away the only good song here, with Worst of the Week also going out pretty easily to Mimi Webb’s “Good Without”, which is the type of soulless, unmemorable garbage that makes pop music look uninspired, and as a person who writes about the charts constantly, it’s a misconception I don’t want proven or revisited. Dishonourable Mention is a toss-up but I guess I’ll give it to Russ Millions and Tion Wayne for that sprinkle of drill disappointment that is “Body”, and that’ll be it for this week. I predict some impact from Demi Lovato, Lil Tjay and especially Olivia Rodrigo next week, but for now, here’s our top 10:

Thank you for reading – sorry for the grouchiness on this one – and I’ll see you next week!

[met-4n0i4]

I want to preface this by saying, yes, I do know that this all happened a very long time ago, but everything about these bands we love happened a long time ago. I also don’t want to be pinning things directly on a certain person because I don’t to come off as an asshole because I am not an asshole I just hate some things and I am going to address them here. One last thing: I am not writing this for people to comment on it and reblog it to start drama with me or another person. Again, this all happened a long time ago. I am merely expressing opinions here and, as a very important person in my life has said, I should feel comfortable to post my opinions on my own blog without fear of people absolutely dragging me for it. 

Sort of a warning here, there will be explicit language and I will have screenshots of racial and homophobic slurs and I will be putting a warning before those screenshots appear. 

Okay, to begin, I will come forth saying I do not like Guns N Roses as a band mainly because their music isn’t necessarily my cup of tea. I am not here to judge people on their music taste because that’s fucked up. While the only reason I don’t like the band is their music, the people in the band are a different story. 

No I am not talking about Slash or Duff or fucking Izzy or anyone like that. I am talking about Axl. Now, I know what you may be thinking: “Axl is sensitive, yeah, we know this.” Well, that isn’t all. There are some very fucked up shit that is going on with that dude and, like I said, I’m not trying to pin anything on one certain person because there are about four-hundred sides to every single story and those sides are all told by different people at different stand-points on one situation, but honestly, something does need to be said. 

First and foremost, why not go ahead and get some of the borderline-racist things out of the way. 

We can start off a little small, what with some song lyrics. 

I think this is the only song, but go take a quick listen to One In A Million on their acoustic record. Sounds a little normal until you get to the second part of the first verse.

Now, let me say again that I know this was the late 80s but the fact that he had been questioned on this before and just played it off is what pisses me off. 

In an interview in 1989 with Rolling Stone, he had this to say: 

“I used words like police and n*****s because you’re not allowed to use the word ‘n****r.’ Why can black people go up to each other and say...but when a white guy does it, all of a sudden it’s a big putdown?” He went on to explain that he doesn’t like boundaries of ‘any kind’ and he doesn’t like being told what he can and cannot say. “I used the word...because its a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word...doesn’t necessarily mean black.” I don’t know about any of you guys reading this, but I have never heard of anyone refer to a person in their life who is causing disturbances and being a problem as that racial slur. And even then, why is he, a white, straight male out here trying to explain the meaning of a slur that derived from slave times used against slaves. White people aren’t allowed to say it because it wasn’t our word to suffer through, fuckface. He then said something about a song by John Lennon with the word in the title about women, using that as an example that it doesn’t mean black. “There’s a rap group, N.W.A.-N*****s With Attitude. I mean, they’re proud of that word. More power to them. Guns n’ Roses ain’t bad...N.W.A. is baaaad!” Axl then goes on to state that Mr. Goldthwait left the lyrics on the record to sell albums because it would cause controversy. Way to go. Blame someone else for the lyrics YOU wrote. 

Not only did all that occur, but when Guns n’ Roses and Living Colour were supporting The Rolling Stones, Vernon Reid commented on the song during their set and Axl heard it, suggesting that they play the song just to make Living Colour angry. 

In 1992 he went on to comment on the lyrics again, claiming that he was trying to do it for a select group of ‘black people’ who had tried to rob him. 

The thing is, you can’t say a racial slur about an entire race of people for a select few people, otherwise it looks and sounds like you are commenting on the whole race. Not too cool. I don’t believe that claim for a second. 

And that isn’t all the shitty things in that song!

This is said later in the song and holy shit. 

First of all, the word ‘faggot’ is the same to us in the LGBTQ+ community as racial slurs are to people of color. 

He spoke on this topic, saying he was “pro-heterosexual’ and that he isn’t ‘against them doing what they want to do as long as its not hurting anybody else and they’re not forcing it upon me.’ He then recounted a time when a man let him sleep on a hotel room floor then tried to rape Axl. I am not going to sit here and say that that didn’t happen because, as a survivor, I know how it feels to be silenced or to have people not believe you but first of all, what the fuck does pro-heterosexual mean? Second of all, I think we can all agree that he has hurt a lot more people with his word choices in the song. And lastly, I know some people can be pushy but how do you think women feel when confronted by a very persistent man. Coming from someone who has stated that you find it ‘very hard’ to be in a committed, one-on-one relationship if the other person wont let you ‘be with other people’ you should understand just how some women feel about men. And then using Freddie Mercury and Elton John, his supposed ‘idols’ as the only reason he isn’t blatantly homophobic doesn’t really help matters.

But on to the more important part of that verse, the immigrant part. 

How dare you say that immigrants and refugees coming to the land of fucking hypocrites is almost a negative thing. I mean, he says it as if they just waltz right over here without any trouble at all and fucking sit on their asses and do nothing. Then saying that they try to start a ‘mini-Iran’ (more than likely a punch in the form of islamophobia) and spread diseases is just fucking stupid. Not all immigrants are from the middle east. He is an immigrant. I am an immigrant. Anyone who is not native in America is an immigrant and a lot of the immigrants of today including him, rag on the immigrants coming over now. That is your heritage, dude. 

Then just talking about their languages. Like, what the fuck? English isn’t universal you vile swine. 

Ugh, okay now the finale to this whole song bullshit. 

Here. Racists? I am not blatantly trying to call him racist, that isn’t my intention, but I don’t think using the words he has used in this song makes him a particularly good candidate to call out said racists. And then feeling the need to say that he is white? We know. You’re skin is literally fluorescent (mine is too I am just bullying him at this point), there is no need to remind us. 

ANYWAY, I think we can move on from One In A Million with the knowledge that that song is fucking stupid and while there is a fake news clipping on the cover of the album with the header being the name of the song stating that it is a straight to the point song and he apologizes to anyone who takes offense, that just isn’t enough because it is practically hiding in the rest of the newspaper clippings covering the album.

Moving on to just overall band shit, what happened to Steven when he attempted suicide and needed help with addiction? He got kicked. Like I said, I am NOT going to be biased in this so I am going to also bring up the Dave Mustaine and Metallica mishap. While Dave didn’t try to commit, he was struggling with an addiction and some violence problems and they just said ‘fuck you, man, you’re done.’ Let me say again that I know this was back in the day and things like that weren’t as widely accepted as they are now but man, Steven and Dave needed their brothers and they said nah and kicked them out of their little family.

Not only did Guns do that to Steven, but ask Izzy Stradlin why he left. He was sick of Axl being a fucking dick and the band taking percentages of his royalties. Not only that, but he never got proper credit for his admittedly banging music. 

Izzy is a wonderful musician and it was a shame that he wasted that on a band who didn’t respect just how good he was. 

Axl has also called Duff 'spineless’ before when slamming Velvet Revolver, also calling Scott Weiland a ‘fraud.’ 

But that is just isolated incidents within his band. 

Why not move on to other bands. 

Let’s start with Nirvana.

Kurt said it best in 1991 in my opinion, talking about how Nirvana actually had shit to say, commenting on the rebellion they wanted to incorporate in their music. He said “Rebellion is standing up to people like Guns n’ Roses.” 

True. Very very true. 

Then in 1992, Axl tried every way in the world to get Nirvana to tour with Guns, obviously either not listening or not caring when Kurt shit on their music as not having anything to say. 

This was for the tour they had with Metallica and trust me, we will get into Metallica in a little bit. 

But Dave Grohll recalled one time that Kurt was complaining about this, saying that Axl wouldn’t stop calling him. 

Then later in 1992, Axl had a meltdown on stage after having enough of Kurt’s comments and his band’s style, giving into the rumors that Frances Bean had been born with birth defects, stating just what ‘alternative’ meant to him.

“...the only thing that means to me is someone like Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, who is basically just a fuckin’ junkie with a junkie wife. And if the baby’s born deformed, I think they both oughta go to prison — that’s my feeling.” I just don’t understand how you PUBLICLY say things like that about someone. 

In September of 1992, at the VMAs, Axl was walking backstage with his girlfriend and when they passed Courtney and Kurt who were holding Frances, Courtney mocked him, asking if he wanted to be the godfather to their daughter. 

Axl apparently hated that, shouting a quick “You shut your bitch up, or I’m taking you down to the pavement!” to which Kurt mockingly sent a “Shut up, bitch!” over to Courtney. 

This resulted in Duff and Krist going for each other.

The last words were said by Kurt, though, stating that Axl was “a fucking sexist and a racist and a homophobe, and you can’t be on his side and be on our side. I’m sorry that I have to divide this up like this, but it’s something you can’t ignore. And besides they can’t write good music.”

Wrapping that up, Axl never even thought to reach out after Kurt’s death to apologize or send condolences either, even after Duff apologized to Krist and Matt Sorum called Dave to send his condolences. 

Moving onto Metallica, it is a shitstorm. Again, I will not be biased on this just because I love Metallica because they did some fucked up shit too and that will not go unnoticed. 

I mean, for starters, I think it would be fair to begin this with the Montreal show in ‘92. 

What happened during the Metallica set was tragic at best, but what happened after was fucking stupid. Quitting a whole show after barely starting it because your voice was feeling subpar. Not only did the fans have to deal with their Metallica set being cut short, they also had to deal with Guns throwing a hissy fit over Axl’s throat and the sound system not being good enough so they just left, leaving the arena in a mess without them even caring. 

During Metallica’s video recording A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica, James totally shit on Axl for his list of crazy commands on tour. 

I will say, even if it was in a joking manner, he should have known that you can’t be that picky over something Axl Rose is doing. He will never forget it. 

After that was released and Axl saw that James was saying things like how Axl had to have his steak cubed so it could “fit down his skinny neck” and making fun of the way he sings, Axl went on to call James a racist for not wanting Ice T and his band Bodycount on the tour which, I think Axl has said his fair share of racist shit and why would anyone mix genres on a tour like that? 

But it has been said that James did say some not so kosher things relative to the situation and while I wish I could back him up, I refuse to on this topic and there are no excuses for that type of behavior. 

James later went on to jab back at the ‘band’ stating it wasn’t necessarily that, but rather ‘a guy and some other guys.’

But, I have made myself tired with the merciless research and my fingers have gone numb from typing on this keyboard for so long. If you guys make it to the end of this, I really appreciate you . Again, I didn't do this ti start drama I merely wanted to get my opinion out. Thank you for reading. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_in_a_Million_(Guns_N%27_Roses_song)

https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/18-reasons-why-axl-rose-is-the-biggest-douchebag-in-rock-772295    

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/jun/29/guns-n-roses-drummer-steven-adler-hospitalized-aft/#:~:text=Former%20Guns%20N'%20Roses%20band,in%20a%20suspected%20suicide%20attempt.&text=He%20was%20kicked%20out%20of,suicide%20during%20his%20darkest%20hours.

https://www.iheart.com/content/2018-05-29-izzy-stradlin-finally-addresses-absence-from-guns-n-roses-reunion/#:~:text=Adler%20performed%20portions%20of%20the,cut%20his%20percentage%20of%20royalties.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/guns-n-roses-vs-nirvana-a-beef-history-166180/

#metallica #guns n roses #axl rose #slash #duff mckagan #izzy stradlin #steven adler #james hetfield #kirk hammett #lars ulrich #jason newsted

[interesting-blog-name]

FKA twigs MEGAREVIEW (LP1/M3LL155X/MAGDALENE

FKA twigs is a British R&B and art pop singer who came up as a backup dancer for various artists’ music videos, and decided to start her music career, releasing her first official EP, EP1, in 2012. I am not familiar with anything she’s done except for her feature in A$AP Rocky’s Fukk Sleep, so I don’t know what to expect, even though I’ve heard good things. I’ll be listening to her two studio albums and an EP she released between the two, chronologically.

 LP1

I love it.

Although twigs isn’t fond of being categorized as an R&B artist, specifically alternative R&B, as she has stated in an interview with The Guardian, there really isn’t much else to be used to describe her music, and the term is pretty convenient to embody most of the sounds in LP1, so I’ll most likely be using it. The album is a mixture of strong, dark electronic production and twigs’ beautiful falsetto singing, taking form as either the sexually charged, euphoric vocals you hear in the chorus of Two Weeks, or the hymnic elements her voice has in Closer and the intro Preface. These two key elements constantly clash and form something way more impactful than what they’d be individually, and give the whole LP a soothing and simultaneously dark and dizzying atmosphere.

The highpoints in the album are when the two combine into grand moments such as the ending of Lights On, where the production amounts into a huge chunk of pure bliss, sounding like there are tens of different sounds all in sync with one another, or the processed, multi-layered chorus in the next track, Two Weeks. Another great quality to the production style in the album is that it gets to be adventurous when it wants, how it wants, whether by pulling back completely and minimalizing its role to let FKA twigs’ voice shine on Hours, or on my favorite track Pendulum, where the whole song is built around this unstable knocking and simple yet effective manipulated keyboards, completely fading out at times leaving the high-pitched vocals to themselves.

The lyrical themes are all built around love and passion, with varying levels of aggression to romanticism (Lights On, Two Weeks vs. Hours, Give Up) or regret, such as in Numbers, which showcases how far into the electronic side the production can go, with erratic drums and beeping at the start, progressing into some gorgeous synths under some of twigs’ most heartfelt singing in the project. The exception is Video Girl, the most personal track here, where she sings about her time as a backup dancer and the struggles that came with her intent on achieving fame. The lyrics hit hard and it serves as a really nice intimate moment in the album.

For the tracks I don’t like as much I have the two closers: Kicks and One Time, the latter being only available in the deluxe version, which is not on streaming platforms. Kicks, from what I could tell, is all about being enough for yourself, specifically sexually. Without the grand ambitious production from the rest of the album, this outro is left with okay vocals and an odd theme that doesn’t go anywhere, backed by some slightly annoying production decisions, and a nice chorus which is definitely the best part of the song. One Time, on the other hand, is just really bland compared to the craziness of the rest of the album, as it is the most stagnant and uneventful of the tracks.

The sound of LP1 is definitely intriguing, and I consider it a nice introduction to an artist I have high expectations for.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Pendulum, Video Girl, Two Days, Lights On

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Kicks

  8.25/10

“You’re younger than I am broken. I dance feelings like they’re spoken, so my conversation’s not enough.”

 M3LL155X

Read as “Mellissa”, this EP was released in August of 2015, and features 18 minutes of music spanned into 5 tracks, and I love to say there’s not one track here I don’t like

What surprised me about M3LL155X is how “explosive” twigs seems to be compared to LP1, where most of her tracks were sung in a comfortable, soothing falsetto tone, in here she isn’t afraid to let her voice carry out a lot more, which brings some much appreciated strong emotions and power to the songs here, great examples being her fast delivery on the hook of In Time, and her enchanting finish to Mothercreep.

The EP starts with Figure 8, which places the listener dead center in the chaotic instrumentals the project has to offer, with a banging bass right at the beginning. The track slowly progresses from its slightly angelic cadence into the weird, choppy vocal effects in the latter half, giving the track a nice finish. What I find a little underwhelming are the lyrics, sometimes they come off slightly meaningless, at least at first glance, but I feel they could have been used better, maybe to convey meaning other than love and relationships, which is done in the last two tracks, but not in such an effective way in my opinion, specifically on Mothercreep, a track supposed to be a mature hindsight to twigs’ mom’s decisions to her daughter’s life, which doesn’t come off as super personal in a way it could have. Like I said, however, the ending to this song is gorgeous, and I love how the song waits to bring in that climax, it really ends the EP on a huge high note.

To me the best the EP has to offer is In Time and Glass & Patron, the first being this infectious, addictive, ever-evolving fat banger, I just cannot get enough of it at all; and the latter being the weirdest, most electronic-influenced song here (I mention the umbrella electronic genre very carefully because I know fuck-all about it), with the oddest but most interesting progression here. That isn’t to undermine twigs’ vocals, as they are as good as ever, I just wish in tracks like this and I’m Your Doll, where she reaches some great vocal inflections, she’d make more use of them, but to me they feel like the vocals are somewhat teasing themselves to the listener, when they could’ve been used to a much greater extent.

I love this EP, I love its aggressiveness and how it surprised me, but I know, even as good as it is, that all the potential here could have been used a bit better.

 RANKED TRACKS: In Time, Glass & Patron, Mothercreep, Figure 8, I’m Your Doll

 8.15/10

“Paper cut it, I feel the slightest rip is a river that’s overflowing me”

 MAGDALENE

Bruh.

I don’t even know what to say honestly, I’m completely blown away. This is heaven.

