#i mean i was working while listening to the podcast obviously your honour

[fazcinatingblog]

PEOPLE HAVE WRITTEN FANFICTION ABOUT THE ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE TELL MY BOSS I WANT A WEEK OFF BYE

#i googled royal doctor flying service so that's obviously what it's called #DOCTOR FLYING SERVICE #THOSE ROYALS WHO FLY AROUND SERVICING DOCTORS #yes i am ok thank you for asking #my boss didn't ring for the entire afternoon and at 20 mins to 5 she rings and asks if anyone has sent back the signed terms of engagement #like she probs woke from a nap and was like HEY I WONDER IF ANYONE HAS RETURNED THE TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT LETTER #like that's her first thought #not how's the business going or better check up on laura in the office and see if she's actually doing work #the last hour of work was listening to 2 guys 1 cup in the office because it was just me alone #one of the accountants left early (possibly a job interview) and my boss didn't even ring to ask just assumed he was there??????? #i don't know #i mean i was working while listening to the podcast obviously your honour

[bigstripeylie]

Ghosts theory- “sucked off” edition

Apologies for the title.

I have a theory about how each of the ghosts in Ghosts has a parallel with another Ghost and how this could be the key to them finally being able to move on, or “be sucked off’ as Mary would say.

Putting it behind a cut as this is extremely long and rambly. Spoilers for pretty much every episode of Ghosts

First of all I was listening to Mat and Jim on the Empire Spoilers podcast and Mat said something really interesting about how he intended “you stays how you dies” to refer to the ghost’s mental and emotional state, as well as physical. So Thomas always being obsessed with seeking love is because he died broken-hearted and Fanny always being so grumpy is because she died angry at her husband. 

I believe, therefore, that if the ghosts were able to overcome each of their emotional blocks that would be the thing that would allow them to move on. Furthermore, each of the ghosts has another ghost that seems perfectly suited to be able to assist them in that.

Let’s go through them:

Thomas- Thomas died believing his love never loved him back and now is forced to spend eternity seeking for love as a ghost. If Thomas was able to find someone who could reciprocate his affections, this would the resolve that issue. In the Series 2 episode “About Last Night” when Alison drunkenly tells Thomas “if you were alive and I was 200 years older, then we might have…” we hear a choir start singing and Thomas is pulled, as if compelled, through the wall, similar to how Fanny is pulled forwards towards the window to jump when she “doesn’t even realise [she’s] doing it.” Thomas desperately craves love and affection from another person, but in life was constantly rejected by the people he loved most. You know who else that sounds like? Kitty.

Kitty- Like Thomas, she is from a wealthy family who sheltered her a lot growing up, but is ultimately good and tries to be honourable. Kitty also craves love and affection as well as companionship and she tries to seek it, first in Eleanor and then in Alison (because Alison reminds her of  Eleanor, like how Alison reminds Thomas of Isabelle). However it comes up again and again that Kitty’s relationship with Alison isn’t as fulfilling to her as she would like it be because her being a ghost prevents her from sharing every activity with Alison, and Alison cannot show her physical affection. Kitty is trying to recreate aspects of her relationship with Eleanor using Alison as a substitute but this isn’t very healthy for her, as it simply traps her in the constant state of seeking affection that will not or cannot be returned fully. We don’t know the exact circumstances of Kitty’s death but after Series 3, if seems likely that her sister was in some way involved. Maybe what is keeping Kitty trapped as a ghost is her need for approval and love that she never got in life? But by seeking it in people who remind her of Eleanor exclusively, she is further trapping herself.

If Kitty and Thomas could find love with each other, they could each fulfil the other’s need for reciprocated affection. They are both equally needy so this quality wouldn’t likely annoy the other. Kitty seems to genuinely enjoy high romance in earnest and in finding an outlet for her love in Thomas, she could finally move on from her sister. Thomas would also find someone to love him and could devote himself completely to someone who would actually return his love, instead of fruitlessly pursuing women who remind of Isabelle’s rejection. This could lead to the resolution of both character’s finally moving on from their deaths.

Next up, let’s look at The Captain-

The Captain’s central conflict is obviously his sexuality. I believe that the resolution to this conflict would be him finally accepting and coming to terms with being gay and feeling comfortable with that part of his  identity. Which ghost could best help him in this?

Fanny. 

Maybe not the answer you were thinking, but hear me out. The Captain already has a strong positive relationship with Fanny built on mutual respect. He is more likely to value her opinion as an equal that any of the other ghosts and he seems to align himself with her on most issues. Which makes his choice to go against Fanny and defend the same-sex wedding and its guests to her in “Perfect Day” really remarkable.

In “Perfect Day”, Fanny expresses some pretty disapproving remarks about the wedding guest’s attire and some homophobic opinions about the same-sex wedding in general, which prompts the Captain to defend one of the guests to Fanny. “It’s chic, it’s now, and if it makes her feel fabulous…”

Imagine a scene where The Captain has to defend himself towards Fanny in a similar manner after coming out, showing that he is finally accepting of his sexuality as being the right thing for him. 

Anyway, that was a slight digression…

Fanny is still struggling to deal with the circumstances of her own death which was brought about in part because she caught her husband having an affair with other men. Fanny needs to accept and come to terms with the fact that her husband didn’t love her and that while he was obviously wrong for murdering her, she needs to move on so she can stop reenacting it by jumping out the window every morning. Because she died feeling angry and betrayed, she is trapped in that state in death. Discovering that one of her closest friends is gay and realising that it is possible for someone to be both gay and a good person might prompt her to think differently about her own life, as she started do with Humphrey in Perfect Day. 

The Captain, in turn, could be driven by Fanny’s ability to accept his sexuality into thinking ‘if she can accept that part of me, then maybe I can too.’ Personally, out of all the ghosts, I think it could only be Fanny who could prompt him to think that because it would mean the most to him coming from her.

Humphrey- Humphrey died because he was trying to protect Sophie, who rejected any attempt to get to know him and who he believed didn’t even like him. In death he is trapped in a state of being a selfless self-sacrificing people-pleaser and desperately wanting to be included in the other ghost’s activities, even allowing himself be kicked and thrown around if it means he can just be involved. In ‘I Love Lucy’ he even attempts to make a relationship with Fanny work, showing he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of others.

Julian, by contrast, is the most selfish of all the ghosts at Button House. Deep down he feels guilty that his selfishness negatively affected the relationship with his daughter but seems not to be consciously aware that he feels like this. Julian’s selfishness to not spend time with his family ultimately leads to his death in Button House, as he neglected his family to spend more time at work and was clearly cheating on his wife, showing he is driven by selfish impulses.