From the start, I thought this album was gonna be alright, but immediately after home with you I knew this shit was something else. This is by far her most cohesive, beautiful, emotional, greatest album overall. I seriously don’t even know what to say, I’m writing this immediately after my second listen, and I love almost every aspect of it.

I guess I’ll start by the things I liked the least, which were probably the tracks sad day and holy terrain, even though these tracks are at least great. The melodies in sad day are so unique and entrancing, really the only thing I didn’t like as much was the production, which felt like it could have gone a bit further. For holy terrain, I have mixed feelings towards it. While a part of me feels like it was a little weird, a bigger part is amazed at how well these two worlds merged with each other to form a track as beautiful as this; again, it doesn’t stand out as much as some others, and I think twigs sounds a bit like Ariana Grande at the beginning of the hook, but fuck me some moments in this song are insane.

I was a little indifferent towards thousand eyes at first, but I’ve come to appreciate a slow, ascending intro to this mindfuck of an album, and the track right after that, home with you, is pretty much perfect, I have nothing bad to say about it. I love the alternating between processed and raw vocals, and it just ends so beautifully, it’s seriously otherworldly.

“Otherworldly” is actually a great word to describe almost anything here. mary magdalene is a gorgeous look into the ethereal feminine theme this album is solidified over, and sounds like something you’d hear as you ascended into heaven after dying; fallen alien is aggressive like something out of M3LL155X, but even more polished and fits perfect into the context of the album, and after it starts a nearly flawless outro of three tracks: mirrored heart, daybed and cellophane. This is pure emotion, I cannot describe what I felt while listening to these three. The first is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, or at least that’s what I feel right now. I have to be extremely careful not to listen to this too much, so it doesn’t lose its magic on me.

daybed is much simpler instrumentally, with an ambient undertone to the track that just really fits my personal tastes. The lyrics in this track are raw feels, in fact the lyrics in MAGDALENE in general sound much more mature and fleshed out, and I absolutely love it, it’s heartbreak, bittersweet beauty in every direction, all connected by this weird theme of something greater than humanity; if twigs’ intent was to make herself look extraterrestrial with her art, but at the same time undeniably human, then I think she succeeds, because, to me, it feels like she is the music, it feels like she pulls these songs straight from her soul, and that’s why it’s so alien, because it is incredibly human.

For the closer, cellophane absolutely wrecks your heart with a gorgeous piano ballad, and I’m very happy I never heard this song, considering it is the lead single to the album, because it just added so much emotion to the outro of one of the best albums I’ve heard. I seriously cannot get enough of it, and I think I’ll go sleep for a while now just to clear my mind a little bit. I’m sorry if these three “reviews” haven’t gone super in depth with the albums, but I feel like if I talk about them any longer they’ll lose some of their beauty to me, plus I’m not doing this to be perfectly objective, just to share my super biased, super inexperienced thoughts on what I listen to. So I guess just listen to them. They’re awesome. Peace.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: home with you, mirrored heart, cellophane, daybed, mary magdalene

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: none

 9.45/10

“Aching is my laughter, busy is my pastime, telling is my silence, blurring my horizon, smothered is my distance, careful are my footsteps, possessive is my daybed.”

#fka twigs #r&b #art pop #pop #album #album review #review #electronic #this is ecstasy #magdalene #lp1 #m3ll155x #EP Review #EP

[just-some-random-blogger]

One Million In One Day | 4

GOT7 SugarDaddy!Jackson Wang x Reader | Part 1 2 3 4 5 ? Characters: Jackson Wang, Park Jinyoung, Im Jaebum, etc. Summary: His mother’s final wish is to see him be happy in a relationship, knowing that Jackson would be fine when she left him. But, damn, he didn’t have time for relationships, especially not since he was busy running his father’s billion dollar empire, thus the compromise: you.

Word Count: 1k+ Warnings: Dumbness, drinking, mentions of infidelity, annoying-ness, etc.

Preview | Alternate Moodboard

A/N: once again i did this on the app so if its barf on your pc i am so sorry ALSO TYPOS AMSJSJSJS

Pabo ❤: ya. U wanna watch smthing w me+mark

Pabo ❤: yayayayayaya wake up its only 7

Pabo ❤: ysaaaaaaaaaaaa

Pabo ❤: r u rly asleep or are u busy? U w Nari???

Pabo ❤: YA

Pabo ❤: R U GOING TO JB'S PARTY

Pabo ❤: YA NARI TOLD ME U WERE GOING

Pabo ❤: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DONT FKING DO THIS

Pabo ❤: YOU HABE NTOING TO PRPVE

Pabo ❤: YAAAAA

Pabo ❤: YAAAAAAAAAAAA PICK UP!!!!

You have 10 missed calls from Pabo ❤

My heart dropped as I rummaged through this tiny, tiny purse that was just an accessory basically. After moments of looking and looking, and coming across with nothing, it was decided. I groaned in utter annoyance and almost ripped my scalp off if it wasn't for the fact I spent hours curling my hair to perfection.

I caNNOT BELIEVE I left my phone at home.

I whine and stomped my feet lightly, not wanting to disturb the driver of the taxi I was in. He didn't deserve that.

I huffed and crossed my arms. Oh well.

This was it, and at least I had my keys and wallet with me. Nothing was going to ruin this.

I wonder if Nari was already there.

I paid the driver once I got to my destination and went my way, inside the exclusive party. I turned to tell the bouncer my name but oddly enough, he spared me no look and simply moved aside and let me in. I... huh, thoughtful?

I blinked rapidly as I walked in the place.

Wait... do you know what that means?

It means I, me, ME, I have an effect on people. But why? It's neve-- wait, is it because-- because of this dress.

My heart pounded in my chest as I stalked down the hallway, making it into the dim, loud, smoky, dizzying place that made my stomach churn and my hands sweat.

Where is Nari?

I chewed the inside of my lower lip and watched where I was going. I went to the sides, avoiding the crowd at all costs, hearing a few heys and some how are you beautiful on the side, making me want to gag though my lips haven't even touched alcohol yet.

Suddenly, a very distinct shriek pierced my ears and I looked up to find the source. And there Nari was with a big grin, waving her hands at me as if I was some sort of celebrity.

"Oh my gosh!" she gasped, shimmying through the crowd. "You bought really did buy the dress!"

I chuckled nervously and nodded. I can't tell her about Jackson.

"Yeah. I... I thought it was about time, y'know, in this long time coming."

"Damn straight, jagiya!" she eeked in approval. "Oh when Jaebum sees you, he's gonna--" she cut herself off and then slapped my arm. I whined at the random action.

"What the h--"

"Jinyoung has been calling me for hours! Why haven't you answered his calls?! Is it because he doesn't want you to go to your ex's party."

My brows quirked, "Jinyoung's been calling me?"

Nari scoffed, and seemed that sh was about to attack me, but then she realized something. "Don't tell me, you forgot your phone again, didn't you?"

I rolled my eyes, "No shit Sherlock! Text Jinyoung and tell him I'm fine, ho."

She rolled her eyes, "You do it!"

"Nari! Just tell him this: she's with me, and is fine."

My best friend gave a prolonged groan and pulled her phone out. "Get me a drink then, ho. Reception is bad by the bar for some reason."

I chuckled and nodded, "Fine. Wait for me here then. I'm not particularly fond of hanging around the bar."

Nari nodded. I moved past her and went through the sea of people, gritting my teeth whenever sweat skin made contact with mine. I shuddered at the revolting atmosphere around me that gave me nothing but revolting sensations. Once I was spat out of the crowd that shoved itself against me, I huffed in both relief and frustration, gripping my glittering dress and strutting to the bar. The bartender gave a smile and nodded, immediately asking, "What can I get you?

I pursed my lips, "The sweetest cocktail you have, please."

"I'll make it sweeter for you." the bartender winks, making my eyebrows raise and my head to pull back. I brushed my sweaty nape and chuckled as the man behind the bar got to preparing my drink.

I laughed quietly by myself as I looked around the place.

JB really knows where the hottest places are at. He'll be a great businessman.

"Hey."

I looked over my shoulder, to where the voice came and looked at the man with widening eyes. His hair grew longer since the last time we met, but it still suited him, because, well, he was him.

"It must be your first time here," he spoke while his pointer and middle finger flattened my hair. It was a habit of his. He took a sip of the drink he had in hand then continued, "And the world must be good to me because it's my birthday."

I looked at him, astonished, in pure and utter disbelief, and chuckled loudly, "Don't you know who I am?"

The man seemed to take the questioning statement as a challenge. He leaned him, smelling his cologne and subtly of alcohol. "I could... know you real good."

I my mind went spinning and I just had to turn away.

"Don't you have a girlfriend?" I snipped, whipping my head back to him.

His face remained playful, but I saw how slightly his eyes dropped. "No," he replied the same way he did the first time I asked him a similar question.

"No?" I scoffed out a chuckle, "Are you sure? Isn't her name Jisoo or something."

It was then he visibly showed tension.

I felt tears well in my eyes but I blinked them away. I turned away and rubbed my nape, digging my fingers into roots of my hair. "I can't believe you're drunk already. Has your tolerance went down since last year?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What?" I repeated as I looked at him, "Do you really not remember me, Bum-ie oppa?"

Just then the bartender came back with my order and I took it without hesitation. The man before me was struck by lightning or realization. I took a sip of the drink in my hand and then clicked it against his, "Happy birthday, cheater. Good to know you want back what you've broken."

I turned away from him and swayed my hips away from the imbecile. Apparently though, he wasn't embarrassed enough by our encounter and called my name, pulling me by my arm. I looked at him over my shoulder and he dared to push my hair back behind my ear. He spoke my name again and so I reciprocated.

"Jaebum." I spoke with venom.

"Wh-wait. Ya... You look amazing."

I scoffed and roughly pulled my arm out of his grip, "I've always looked amazing, you bastard." I turned around and downed the drink in one go as I walked back into the sea of people.

"Ya! Where's my drink?" Nari asked as I gave her the empty glass. I saw a bunch of frat boys drinking soju and so I pushed my best friend aside and went to them.

"Hey, boys. Can I have some soju?"

They all turned to me and nodded profusely. I then took their bottle and drank it all the way back to Nari. She looked bewildered, mortified at me and my actions. "YA! WHAT THE HELL?"

"Jaebum-ah."

Nari pulled her head back, "Ya! I'm not your cheating ex-" "I saw him." I spoke, out of breath and hot blooded.

"You did?" Nari spoke in surprise and concern.

"Yeah and he thought I was someone else and hit on me!"

"HE HIT ON YOU! WAAHHH WHAT A DOG--" "I'm so pretty he hit on me!"

Nari held back her laughter as I took her hand, "Ya... I need you to take thousands of hot pictures on me okay. I have to show someone."

She chuckled but pulled her phone out, nevertheless. "If that someone is Jaebum, count me in."

"NOOOOO!" I scoffed, "it's Jackson!"

Nari stilled, "who's Jackson?"

"He's my sugar daddy! Ya, don't you know I'm so pretty he asked me to go out on a date with him and pay me a million for it."

The woman threw her head back in laughter.

"YA! I'M NOT LYING!"

"Okay, jagiya. I believe you." Nari breathed out, "Waaah, I can't believe you're already that drunk."

Nari took my pictures and filmed me while I danced and drank, and danced, and drank, and drank again, and again, and I think I seduced Jaebum or something, because the same Nari was pulling me away for something.

I don't know what.

"Here," I was handed to someone like a package.

"She drank a one-fourth bottle of soju, two cocktails and a bunch of half finished drinks from strangers."

I looked at the man I was leaned up against and caressed his cheek, "You're pretty."

He looked down on me with raised eyebrows, "and you smell horrible."

"Ya, Jinyoung-ah, the correct response is to say you're prettier."

He rolled his eyes and grabbed my wrists, spinning around and carrying me behind his back. I grunt and hit my nose of his head, causing both of us to grunt.

Nari whined, "Just let her die, honestly."

"You read my mind." the man I was propped on growled.

"URSA MAJOR IS JUST A HOAX! I'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE."

"You can't tell the constellations apart for the life you," Jinyoung noted, adjusting his drip on me.

"You can still dump her body in a dumpster, Jinyoung." Nari offered.

He sighed, "Nah, she's not worth potentially getting caught and sent to jail for."

Jinyoung started walking off and Nari waved goodbye before heading back in. The bouncer however did not let her enter, which made her shout at him in annoyance.

"Yaaaa, stoooop! I still have to take pictures for Jackson!"

"Who's he?"

"He's the one who bought me the dress."

"Ah, you're sugar daddy? Nari sent you your photos for him." Jinyoung spoke as he put me into the front seat of some car.

"How do you know? Did you steal my phone?"

Jinyoung went into the front seat and opened the engine. He chuckled and drove his car back, "She called me, and told me."

"Why would she tell you?"

"Because I called her, knowing you."

"Knowing me?"

Jinyoung drove forward and glance at me quickly, "Knowing how you get around Jaebum."

"Ew! Don't talk about him!"

Jinyoung chuckled softly.

"Nari didn't call you to pick me up though."

"What?"

"She was too busy taking pictures of me. You came here to kidnap me." I spoke, crossing my arms.

Jinyoung pursed his lips as I continued, "I won't give you my heart."

There was silence. The driver gripped the steering wheel. "You can't sell any of my organs to the black market."

Jinyoung gave a breath. His eyes crinkled. "Ya... no one would want any of your organs. You're too unhealthy. Mine on the other hand, would cost billions." The man struck a pose and I hissed between my teeth.

"Who is Jackson though?" a long minute of silence was broken by that sentence. I huffed at the question asked by the person beside me, "I told you, he's my sugar daddy. He's gonna make me rich."

Jinyoung pursed his lips, "Are you seeing him?"

"I'm seeing you, pabo."

There was nothing but silence at this point. "Sure, let's see each other then." Jinyoung spoke after a while, deciding for himself.

I shrugged, "Sure."

#jackson wang #jackson #got7 #jackson wang fanfic #jackson wang x reader #jackson fanfic #park jinyoung #park jinyoung x reader #park jinyoung fanfic #got7 x reader #got7 fanfic #im jaebum x reader #im jaebum fanfic #jaebum x reader #jaebum fanfic #jinyoung fanfic #jackson au #sugar daddy!jackson

[mingxinyu]

Week 2: Being Connected, Social Networks & the rise of Social Media (January 21)

The teacher discussed the Social Network Site (SNS)in class. Many SNS have emerged since 1997. With the popularity of social media and the Internet, people's lifestyle has been changed.

But rather than discuss the rapid development of social media and the convenience brought by social networks to all aspects of society, I would like to discuss the problem of Internet addiction.

There is growing evidence that social media addiction is an enduring problem among students. (Van Rhyne, Chinyamurindi and Cilliers, 2019)

The mechanisms of addiction are similar. When people talk about addiction, they immediately think of all kinds of drugs. But beneath the surface, internet-related addictions are far better known and plague many. Is associated with social media addiction, because I think in my own experience, remember it was in 2004, I was still in elementary school access to China's first social software QQ, its form is similar to Twitter, but it has a characteristic, very easy to let users become addicted, is as the landing time increase the account will have to upgrade mechanism, and your friends will see your level increase, so the heart, I often use after school time to go to Internet cafes landing QQ is to increase the series, I later academic performance worse and worse, I just realized that social networking software occupied too much of my study time, and the increasing amount of information I received from the Internet world made me unable to concentrate on my study.

Our desire for social connectivity makes us addicted. Any activity that brings pleasure can be addictive. We are familiar with addiction to shopping, Internet porn, gaming, social networking, smoking, drinking, and gambling, to name a few.

Therefore, it is not necessary to specifically pick out the problem of network social addiction, which can be viewed from the perspective of people's behavior choice.

Addiction is a form of psychological dependence. So why do some people become dependent while others are immune?

Let's think about it in terms of economics. For example, in a small town, there is only one clothing store. People have to accept the clothes even if the price is high and the appearance is monotonous because there is no choice. Once more stores are opened, people can go to other stores to buy cheaper clothes. With alternatives, people have a choice and are less dependent on the store.

Similarly, an activity that meets our needs is pleasurable (positive emotion). If someone has few interests and is not good at socializing, activities like online games can be a major source of pleasure. For anyone who has too few ways to get positive emotions, the activity becomes too important to let go, like a life-saving straw. That's why so few people can kick bad habits.

Dependence is not necessarily an addiction. Another factor is taking shortcuts.

People's approach behavior is largely mediated by dopamine (catecholamine), the reward system.

The role of dopamine in the rewarding process was classically associated with the ability to experience pleasure; recent data suggest a more motivational role. (Bressan and Crippa, 2005)

In the process of meeting people's needs, modern society has gradually understood people's psychological and physiological mechanisms. In other words, people have discovered a flaw in the reward system that allows them to gain pleasure at a very low cost through certain behaviors, such as watching TV shows, playing video games, and so on.

Such activities may seem cheap, but there is no such thing as a free lunch, with the potential cost of making other activities less attractive. That is to say, why work so hard to achieve career success when I can be passionate and get a sense of accomplishment in the game? Some people fall deeper and deeper, gradually lose interest in hard work and become addicted to other things.