If Julian were to perform a completely selfless act to the benefit of Humphrey, then Humphrey would get to feel as though someone was putting him first for once and valuing him the way he seeks to be valued. Julian would also break the pattern of selfish behaviour that caused his downfall.

The rest are little less well-defined:

Pat is the probably the ghost that we know the most about, through seeing his death and actually meeting his family in “Happy Death Day”, to the numerous anecdotes he reveals about his life throughout the show. However, I can’t decide for sure what is the thing that is keeping him a ghost. Pat himself seemed to think it was that he was missing his family, but this was ultimately proved wrong after he saw them again in ‘Happy Death Day’. Even meeting the boy who killed him and forgiving him in ‘Perfect Day’ didn’t cause him to move on. It could be something to do with Carol’s affair with Maurice but I just don’t know for sure. I like the idea of him fitting in with the plague ghosts. I think his personalty and leadership style would get along better with them than say, The Captain, who is too authoritarian. I also think Pat is someone who thrives in a group setting.

Robin and Mary are also tricky to work out what the thing keeping them as ghosts is because we know so little about their lives and deaths compared to the other characters. I think these are the only two ghosts who have not yet received a flashback to their lives. We know that Mary was in some way involved a witch-trail and this has traumatised her. Robin also has experienced a lot of trauma in his life but he seems to be more philosophical about it and accepting of it. He shows great empathy towards others both in trying to comfort Pat about his death in “Happy Death Day’ and Kitty in “About Last Night’, he could use his experience of trauma to help Mary deal with hers. They both seem to be looked down upon and ‘othered’ by the other ghosts due to their perceived lack of intelligence even though they are both very emotionally and socially intelligent.

If anyone has any thoughts about these last two pairings or any of the others, then please reblog and add your take!

I am not in any way saying that I think this is what will happen in the next series or what even I think should happen, but that this is one possibilities for much further down the road when the ghost are all ready to move on.

Also I have spent way too much time thinking about this…

#bbc ghosts #the captain #kitty bbc ghosts #thomas thorne #julian fawcett #robin bbc ghosts #mary bbc ghosts #fanny button #headless humphrey #plague ghosts #pat butcher #Horrible Histories #mat baynton #ben willbond #jim howick #larry rickard #martha howe douglas #simon farnaby

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

One of my CBC podcasts is called Power and Politics. It’s a condensed version of the audio from a TV news program that airs every weekday evening (condensed because they turn the two-hour TV show into a podcast that’s about 50-70 minutes). I’ve listened to every episode, five days a week, for almost three years now, and I like that keeping up with those keeps me fairly informed about the news.

I respect the CBC has resisted the trend of blending news with entertainment, and throwing away standards for views. They do their best to present the news in a way that’s unbiased and fair, even if that makes for less exciting television shows and podcasts. Obviously they’re not perfect at that; perfect journalistic integrity is a platonic ideal. But at least they’re trying, which is more than I can say for a lot of news sources.

So I really like that the CBC tries not to sensationalize things, but they still have pundits who will editorialize (after fully declaring all personal conflicts of interest with the issues at hand and while being prepared for the host to fact check them, because that’s how the news is supposed to work) and let their own personalities colour the way they talk. Sometimes they even try to make jokes, which I often find a bit endearing. The jokes range from terrible to slightly funny, and they’re always at least a little awkward, but they do give it a sort of fun feel of “all us political nerds in this together, tackling these depressing and serious issues, why not occasionally lighten the mood with a pun?”

Anyway, I’m listening to tonight’s episode of Power and Politics, and for the first time, I’m feeling the need to quote some of it on this blog. This is the first time I’ve done that, because CBC is my news source of choice because it’s fucking boring. That’s a feature not a bug; news should be delivered in a boring way that tells you facts instead of sensationalizing everything. But it does mean it’s not great fodder for my blog that’s mostly about comedy.

But I do want to share this exchange, between the show’s temporary host Paul Hunter and pundit Tim Powers, while discussing the Prime Minister’s announcement today of tighter COVID restrictions due to the spread of Omicron.

Paul Hunter: You may have heard Justin Trudeau saying, ‘This sucks.’ But it is what it is. Tim Powers: Yeah, I would use a… I may substitute the S with an F and put something else in there. Paul Hunter: [laughs awkwardly] You’re live on TV, Tim. Tim Powers: I didn’t say the word, Paul! Didn’t say the word. Paul Hunter: Good for you, uh, so far.

Right, okay. So I like an appropriately timed and tasteful joke to liven up a news show as much as the next person, but… two things, Tim:

1) I’d never thought before about the fact that there’s overlap in the Venn diagram between boomer humour and small child humour. But I guess “pretend to say a swear word without actually saying that swear word” is right in there, so good job hitting that spot.

2) I realize you were live on TV and in the middle of discussing an important political issue and you are far from a professional comedian, so it isn’t fair for me to expect you to think through all your jokes before you say them. But I would really like to dive into the meaning of this particular joke with you, because... are you saying you wish The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau had stood up at that press conference today to announce that the Omicron COVID-19 variant fucks?

[snowpatrolfanclubbrazil]

By Paul Mcnamee

Chasing Cars was the UK's most widely played song of the Noughties. But after global success, Snow Patrol have been quiet for seven years. Frontman Gary Lightbody was drawn into the 'dirt darkness' by drink and depression but now, he tells Paul McNamee, he's found his way home.

Gary Lightbody's moment came two years ago in a gym in Santa Monica. The Snow Patrol frontman has long had a reputation of indulging his appetites. But even he was going at in on a bigger scale, with a fierce, Valhallan vigour. The band's last tour had finished in late 2012.an then: "I started drinking." he says, "with a gusto that a professional boxer might train for a prize fight. It'd be mostly beer, I was quite a happy drunk. There was a hell of a lot of fun. Until it wasn't.

"I'd get to 2am sitting on my own, have a cry, and then a glass of something [stronger], I didn't have any relationships and I wasn't having sex either.I was very hermetic. Around 2015/2016 I was drinking every day and also I was hating it. I regret doing it even though I knew I was doing it out of compulsion" He was hitting the gym in the mornings to sweat it off. Then came the moment.

"I bent down to touch my toes and everything started spinning. It felt like the floor beneath me was moving. I thoughy it was an earthquake. But I kept going on. I phoned a friend who lived around the corner. I was like, 'Are we having an earthquake?' He said "Something's going on here'.