When people choose their behaviors, they follow the principle of profit maximization. The criterion is partly the reward of feeling or emotion, and partly the evaluation of reason. As a result, people who are addicted to bad habits often feel guilty because they waste their time in meaningless activities. And eliminating that guilt (negative emotion) becomes a reason to do it again, and so on.

Finally, I want to get specific about social networks. One source of pleasure is learning new knowledge, and the other is connecting with others. The closer the relationship, the greater the positive emotional payoff. Third, compared with the achievement, in reality, the achievement on the Internet requires less cost, such as a long login or a certain amount of money. As a result, the Internet will attract a large number of people who cannot find enough sense of accomplishment or satisfaction in real life, especially teenagers.

To prevent teenagers from becoming addicted to social networks, they need to be encouraged to find their own real happiness in real life. They should hang out more with their friends or take part in more sports. In today's society, there are still some traditional people who do not use smart phones, refuse to use the Internet, and keep traditional hobbies, but they are regarded as the outlier.

References

1. Bressan, R. and Crippa, J. (2005). The role of dopamine in reward and pleasure behaviour - review of data from preclinical research. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 111(s427), pp.14-21.

2. Van Rhyne, Z., Chinyamurindi, W. and Cilliers, L. (2019). Social network addiction and advertising on social networks: A case study of rural students in South Africa. SA Journal of Information Management, 21(1).

[grimelords]

My November playlist is finished and I've done something slightly different by actually ordering the songs into a cohesive playlist rather than leaving them in the order I added them. Listen in for everyone's favourite genre, acoustic guitar instrumentals, followed by old fashioned cowboy country, comedy and ridiculous songs, 80s and modern dance, out-there piano instrumentals, rocks and rolls, oddball rap, christian rock buried where nobody will find it, noise rock of all flavours and Mirror Reaper in full. I guarantee there'll be at least something in four hours of music that you'll like. listen here!

Deixa - Toquinho: I love how much happens in this song even before it even kicks off at about a minute in. It cycles through so many different feelings before it really powers up and the drums come on. The rhythm from then on is just mesmerizing, it's just so busy and never dwells on any section for too long, the interplay between the melody, bassline and chord rhythm is amazing. And then at about 2:20 it powers up again! Bossa Nova Strong. Also I'm feeling very disrespected because I just did some research on this song only to find out it was sampled by Nujabes on one of his bad anime youtube hip hop songs.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee - Marisa Anderson: Traditional And Public Domain Songs is Marisa Anderson's weakest album, which is a shame because I love Traditional and Public Domain songs. Her playing is on point as always, but the tremolo and distortion she's using overwhelms the recording more often than not. This song is the best on the album purely because she's playing so quietly that it only shows up when she gets loud so it works perfectly near the end as it crescendos.

The Three Deaths Of Red Spectre - Gwenifer Raymond: Gwenifer Raymond has a new 'non-holiday specific single for a cold climate' in her words and I absolutely love it. The sheer velocity of the middle section is flooring, before it breaks apart totally and reforms into a sort of shanty before metamorphosing again into a heightening mania. I love the constantly shifting structure of this, it barely stops to give you room to breathe all the way through before the very end where it almost feels like it's going to collapse entirely.

Mister Sandman - Chet Atkins: Happy to report that I've had Mr Sandman stuck in my head for three weeks now and still don't really know the words because of tumblr posts. It alternates between 'mr email / e me a mail / make the attachment a pic of a snail' and 'mr sandman / sand me a man / make him the cutest man car door hook hand'.

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind - Chet Atkins & Dolly Parton: I've never gone much on Chet Atkins but my girlfriend showed my this song and it has completely reversed my opinion and it's mostly due to Dolly Parton. She is just so lovely on this it makes me tear up - the song itself is so nice and the playing is perfect but her personality just shines through so brightly it's an absolute delight.

There's A Man Going Around Taking Names - Lead Belly: I've been doing research to try to find out what this song is referring to, or its origin but I cannot find anything concrete. A few people are saying it inspired Johnny Cash for The Man Comes Around, which is plausible and adds a mystic bent to it. It seems incomplete, like it's missing the turn at the end that reveals who exactly he is or what's happening so the whole song just ends up feeling very mysterious and ominous.

When Mussolini Laid His Pistol Down - Merle Travis: This song is from 1943, which is sort of amazing because that means it's not a song about history particularly but rather current events. A great paragraph from wikipedia: "On 24 June Mussolini gave his last important speech as prime minister. It went down in history as the "boot topping" speech, with the Duce promising that the only part of Italy that the Anglo-Americans would be able to occupy (but forever and horizontally, i.e. as corpses) was the shore-line (for which he used a wrong word to define it). For many Italians, that confused and incoherent speech was the final proof that something was wrong with Mussolini." Mussolini, truly history's greatest moron.

The Master's Call - Marty Robbins: As a result of Red Dead 2 and my own natural instincts, I've been having a bigger than usual moment with cowboy music this month which of course includes Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs. In my mind this song is both the true ending and end credits music of Red Dead 2. Arthur sees the face of Christ in a lightning bolt and abandons his life of crime and sin, pleading with the lord to forgive him and then God kills a hundred cows with another lightning bolt just to make damn sure Arthur knows He's serious.

Saga Of The Ponderosa - Lorne Green: I was hanging out with my old housemate a few weeks ago and it turns out we were both having concurrent Marty Robbins cowboy music phases which was great news because then he turned me onto this album by Lorne Green who was on Bonanza and apparently took it upon himself to expand the Bonanaza Cinematic Universe in the 60s with a few albums. This song is apparently an origin story of Bonanza which I have never seen. It's extremely good, very powerful music. Great story of this godlike man striding across the country and overriding his wife's decision by naming his son HOSS.

Hard Sun - Eddie Vedder: I think it's interesting in A Star Is Born that Jackson Maine doesn't seem to be a real life equivalent of any actual musician. He's not obviously an archetype of any real person and so it's hard to place how exactly famous he is in the world of the movie. He's washed up enough to be playing pharmaceutical conferences but still has enough industry respect to be playing a tribute at the Grammys. The closest I could think of was Eddie Vedder oddly enough, and this song from the Into The Wild soundtrack really does sound like a Jackson Maine original.

For Chan - Tim Heideker: I'm having a real thing with comedy music recently and I can't tell if it means I've got a brain parasite or comedy music is good to me now. I think what I like about this song is the bluntness. There's no two ways about these people, and after years of hearing about the alt right as mysterious political genius computer brains it's a nice break to just hear them called greasy fat basement guys like we used to.

That's Right I'm Five - Don't Stop Or We'll Die: More good comedy music! They played this song on Comedy Bang Bang without announcing what it was called first, so the chorus really surprised me and made me laugh a lot. "They're selling the stocks so buy them, launch the torpedoes, tell my wife I love her, and send my son to college, bury me in the desert in my osh kosh b'gosh - that's right I'm five!" might be my favourite lyric of the year.

Future Brain - Den Harrow: Den Harrow is very good. He's like a beautiful moron American man that some italian scientists built in a lab in order to conquer America from the inside. Here are some good highlights from his wiki article: "The name Den Harrow was conceived by producers Roberto Turatti and Miki Chieregato, who based it on the Italian word denaro(money)." "After years of fame and popularity, it was revealed by frontman Stefano Zandri and his producers that Zandri did not actually sing the Den Harrow songs; he was essentially a character who lip-synched to vocals recorded by a number of other singers. Furthermore, since they did not consider Zandri's name and origin to be "trendy" enough, the producers R. Turatti and M. Chieregato concealed Zandri's Italian origin, marketing him as having been born Manuel Stefano Carry in Boston. This was done so Polydor Records could market him more easily in the English-speaking world, where Italian-produced music was, at the time, viewed with skepticism"

Love A Girl Right - Little Mix: Check out this rewrite of the Thong Song they did for the new Little Mix album. It's beyond belief. My girlfriend loves Little Mix and she's right to because they're the only girl/boy band that actually takes advantage of the form and does harmonies instead of just having them all sing in turn or all at once. They've got good vocal arrangements but they have the worst fucking songwriters working for them. Songwriters that pitch 'what if the Thong Song had a crunchy nu-metal guitar in it'.

This City Made Us - The Protomen: It's interesting to hear a band change styles - most other Protomen songs are a sort of Springsteen pastiche but this one from their newer single is more like Iron Maiden or Thin Lizzy. Approaching the 80s from a different angle. It's impressive to switch so radically and still have enough of a unifying sound that it feels like the same band. 80s throwback rock is a generally pallid genre populated by freaks who can't move on but Protomen put so much heart into it it's hard to write them off.

Teardrops - Womack & Womack: I love this song because it has two choruses. The drums stay the same throughout, the chords stay the same through the verse and chorus and only change for the second chorus/bridge part ("the music don't feel like it did when I felt it with you"), which just gives the whole song this feeling of beautiful endlessness. It goes and goes and goes and you're always already living in the best part of the song.

Boys Will Be Boys - The Duncan Sisters: Very very good piece of disco with a very nice piece of country picking guitar near the start for some reason. I quit like that the chorus of 'boys, oh boys, will be boys - they can really hurt you!' goes from a lighthearted thing about relationships until the bridge near the end where it sounds more like a dire warning. She's staring straight into your eyes and saying 'they can hurt you. boys can hurt you. they can really hurt you.' while motioning toward the exit with her eyes. 

Ayaya - Bicep: I've been trying to train my ear a bit better so I got a piano app on my phone and I just try to pick out the melodies of songs now when I'm bored. It turns out this is a very satisfying song to play. The melody is very simple, but the constant build and the couple of other melodies that come in around it make you feel like a super genius for just playing the same thing over and over.

The Call - David Mayer: I completely forget how I came across this song but I'm in love with the vocals on it. The effect reminds me of the one on Problem With The Sun by Nicolas Jaar, sort of pitched down and layered over itself. Outside of the vocals it's a pretty straightforward euro house chunk but damn sometimes a song just has a really good sound in it that you can't deny.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: My girlfriend's brother was telling me he was riding his bike the other day and had some kind of mental break where he was riding north in the afternoon but the sun was on his right, in the east - and for some reason his first instinct wasn't that he was wrong or disoriented, it was that there was a problem with the sun and it was in the wrong place. That boy ain't right but this song is good. I love that Nicolas Jaar uses this weird down pitched voice on a few songs and I really wish he'd bring it back, it sounds great and also funny to me.

Ensaslayi - Cecil Taylor: I don't have the brain power to comprehend any of Cecil Taylor's ensemble work that I've heard, free jazz in a band setting is simply too much for me it turns out -but I've really been getting a lot out of this solo album of his called Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!. This song in particular is one of the longer ones on the album, where another is only 53 seconds long and a few last around ten minutes. This is a nice midpoint, where he gives himself so much room to get lost in different directions without losing the thread entirely. I said it last time I was talking about him but I've really never heard anyone play piano like this and I absolutely love it. A lot of reviewers describe it as him playing the piano like it's a drumkit, which I think is accurate to a degree - but I think looking back from here this music makes a lot more sense within the context of black midi and things like that. The extreme edges of what a piano can theoretically do, but with a decisive and beautiful human edge and human brain that's responsible for and making sense of the chaos.

The Homeless Wanderer - Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: I found out about this album cause Benjamin Booker was posting about her on his instagram story and it's just incredible. The TL;DR of her story is she's an Ethiopian nun that studied music in Switzerland and Cairo and wrote this beautiful piano music based on traditional Ethiopian pentatonic music. I love the rhythm of it, every note in the right hand get swirled around and around before it's settled on while the left hand moves so smoothly and delicately. Unfortunately-ish she's obviously in that genre of Searching For Sugarman secret blog music evidenced by her spotify similar artists being Karen Dalton, Alice Coltrane and Connie Converse. That's not a bad thing exactly, at least people are hearing about her, but her music is unique and amazing enough on its own without needing much mythologizing.

Carnival Of The Animals: No 12 - Fossils - Camille Saint-Saëns: My girlfriend was showing me Saint-Saëns' The Swan and then we were going through the whole rest of the Carnival Of The Animals and I'm happy to report that he not only did he do one for fossils but also centered it around the idea of a bone xylophone. I'm going to write an article for Vulture tracing the origin of the cartoon bone xylophone and my thesis is it starts here.

Perth - Bon Iver: Just thinking about how good Bon Iver is. I love how massive this song can feel, the drums combined with the big brass. It's small and soft on the grand scale, but on an album that gets as quiet and soft as songs like Holocene this song blows up like an atom bomb.

Yet Again - Grizzly Bear: This really is one of the best songs of all time I've decided. It feels like I get into a thing of listening to it on repeat almost every month now. I don't know what it is exactly - I guess it's every part of it. The lyrics are impenetrable (check) the riff is simple and powerful (check) the drums are doing a lot and keeping it simple at the same time. The the way the harmony vocals all intertwine in the prechorus part is amazing. The way the whole song blows up into a big radio static solo at the end. Every part of this song is great, I just love it.

Fuckin N' Rollin - Phantastic Ferniture: I found out that Julia Jacklin has a side project with a very shit name and they make very good music. I love when people have a whole other band for another side of their self. This is just Julia Jacklin if the lyrics were just first draft whatevers instead of incredibly poignant and beautiful and the music was just rockin and rollin with your friends. It's great!

Soft - Kings Of Leon: Number one best song ever about havin a bad dick!! I'd love to hang out lady but my dick! I'm passed out in your garden, I'm in I can't get off I'm so soft! I'd pop myself in you body, I'd come into your party but I'm soft!

Soft Serve - Soul Coughing: I played this while I was driving with my girlfriend and she said 'what the fuck is this' and she's right, as usual. It's Soul Coughing baby! The 90s 'slacker jazz' band! They sound dated as fuck, a real product of their time but I think they've still got a lot to offer. I had the chorus of this stuck in my head for a couple days which made me listen to this album more than usual when I mostly prefer their first one Ruby Vroom. Irresistible Bliss might have the worst album cover of all time though, so it's got that going for it. Google it.

Ya Mama - Wuf Ticket: There wiki article for this band says they had two songs in 1982 and that was it. Then it has a section titled Greaseman and then the article ends. Here's the Greaseman section in its entirety: "Wuf Ticket's “Ya Mama” achieved its greatest notoriety, and airplay, as a music bed for bits by shock jock The Greaseman on WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C. and later his nationally syndicated radio show where Greaseman would argue with a surly service industry worker." Anyway this is more of that very good early hip hop shit where everyone assumed songs should go for 8 minutes. It's just extremely weak sauce Ya Mama jokes for a very long time before they change tack completely and start talking about how Every Woman Is An Angel And Without Mothers We Would Never Have Been Born So Think About That Next Time.

Gon Be Okay - Lil B: I had the part of this song where he sings 'things are never gonna be the same again' along with the piano in my head the other day and spent fully an hour googling to try to find what song it was from before giving up. I woke up the next morning and suddenly remembered it was this song but was very shocked to find out that he actually never sings that line along with the piano melody, he says it once at the start and that's it. What's going on with my brain. Anyway in my searching I found out that the piano is sampled from the Spirited Away soundtrack so once more in my life I've been led to ruin by anime.

2 Minute Drills - Allblack & Kenny Beats: This whole EP is great. More sports themed rap please. Allblack is ferocious and Kenny's production throughout is great, the perfect mix of simple straighforward beats that still have a lot of space and energy in them, plus 'Woah Kenny!' has my award for Best New Producer Watermark.

Don't Gas Me - Dizzee Rascal: I don't know how he keeps doing it but somehow Dizzee Rascal continues to make extremely fun bangers without ever slowing down. The best line in this is when he says "no I don't drink Appletiser" (the sparkling apple juice) which is an extremely weird flex if there ever was one.

Acid King - Malibu Ken: It feels insane that a Tobacco and Aesop Rock collab sounds as good as this. I love that there's no drums the entire time he's rapping and I completely love the Mort Garson vibes in the instrumental which turns out to be a perfect soundtrack to the Ricky Kasso satan worship LSD murder story that Aesop's telling. Also in reading about Kasso I just discovered the very good stoner doom band also named Acid King, so expect to see them in next month's list.

Pirate Blues - As Cities Burn: As Cities Burn have reformed and put out a new single so I've been thinking about them a bit. On paper they don't sound good, over three albums they morphed from a christian metalcore band to a christian alt-rock band, and while they never reinvented the wheel I think they're a remarkable band who took a lot of risks in their own way and made a lot of rock solid music. They've got a lot of great songs but I think this is my favourite from their third album when it finally felt like they'd settled into a steady alt rock sound informed by their much heavier past.

This Is It, This Is It - As Cities Burn: The thing I like about As Cities Burn is that as much as they're a christian band (yuck) they're more of a band of guys who are christians (slightly less yuck) and the difference is huge. Rather than evangelising or preaching, their songs are about their own personal struggles with their faith (still slightly yuck). I like this song especially because the lyric feels close to gospel, 'we're all singing for our sins, unless grace be the wind' but with the added twist of being furious that you're trapped by the sin of your physical body.

Timothy - As Cities Burn: I think this song is just incredible. The lyrics are so strong and direct and heartbreaking, the vocal performance especially is amazing and it may be the only time in history that a 6 minute guitar solo has seemed good and necessary.

Face Tat - Zach Hill: There's an incredible video of the recording of this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGi9SOFX5rc that really looks exactly how it sounds and has a very similar energy to that video of 80 guys singing the halo theme in the boys bathroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRG9KwvbVhk . This is what it sounds like when the boys are left alone. The biggest draw to Zach Hill's drumming is the intense primordial immediacy of it. He is just pounding away like a possessed animal and it's really on show here, especially combined with the occasional punctuating shout. Carson McWhirter's guitar is incredible too, the tone he's got where it sounds like three at once playing these incredible twisting riffs that turn on a dime. I think what I like most about this song is just how in sync they are - for such a chaotic, noisy song it sounds so rehearsed, somehow every single note is perfectly in time in the storm.

Betty's Worry Or The Slab - Hunters And Collectors: This is maybe the sweatiest song I've ever heard. It's a disgusting song about being incredibly sweaty and horny and I love the weird squeaky noise he makes after he says 'say it! say it!'. The bass sound in this is so fantastically meaty too, and combined with the brass at the end it's just great.

Worms Of The Senses / Faculties Of The Skull (live) - Refused: I cannot believe just how absolutely ferocious live Refused is. Insanely powerful without ever missing a beat in a song like this that requires incredible timing throughout. For some reason I've always thought Refused were an only ok live band after watching Refused Are Fucking Dead because all I remember of it is a clip where the guitarist accidentally hits the singer in the face with his headstock and they have to stop the show.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: I got to see Bell Witch live a couple of weeks ago and it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. I can't really describe it other than it feels like the closest thing to a legitimate summoning ritual that I've ever seen. An invocation and an expelling of raw power and emotion between two people, it was really something. Also the best part was about two minutes in when they were really setting the scene with the sort of ambient beginning of Mirror Reaper and the whole crowd was dead silent and entranced as they built this mystic atmosphere and set the vibe a guy behind me said loudly to his friend 'hm pretty good so far!'

What's You Gonna Do When The World's On Fire - Lead Belly & Anne Graham: This is in my opinion the best genre of gospel song where they they just roast you for not being saved yet.​ 

listen here

#playlists

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #178

“for such a little thing, you sure are in your own way.”

What’s your favorite type of bird? Barn owls are actual deities. What was on the last sandwich you ate? Pb & j. What sort of music did you listen to when you were in high school? Same stuff I listen to now, although I had a mild screamo-ish phase. Have you ever gotten back together with an ex? No. How far away is the closest store to your house and what is it? Some cheap dollar store in the town, dunno names. What is your favorite Thai dish? Haven't tried any. When was the last time you made out with somebody? Over a month back. What month of the year was your mother born? August. Are there any candles in your bedroom, and what scent are they? No. What TV show(s) have you been watching currently? None. How many apps do you have on your phone? Six. My phone has so, so little storage ugh. Have you ever dated a smoker? If not, would you? No to both. Are there any movies you’ve seen so many times? Yeah, sure. Of course a lot as a kid, Finding Nemo and The Lion King 1 & 2 especially, then I've watched both Blair Witch Project movies a lot, Jim Carrey's How the Grinch Stole Christmas... How would you describe your sense of humor? Sarcastic. What’s your favorite type of bread? Pumpernickel. Do you share a middle name with any of your siblings? Yeah. Have there ever been any brushfires/wildfires in your area? Yeah. What did you have to eat for dinner last night? Nothing (Thanksgiving was lunch). Do you have separate emails for personal and business? No. Have you ever missed a flight? Yes. Do you know your significant other’s passwords? No, I have no reason to. Would you like to study abroad one day? No. Does someone have a crush on you but you don’t feel the same way? Idk. Who do you feel most beautiful around? Sara. /v\ What’s one makeup item you cannot live without? I could easily live without any. Is there one thing all of your ex’s had in common? All guys. Did you french kiss before you were 16? No. Imagine your spouse just died; would you get re-married? I don't know if I would. Like... I'd never stop loving her, so "moving on" to someone else just because she's no longer physically here would feel disloyal. What’s your favorite thing about life? New, fun experiences and creating strong bonds with people like you. Who pays for the first date? Idrc, but probably whoever proposed the date? Or split the bill? Have you ever had a friend that got a bf/gf, and then completely ignored you? Yeah. Do you play any computer games, if so, what ones? Not currently 'cuz my gaming laptop has to be fixed. :| When it is and I have my own income, I might return to WoW, but I'm not sure. I think the subscription is kinda high, and I have more important things to handle. What is the funniest movie you’ve ever seen? Idk why I find White Chicks so goddamn funny. What lyric means the most to you? Off the very top of my head, "A bloody war behind my eyes; I'll come all right on the other side" from "Free" by Mother Mother. Really makes me think of all I've been through but how I keep coming out stronger. Who is the smartest person you know? Girt. What’s the next movie you will see in theaters? Idk. Are you adopted? No. What band do you like that most people hate? You canNOT look me in the face and say you don't like at least one Nickelback song. I don't get the hate. Any new bands that you actually enjoy? Oh idk. What is your escape from reality? RPing. Do you have any self-inflicted scars on your arms? You can only just barely see them. Do you like “scene” hair? YEAH AND I ALWAYS FUCKING WANTED IT BUT I COULD NEVER POSE IT CORRECTLY 'CUZ MY HAIR WAS TOO THICK AND HEAVY. Have your parents ever been to jail? No. If your friend asked you to hold their drugs, would you? Definitely not. Does it scare you when a relationship moves too fast? Y E A H Would you ever consider hitchhiking? I don't know if I would even in a desperate situation... I don't trust people. Have you ever hitchhiked? No. Have you ever been to a music festival? No. What color car do you want to have? Burnt orange. Would you rather hike a mountain or explore a cave? Explore a cave!!! Would you rather wear a flower crown or veil? Probably a veil? Do you believe peace on earth is attainable? I honestly don't believe so. What type of tattoo do you want? s o  m a n y What is your favorite insect? Butterflies. Would you ever live in the desert? Nooooo. Fuck the heat. Is your town beautiful? I don't really live in one, but the closest town isn't. Which season do you want to get married in? Autumn. Are totem poles cool? YEAH! Favorite art forms? Conceptual photography. What kind of music do you enjoy? Plenty sorts of metal, rock, and alternative. Do you have any gay friends? Yeah. Where is your favorite place to go? The zoo, even though I have mixed feelings about them... Do you know your dad? Yeah. How often do you get on Facebook? At least once a day. Are you related to anyone who’s in prison? Don't think so?? What concerts are you attending in the near future? Y'ALL I MIGHT FUCKING SEE OZZY IN JANUARY. He and Megadeth are coming to Charlotte and the tickets aren't too bad. :') It's a loooong drive but Mom was like "hell yeah" when I told her and wants to buy tickets after she gets her tax return AH. Metallica is a possibility too, but Mom doesn't think she can afford it. If you were kicked out of your house, where would you go first? Dad's. What are you currently looking forward to? Sara's b-day, Christmas, hopefully getting my laptop fixed, aforementioned concerts, and school. What was the reason you got grounded for last? Idk, that was a long time ago. But most likely for "talking back" to Mom. The last two people you kissed, are they virgins? Yes; probably not. Is there a guy that knows everything or mostly everything about you? Yeah. Do you sleep on a certain side of the bed? A bit to the left. If you could have anything delivered to your doorstep each morning, what would it be? Um,,, money?????? What is one vacation destination that many people think is just fabulous but which you personally have no desire to visit (or revisit)? New York City. Heard from my sister it's a shithole with the craziest and rudest people known to Planet Earth. I'm not big on cities, anyway. Which animated character is your all-time favorite? Uhhhhhh... Dory, maybe? If you could own a home on the shore of any body of water in the world, which waterfront would you choose? I WANT THE PINK BEACHES OF THE BAHAMAS. But I'm scared of the Bermuda Triangle so will probably never see them. :'''''') What serves as the greatest motivation for you in your daily life? MY RECOVERY. If I got through what I have, I can't ever give up and roll back down that hill. I'm focusing to always improve. If you could have any round object in the world, what spherical item would you want? t h e  g a m e s p h e r e ,  l a d s If you were left alone for one hour with nothing more than a pen and a notepad, what would you be inclined to draw or write during those 60 minutes? Practice eyes or start a poem. If you could witness anything at all in super-slow motion, what would you want to see? Hmmm... OH, maybe a big cat's tongue licking meat. See how it actually shears tiny bits off. Cats' tongues are cool. What do you forget to do more often than anything else? Take my anxiety med at the right time. If you could teach everyone in the world one skill, what would it be? Compassion. You’ve been offered the chance to paint a billboard along a highway with any message you choose, as long as it’s only 10 words long. What is your message? Oh jeez, I'd have to think too hard on this. Who’s the last guy to give you roses? Tyler. Did your parents do drugs when they were younger? Not to my knowledge, and I doubt they would've. Do you have any relatives who live on a different continent than you? I don't believe so. What are your religious beliefs? Were you raised with those beliefs, or did you develop them on your own? I'm a theist, entailing I believe in a creator, but I know nothing about him/her/it. I personally picture them as a peaceful and sage deity that allows life to go on without it intervening anywhere, letting the world evolve on its own and see how we adapt to our unique settings and handle life. In the end, I believe we are either given some form of paradise or a type of damnation depending on how you wrote your story. I like to imagine the good go to their personal vision of "Heaven," and I wonder if the paranormal activity some experience in life are the acts of the damned, apparently confined to remain on Earth or something. Anyway, I wasn't raised with such beliefs; they were developed. I was brought up Catholic, then I turned to just simple Christianity as I didn't agree with a lot of Catholic ideas, and most recently I abruptly turned away from that in favor of theism. How did you and your significant other celebrate your last anniversary? We went out for breakfast. What has been your favorite house/apartment/etc you’ve ever lived in? My last house for location, as a house itself, my childhood one. What’s something in your house that currently needs to be cleaned? I need to vacuum my room. Do you still remember any of the dreams or nightmares you had as a child? Yup. What’s the most bizarre conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard of? The world is donut-shaped. Yeah. Do you have a good sense of direction? Not. At. All. Who was your first crush? Did you ever actually date them? Dylan, and no. What’s the weirdest, rudest, or most ridiculous thing a guest has ever done in your home? Who knows. Has anyone ever told you you’re manipulative? I don't think so. Do you know anyone who owns their own business? No. When was the last time you weren’t 100% sober? Uhhh maybe that movie night with Colleen and Chelsea. Is obtaining a college degree something that is important to you? Well, for my possible career future. Have you ever eaten at a vegan restaurant? No. Do you view substance abuse as a disease or a choice? I have... mixed feelings here. Starting something, that is indisputably a choice. Becoming addicted though, I'm not sure. Some people have addictive personalities so have a bigger inclination to become addicted, but isn't that just a personal trait/weakness you can fight?? I dunno. I know it's labelled as a disease by people way more informed than me though, so. What does the last text you sent say? Don't feel like checking. Does it bother you when people call you ‘ma'am’ or ‘sir?’ No. I live in the South, that's polite. Have you ever been obsessed with a television character? Does Dory count for movies? ha ha Do you ever wish you had powers of invisibility? Not really. What was the last thing that changed your life completely? Recovery. Do you have any step siblings? One. Have you ever been questioned by the police? No. In which state/country were you born? NC, U.S.A. Have you ever been to an amusement park out of state? Disney World. What do you normally drink when eating at a fast food restaurant? Coke or Mountain Dew. Have the police ever been looking for you? Not because I did something wrong; I've told the beach story a few times. If you chew gum, which kind is your favorite? I love the watermelon Hubba Bubba one asjfawoeu Have you ever kissed someone of the same sex? Yeah. What was the last liquid that you choked on? Water, just this morning when I was taking my meds ah. How many times did you wake up today before actually getting up? Well, I woke up once in the middle of the night like usual, then I woke up at like, 6-something and went back to sleep. Who did you celebrate your last birthday with? Mom, sises, Ash's husband and kids, and Dad stopped by. Was your last kiss initiated by you or the other person? I think it was kinda a simultaneous thing. We were saying bye. Do you buy a ton of things at the store at once or just for that day? Mom does the shopping, but it depends on how much time she has and what's at the house. When getting dressed do you put your pants or shirt on first? Pants. When you kiss a person where do your hands usually go? I actually don't know if it's a consistent thing for me??? I don't kiss anyone regularly so I don't recognize a pattern. What is one song you listen to that you’re sure not many people do? "False Flags," probs. Massive Attack is so neglected of the attention they deserve. Do you use a handrail on stairs if there is one? Yes, I'm scared of tripping. What was the last thing you saw that made you smile? Teddy came right up into my face wanting attention. What is your favorite drinking game? Never played any. Do you have any tattoos that you don’t like anymore? I think I've mentioned why I don't love my "ohana" one now. I'm getting it covered at some point. My "perfectly flawed" one is probably getting covered by a much bigger piece; I picked a bad location for it to want a sleeve. I'd just maybe redesign it, put if somewhere else. Do you have a shower curtain or door? Curtain. Who was the last person from your high school graduating class you saw? Probs Colleen? Who was the last non-relative you hung out with? Sara. Are you listening to anything right now? I'm way too obsessed with "Black Wedding" by In This Moment (feat. Rob Halford). Rob makes it, and the chorus is awesome. How many keys are on your keychain? One. Who was the last person you took a photograph with? Ryder, my nephew. Are you left handed? No. What were you most scared of when you were little? Losing my mom/being separated from her. Are you biracial? No. When was the last time you painted your nails? What color(s)? I couldn't even guess. Has a stranger ever offered to buy you a drink? Thank fuck no. Have you ever overflown a bathtub? Don't think so. What’s at the top of your to-do list in life? Stay positive, never stop aiming to improve. What was the last thing you shared? Well, Thanksgiving food. Where are you most ticklish? Feet. Do not- Which cartoon character do you want to keep as a pet? Uhhhh how 'bout an Espeon. I imagine them to be calm and silently affectionate like cats and very intelligent. Have you ever considered a career in music/acting? No. When was the last time you felt seriously embarrassed? Getting food yesterday. Per usual, let things die down, but I still ended up crammed in a corner, unable to go in any direction while someone was trying to get past me. I was headed for an anxiety attack and felt like a total nuisance. I'm pretty sure it showed in how I was whipping my head around, shuffling in various directions, clearly wanting the fuck out. Have you ever liked a song, looked up the lyrics to it, then hated it? No, lyrics can't ruin a song I like the sound of. What would be the icing on the cake for you this Christmas? A PS4, omg. I have to get my laptop fixed and a new camera, so I highly doubt I'm getting that or a tablet considering cost. I want to play the Spyro Reignited trilogy beyond words, like I refuse to even watch a let's play because I want to experience it all first-hand, but. Yeah, unlikely anytime soon. If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it? Noooooo. Do you like quesadillas? Only chicken and/or cheese ones. Did you like the show Invader Zim? I surprisingly never saw it. What’s the greatest/most influential song you’ve ever heard? "Life Won't Wait" by Ozzy always makes me wanna get off my ass and do something. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen in a grocery store? A HUGE BOX OF ANIMAL HEADS IN THE MIDDLE OF WAL-MART, BECKONING THE FURRIES INTO ITS DEPTHS. Have you ever bought yourself a present on Christmas? No. Well, I've used money I've been given on Christmas, if that counts. Have you ever been on a mechanical bull? No. Do you need a key card to get into the building you live in? No. Have you ever stepped in chewing gum? Yes. Name all the people you know that you’ve seen today. Just Mom.

#survey #quiz #questions #random

[junktrait]

meet the simblr! i was tagged by the wonderful @highhopesforasimming and also did all 125 questions (two times bc the first time i was doing this my browser crashed YEET)! i don’t rlly have anyone to tag so uh! here we go! 