"I had a bunch of CT scans on my head. My whole head was infected - sinus, ears, eyes, everything. I'd been having styes and stuff on my eyes. Stick a teabag on it. This was the week before I was going to France to see Northen Ireland play in their first tournament i 30 years. I siad to the doctor, 'I'm flying to France in five days'. He's like, "No, you're not. If you fly with the air pressure it's feel like daggers ripping into your head'. I was still thinking maybe I'll be alright. I spoke to a friend, Gabrielle, an acupuncturist, an extraordinary human being. She'd been trying to get me to stop drinking for while..." So he stopped. Or at least, he began to stop. And in flooded the dark realities he'd been masking.

In recent weeks, as he's been working around the release of Wildness, Snow Patrol first album in seven years, Lightbody has started to talk for the first time about the mental health problems which have plagued him for year. ("I didn't talk about anything, nobody knew, the band didn't know.") Last year, after 12 months sober, came another key moment.

"Last summer", he says, "I thought I'd be relieved to get the album done. We'd just finished. But I wasn't. I was devasted. I'd opened a place in my psyche and I didn't know how to shut the door. It was like ark of the covenant was opened [from Raider Of The Lost Ark] and there were melting faces left and right and I didn't know how to shut the thing down. So instead of talking to somebody I tried to shut myself out. Let my own face melt. And the band knew something and they flew from London and arrived at the door and I broke down and told them everything. 

I have a depressive personality that has no relationship with reality. I could be having the best time on the surface and yet my depression goes 'You're still a cunt. Don't forget that. I'm dragging you down into the inkand the dirt and the darkness'. I could be playing to 15,000 people and three hours later be in a hotel room cruying on the floor. That's happened a bunch of times. The depression and the success have no relation to each other. It's just part of me. I've learned that rather than running from it, which you can never really do - you can have and turn and face it and look it in the eyes and say I'm not afraid of you any more".

And so he went home. Back to Northen Ireland, to North Down where he was brought up. It's the place he was desperate to leave in 1994, whe he ran to Dundee to star university, to start a band , to start years of chipping away with no success. Then he wrote Run and everything changed. 

It's easy, given their time away, to forget just how huge Snow Patrol were for a period from the mid to late Noughties, Nobody, really, was bigger. The song Chasing Cars, from fourth album Eyes Open, was picked up for UA his TV show Grey's Anatomy and propelled them to massive fame. Lightbody moved to Santa Monica around 2009. ("Soon as my feet hit the sand in Santa Monica something just hit and I thought, I want to live here") Recently he claimed he'd moved back to Northern Ireland because the band were getting ready to work again  and he needed to be near them. But it feels like the truth is little more complicated.

"You're right. There are quite few reasons. My dad isn't well, my mum isn't coping very well and my niece is going to be 11 in July, I've missed most of her life living in LA.

"And I missed home. It's a time in Northern Ireland as well when it feels like we're at a bit of a crossroads again. I felt a bit of a calling back here. Not that I figure I can help in any way, but I certainly won't feel connected if I'm 5,000 miles away I wanted to reconnect". We're meeting in the Crawfordsburn Inn, the picture post card hotel not far from Gary's shorefront home, overlooking Belfast Lough.

It feels timely. We meet on the 20th anniversay of a concert in Belfast's Waterfront Hall, hosted by U2, that helped deliver a huge Yes vote in the referendum for the Good Friday Agreement. In a nation where defiant, No's had been the lingua franca, a Yes was significant. A political statement and a cleansing.

On that day, John Hume and David Trimble were ushered onstage by Bono , a man with a keen eye for a moment, U2 sang Don't Let me Down. Ash were there too, being young and hopefull. Twenty years on, as Lightbody says, Northern Ireland is at a bit of a crossroads. And he's found his way home. The album, Wildness, is worth the wait. If Snow Patrol had touched on themes of running and movement in the past, Wildness has a leitmotif of finally settling; The word 'home' is laced throught several songs. Two tracks in particular illustrate what Snow Patrol can really do - the anthemic reach of the huge, wondroug openning track Life on Earth ( a track that took Gary five years to complete) and the intimancy of What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?), a piece with just Gary on piano, a heartbreaker written for a friend going through a divorce. 

The song Soon marks another significant theme. It deal with Lightbody's father Jack's battle with Alzheimer's . It's a simple builder, full of grace note and sadness. There is a something quietly heroic in it. The video, filmed in Lightbody's apartment, sees him and his fater watching old home movies his dad recorded throught the years. As well as the sadness over what his father is losing, there is an understanding of a farewell to lost youth that the hopefulness of that other country is worth revisiting for both of them. "I love my dad," he says. "I have a lot of respect for him so I wanted to honour him, but at the same time I also have a lot of guilt for being away for most of my adult life. I don't just mean LA, I mean Glasgow, London,  or on tour constantly. And there is probably a place in my head where I go when I'm feeling somesick and that is both a place of calm and nostalgia and also a place of guilt and some shame.

"I've felt I've been running away most of the time from myself. So [he pauses]...someof the home references are me feeling disconnected rather than connected...feeling like I'd never really found a home. I never truly felt at home when I was growinh up in Northern Ireland. Then I left and never really felt at home anywhere else. And then I moved back to Northen Ireland and now I do feel at home here, but that has also coincided with me feeling at home inside my own body. Which was the whole problem the whole time. I wasn't comfortable with myself, I didn't like myself. So you have to figure that out before you can feel at home anywhere.

The band's influence and legacy go beyond their own work. They've helped shape the sounds that have become pervasive in post-millennial pop. Lightbody and band member Johnny McDaid have written with, among others, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and One Direction. Snow Patrol took Sheeran on the road in the States in 2011, helping him break through. They remain close. "Between myself and Johnny McDaid, we're written a lot of things for other pop acts, him more than me", he say. "I would say Ed came fully formed from his first album. He'd done the groundwork. All the grafting that you need to do, when you're a young band. He busked his ass off from the age of 15 on the streets of London, sleeping on his mate's couch. He had turned up to gigs and said to promoter, can you give me 15 minutes after the doors open. And promoters say aye. That's how he started. He grafted harder and still does to this day - harder than anyone I know. Sheeran's returning the favour, taking the the band on an American tour autumn. 

Refusing to accept Snow Patrol as fountainheads of a sound, Lightbody says they are more like Zelig, "probably bystanders". One got away, though. Mutual friend James Corden introduced Lightbody to Adele. 

"It happened to be a birthday of somebody that James and Adele knew...and I sat down with her and she said when are we going to do [a song]. We did two days - Adele, Johnny McDaid and me - the bones of three really amazing fucking songs. But we never got round to finishing it. And then the album came out and obviously we weren't on it."

While his own album has just come out, there is already preassure to get busy on the next. Long time producer, friend and mentor Garret "Jacknife" Lee has been in touch ("he says we need to get cracking on the next one"). For now, ahead of their own arena tour in the winter, Lightbody is learning to cope, listening to podcasts ("StuffyouShouldKnow from HowStuffWorks is my favourite one") and Bon Iver ("I think he's the finest songwriter alive") and working things out. 

"Me, now not drinking, I like myself but I'm socially awkward, I'd rather be sitting with bandmates, my family. I'm 41. I know what I want.

  And that is? 

"Peace I want to make sure that every day of my life I take a moment and realise eveything is calmer. I've learned how to meditate, learned how to do Qigong. Learned a whole load of practices that I do every day. They mitigate the madness. The greatest thing I ever did for my own emotional wellbeing was to talk."

And if we went back 20 years, and said here are the successes, here are the demands it'll make on you mentally, personally, physically - would you have taken it? "I would have taken it for half the successes I can't believe what happened to us. I still can't believe when I look back at  it, at  everything that is successful that has been good. At everything that is still happening. It is a dream, It's a bloody dream."

#snow patrol #gary lightbody #article #news #interview

[falteringfaith]

20 things I learned in 2020

1. The only certainty in life is uncertainty.

This is obviously true in the case of, you know, a global pandemic, but even moreso is the way this permeates every aspects of our life on earth. Fundamentally, nothing in certain. No time has ever been ‘precedented’. This year was a reminder of that, but so was clerkship in general. Every month, every new rotation forced me to confront the difficulties I had managing uncertainty. As a person who needs to know EVERYTHING at all times, I was forced to accept that I simple could not know it all in these clinical scenarios. This doesn’t mean it made it any easier to deal with - I still get pretty anxious the night before a new rotation, but I certainly deal with it easier than before. 

2. Ask for help.

Ask and so you shall receive! Why stumble around the hospital by yourself, sweating anxiously and checking your watch nervously as the minutes tick by closer to when you’re supposed to be at X or Y destination, when you can ask someone who is (in my experience - literally always) willing to help? Now, I stride in and ask the first person I see where I can find what I am looking for. People want to help - you just need to ask. Whether its for finding something or letting someone you can confide in know that you’re struggling - ask.

3. You are what you do every day. 

Aristotle said it best, so I won’t mince his words. What we spend our time doing each day reflects what is valuable and important to us. This year, for the first time in my life, I began to work out for myself and made it a habit. I wasn’t doing it to lose weight, to participate on a team, or for any other reason than for me. I noticed myself get stronger, happier, feel better. I made it a habit to the point where when I don’t do it, I feel off. I didn’t think this was something that was possible for me - rather, that I was destined to a life of just not being an exercise person. But here’s the thing - everyone is and can be an exercise person. You just have to be doing it for the right reasons - for wanting to move your body in a meaningful way each day because thats what makes it feel right. I hope to come to love my body and all it does for me in the coming years. I would lie to say that I love and am truly accepting of it right now, because I know I am not. But I do know that I am treating it a whole lot better than I ever have before.

4. Be vulnerable/STOP PEOPLE PLEASING

Holy fuck --- this !!!!!!!! You do not need to have it all figured out. You do not need to pretend that you are unphased by things or that you are the ~chill~ girl. This does not benefit anyone, and it certainly does not benefit yourself. People want honesty. They want to know how you’re feeling. All you do by shutting that away is harbor negativity and resentment that end up exploding later. I was taught to hide these emotions growing up for whatever reason - shame, embarrassment, whatever - but I will stop doing this. You cannot begin to unpack the why of how you are feeling, and try to achieve more, if you don’t do this. You should be open and raw - tell people why you love them (like when you messaged people you felt grateful for over twitter and facebook last summer) or why you felt badly about things (like you did in your relationship). You deserve to be heard.

5. Take a walk.

The power of going for a walk to clear your headspace and give you time away was truly found this year. Nature is grounding. Fresh air feels like it lifts the weight off your chest. Spend time outdoors - don’t feel badly if you cant - and breathe deeply. Feel the earth against your feet as you propel forward and deal with emotions. Whether it was 5 minutes between virtual clinics or 5 hours walking around when you were upset and in an argument with Felipe, taking a walk was the answer.

6. People like people that they like.

This year, in clerkship, I learned that it is not always important to be the smartest or wisest or wittiest. You dont even have to be smart, wise or witty. You just have to be trying, responsible, likable. A good team player. On most days, being just me, at my baseline, was more than enough. I think this year I realized that I am likeable (or affable) as one of my strengths. It was the CL psych nurses (Karen telling me “you are a star” on my last day and making me tear up on my walk down the hill back to my car parked on Strachlan), or it was the R3 on gen surg (”you have a good energy”) or whoever else. Not necessarily things or fields I knew the most about, but just who I am. And that was nice to hear. Stop the imposter syndrome - you are enough.

7. Non-fiction books can be enjoyable.

Fiction is still better, but there is lots to be learned in a good non fiction.

8. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

You bawled your eyes out on your birthday morning, at Felipe’s house on James. You sat on the balcony and couldn’t control all the tears that wanted to come out. It was blackout tuesday, and where was the validation that your year MEANT something if it wasn’t shown via birthday posts on instagram? More than this, people ARE DYING IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC, SARA. And even moreso than that, you were flooded with, dare I say, WHITE GUILT that this was the way you were feeling in the midst of pronounced racial, civil unrest. For the first time, I think you were really confronted - every day, for weeks - with the fact that you were white. You knew this before, of course, but this was blaring at you from every angle, even on your fucking birthday. And here’s the thing - things will never go bac to the way they were, when you were afforded the privilege of being blissfully ignorant and unaware of your race. When it wasn’t something you had to think about, at all, because you were obviously part of the majority and benefiting from your race in innumerable ways each and every day. We’re not going back there. The only way forward is through. Get over your guilt, we’ve got shit to do.

9. External vs. Internal validation

I think this year you really realized how much you depend on external validation to feel valued and confident. I wish for you to see in the coming years how much more you are than just what people tell you. You are bold, brilliant, confident, clever and strong because you are - not because others tell you so. 

10. Recognizing my emotional dysregulation 

This year, I became a lot more aware of the fact that I emotionally dysregulate and have extreme tempers or profound sadness with a baseline of general bubbly/contentment/joy. Now, it’s going to be all about managing it...