1. what is your full name? julian [redacted] [nope]. 2. what are your nicknames? jules but not enough people call me that tbh 3. birthday? [nope] 4. what is your favorite book series? agatha christie’s whole body of work 5. do you believe in aliens or ghosts? aliens yes, ghosts not rlly  6. who is your favorite author? richard siken! 7. what is your favorite radio station? i never listen to my car radio but i listen to a lot of kpop radios on spotify 8. what is your favorite flavor of anything? ARTIFICIAL CHERRY FLAVOR 9. what word would you often use to describe something great or wonderful? “cool beans” bc i am a dad from 1995 10. what is your current favorite song? mitski “your best american girl,” exo “monster,” nothing but thieves “graveyard whistling,” nct u “baby don’t stop,” studio killers “ode to the bouncer,” red velvet “butterflies” and lots more! 11. what is your favorite word? verisimilitude! the property of being real or true 12. what was the last song you listened to? “be the star” by pristin! 13. what tv show would you recommend for everyone to watch? tidying up w marie kondo & london spy! 14. what is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down? coraline and lately the incredibles 2! 15. do you play video games? in my free i’m either 1) playing video games or 2) editing video game content 16. what is your biggest fear? birds, caves, and open water 17. what is your best quality, in your opinion? i am very empathetic 18. what is your worst quality, in your opinion? i am A Big Bastard 19. do you like cats or dogs better? cats! 20. what’s your favorite season? summer/fall cusp! 21. are you in a relationship? nope. nope! n o p e r i p  22. what is something you miss from your childhood? it being acceptable to be rlly into winx club 23. who is your best friend? i have two! one from college and one i know from other stuff! 24. what is your eye color? blue! 25. what is your hair color? naturally brown but its like pink and brown rn as my purple dye fade out/roots come in 26. who is someone you love? MY CAT 27. who is someone you trust? MY CAT 28. who is someone you think about often? MY CAT 29. are you currently excited about/for something? eventually graduating college omg 30. what is your biggest obsession? kpop + video games 31. what was your favorite tv show as a child? the marvelous misadventures of flapjack BOY 32. who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone? best friends! 33. are you superstitious? i knock on wood/glass a lot 34. do you have any unusual phobias? i mentioned ornithophobia earlier! so ig that counts 35. do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it? behiiiiiiiind 36. what is your favorite hobby? video games. 37. what was the last book you read? kindred by octavia butler! 38. what was the last movie you watched? i just watched bohemian rhapsody last night! 39. what musical instruments do you play, if any? oof i shouldn’t rlly say that i can play the violin because i haven’t practiced in years but ig that a little. 40. what is your favorite animal? cats! big cats small cats all cats 41. what are your top 5 tumblr blogs that you follow? i rlly like bloomlet and infinityonsims! 42. what superpower do you wish you had? time stopping. 43. when and where do you feel most at peace? WHEN I AM IN BED AND UNCONSCIOUS 44. what makes you smile? anything funny 45. what sports do you play, if any? i am a fat bitch so no 46. what is your favorite drink? strawberry ramune its pink sweet and carbonated and even the bottle has Drama 47. when was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody? i cannot even remember 48. are you afraid of heights? YES. 49. what is your biggest pet peeve? just general rudeness 50. have you ever been to a concert? yep a few 51. are you vegan/vegetarian? neither! 52. when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? same thing i wanna be now, a writer in some capacity 53. what fictional world would you like to live in? harry potter ig! 54. what is something you worry about? everything lol 55. are you scared of the dark? less so the dark and more the things in the dark 56. do you like to sing? NOPE i can’t 57. have you ever skipped school? oh yeah 58. what is your favorite place on the planet? best friend’s house! 59. where would you like to live? tiny house. in the forest. close to town  60. do you have any pets? two dogs and two cats that live w my parents and a cat of my own! 61. are you more of an early bird or night owl? night owl. 62. do you like sunrises or sunsets better? sunset 63. do you know how to drive? yes and i love it 64. do you prefer earbuds or headphones? headphones 65. have you ever had braces? yep! 66. what is your favorite genre of music? kpop and alternative! 67. who is your hero? my bff’s parents! they’ve lived their lives in ways i want to! 68. do you read comic books? yeah a few! 69. what makes you the most angry? dani said it best TERFS 70. do you prefer to read on an electronic device or a real book? real book always 71. what is your favorite subject in school? english! 72. do you have any siblings? yep 73. what was the last thing you bought? statistically, fast food 74. how tall are you? 5″4 shut up 75. can you cook? yeah! 76. what are three things that you love? lavender, fried chicken, being gay 77. what are three things that you hate? waking up, being tired, PEOPLE TALKING IN MOVIES 78. do you have more female friends or male friends? female! 79. what is your sexual orientation? i’m bi baby 80. where do you currently live? usa! 81. who was the last person you texted? bff! 82. when was the last night you cried? oh idk 83. who is your favorite youtuber? rn rtgame! 84. do you like to take selfies? not rlly tbh 85. what is your favorite app? just my pure usage time spotify or twitter but my actual fave is a lil dress up app called pastel girl 86. what is your relationship with your parent(s) like? bad! 87. what is your favorite foreign accent? some form of european idk 88. what is a place that you’ve never been to, but want to visit? japan! 89. what is your favorite number? eight 90. can you juggle? nope 91. are you religious? nOPE 92. do you find outer space or the deep ocean to be more interesting? space! 93. do you consider yourself to be a daredevil? nah 94. are you allergic to anything? i think a specific type of sunscreen 95. can you curl your tongue? nope 96. can you wiggle your ears? nope 97. how often do you admit that you were wrong about something? i will as long as it wasn’t my parents 98. do you prefer the forest or beach? FOREST beach sucks 99. what is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you? “be gay do crimes” 100. are you a good liar? moderately good i think. 101. what is your hogwarts house? hufflepuff! 102. do you talk to yourself? nah and i hate when people do 103. are you an introvert or extrovert? introvert 104. do you keep a journal/diary? nope, not committed enough and it gets depressing 105. do you believe in second chances? usually yeah but obv if its rlly severe than no 106. if you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do? return it bc 1) i’d be afraid of getting caught 2) i wouldn’t want to accidentally take money from someone who needed it 107. do you believe people are capable of change? ehhhhh 108. are you ticklish? yep unfortunately  109. have you ever been on a plane? mhmm! 110. do you have any piercings? just my ears  111. what fictional character do you wish was real? HAL JORDAN 112. do you have any tattoos? not yet! 113. what is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far? coming out probs 114. do you believe in karma? not cosmically but if you are enough of an asshole its gonna disadvantage you eventually 115. do you wear glasses/contacts? yep 116. do you want children? nope 117. who is the smartest person you know? i’m the biggest smartass i know does that count 118. what is your most embarrassing memory? every one? 119. have you ever pulled an all-nighter? yeah all the time 120. what color are most of your clothes? dark w majority black  121. do you like adventures? not rlly tbh. or up to a point 122. have you ever been on tv? probably not 123. how old are you? over 18! (sorry i’ve been very vague i’ve just gotten over sharing personal information!) 124. what is your favorite quote? “some days in late august at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar” - the sound and the fury 125. do you prefer sweet or savory foods? i like both equally!

#i'm still so mad i had to do this twice bc fucking opera CRASHED #ty ty tho dani! and this motivated me to make a simself sjdfksdf #ts4

[philippmichelreichold]

#scifi #Review Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course daw books

#scifi # Review Barrington J Bayley's Collision Course

I first read Barrington J. Bayley's Collision Course/Collision with Chronos more than thirty years ago. I must have given my first copy to the Goodwill. I searched for years before finding my current copy at Haslam's Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. They are the best. Collision Course is the sort of story you want to not lose.

Bailey follows a fairly unique approach to time travel stories. The vast majority deal with an alterable timeline that must either be changed or preserved to save the viewpoint character's way of life, the universe, etc; or with a multiverse where myriads of ways unfold and whatever decision a character might make, other versions of that character are deciding to do the same thing or its opposite. One example of the former is  Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. There are many examples in Star Trek with its time loops and Predestination Paradoxes and Chiefs O'Brien averring their hatred for Temporal Mechanics.  Larry Niven's All the Myriad Ways is an example of the latter.  Catch that Zeppelin by Fritz Lieber and Joe Haldeman's Manifest Destiny offer alternate time lines within a multiverse. Another approach, my personal favorite, is that you can't change the past. This the premise of By the Time We got to Gaugamela by R Garcia y Robertson. You can go back, but whatever is about to happen has already happened. To paraphrase, all the history books agree that Alexander the Great is going to be alive tomorrow, but no such assurances are available for the time traveller in question. Bailey takes a totally different tack from any of these, one ""so original that it avoids all (most?) time-travel clichés".

According to The Newsletter of the Council for the Literature of the Fantastic, Bailey followed the ideas of J. W. Dunne set forth in An Experiment with Time. Time travels as a wave or a torrent through six dimensional space in a local region of what we perceive as three dimensional space, creating and carrying life and consciousness with it as side effects. The future is dead and decayed, the past dead-- a collection of insensate automatons. You can build a machine to carry a bit of time with you ahead of or behind the time wave, but it won't do you any good. Times finger, having writ, moves on and you cannot change a word, act or dead. The trouble comes when two different time streams are headed along the same planet in opposite directions, like a pair of locomotives rushing along a track on a collision course set to arrive at a fatal destination. Life-consciousness-intelligence, it cannot be over emphasized, are byproducts of the time stream/wave/torrent.

And so it is in Collision Course that two time streams associated with Earth will crash together in about 200 years, with serious effects noticeable in about 100 years. Collisions of this nature must occur with some frequency as the International Space Society Retort City, located many light years from Earth and populated by the descendants of Chinese emigrees, has recently had a near miss with an entity whose time stream is situated obliquely to that of Retort City. The inhabitants of Earth are just beginning to understand time travel. The inhabitants of Retort City can literally run rings around the Earthers, and the Oblique Entity has nearly godlike (not Godlike as it points out) powers. The abilities of Retort City's scientists and the Oblique Entity, combined with obliqueness of their paths, allowed them to avert total disaster. Even so, things got pretty bad. The Oblique Entity and a researcher on Retort City have been watching events on Earth unfold with detached insouciance and mild concern. Time travellers from Retort City rescue stranded time travellers from Earth and offer to help.

Matters are not so straight forward at this point as one might hope. ISS Retort City was established 5000 years before the setting of the story, which is many thousands of years ahead of our own time. The races of man on Earth bare little physical resemblance to the people of our times (the "Chinks" of Retort City are a legendary race on Earth). The dominant race on Earth, led by the Titanium Legions (think SS), follows an Earth Mother religion. They believe with all the fervor that religious conviction can bring that they, True Man, are Earth's true sons and all the other races are defiling deviants whom they must expunge. There are archaeological ruins of alien design scattered about they believe support these beliefs.

The Titans see these ruins as proof of Alien Interventionalists who diabolically caused the rise of the Deviant races to destroy True Man. Never mind that there had been nuclear wars in the past with radioactive fallout to increase background radiation levels and thereby raise the mutation rate and never mind that the new races arose isolated from one another for a long time. Natural selection and niche filling divergence don't fit their self image or self interests. Or their self serving propaganda. Genocide is something the Titans have been quite successful at with only a few remnants of the other races remaining on reservations. The Titans have roving "experts" that can tell at a glance if someone is "racially impure". There is of course opposition and an underground which is losing faster each day. When the Titans learn of the ISS, with its wondrous technology and mighty industrial capacity, the natural recourse is to mount an invasion.

Retort City is designed as a double retort with the retorts set end to end. Lower Retort/Production Retort is devoted to industry and production. The mastery of time is so complete that different sections of a ping pong table can have different time streams moving at separate rates. Production lines can be run through time loops so that an artefact that was months in the making can be available hours after being ordered. The two halves are offset by about 34 years, so direct travel between the two halves is futile. Manufactured goods travel along a time gradient to the other half of the city and always arrive just in time. So great is Production Retort's efficiencies that it has greater industrial capacity than all of earth. The workers there are wholly devoted to their work. Their absorption with work is so great that off duty conversation often centers on how and where work is going. To them any other way of life would be a waste. "Technology was, after all, their life."(pg 54)

Life within Upper Retort/Leisure Retort is more luxurious, more devoted to subtle esthetics, and "was probably the most refined culture the galaxy had to offer". (pg 57) It's inhabitants are wholly absorbed in advancing the arts and sciences, so absorbed that they tend to objectify people and ignore any human factor not connected with the research that holds their attention. (So self absorbed that the sounds of fighting with the Titanium Legions is less a survival threat than an annoying distraction.) Little physical labor is performed directly, there being machines to handle that sort of thing. The apparent social disparity between the two halves of Retort City is solved by their mastery of time. Envy is avoided by the Exchange of Generations. One sends one's children by way of a temporal differential tunnel to the opposite half of Retort City and receives one's grandchildren in return. Robert Gibson hits the nail firmly when he says the equanimity of the arrangement eliminates jealousy between Retort City's two halves. The Leisure Retort's inhabitants are not so self absorbed as to not offer to help the inhabitants of Earth deal with the impending collision.

Once again, nothing is easy. An evacuation of refugees is impractical on religious grounds. The Titan dominated society could never abandon Mother Earth. It is unfeasible logistically as not Retort City lacks the lift capability. Diverting the time streams is beyond their science. They are not sufficient to the task and must ask the Oblique Entity for its help-- a sort of deus ex machina.

Aliens are described in some stories as being too alien to comprehend. Most human motivations/conflicts begin with food safety and shelter and proceed along Maslow's hierarchy to greed status fulfilment and pleasure seeking. Niven's Kzinti are motivated by status and the desire to acquire estates on which to hunt and raise families. The alien empires in Star Trek seem involved in dominance games characteristic of humans. I don't recall hearing an explanation for the behavior of the aliens in Independence Day unless it was pure revulsion. Certainly hatred was evident. All understandable as human like. The Oblique Entity may be beyond human comprehension by nature. No human definition fits and description is based only on vague and fleeting perceptions. No words suffice for it to explain its nature to humans. One common trait comes through clearly-- the enjoyment of entertainment. One of the human time travelers implores its assistance in saving the Earth. How does one obtain aid from someone who finds great entertainment value in the unfolding drama of one's plight?

For that matter, how does one convince someone that their murderous hatred is misplaced and futile? The Titans and the lemur like creatures in the approaching time wave ignore the fact that consciousness/life/intelligence are but byproducts of time. Even if one group succeeds in exterminating the other, the 2 time waves will still crash together ending time and life. (It is a theme of the story that despots and tyrants and haters ignore any information that contradicts their dogma and preconceived notions.) Effort and time that would be better spent working together for mutual survival are wasted on hydrogen bombs and plague weapons. As the Oblique Entity says, the final Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Collision Course is tightly written, fast paced story that wants to be read all the way through without a break. As one reviewer puts it, "Bayley packs more into under two hundred pages than most authors come up with in a lifetime". The characters are sketched in quickly, but you know them as well as need be to follow the plot. The unique approach to time travel and the unique solution to the class struggle make it well worth reading. The ending of the story is fitting as the major conflict is resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned, even if they don't all know it. It is not a sugar coated resolution and conclusion, but the Titans would not have had it any other way, "with their cargos of death, death, and more death." I first read the story when I was in my late teens and then reread it some 30 years later. I enjoyed it as much this time as I did the first time. It is not currently available as e-text, but there are paper copies still available.

Selected dramatis personae:

•Leard Ascar- Earth's leading time scientist

•Chairman of Panhumanic League

• Grandfather of Hue Su Mueng

• Herrick- Amhrak scientist inventor of remote, intferometry-based remote viewing

• Rond Heshke- prominent archeologist

• Hue Su Mueng- disgruntled Retort City malcontent

• Hueh Shao father of Hue Su Mueng

• Hwen Wu- Leisure Retort prime minister and old friend of Hueh Shao

• Layella- Sobrie's "racially impure" girlfriend

• Leader Limnich- leader of Titanium Legions and de facto ruler of Earth

• Li Kim- friend of Hue Su Mueng

• Li Li San- Retort City envoys to future Earth aliens

• Blare Oblomot- assistant to Rond Heske at Hathar Ruins. brother of Sobrie. member of Panhumanic League

• Sobrie Oblomot- member of Panhumanic League

• Shiu Kung Chien- Retort City's leading expert on time. in contact with the Oblique Entity.

• Titan-Lieutenant Gann- time travel tech officer

• Titan-Lieutenant Hosk- time travel tech officer

• Titan-Captain Brask

• Titan-Major Brourne

• Whang Yat-Sen Retort City envoy to future Earth aliens

Further reading about Barrington J. Bayley, Collision Course/Collision with Chronos

•  COLLISION WITH CHRONOS on Ovias

•  Astounding Worlds of Barrington J Bayley on Ovias

• Review of Collision Course on Science Fiction Ruminations

• Wryte Stuff-- Politics with a Difference - Science-Fictional Constitutions

•  Jesse's Review on Goodreads

•  Barrington J Bayley on Wikipedia

•  Barrington J Bayley # ISFDB

• Barrington J. Bayley: Science-fiction writer who treated the human condition as a puzzle that must be solved

• Book Review: The Fall of Chronopolis, Barrington J. Bayley (1974)

• Book Review: Star Winds, Barrington J. Bayley (1978)

• Book Review: Empire of Two Worlds, Barrington J. Bayley (1972)

• The Zen Gun-Barrington J. Bayley (1983)

• Review: Let the Galaxy Burn - Warhammer 40k Anthology

• Obituary: Barrington J. Bayley

• Barrington John Bayley on Fantastic Fiction

Creative commons 4.0 

Credit cover art image under fair use for review. contact publisher for reuse 

[anthropologicalhands]

r/n 26. as an apology

One of the most unpleasant revelations of working at aserious relationship is how ugly thefights can get. Not every fight is simply a match of wits, an intellectualstimulation in building tension and finding enjoyable ways to expel it once theinitial conundrum has been resolved.

The roof of his apartment building is surprisinglybeautiful, though Nathaniel isn’t really in the mindspace to enjoy it, and the areafeels a lot smaller than it looks –he paces the perimeter three times straightbefore his restless energy abates enough to allow himself to sit at the edge ofone of the walls. He interlocks his hands behind his head and leans back,breathing slowly, trying to keep his mind blank, to not stew over what was justsaid. It works, somewhat, but he still feels taut and shaky, alternatingbetween being a selfish, righteous anger and exhaustion.