11. Envy/comparison is a thief of joy.

12. You’ll never know if you don’t try.

I am proud of all the ways in which you put yourself out there this year and applied to things. You got rejected - a lot. Whether it was awards and scholarships (OMA ambassador, all the general scholarships through MacMed) or leadership opportunities (where to begin? OMSA day of action lead or even being part of the OMSA day of action), or the million times you vowed that you would not apply for Ontario Regional Director. There were so many times that week you wanted to quit - to not write a script, to not attend a zoom session, to pull out even when you just saw the competition - but you didn’t. You learned a lot, you practiced giving a zoom speech, and you chatted with some interesting people. You lost the election, but you personally did not lose anything. While at that time it was a tough pill to swallow, here you are. Now you have more time to dedicate to your YWCA partnership, and isn’t that a beautiful thing after all?

13. Stop putting things off - do them right away!

Still working on it lol.

14. Popcorn

15. Being a good friend/girlfriend/daughter is a skill. 

Noone ever tells you, I feel, that having strong, close relationships is hard work. You can’t just sit idly by. You also can’t expect that giving a gift or saying some nice words is enough. Especially in a year of social distancing - you had to get creative. Face times, flowers delivered, watching netflix simultaneously on the extension with Felipe (money heist anyone?), zoom hang outs, picnics at Oakville lakeshore, scheduling monthly hang outs with Sharon.. relationships are about making the time and investing into it like you would with anything else. You don’t necessarily have to be doing fancy things like this either - but emotional intimacy is important and necessary, too.

16. If you’re not doing it because you love it, it won’t give you any contentment.

All the extracurriculars in the world don’t matter if they dont make you tick. 

17. The opportunity for learning/gratitude is everywhere.

Whether its from patients sitting right in front of you (listen to them, always), podcasts, or anywhere else. There are opportunities to learn all around you. Likewise, there are always, ALWAYS things to be grateful for. Take a moment to pause and think about what you learned or are grateful for in a day. There is always something.

18. You’re actually really good at procedures.

Why did you think you weren’t? Were you indoctrinated to believe that only men were good with their hands? Regardless... don’t be nervous. You’re good at them!

19. Routine, good nights of sleep are not overrated. Not at all. 

20. Residents are the unsung heroes of the medical student experience. They make or break a rotation, and influence it more than any other factor. Future Sara you better be a fucking good resident to your med students.

Honourable mention goes to this awesome moment this year that I almost forgot happened, but thankfully tweeted about - “No better way to spend International Women’s Day than on the Labour & Delivery floor witnessing the strength, power & tenacity of mama’s in labour! First delivery of the day - unmedicated () with a beautiful baby girl joining the world!”

Another honourable mention to coming together with a fun crew to create COVIDreview, which unexpectedly got lots of media attention and praise but, most of all, was a fun way to get to know people in my class that I didn’t normally speak to.

On other notes, I will cherish the fact that I got to spend 3 months in my parents home with them for the first time in many, many years. We watched movies, did yoga, baked (a LOT), and went for many, many, repetitive walks. I love them more than words can describe and cannot imagine a life without my parents (and my brother). My family is everything.

I am also very appreciate to be in a relationship with Felipe that is constantly pushing me to be better and to recognize things about myself I didn’t know (or didn’t want to know). These things sometimes upset me, but ultimately I recognize they are important for my growth and leading me into becoming more of who I want to be. I am learning so much about myself, what I need and want in a partner, and how to communicate more effectively to convey these things (versus not communicating this at all in the past). Things aren’t always easy but I cherish the moments that happened this year (starting the year off travelling Arizona with him, meeting his sister/niece/nephew, him meeting my family, coming to Blue Mountain, going on an impromptu trip to Niagara, all the biking expeditions, going to Stratford for his birthday!!). I also must (MUST!!!!!) stop comparing my relationships to others. 

Overall, I find it ironic that the year marked by a GLOBAL PANDEMIC is the year where I was finally forced to stop, pause, and prioritize my health. My physical health, in building a habit for fitness that finally stuck, my emotional health in learning to recognize what I want in relationships and *starting* to ask for it/be vulnerable, and my mental health in taking the time for sleep, walks, and meditation (sometimes more than others). Lets continue to take these lessons into 2021. 

[ssaalexblake]

What's your opinion on Karen Page? AJAKSKKSKS

I have some random half formed opinions on Karen, and the Daredevil narrative for her in general. And maybe how the defenders writing didn’t really mesh with how she’d been portrayed before, and if it did, then it showed her in a vaguely hypocritical light. 

Also, she’s a legit straight up murderer and it’s kind of vaguely hilarious in an ironic way that she now works for a living digging up other peoples dirt, because she honestly wants to see justice done. She’s not somebody who wakes up in the morning thinking something malevolent, she’s by all accounts, somebody who has aspirations of goodness. Her moral grayness her so much more interesting in that light, tbh. 

(but, like, honestly, I neither like nor dislike Karen, she doesn’t particularly grab me but i don’t you know, hate her or anything, i’m just personally not captivated). 

Anyway, I’ve been listening to a podcast lately hosted by 2 bona fide behavioural analysts (jim clemente and Laura Richards) and honestly, hearing them talk about it, while simultaneously watching S2 of Daredevil, was thought provoking. 

We know that Karen murdered a man, afterwards she was traumatized by his actions (the kidnapping and threats against her) and that she was even more traumatized by her own actions, she just gunned him down, The End. The show could have painted this in a number of ways, but imo it clearly painted this as a murder, to be honest. I mean, he was victimising her at the time, but this shock killing was not narratively described as a valiant bid for freedom where a woman shoots herself out of a hostage situation. It’s painted as Karen shooting him, and her being left alone in a room with a gun and a blood soaked body. 

She’s terrified she’d get found out. I haven’t seen that season for a long time now, but also, i think it’s relevant that a chunk of her fear after this was fear about what Fisk would do if he found out she did it, and for her own safety thereafter, rather than the action of killing a man.

In that light, fashforward to season 2 and the intro of Frank Castle. Karen is the character in the entire show who is the most okay with Frank. She sees Frank’s honour code and understands it, she isn’t afraid of him harming her despite him being genuinely terrifying. She also isn’t nearly as bothered by his methodology as the others. Frank believes killing the wrongdoers is the apt solution to Hell’s Kitchen’s problems (and anywhere, really). 

It’s interesting, because, throughout the whole time Nelson and murdock are defending Castle, she is trying to convince Matt and Foggy of the merits to his actions. She’s trying to justify it. This is why I mentioned the podcast, because in it, they explain that people who have thoughts and feelings that are generally considered by society to be abhorrent or wrong (and i mean, actual fucked up things, not shitty bigotry) they will attempt to find the same behaviour in others they trust and respect, to prove to themselves that they’re not Bad™. 