He loses track of time, just trying to calm down, trying notto wallow in everything he said that he regretted when he said them and howit’s even more magnified now.

At eleven fifty-three, Nathaniel’s phone vibrates.

come back to theapartment

It isn’t the message he expected from her. Nathanielcontemplates it, his thumb hovering over the unlock button. Truthfully, he thoughtshe would have gone home—or the part of his brain that was still paranoid aboutlosing her anticipated that she would declare that it had been too soon, that allof this was on hold until they sorted themselves out a bit more.

Logically, he knows that she won’t call the whole thing offfrom one bad fight—they’ve evolved past those kinds of gestures. But still,their history, coupled with a more recent self-awareness of his own failings,insists on imagining otherwise.

In the stretch of his hesitation, a new text bubble appears.

it’s late. i’m notready to talk about it, but i don’t want you to stay on the roof all night.

come to bed.

He hesitates before replying.

heading down

He moves to stand, working out the stiffness in his backbefore he heads to the stairwell.

~

The inside of the apartment is dark when he opens the door,the light from the hallway only briefly highlighting the first few feet inside,but his eyes are still immediately drawn to an ill-defined lump under thebedsheets, facing away from him.

He locks the door and feels his way through the apartment,eyes adjusting to the dark with the aid of the scant moonlight from thewindows, going through his nightly routine, moving quietly to keep fromdisturbing her.

When he pulls back the sheets to get in the bed, she stillhasn’t moved, and that’s how he knows that she isn’t sleeping—angry or not, sheusually shifts automatically towards a new source of warmth. But now she keepswell on the other side of the bed, her breaths slightly too even, a little tooslow and controlled.

The resentful sting hasn’t faded, but it is softened when helooks at her, curled in tightly into herself. Despite his initial instinct tocling to the feeling, he welcomes it, something of the tension loosening withinhim.

A new impulse compels him to shift a little closer. Hehesitates, because he’s about ninety percent certain that she will keep playingpossum no matter what he does. But he should say something, and even if theystill need the night to cool off, maybe it’ll make it easier to say in themorning, too.

Slowly and deliberately, telegraphing his movements so thatshe doesn’t sit up and smack him in the face –he can’t afford to crack anotherone of his teeth—Nathaniel leans over, carefully planting his hand on thenightstand so he can bend over her without putting any weight on her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, pressing a dry kiss against herhair, not quite having the courage to go for her skin.

He’s settling back into his side of the bed when her sullenreply cuts through the dark.

“That’s not how this is supposed to work.”

He opens his eyes to the click of the bedside lamp and thesound of shifting sheets to see that she’s sitting up against the headboard.Her eyes are still red-rimmed and she’s not looking towards him but staringdeterminedly at the foot of the bed, picking at the loose threads on thesheets. She still looks a little angry, like the tension from their fight hasyet to bleed out, but there’s something new in there as well.

He sits up as well.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk until tomorrow,” he says,as neutrally as possible.

“I didn’t,” she says stonily. “What was supposed to happenwas that I was going to get up early tomorrow, make some tea, we would both sitdown at your awful table and talk things out like adults. After I apologized first.”

He frowns, confused. “Why would you apologize first?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, you definitely owe me a couple too,”she sniffs, slouching down a little, crossing her arms and glaring at herdrawn-up knees. “But I thought we’d start with the last blow and work our waybackwards. So.”

“Rebecca, we don’t need to do this now—”

“I shouldn’t have brought up Mona.”

…and there they were.

“You didn’t though,” he says, though it’s harder to sound conciliatory.That was what had sent him to the roof in the first place. “Not really. Atleast, nothing that wasn’t true.”

But Rebecca is shaking her head, her arms tightening overher chest. “Still. It had nothing to do with our argument. It had nothing to dowith anything at all. I don’t like, actually, logically think you’ll decide I’mtoo much and just walk out. I really don’t. I don’t know; I was spiraling and Ijust needed to win something todayand that was the cheapest shot.”

There’s nothing really that he can say to that, because heknows that feeling very intimately, knows how intense it can be for him, thedesire to turn any perceived failure back to his advantage. He’s seen itseffects on Rebecca more than once, either directed towards him or not, how it overtakesher body so completely that at times it seems like she will burst into flameswith the force of it.

And it’s frustrating, because knowing, logically, what to dowith his feelings and the best ways to react to them does not always translateover into actual actions. Because the second she had thrown it in his face hehad seen her suck her lip between her teeth and squeeze her eyes closed andhe’d known she regretted it. But it hadn’t been enough to keep him in theapartment, not when walls seemed to contract so tightly around him and her thatthey didn’t have any space and he had to get out, go up to the roof for air.Part of him had wanted to leave the apartment building entirely, but the restof him couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her, of having her thinking that hewould leave her, and the roof had been his internal compromise.

“Well, I could have handled things better. You told me youhad a bad day—”

She laughs harshly, the sound sharp and strained.

“First rule in therapy,” she says, with a bitter twist ofthe lips. She twists to look at him properly. “A bad day is not an excuse totreat people like shit. And screaming at my boyfriend that I must be too muchto handle probably counts.”

He hesitates, both agreeing but not wanting to, not when he isin the wrong. Not when she already feels like she spends so much timemonitoring herself in every other aspect of her life.

“Well,” he says, picking his words carefully. “My responsesweren’t exactly great, either, what with the defensiveness and snapping at you.And, to be honest, I probably could have picked a better time to mention that I’vebeen looking for support groups,” he says with a self-deprecating twist of themouth. “Especially when I hadn’t brought it up before.”

She exhales at that, though it’s not quite a laugh.

“Well, yeah, probably. It still shouldn’t have escalatedlike that. There’s no excuse for fighting dirty.”

Her eyes are filling with tears again and Nathaniel wouldlike nothing better than to shift closer and gather her up, tuck her head underhis chin and hold her until she stops shaking. But he’s gotten more used tothings he didn’t let himself think about before he came to West Covina, likehow emotions don’t always manifest the way you want them to, and how sometimescomfort comes in different forms that the obvious. It’s not just sadness, itcould be shame or fear or some other unholy combination.

Instead, he slides his hand across the space between them,turns over and opens his hand, palm up, there for her to accept if she wants.

She reaches out sothat her fingertips brush and gently curl over his—not fully accepting the contactbut not rejecting it, either.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For the things I said, and making youfeel like you’re too much. I want to help, but I still don’t really know how totalk about this stuff, and there’s more to it than, well…”

It’s embarrassing already that he has trouble processing hisown emotions in a reasonable manner, let alone understanding hers. He had justwanted to do the right thing for once, to know how to help Rebecca with herstuff and not be a failure at it. But then he worried that it meant he wasinadequate, not knowing how to help on his own, and put off talking to her, andlook where it led them.

Rebecca’s fingers flex and then slide over to rest fully inhis palm.

“Yeah. I know.”

The silence is thick and syrupy and still heavy betweenthem, but there’s just white noise in his head—nothing he can say withoutsounding utterly inane or without fearing that he’ll make a wrong turn.

“Man, remember when we could just fuck our way through ourproblems?” She tries to joke, but her delivery falls flat. “That was so mucheasier.”

He cracks a smile anyways. “It was definitely a good distractionat the time.”

“Yeah, we’re kind of past that.” She worries at her lip. “Wehave to be more careful, with all of this history, huh?”

And if that’s not true, nothing is.

“We do,” he agrees. He feels the weight of it sometimes,reminding him that this cannot be like the first time or the second—that they won’thave endless chances. Failure was drilled into him as something catastrophic,something to be avoided at all cost. Every incident was a source of shame, nota way to grow. He’s not used to approaching failures like this –in increments, withthe intent to salvage and mold into something than can become part of a greaterwhole, a mosaic that is the stronger for the bad parts weathered.

“We still need to talk this over in the morning,” she says, stilllooking down at their conjoined hands, but not at him. “But I can set up anappointment for us with Dr Akopian, see if she has any specific recommendations. Think that will help?”

“Okay,” he says, squeezing her fingers. “That sounds like aplan.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The air in the apartment is no longer so heavy, moreelastic, more room for reactions beyond defensive caution.

“Would you excuse me,” she says suddenly, letting go of hishand and scooting out of the bed. “I need—I need to clean up my face.” Shegestures vaguely at herself, not meeting his eyes. “I’m a mess. I’m oozing. Ilook like a blob.”

He lets her go, sliding down on his back again and dragginghis hands over his face. His stomach is still squirming, still a little uneasy,but it’s better than the heavy knot that was there before.

When she emerges from the bathroom, her eyes are a littleless red and her face and arms still spattered with droplets. Instead of goingaround the bed to her side, Rebecca surprises him by climbing over him, so thatshe’s straddling his stomach. She bends down and hides her face in the crook ofhis neck, her nose against his collarbone. Carefully, he wraps his arms aroundher, sealing her tight against his chest, one hand slipping under her shirt topress flat against her back, the other curling up to rest against the nape ofher neck. They stay like that, just breathing together, and he can feel how herheartbeat slows and steadies against his chest.

“Thank you for not leaving the building,” she says, hervoice muffled. “And for the record, I do know that you’re trying your best.”

That really shouldn’t make his heart lift the way it does.Nathaniel smiles into her hair.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m just trying to make my best suck alittle less.”

She laughs, for real this time.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

#rebecca x nathaniel #writing meme reply #meme reply #crazy ex girlfriend #ellie writes fic #notbang

[possessivesuffix]

Why is the Greek word for ‘rice’ ορυζα?

This obviously comes from the direction of Indo-Iranian. The zeta rules out anything involving Indic proper (Sanskrit vrīhi; likely from earlier *wrīdžʰi or the like). Most of Iranian today has /br-/, apparently borrowed through Middle Persian blnj /brindž/ — but if this is soundlawful from *wr- is not clear to me. The only case I can find of a PIE root with *wr- being continued in Iranian is *wreyḱ- ‘to turn, wind’ (English wry, wriggle; Avestan /wr-/, Parthian and Sogdian rw- (/rʷ-/ or /rVw-/?) > Yaghnobi /rĭw-/, etc.). This gives MPer. lyštk /rištag/, ʼlwys /arwēs/ (both ‘rope’) with different development, but of course these could be loans from some other Iranian variety (esp. since these are derived nouns and seem to show two different developments).

In any case the ‘rice’ word is very likely to be post-PII, and even post-PIr. date would not be a bad bet. But if it had been instantly substituted as /br-/ in non-Avestan dialects, surely we’d expect the same even in Greek. So maybe assuming Old Persian *wr- > Middle Persian /br-/ is still the best option, even if this cannot be demonstrated in native vocab.

Moreover, none of the II or even other South Asian reflexes (Dravidian, for example, has *wariñci) seem to show an /u/ as the root vowel. Is the word new enough in Greek to have been adopted with front /y/ already at onset? If so, then maybe at this stage /or-/ would’ve been the closest match for foreign /wr-/ or /βr-/, due to Greek not having short /u/ (at a suitable stage even: no /u/ at all).

But alternately: Greek initial ῥ [rʰ] only comes from PIE *wr-, *sr- > Proto-Hellenic *wr-, *hr-. Maybe the loan is old enough that these were still clusters (perhaps already merged as *hr- though) and not yet simply a word-initial allophone of /r/. So then the ο- would be prothetic after all, as it first appears, added to a Scythian (?) form that already had undergone *wr- > *r-. The choice of /o/ could be then due to the labial root vowel (whatever its explanation).

Interestingly, does anything really prevent extending the same explanation also to various other prothetic omicrons in Greek? While it seems cases like ὀρεκτός still have to be accounted via *ə₃ < *h₃, maybe cases like ὄνομα ‘name’, ὀρυσσω ‘I dig’ could be maybe also from *ə₁ or *ə₂ with labial coloring to /o/ (and I note that some people already seem to reconstruct ‘name’ with *h₁). I would even note that PIE seems to have multiple cases of *h₃m- versus none of *h₁m-. In principle this could be another position where *ə₁ > /o/ could be considered; also ὀμφαλός ‘navel’ < *əmbʰlo- < *Hm̥bʰlo- < √Hnebʰ- could fall under this.

#Greek #iranian #wanderwörter #etymology #historical phonology

[kentmwz-blog]

The Age of Trump

2016-02-27

ELIOT A. COHEN http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/26/the-age-of-trump/ How on earth did this happen?  Some, like Robert Kagan, think it is solely the result of a prolonged self-poisoning of the Republican Party. A number of shrewd writers—David Frum, Tucker Carlson, Ben Domenech, Charles Murray, and Joel Kotkin being among the best—have probed deeper. Not surprisingly, they are all some flavor of conservative. On the liberal (or, as they say now, progressive) end of the spectrum the reaction has been chiefly one of smugness (“well, that’s what the Republicans are, we knew it all along”), schadenfreude (“pass the popcorn”), and chicken-counting (“now we can get a head start on Hillary’s first Inaugural”). Their insouciance will be stripped away if Trump becomes the nominee and turns his cunning, ferocity, and charm on an inept, boring politician trailing scandals as old as dubious investments with a 1,000 percent return and as fresh as a homebrew email server. He might lose. He might, however, very well tear her to pieces. Clearly, he relishes the prospect, because he despises the politicians he has bought over the years. The conservative analysts offer a number of arguments—a shifting class structure, liberal overreach in social policy, existential anxiety about the advent of a robot-driven economy, the stagnation since the Great Recession, and more. They note (as most liberal commentators have yet to do) Trump’s formidable political skills, including a visceral instinct for detecting and exploiting vulnerability that has been the hallmark of many an authoritarian ruler. These insights are all to the point, but they do not capture one key element. Moral rot. Politicians have, since ancient Greece, lied, pandered, and whored. They have taken bribes, connived, and perjured themselves. But in recent times—in the United States, at any rate—there has never been any politician quite as openly debased and debauched as Donald Trump. Truman and Nixon could be vulgar, but they kept the cuss words for private use. Presidents have chewed out journalists, but which of them would have suggested that an elegant and intelligent woman asking a reasonable question was dripping menstrual blood? LBJ, Kennedy, and Clinton could all treat women as commodities to be used for their pleasure, but none went on the radio with the likes of Howard Stern to discuss the women they had bedded and the finer points of their anatomies. All politicians like the sound of their own names, but Roosevelt named the greatest dam in the United States after his defeated predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Can one doubt what Trump would have christened it? That otherwise sober people do not find Trump’s insults and insane demands outrageous (Mexico will have to pay for a wall! Japan will have to pay for protection!) says something about a larger moral and cultural collapse. His language is the language of the comments sections of once-great newspapers. Their editors know that the online versions of their publications attract the vicious, the bigoted, and the foulmouthed. But they keep those comments sections going in the hope of getting eyeballs on the page. Winston Churchill recalls in his memoir how as a young man he came to terms with hypocrisy, discovering the “enormous and unquestionably helpful part that humbug plays in the social life of a great people.” Inconsistency between public virtue and private vice is not altogether a bad thing. No matter how nasty the realities are, maintaining respectable appearances, minding the civilities, and adhering to the conventions is part of what keeps civilization going. The current problem goes beyond excruciatingly bad manners. What we increasingly lack, and have lacked for some time, is a sense of the moral underpinning of republican (small r) government. Manners and morals maintain a free state as much as laws do, as Tocqueville observed long ago, and when a certain culture of virtue dies, so too does something of what makes democracy work. Old-fashioned words like integrity, selflessness, frugality, gravitas, and modesty rarely rate a mention in modern descriptions of the good life—is it surprising that they don’t come up in politics, either? William James, a pacifist who understood this point, argued in “The Moral Equivalent War” that “intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command must still remain the rock upon which states are built—unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for contempt.” Just so. Trump might have become a less upsetting figure if he had not wriggled through the clutches of the draft in the 1960s. Trump’s rise is only one among many signs that something has gone profoundly amiss in our popular culture. It is related to the hysteria that has swept through many campuses, as students call for the suppression of various forms of free speech and the provision of “safe spaces” where they will not be challenged by ideas with which they disagree. The rise of Trump and the fall of free speech in academia are equal signs that we are losing the intellectual sturdiness and honesty without which a republic cannot thrive. There are other traces of rot. They can be seen in the excuses that political leaders and experts have begun to make as they cozy up to Trump. Like French bureaucrats in the age of Vichy, or Italian aristocrats in the age of Mussolini, they are already saying things like: “I can make it less bad,” “He’s different in private,” “He has his good points,” “He is evolving,” and “Someone has to do the work of government.” Of course, some politicians—Chris Christie, that would be you—simply skip the pretense and indulge in spite or opportunism as the mood takes them. This is not the first age in which politicians have taken morally disgraceful positions, even by the standards of their time. In the 1950s and 1960s there were flagrant bigots in Congress. But many of them were in other ways public spirited—think Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, for example, who presided with dignity over the Senate Armed Services Committee for nearly two decades. Lyndon Johnson may not have opposed the evils of his time forthrightly, but he used the full extent of his wiliness to break through the institutionalized discrimination of the South. The villainy of today takes softer forms, but it is pervasive—politicians swallow their principles (such as they are) and endorse a candidate they despise, turn on a judge they once praised, denounce the opposition for behavior identical to their own, or press their branch’s prerogatives and rules to the Constitutional limit, and beyond. The rot is cultural. It is no coincidence that Trump was the star of a “reality” show. He is the beneficiary of an amoral celebrity culture devoid of all content save an omnipresent lubriciousness. He is a kind of male Kim Kardashian, and about as politically serious. In the context of culture, if not (yet) politics, he is unremarkable; the daily entertainments of today are both tawdry and self-consciously, corrosively ironic. Ours is an age when young people have become used to getting news, of a sort, from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, when an earlier generation watched Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. It is the difference between giggling with young, sneering hipsters and listening to serious adults. Go to YouTube and look at old episodes of Profiles in Courage, if you can find them—a wildly successful television series based on the book nominally authored by John F. Kennedy, which celebrated an individual’s, often a politician’s, courage in standing alone against a crowd, even a crowd with whose politics the audience agreed. The show of comparable popularity today is House of Cards. Bill Clinton has said that he loves it. American culture is, in short, nastier, more nihilistic, and far less inhibited than ever before. It breeds alternating bouts of cynicism and hysteria, and now it has given us Trump. The Republican Party as we know it may die of Trump. If it does, it will have succumbed in part because many of its leaders chose not to fight for the Party of Lincoln, which is a set of ideas about how to govern a country, rather than an organization clawing for political and personal advantage. What is at stake, however, is something much more precious than even a great political party. To an extent unimaginable for a very long time, the moral keel of free government is showing cracks. It is not easy to discern how we shall mend them.