Karen, with both Foggy and Matt, the two she is closest to in Hell’s Kitchen (in the world really), BOTH get this line of questioning from her, where she tries to get them to admit that hey! maybe killing bad people is okay and fine. This, to me, seems that Karen is looking for some kind of absolution. Not the kind where she denounces what she did, or what Frank did, but the kind where others prove her ‘correct’ and absolve her of her sins by justifying them. The kind where she doesn’t have to feel bad or be in trouble for her actions. 

In the end, Matt and Foggy, having no clue all the while that this is personal to her, brush off every justification she gives, both of them basically going ‘what the hell! no! bad!’. Because while matt is a vigilante, he’s also one who does not approve of being judge jury and executioner. Foggy was even less likely than Matt to play part to that line of thinking, because he thinks Matt goes too far, let alone Castle. Them doing this, rejecting her without even knowing it, leads Karen smack into the figurative arms of Frank Castli, who is obviously intimidating to her, and goes too far in her eyes, and freaks her out, but he’s the  one she’s most in tune with. Her philosophy is far closer to his than it is to Matt and Foggy. Frank even says it himself, he knows she’d have taken the shot, she means business, even if it’s lethal. 

I have no idea what to say about Karen and Matt. Narratively it’s never made sense to me, and i honestly thought that her reaction in the defenders to him needed a hell of a lot of background filling out between daredevil s2 & this show to make sense. It needed background we weren’t given, but Karen’s /always/ been pro daredevil, we needed a filler to tell us what happened in that gap of time to cause her to treat matt’s vigilantism as an addiction. Foggy, Foggy it made perfect sense because there was background, with Karen who had always been pro devil, it needed explaining. As it is, it kind of came across as Karen being pro vigilante as long as it’s not her friend, which is kind of harsh? It can ruin somebody else’s life but not somebody who i like? Which they could have done, but i’ve also never really thought of karen as selfish in that type of sense, either. 

But, honestly, i feel like the main facet of Karen’s character, her absolute defining trait, is curiosity. 

Karen’s curiosity knows no bounds, and i mean that. No bounds. Karen got into trouble in the first place in episode one because she saw something and didn’t let it go (she continues to not let it go the whole season, even when she’s warned, even when it’s dangerous, through everything). It’s interesting, because Karen’s curiosity doesn’t appear to have much more ground  than wanting to know things, she’s a Ravenclaw type, you know? Her curiosity isn’t really tied to morality, or special interest, he is just curious. 

Unfortunately, her curiosity isn’t necessarily tempered by a hell of a lot of forethought. She drags Ben to a nursing home because she dug something up, and when i say drag, i mean lies and tricks!!! Ben there with her, being pretty damn underhand tbh, i mean, it was low. And then Ben’s name ends up in the log book and then because of that, Ben is murdered. 

That was an example of Karen being driven by her curiosity, bullheaded, and not thinking it though. In S2, the person she gets in trouble at the end of the season is herself. She does it again. Curiosity with no heed to consequence. She is merely lucky Frank saved her. 

I mean, narratively, Karen ending up a reporter is perfect for her as a person, i’m not surprised we ended up there. She is bullheadedly curious, she is tough as nails (hello that kidnapping by the hand), and will legit do any dangerous thing to get her story. She also is curious for curiosity’s sake, so her boss doesn’t really run the risk of her only researching one thing or causing a moral shitstorm. 

I’ve never really seen the show as portraying Karen as a moral goodness or whatever cliches come with the blonde noncombatant tropes in these types of stories, to me, Karen’s never really been the goodness personified in the show. To me, that is Foggy. I like it, to be honest, because lets be real, the blonde haired blue eyed ~angelic looking woman, not being the epitome of goodness??? 

I wouldn’t call Karen moral, i would call Karen curious, with aspirations of goodness. She wants to be a good person, but she’s thoughtless and chaotic and sometimes just kind of… amoral. No other real way to put it. I’ve also never really seen the  show as portraying her as the goodness centre, i mean, i can see how the other characters would think it about her, but the audience? We know more about her than them. 

Foggy and Matt don’t know she killed somebody. Her boss doesn’t know that. The stuff with Ben? that’s for us to know, too. We’re the keepers of Karen’s secrets, not the other characters. As such, the way they treat her as special and good in the show doesn’t bug me too much, from their pov, it probably looks that way, it’d annoy me if she got a good job and the show tried to tell me it’s because she’s a ~good~ person and deserved it, but imo, the show has not done that. 

Her ~aspirations of goodness are all the more interesting, imo, because she does not appear to have them as some kind of attempt at penance. That would make it redemption, or an attempt at it. She’s not trying to redeem herself. 

tldr, , i think Karen is curious, chaotic, wants so hard to be good, but finds herself coming up short and is scared of it. I also think the only person in the universe who accurately has her number is Frank. And also, that even if Matt’s vigilantism hadn’t destroyed their personal relationship, that in the end, the total polar opposite creeds they both have would have done the same thing in the end. 

#defenders spoilers #idk how to tag this lol #reids-curls #idek if u meant to send me this but it was fun t b h #i like talking about other things #i do have karen opinions #i just don't really like her as a person much?? but yes as a character #anyway #karen page #for my own tagging #also notably claire is a bastion of goodness #but her goodness like... overpowers her shady #with karen it's the other way

[davidcarterr]

Dan Joyce Interview

To coincide with the beginning of work to open up the full space at Southbank, The Arts and Humanities Research Council have commissioned and released ‘You Can Make History’. Edited and shot by skateboarder, film maker and one-time member of Dirty Sanchez, Dan Joyce, the film takes up the current situation at Southbank and incorporates voices representing every stakeholder involved in the process of protecting and reclaiming the Undercroft for all.

Obviously, this is by no means the first film to address Southbank’s multi-layered meaning as a space, nor to discuss the role that the Undercroft has played in global skateboard culture, but it is probably the first time that the multitude of voices invested in the process have been put together in one place.

We caught up with Dan Joyce to discuss the process so as to give you all a little context to the film below. If you missed our previous interview with LLSB detailing the work to open up the Southbank’s available space – you can catch that here: LLSB interview

Big thanks to Dan for his time and for providing a selection of his photography to illustrate this piece.

Can you give us the back story to this video project firstly please Dan? How did it come about?

I was contacted by the academics a few years ago about making a film covering the LLSB story. I said straight away that Winstan Whitter had already made a film and had a lot of archive footage and that he would be better person than I to tell the story.