#oldblog

[licheninsect]

GameStop, the natural experiment

Someone, reminding me of my 10-year-old debate with Robin Hanson, texted me and said: this GameStop short squeeze proves your point about futarchy, doesn’t it?

Well, kind of. It’s certainly an interesting uncontrolled event. Arguably GameStop does more to prove my point about asset transformation and systemic risk. But it is also an instance of market coordination (stop saying the m-word, which is a pejorative), which in a broad general sense is also the problem with Professor Hanson’s futarchy.

The most general possible point of the experiment is that market coordination works. If a market price is a pure effect that causes nothing further, the market is theoretically efficient. But once the price signal becomes a cause—as in futarchy, where markets control political decisions, or as in a short squeeze, where price signals trigger further buying—the side effects of that cause may give market participants ulterior motives to make bets which are intentionally inefficient.

(Professor Hanson at last report still refuses to concede the overwhelming power of my perspicacious objections—Professor, you may name the time, the place, and the arms.)

Since r/wsb is a mob and not an army, the $GME squeeze is decentralized coordination. This phenomenon is also of political interest. In addition to being (mostly) centerless, which makes it highly defensible, the players are organized not by commitment but by cohesion—they are buying $GME not because they believe in the company, but because they believe in each other. Here is a collective action which is effective, yet nihilistic—something under heaven and earth, which may not be in your political philosophy.

So we have a double natural experiment: in both economics and political science. No wonder everyone thinks this GameStop thing is so cool.

(TLDR: my guess is that what will pop the bubble is either some kind of SEC order, or GameStop issuing new shares, But even this will be hard.

My best guess: SEC tells GameStop to issue new shares. My ideal policy: the Fed reprivatizes GameStop—buying it at its current valuation, cashing out all positions long or short at their present value, then auctioning the equity back to the market.)

Economics for retards

When the “retards” of r/wsb say “I like this stock,” their retardation is purely ironic. They don’t actually like this stock. (Except that GameStop was already a 4chan meme.)

Their interest in this stock is not related to its current or prospective price-to-earnings ratio, its dividend stream, the assets on its books—or any of that lame-ass bullshit. Hey boomer! Want to know something? You can’t say “asset” without “ass.”

Market coordination is any activity, organized or spontaneous, that affects a price signal for ulterior reasons—with trades motivated not by the security’s expected return, but by the hope of influencing some side effect caused by the price signal. In the case of a squeeze, that side effect is forced buying by screaming, tortured shorts.

The efficiency of markets is super-tempting as an epistemic tool. The market, it seems, is always right. So why not always do what the market tells us to do? Why not link decisions to market outcomes? Because as soon as we let the market tell us what to do—the market is no longer always right.

Every time you link a market signal to some side effect, you are leaking that effect’s power backward into the market. You want the causality to flow only forward. But the pipe has no valve. So the market becomes contaminated with power.

Anyone who can coordinate a market signal can also coordinate any side effects—and often has some incentive to do so. If there is such an incentive, your market will find itself befouled with uneconomic trades—and its signal’s accuracy will be ruined. And that’s why, as I write, $GME is not priced according to textbook fundamentals.

(Don’t worry if you don’t quite get this—we’ll go over it again in way more detail.)

The market for whiteness

Such contamination is especially dangerous in markets designed to work as Keynesian beauty contests, without any direct causal connection to the underlying signal—for example, a blockchain dispute-resolution contract like Kleros.

These are agreement markets: they reward players who agree with other players, and punish those who disagree. Every player’s incentive is to always be in the majority.

The KBC design assumes that the only rule that can coordinate the players is the rule of truth—that everyone’s opinion equals universal, objective truth plus individual, random noise. But there are infinite alternative coordination rules. (This issue also plagues proof-of-stake, or “POS,” blockchains.)

For example, imagine if Kleros were taken over by white supremacists, whose rule of judgment was simple: decide every case in favor of the whitest side. Once this Kleros Klan got in the saddle, every judge whose criterion was truth, not racism, would lose money on every case where white was not actually in the right. Soon these honest judges would be driven bankrupt and drop out—making Kleros a straight-up klavern. (Who would then fall out amongst themselves about the technicalities of whiteness.)

Pure agreement markets are rare. Usually there is a more concrete causal connection from the fundamentals of a market to its price signal. What this means for any market coordination is that this coordination is, at some fundamental level, unprofitable. It is trading with a suboptimal strategy.

But that it is unprofitable only means that players with an ulterior motive must incur a cost, in some fundamental sense, to achieve that ulterior motive. Maybe that cost is worth it. It is possible that the market can drain their wallets dry before they get what they want; it is also possible that the market can’t.

In the GameStop case, the ulterior motive is a short squeeze. What is a short squeeze, exactly? A short squeeze is actually a very unusual kind of bank run. Its cause is the unsound and unstable, but ubiquitous, bad accounting practice of asset transformation, which inherently produces systemic risk.

The retards (who might be able to stay retarded longer than Citadel can stay solvent) are exploiting a structural instability created by this bad accounting—which is left over from the 19th century. So e. e. musk is right when, in a sort of poem, he writes:

u can’t sell houses u don’t own u can’t sell cars u don’t own but u *can* sell stock u don’t own!? this is bs – shorting is a scam legal only for vestigial reasons

Well, “scam” is a bit much. But the sentiment is basically correct. Let’s work through this interpretation in exquisite proctological (excuse me, praxeological) detail.

The pure bubble

We’ll start by understanding a pure bubble, with no side effects—in a stock that no one is shorting, about whose price no one cares, and whose shares no one is printing.

The basic math of a pure bubble is that, given an arbitrary amount of money, you can pump this stock’s price up to an arbitrary level. However, you cannot get any more money out than you put in.

What you can do is profit by being the first in and first out—but the bubble remains a zero-sum game. The players are just being rearranged. This is why a pure bubble, if intentional, is a scam—a pump-and-dump scheme. For every winner, there is a loser.

Le short squeeze

But if the stock is shorted, now the pure bubble is no longer pure. It has a side effect. That side effect is pain—for the shorts. As Musk, the poet, writes:

Here come the shorty apologists Give them no respect Get Shorty

Shorty can relieve his pain (but not his losses, which are lost forever) instantly—by buying. And hence driving up the bubble—which is no longer zero-sum.

This is a game of musical chairs. Technically, it can go up forever—especially when there are two and a half times as many butts as seats.

It’s important to also note that the people with the butts are not really that rich, in an accounting sense. These funds, banks, etc, do have zillions of dollars of assets—and just slightly fewer zillions of dollars of debt.

This difference, which is smaller than you think, is how much money they actually have (their “capital”). The usual ratio of their capital to their assets (their “leverage”) is set at a level that makes the YOLO margin options daredevils of r/wsb look like Julianne Moore in Safe. “They put derivatives in everything these days.”

And this is safe—since all conceivable failure scenarios have been simulated by the risk management team, all ex-physics professors whose PhD work involved not just finding the Higgs Boson, but actually fucking it—guys who, aged 11, didn’t just win the International Math Olympiad, but had their jersey retired—sir, the guys have run the numbers. Twice. And there’s no way this can happen. You can head home now, sir.

But none of their fancy models accounted for a bunch of Reddit retards… can’t you almost see the movie?

What’s actually happening here? Let’s delve into the proctology—I mean, praxeology. Basically, bank runs happen because people think statistically, not praxeologically. People think statistically, not praxeologically, because that’s what the law requires.

A bank run on the gamer shop

What is a short, anyway? Who is this mysterious… Shorty? What are his nefarious activities? Are they legal? 100%. Are they a scam—as Space Admiral Musk asserts? Well… it’s complicated.

Shorting really is a kind of counterfeiting—honest counterfeiting. To short GameStop, you literally just print your own GameStop share. You put your name on it, of course. And what do you do with this fake share? Sell it, of course. What else would you do?

The counterfeit share is a promise, made not by GameStop but by you, that whatever benefits a real GameStop share confers (dividends, free Xbox games, raffle tickets, etc), your fake one will provide as well. Obviously, you owe whatever this promise is worth. The money you made by selling it (selling a promise is what “borrowing” is) is yours.

Musk is right to refer to this as a “vestigial practice.” The truly vestigial practice is not the fabrication of these counterfeit shares—but the old “paper belt” financial systems which treat these two very different securities, the real GameStop share and the fake one, as the same thing.

It’s true that they promise exactly the same returns; but the promises are made by different people (“counterparties”). These are different financial instruments—because they have different risk structures. They also confer different rights—a fake share has no shareholder vote. Mixing them together is just a 19th-century programming error.

Obviously this mistake is obvious—so it has a patch. The promise that is a short is your promise, but it is secured by a central clearinghouse. Through your broker, this clearinghouse watches your capital, makes sure you can always pay off your promises by selling assets, and if you can’t sells them for you.

In theory the clearinghouse can’t fail. In practice maybe it can—if it gets in the way of the wrong flash crash, which is the actual reason brokers turned off GameStop trading on Thursday. A flash crash is a chain reaction of automatic selling—which can happen at arbitrarily high speed, making margin accounts insolvent before margin calls fill. (A flash crash is also a concern for stablecoins built on asset transformation—see below.)

If the clearinghouse did fail, and instead of a real GameStop share you held a piece of paper signed by (a) some dude, and (b) what used to be a clearinghouse but got torched and is now a crackhouse, you really are SOL. (Pro tip: you can usually ask your broker to hold only real shares, not laminated promises. Call and tell them not to let your shares be “borrowed.”)

But in practice, America is the stock market. Which means anyone who is useless to the stock market is useless to America. (And has probably gotten that message, too.) Which means your laminated promises are actually safe, because the clearinghouses are too big to fail and will be bailed out.

Which also means that they are de facto government agencies. But we don’t feel any urgent need to admit that. Increasingly, the 21st-century consensus of government looks like it is coming into view: pseudolibertarianism.

Pseudolibertarianism is nominally libertarian and polycentric, but actually statist and monocentric—mating the empathy of capitalism with the efficiency of socialism. This worst-of-both-worlds dystopia flourishes by uniting the worst people from both sides.

Synthetic assets are good, actually

Again, the fundamental problem here is bad accounting.

The value of the promise is fundamentally lower than the value of the share, because the risk of the promise can never be zero—especially since the final policy in the stack of insurance policies that purports to fill the gap is an informal government promise—the clearinghouse is “too big to fail,” whatever that means. On such pillars rest our roofs.

Any financial system dependent on informal securities must be in some sense vestigial. At least, no one would design any such thing. Even if there is no way to fix a system, it is often useful to know how it would be designed if it could be designed from scratch.

The default path for fixing a system is to rationalize and formalize current practices. If we eliminated the risk gap by fully nationalizing the market, broker and clearinghouse, your synthetic laminated promise would truly be as good as a real share—and synthetic shares could be injected ad libitum into the market for real shares.

The description I gave above, which is of what some call naked shorting, has already gone halfway there—well past reality. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with naked shorting, it is not looked upon well by securities law—but it’s also treated like driving 70 in a 55 zone. If anything is vestigial, this “gray area” BS is vestigial.

In reality, there is a gnarly system of “borrowing” shares which often breaks down and makes shares “hard to borrow.” Islamic banking uses similar rickety constructions to pretend it doesn’t have interest rates. (Western banking is closer to Allah every year—indeed Japan has long been fully halal. Though Allah’s view on negative interest rates is not clear—is there some hadith?)

Far from destabilizing the market, unlimited safe and healthy naked shorting would stabilize it—because if Wall Street can go “all in” against Reddit, Wall Street walks all over the tards. Wall Street knows that GameStop will not be trading above $30 in six months, or maybe even six hours—so there is a huge amount of money to be made.

But to make this money, you have to have perfect timing, balls of steel and a bankroll the size of God. Wall Street has only two of these things—but Reddit has the other. That’s why the battle is fun. If Wall Street knew that Wall Street could go all in with unlimited synthetic shorts, they would drive GameStop back to $15 in 45 seconds.

But because of this funky “borrowing” infrastructure, which is, like, something that feels like it was invented by Jesse Livermore in 1927—or possibly John Law in 1727—I complain about old operating systems because they date to 1972—Wall Street cannot project that Wall Street will put on unbounded shorts. So it cannot model its risk. Wall Street does not have balls of steel. Wall Street has risk-management departments.

There are individual financiers who have balls of steel. Probably at least half of them have gone full Coriolanus, and joined the retard mob. It is often wise to obey random coordination signals—that’s why the battle is fun.

Synthetic assets are bad, actually

The fundamental cause of the instability is that you shouldn’t be transforming demand for one asset into demand for a qualitatively different asset. Here, demand from what should be the prediction market for the future price of $GME is hemorrhaging spaghetti, driven by a savage positive-feedback loop, into what should be the market for savers to stake their retirements on a chain of videogame stores.

In theory, when you add artificial demand or supply to a market whose price is driven by fundamentals, and this artificial demand or supply creates an artificial mispricing, this mispricing should attract speculators who expect to profit from it. In practice, many forms of market failure can sufficiently daunt this army of market vigilantes, these bold knights of the capital-asset pricing model—till they lose the will to fight, and their citadel is stormed by a braying mob of horny, retarded, revolting peasants.

All forms of asset transformation create structural instability, because all forms of asset transformation create automatic buying and/or selling. As Wall Street first discovered in 1987, automatic trading is to flash crashes as buffer overflows are to getting your website hacked.

The stablecoin catastrophe

For a pure example, consider a crude “stablecoin” which turns a supply of Ethereum into a supply of digital dollars. The dollar hodlers demand dollars, not ether. But they can collateralize virtual dollars with a stockpile of Ethereum, thereby transforming their actual demand for dollars into spurious demand for Ethereum.

The virtual dollars are safe because they are collateralized by more than their value of Ethereum. But value is just price. If the price of Ethereum drops, the contract has to sell Ethereum for dollars, preserving the peg.

This works until a significant amount of demand for Ethereum is actually transformed demand for dollars—spurious demand. At this point we see the potential for a feedback loop which creates a self-sustaining avalanche of Ethereum sales—a flash crash.

Since selling into this avalanche is essentially impossible, and since Ethereum’s price is a Keynesian beauty contest anyway, it can crash to arbitrarily low levels. Fortunately, if only because Bitcoin is ancient and retarded, Bitcoin is immune to this instability.

Takeaway for market designers

Speculators are good because they predict the future price curve of a security. But they should speculate as if speculating in a prediction market for rainfall in Spain—betting against all other speculators, to predict a signal that no one can predict perfectly, and no one can affect at all.

Speculation should not directly inject supply or demand into primary asset markets. The collective opinion of the speculative prediction market should only have indirect effects—effects mediated by humans who respond to the signal this market produces.

If the prediction market has a direct effect on the primary market, it is as if the clouds in Spain cared how much rain the Spaniards in the plain expected them to contain. If the clouds were that smart, who could predict the weather? It would be chaos. Chaos is exactly what I see when I look out the window.

In theory, in the long run, traders in the primary market should be able to ride out these speculative oscillations—and even profit from them. Why should they have to? The size of these rogue waves, though a function of leverage, is not even predictable. The goal of a market designer is to not have chaos.

Speculation should be a zero-sum game whose only side effects are: (a) redistributing dollars between winning and losing speculators; (b) producing interesting predictions about the future. Speculation should never directly cause anything.

How the battle ends

People often mistake me for some kind of rich and/or powerful person. I am neither! Why would I be out here grifting for my supper on Substack? Do you know how shitty it is to be even a tiny bit famous? But in a past life, I was once a CEO, unbigly and very reluctantly. I know what a share is, and a board. I have even passed a resolution or two. And I know the GameStop C-suite is shitting bricks the size of Stonehenge.

In theory, it is entirely up to them to stop this—and they can even stop it in a copacetic way. The GameStop management has every legal right to print GameStop shares and sell them. They have every financial incentive to print GameStop shares and sell them. The retards can stay retarded longer than the hedgies can stay solvent—but no one can be more retarded than a printer. I hear it goes brrr.

And yet—why should they let all the hedgies off the hook at once? Why not drip out a few shares at a time, for a price as sweet as gold? At least in theory, the management is aligned with its new barbarian shareholders—bad as their manners may be. Both have a logical incentive to feast long and slowly on the unlimited, Lloyds-like liabilities of the trapped fund bros. Remember when Frodo got strung up in a cave by that big spider?

As Matt Levine notes, this is a legal and regulatory mess. Hence, Stonehenge. In some ways, “Gamergate 2: Financial BGL” is like covid, a genuine libertarian moment. In a libertarian world we would all long since have been vaccinated. In a libertarian world, the masters of the universe would all long since have put these retards in their place.

The world is as it is—with what result, we see. It did not end well for Coriolanus. And who, observing these events, does not hear the voice of the Big Lebowski echoing in his head? “Lebowski! The bums will always lose. The bums will always lose, Lebowski!” And yet—whose side are you on?

How it should actually work

Here is a weird policy opinion I have that probably nobody else has. I feel that a well- designed market should separate primary and secondary demand. Here is how this financial utopia of mine would work. I am just an Internet rando so forget I said this.

There would be one asset market A which set the price of all securities through unlevered, untransformed demand, from actual savers, for instruments of saving. There would be another prediction market B which predicted the future price of securities, by matching purely speculative long and short bets—without market making, delta hedging, or any other source of mechanical liquidity.

These markets would be as separated as possible. This is hard. But the goal is to prevent feedback loops from the prediction market backward to the asset market. Information can still feed back—asset investors can see the future price path that the consensus of speculators currently predicts—but demand should not feed back.

Under the current design, speculators can drive all kinds of savage leveraged feedback into the asset-price signal. A short squeeze is just this kind of feedback. In a Hayekian signaling sense, grotty feedback does not improve the efficiency of market calculation. Feedback is just noise—and with all due respect to libertarians, noise is disorder. And suppressing disorder is the basic task of even a libertarian government, isn’t it?

The purpose of a market is to produce an accurate price signal. Separating these two markets, if possible, eliminates speculative feedback and improves the fidelity of the signal. But how can two markets be separated?

Here is one design which, though too hilarious to be serious, illustrates the solution: divide players into two groups, by the first letter of their surnames. The A-M players can play only in the asset market; the N-Z players, only in the prediction market. So no one can hedge a prediction by buying an asset—a process that contaminates both markets with completely spurious, mechanical supply and demand. This alphabetic separation is obviously retarded. But there is probably a non-retarded way to get the same result.

Where the mob will go next

Obviously, a mob is a wild, reasonless animal. Philosophy cannot predict it, any more than philosophy can predict a wolverine. All we can do with our logical faculties is to calculate where the wolverine should go—if by some chance it is a rational wolverine.

The essential problem with the Reddit Retard Revolution is that it has no exit strategy. While it is aiming at a real instability, this instability is not a revolutionary instability, but a dead end.

The $GME price has only one stable equilibrium: the normie equilibrium (which sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel). It cannot come to rest anywhere but earth.

Therefore at a certain point it will return there—and in that degringolade, it will be every retard for himself and the devil take the hindmost. The revolution, in short, is doomed to turn on itself. Brother will knife brother. Armez-vous, retards!

So GameStop is not a retarded rerun of 1917. It’s more like: a retarded rerun of 1905. But maybe 1917 couldn’t have happened without 1905. If the wolverine was thinking logically (this is not necessarily how to think about a KBC—especially not when the other judges are retarded)—what would Lenin do? Lenin would look for two things.

First, because say what you want about Lenin but dude was a winner, he would look for a second equilibrium—in which whatever stonk the retards sent up could stay up. Rather than just kicking the market into an interregnum of chaos, a pirate looting frenzy in which the weak are skinned and the strong exalted as heroes, until the dream collapses and the old regime returns, would inaugurate a new financial order. Rather than sacking the Capital, Lenin would take the Capital—and rule from it. Do you… feel in charge?

Second, because Lenin was just as lazy and mean as any retard, he would look for a huge buffalo herd of structurally trapped shorts. We’re no Bolsheviks here, but good Americans—but no sport is more American than surrounding a huge herd of buffalo, shrieking like rabid apes till they stampede over a cliff, then grilling the tendies.

A second equilibrium

A second equilibrium is a monetary equilibrium.

The only way a stonk, or a piece of paper, or a little chip of metal, or anything, can go up and not come down, is if it turns at least partly into money: a medium of saving, or store of value.

The only way for everyone not just to see their tendies as green numbers on a screen, as badges, as catch-and-release tendies before the inevitable rout, but for everyone to take them home and enjoy them permanently, is monetization: turning a normal good, valuable or even worthless, into a standard currency which is conventionally used to transport purchasing power across time.

Such a currency is inherently overvalued—just like $GME. But unlike $GME, it goes up and stays up. Why? Did you know that women, if someone tells them you’ve never read Carl Menger’s On The Origins of Money, look at you funny—like a piece of bad cheese?

I have written enough about monetary equilibria and monetization/remonetization over the years, so I thought I’d just link to the first piece I wrote on the subject, way back in 2005. This was the first essay, besides blog comments (and, in the early 90s, Usenet), I ever put on the Web. (The intro was so cringe that I let my mysterious literary executor rewrite it.) I do still believe pretty much all of it.

In 2005, I really had no way to know that our hyper-rational financial system would not instantly hyper-organize itself around these new principles. Actually it took 15 years; Bitcoin (if Satoshi is who a lot of people think he is—he was on my blogroll in 2007); and r/wsb. And it’s only just started! (And the principles aren’t really new, just a very trivial extension of Austrian economics.)

And if, like Matt Levine, you have questions like

If pure collective will can create a valuable financial asset, without any reference to cash flows or fundamentals, then all you need is a collective and some will. Just hop on Reddit and create value out of nothing. If it works for Bitcoin, why not … anything? Why not Dogecoin? Why not Signal Advance? Tesla Inc.? GameStop?

All the principles you need to know are behind that link. Let’s take Doge, for instance. Is it monetizable? Kind of but not really.

Doge is more monetizable than GameStop, which is totally unmonetizable because (a) it is not categorically unique, (b) there is another valuation model for it, and (c) most important, there is an authority that can print an infinite amount.

Doge has only the first problem. Although a shitcoin with a long and storied history, and the original memecoin, it is an also-ran even in the altcoin space. In the end, there can be only one stable monetary equilibrium—one stably-overvalued good—and it will be Bitcoin or Ethereum if it’s a crypto, gold or silver if it’s a metal, and the dollar, euro or yuan if it’s paper. In an iterated Keynesian beauty contest, the leader tends to win.

Moreover, Doge for some stupid meme reason has a design error: a 5% annual dilution rate. The way to think about dilution is to think in terms of normalized accounting—in which your position in a token is defined as a fraction of all tokens outstanding.

In this model, which is obviously correct, owning Doge is like putting your money in a bank which steals 5% of it a year—to give to randos—because “deflation is bad.” No, retard, actually deflation is good—it means your money isn’t just holding its value, but actually going up. I like money!

The weird, semi-shady, non-decentralized pseudo-crypto XRP has done much better than it deserves, because of its 0% dilution rate. I genuinely think you can’t understand this issue correctly unless you are literally retarded—or at least, know how to fake it.

The 5% thing is fatal. Even with the rocket fuel of the retards, it’ll be hard for a horse this weak to come back from this far back in the pack. I’m not sure how anyone could fail to enjoy chanting “DOGE DOGE DOGE,” but I don’t think it’s enough. And of course—basically no one is shorting Doge. So no buffalo, which bounds thy tendies.

The mighty buffalo

At this point our wolverine eye cannot help but turn to precious metals. My precious! No one can doubt but that these goods are monetizable—the word for “money” in every other language on the planet means either “gold” or “silver.” I like gold. I like silver, too!

But the question is: where’s Shorty? Are there any shorts? As a wolverine, you have no choice but to go where the buffalo roam. Who is shorting gold or silver? Well…

If you want to investigate the existence and accounting structure of synthetic precious metals, aka “paper gold,” good luck. My advice would be to start small and simple. First—just for practice—figure out the JFK assassination.

Once you really understand that, you might have some chance of analyzing the gold-derivatives market. Suffice it to say that according to BIS statistics, today’s market has about $900 billion in outstanding gold derivatives—more or less, laminated promises of gold—and $80 billion in silver derivatives. That’s about 15,000 tons of paper gold—three times as much as Fort Knox—and about 90,000 tons of silver.

That’s… a lot of buffalo. Now, as always, the essential question is: who made all these promises? And what do they have to back them up?

Part of this includes the “hedge book,” or the forward promises of future gold made by gold miners. That’s about 300 tons today—so we’re off by a factor of about 50. Okay… some of it must be offsetting; what you really want is the consolidated net liabilities of all bullion banks… really. Just start with JFK.

Also, while these forward sales represent real gold “in the ground,” it’s still in the ground. You can’t exactly deliver ten tons of ore in a hole in Ghana to the COMEX. So… we’re looking at roughly… on the order of… a trillion dollars of buffalo meat. Okay. Is there such a thing as too many tendies? I think there might actually be.

The thing is that it’s very easy to make fake precious metals, at least on paper. They don’t pay any dividends and no one uses them for anything. Probably no one will ever come back with that piece of paper and ask for a hunk of metal. Who would do that? Some retard?

What’s interesting is that silver, although inferior by all standards as a precious metal—silver is really the Ethereum of precious metals—has a special quality: it is financed like a precious metal, but used as an industrial metal.

As a result, total stocks of silver by value are much lower than stocks of gold—since physical silver is rarely used to store wealth, whereas physical gold often still is. So the ratio of paper silver to physical silver is also much lower. So if you put a lighter under the paper-silver market—that metal, though an inferior currency, “catches” faster.

The precious-metals markets are connected to the stonk market through ETFs. The major ETFs are SLV and GLD. Contrary to popular belief, they hold real metal bars (though there is nothing wrong with the closed-end Sprott equivalents, PSLV/PHYS).

The way these ETFs work is that if their price rises above the spot metal price, which is set by the aforementioned paper-silver market, their “authorized participants” (big banks) can profit by buying metal and exchanging it for ETF shares. They like money, so they tend to do this. Same in reverse, of course, when the ETF goes down.

The result is that if the market drives the ETF price up above the spot price, it creates a giant sucking sound which wants to find all the metal in the world and suck it into the ETF. Only real metal will do—not promises to mine some hole in Ghana in 2025. I’m sure it’s a very nice hole, but… this is of course a maturity-transformation collapse.

So anyone with a claim to metal, because that kind of a person probably likes money, wants to turn it in for actual metal that they can give to the ETF. But, assuming our JFK analysis is accurate and there are more claims than actual metal—we’re back to the ol’ game of musical chairs. With a lot of butts, and not all that many seats. I think.

Moreover—in the lives of those now living—this has happened. In silver. It was in 1980, so it wasn’t decentralized. And there was no ETF. It was literally a conspiracy of three people to coordinate (corner) the silver market.

They succeeded, but they were using too much leverage—so they literally had paper hands, and it was easy to break them. Using leverage (borrowing money to buy stonks) in a coordination attempt is like that scene from The Wire where Stringer Bell asks his class if they’re “taking notes on a criminal conspiracy.”

The powers that be can easily break your corner by pulling your leverage—and why wouldn’t they? Historically, they always do. It’s very legal and very cool. Why wouldn’t they do it to you? Asking for a friend.

The current market capitalization of GameStop would buy about a third of the world’s silver stockpile—and more like 1/250 of the world’s gold stockpile. While this makes gold a better, stabler currency, it makes silver easier for any retard or retards unknown to squeeze—or so I think.

That’s why I just bought a little silver. Not investment advice—merely full disclosure. Probably fuck-all will happen. But it’s still silver. I like this metal.

A much more open and general run

Some eggheads interpret GameStop as a political event. Nor are they wrong. There is an remarkable analogy from almost 200 years ago—Francis Place, and his “To Stop The Duke, Go For Gold” campaign, in 1832’s wild Days of May.

As Place himself wrote in a letter:

It was very clearly seen that if a much more open and general run for gold upon the banks, the bankers and the Bank of England could be produced, that the embarrassment of the Court and the Duke would be increased, and that if a general panic could be produced the Duke would be at once defeated. To this purpose the attention of us all was turned, and many propositions were made to increase the demand for gold.

There was a general conviction that if the Duke succeeded in forming an administration, that circumstance alone would produce a general panic, and almost instantaneously close all the banks, put a stop to the circulation of Bank of England notes and compel that Bank to close its doors, and then at once produce a revolution.

While the discussion was going on some one said, we ought to have a placard, announcing the consequences of permitting the Duke to form an administration and attempting to govern the country, to call upon the people to take care of themselves by collecting all the hard money they could and keeping it, by drawing it from Savings Banks, from Bankers, and from the Bank of England. This was caught at, and Mr Parkes set himself to work to draw up a Placard, among the words he wrote were these,—we must stop the Duke—These words struck me as containing nearly the whole that was necessary to be said, I therefore took a large sheet of paper and wrote thus.

To Stop The Duke Go For Gold.

I held up the paper and all at once said, that will do—no more words are necessary. Money was put upon the table and in less than four hours, the bill stickers were at work posting the bills.

The Bank of England was a fractional-reserve bank whose notes were denominated in, and redeemable for, gold. It had suspended redemption during the Napoleonic wars, then brought it back after the Corsican ogre was vanquished. Everyone had the right to redeem any note for gold, but of course hardly anyone ever did. Same old story.

Place, a Chartist—basically a sort of Jane Austen communist—wanted to bully the Duke of Wellington into letting the Tory House of Lords approve the Reform Act 1832, the first great step in the decline of the British gentry. His idea was to organize the whole lower-middle-class population into a sort of subreddit, and get them to buy $GLD. This would of course mean a run on the Bank of England. Which would wreck the British financial system and cause a revolution. Which would be good for the working man.

And it worked. Not that there was a run—that the “Iron Duke” caved. To this retard. Maybe that was the beginning of the end. In any case, if you’ve learned anything here, at least you’ve learned that 1832 was lit.

Cohesion, commitment and nihilism

From a political or even historical perspective, though, the financial nature of the collective action is not the most important fact about the Retard Revolution. What seems more important is its ironic nature.

In the age of democracy, long before any of us was born—perhaps it is best defined as the age of Francis Place—collective action was inherently sincere. There was nothing even slightly ironic about a Chartist handbill.

A couple hundred years later, the same rainy island emitted a sci-fi TV show in which voters elect a cartoon character. Not everything in Black Mirror will happen. This will.

The ironic approach to democracy uses the same mechanisms, but plays by completely different rules. The normal state of the ironic voter is a state of nihilism; he believes in nothing; he is happy to do anything, “for the lulz.” The idea of sincere and instinctive collective spirit, Ibn Khaldun’s asabiya, is one he finds hilarious and/or horrifying.

Yet he is a human being and a human being is a social animal. He will cohere—he will act in concert with his fellow human beings—and he will enjoy it. But as a modern and cosmopolitan human, he can do so only ironically—as a game.

This is cohesion without commitment. To persuade an army of retards to all buy stock in the same company, it is not even necessary to persuade them to believe in the company.

They understand and believe in their collective action; but this collective action is not a mass projection of an individual action they believe in. It is a collective strategy made from individual actions which are individually ridiculous—but collectively effective.

Normally, cohesion and commitment go together. But we expect cohesion to be the effect of commitment—you obey your officers loyally because of your passionate loyalty to your country. Here, commitment is the effect of cohesion—anyone who hodls side by side with you is your brother, regardless of the stonk.

The capacity for significant collective ironic action is very rare in human history—so rare that I am at a loss to think of another example. It must have happened. Irony is not a new invention—but its distribution across a whole population is unprecedented. Of course, this same population has lost all its capacity for collective sincere action.

Perhaps this is the broad political-science lesson of GameStop: that although politics is the organization of mass human action, the alignment of mass action on the basis of sincere commitment is a phenomenon of the past, designed for the population of the past—a population that now seems unimaginably simple, sincere, and responsible.

But the gamification of mass action on the basis of ironic cohesion is the phenomenon of the future—designed for a population which is only becoming more sophisticated, cosmopolitan and frivolous. I can’t wait till we start doing this with actual elections: nihilistic, gamified voting. Just like that TV show.

Party update

I have good news and bad news. The good news is: January saw strong 30% month-over-month growth—enabling me to buy my children, who are hungry, some tendies. The bad news is: the normies are even stronger.

Retards and gentlemen, we have slipped from #16 to #18 on the Substack politics chart. I anticipated this! I did! Still, it comes as a shock…

So—if you like this kind of shit—well, here’s one way to send a collective message:

#curtis yarvin #mencius moldbug #gray mirror #gamestop