Long story short: they made another film together, and then Henry Edwards Wood made another follow up film with them. I made the third one, which is the one we’re discussing here ‘You Can Make History’.

This felt like the first time that a Southbank documentary piece really engaged with all the stakeholders in every capacity, with everybody from those involved in the original design and construction of the space, original LSD heads, Southbank staff; right through to current LLSB heads speaking from their own perspectives: how did you go about getting this access?

Basically due to a lot of work being put in by the LLSB team and the academics that had worked alongside them. They had been trying to interview Dennis Crompton for years but he was a very hard person to tie down. The previous films had only really been told from the skater’s point of view, whereas I wanted this to reveal all aspects of the story.

At this point that was a much easier thing to do, because so much time had passed, Pushing Boarders had happened and skateboarding in general had become a much bigger and more recognised thing both academically, and in a wider cultural sense.

The Southbank meet ups had got everyone together and people had started engaging with each other and telling all these old stories. It became clear that there were multiple layers of age groups and users all open to talk about their experiences. Older skaters were now introducing their children to Southbank and the like. It was just the right time to make a film like this one really.

Dennis Crompton

It’s amazing to see the way that the official voices of the Southbank Centre have fully embraced its life as a skateboard spot now, after so many decades of perceived animosity between the two groups. Dennis Crompton in particular really seemed to love the fact that the space had been adopted and reinvigorated by skateboarding. He must’ve been an interesting person to speak to…

I think Dennis Crompton and Mike McCart both thought that skateboarding was a fad at first and that it would die off. I don’t think they realised the depth of the culture surrounding it, or that it was a lifestyle, and that once you became a skater, you are in for life. He had so many good stories. I have all the full interviews. I will be giving all of the complete interviews to LLSB and they will be archived. These may be released as podcasts in the future.

How did you go about accessing all the archive skate footage of SB?

Through having the table and the meet ups, the SB community started to grow and they started sharing memories and footage. The Facebook group was a great resource for finding old footage. Winstan and Henry both donated a lot of footage. Thanks so much.

There’s also a fair bit of your own skate footage in there too, right? What stuff did you film personally?

I shot the first LLSB event, when they first organised themselves and painted everything white. I followed Chewy around for a while and got some great footage. I had totally forgotten that I’d even shot this until it came to making this film. I also realised I had footage of Dylan Rieder from when he was there at the HUF demo. It felt really fitting that I used it for this. I also shot Urbside being built, so I used some of this footage too.

What’s your own history with Southbank itself? What’s your earliest memory of visiting SB?

My dad used to be a youth worker in Camden when I was growing up. He was part of the first team that organised Cantalowes skatepark. He used to take me to Cantalowes and Southbank when I was a kid.

I then went to university in London in the 90’s, I got a grant, bought a video camera and used to go down to the Southbank and film skateboarding instead of going to Uni. That camera was stolen from my flat and I ended up moving to Leeds after that.

Did you get a chance to skate it in its original state?

Yeah I skated the original lay out, (well not the original 70’s/80’s layout but the one before the hoardings went up), a lot. I filmed Carl Shipman frontside flipping the high bar, then I shot Neil Urwin switch frontside flipping the cut down bar. I also frontside 180 ollied a picnic table out of the little banks. I have spent a lot of time in the Undercroft going back a couple of decades.

Listening to Chris Allen talk about the Undercroft from the perspective of its function was fascinating, (as in the banks exist to provide access to the different levels incorporated into the original design). How did filming these interviews change your own perception of what Southbank is?

It was a dream come true really, the first day of interviews we went behind the wall and got to see all the old bits, it was amazing.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing again, I had so many good memories flood back. I was also sent all the original plans, I felt very honoured to be asked to do this, it also made so much sense as I had come around full circle from my days at Uni in the early 90’s.

It definitely seems as though the Undercroft space in particular was deliberately created to be ‘interesting’ in so far as its purpose was loosely defined but yet it was still made to look visual appealing, at least in a topographical sense as Chris Allen says. It’s tempting to see it as designed ‘for skateboarding before skateboarding’ to an extent isn’t it?

Definitely, at least looked at from today’s perspective and taking in mind Dennis and co’s belief in the importance of making space interesting.

The group of architects who comprised the Archigram group were very revolutionary and wanted to implement some very radical thinking into their designs.

I asked Dennis about some of this; hopefully I will be able to share the full interviews at some point.

How did you link up with Jim Slater, (one of the original London Skates Dominate AKA ‘LSD’ crew who are credited with discovering the Southbank)? Listening to him talk about the first time that skateboarders skated at SB was amazing – were there plenty of LSD tales that you heard from him that didn’t make it into the film?

Jim Slater was the first interview we shot and it really set the mood of the whole film. He was such a key figure and we owe a lot to him and his crew. It turns out he lives really close to where I live too.

He talked about lots of the nonsense they used to get up to back in the 70’s, way too much to make it into this piece. I plan to do some more filming with him this summer and I’d like to make a mini doc’ with him. I’d love to film some slalom too – I’ve built an RC Hovercraft to film this with.

Dan Adams

The current R.a.D book project really feeds into this too, as so much iconic imagery related to the older incarnation of Southbank the spot are tied into TLB, Wig, Dobie, etc. I’m assuming Dan was more than happy to open up the R.a.D archives for this project right?

Whilst we were filming this, the R.a.D kickstarter was in full swing, I wanted them to reach their goal and I thought they were a key part of this story. Dan was really helpful and showed us so many good photos.

I’d love to sit down with him again and go though what he has. There’s just so much work involved involving in the archiving process, I don’t think people realise just how much stuff he’s working through on his own. Maybe we should plan a big scan weekend? Everyone could turn up with a scanner and scan away…

The idea of skateboarding being accepted as a true part of the heritage of the city really comes through in this film Dan – was that the intention, in terms of your story-telling aims? It’s definitely much more than just a celebration of skateboarding, right?

I think this is mainly due to the passing of time and the effect that has on people’s perceptions as regards the cultural depth and value of Southbank as a place. When you can look back over five decades of skate culture, you start to realise the importance of what has happened there.

As we went through the R.a.D archive we realised that certain photos that wouldn’t have been printed due to not being technically good enough at the time they were shot were now usable as they told a different story and were just as important as the ones that were printed. The fact that other sports that were initially perceived as fads have come and gone over the same time frame, whilst skateboarding has grown and evolved, so much really allows everyone to realise how important this story is.

Listening to people connected to the institution revel in the heritage aspect of SB’s status as an iconic skate spot is pretty bonkers really, particularly to skaters of our age…

I think that half of the space being closed off for so long has helped make this place even more mysterious. There is a whole generation who had no idea it used to be bigger. They only know Southbank as it is now so it must be even weirder and even more exciting to them.

We must speak up about this thing we have, it really does have the power to change the world

I think the response and the overwhelming support given to the idea of reclaiming the lost space has shown the institution the multiple layers of its users across all age groups, and it made them realise how skateboarding is directly connected to so much of the creative industries. Skateboarders found a way to tell non-skaters how much this thing that previously we’ve never had to explain to people, means to us. This is a good thing, we must speak up about this thing we have, it really does have the power to change the world.

It also seems as if skateboarding has reached a point now where it’s value to wider culture, and to non-skaters is undeniable – do you think that’s happened partly because of what LLSB has achieved, or maybe just as part of the process of skateboarding growing up from what was relatively a very ‘new phenomenon’ until recently?

I think its just time again. There are now multiple generations all skating together. There are now more female skaters than ever. Skateboarding has become a lot more inclusive. It’s a coming of age process that has really cemented skateboarding culture’s position into society in general I think and made it an impossible thing to ignore.

There genuinely doesn’t feel to be any animosity towards the skaters any more either. When the likes of Mike McCart talk about moving away from conflict towards embracing collaboration – it does sound as if they wholeheartedly mean it. Was that the impression you got?

Absolutely, that is definitely the impression I got from making this film.

I just think Mike McCart and all the people involved in Southbank the institution genuinely understand who we are now. I don’t think they realised that we all still skated and were all still regular users of the space. I think the threat of closure brought older skaters out of the woodwork again too, which in turn added even more weight to the arguments of LLSB.

The things that Paul Richards says about how the dust settling and everyone working together benefits every stakeholder with a connection to the Southbank Centre really rings true doesn’t it? Especially when you factor in the plans for the Education Centre to sit alongside what LLSB have achieved. Community really does seem to have won through here…

I just hope that skaters will be included in the programming of the youth centre, I would love to share story telling skills, and be involved in doing workshops about film making or zine making.

It’s interesting to hear Southbank staff talk about how the academic conceptualization of skateboarding and its relationship to SB really helped the institution understand what the aims of LLSB. Do you see that as part of skateboarding’s growing up process that we touched on earlier? In so far as if academia can see value in it, then it becomes more tangible to an institution like SB?

I think we have all grown up really; skaters have matured and the culture has matured with them. We are starting to care more about how we represent ourselves and how what we do can benefit others.

Skaters have matured and the culture has matured with them. We are starting to care more about how we represent ourselves and how what we do can benefit others

DIY spots are popping up all over the country and their value to the communities that they touch can be seen and appreciated by a wider audience than that purely inside skateboarding. As we’ve discussed already – it definitely is a part of skateboarding’s coming of age process I think.

Another thing that really stood out to me was the comment about the Southbank Centre putting ‘skating in the sports box, rather than the culture box’ – in a lot of ways that seems to be the major shift here really. And potentially, the main lesson that other projects like LLSB can share in, would you agree?

That’s one of the main things that struck me too. I believe that switch in attitude was triggered by the sheer force of so many different generations and groups of skaters coming forwards to stand up for skateboarding and to explain how multifarious its culture is. Institutionally, this process allowed the Southbank Centre to comprehend how multi-layered skateboarding is and how connected we are to the arts. I think they just believed it was a fad and that you gave up when you grew up previously.

The way it’s put together really reflects what Paul Richards says about the multitude of voices all coming together. Did that idea inform the editing process?

I wanted to show all the different age groups that are still active users. I used loads of different cameras to help show this. I wasn’t bothered by resolution. Editing-wise it was crucial to incorporate as many different voices into the film as possible to reflect the situation as it is.

How long have you been working on this and what were some of the hardest aspects of making the film?

I started shooting last June and I finished it at Christmas. Internal politics were a bit of a problem at times but I tried to not get involved.

How was it received at the premiere?

It was amazing, a lot of old heads turned up, it was great to see everyone. From the reaction in the cinema it seemed to have been very well received.

You’re a filmmaker by trade these days, right? What other stuff have you been working on recently?

I have been working very closely with Huck Magazine recently. Also have a few things planned with Blast Skates. I’m planning another documentary piece at the moment. I’m always involved in something or other.

Let’s end on an obvious one – if I were to ask you what the most memorable thing ever done on a skateboard at Southbank was – what would you say and why?

Carl Shipman frontside flip over the bar after the Plan B premiere. I will never forget that day. When the new space opens, I want Carl to come down and do it again.

Interview by Ben Powell

The post Dan Joyce Interview appeared first on Slam City Skates Blog.

Dan Joyce Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar

[hypaatia]

so in honour of my AS exams finishing this Thursday (!!) and since it's june i know most of my fellow uk-exam-board studyblrs will be finishing up with GCSEs and A Levels too, i've come up with a bunch of things to do for that listless time after exams have finished and you don't know what to do with yourself anymore. 

 personally after i finished IGCSE last year the weirdest thing was that i was suddenly... empty. for the longest time studying for those exams was the most important thing in my life, and so much of my personal growth took place during those two years that after my last exam i was just a little awed by the fact that i was actually done with them. 

 obviously after exams are done you'll want to relax, so here are a few productive-ish ways to make your break count for something. 

 1. Clean 

it felt SO GOOD the night IGCSE finished to just go through my desk and throw out all the junk I had accumulated and kept procrastinating cleaning up because i didn't have time. old notes i didn't need, notebooks, rough work, scrap paper - hell, even a collection of old pens that had long since run out of ink - the pile of rubbish i threw out that day made me feel so much lighter. bonus: play that album you've been meaning to listen to (cough hopeless fountain kingdom) while you work 

2. Read a classic 

i've had Anna Karenina for about a year now i think and hopefully after Thursday i'll start reading it 

 3. Learn to code 

this post is v informative. another thing i want to do this summer 

 4. College/uni stuff 

 if you've just finished AS and plan on going to uni after next year, start digging around on the internet if you haven't already for what you might be interested in 

 5. Record your day in photos 

i've been fascinated by the idea of journaling for basically all my life - i began keeping a diary when i was maybe 7, and though it's been sporadic i've kept it up till now. however, my problem is oftentimes i'm just too lazy to write. with snapchat's time filter i've found a really interesting way of keeping track of your day is just by periodically taking photos and swiping the time filter onto it. this works especially well for when there's an event going on (eg graduation/prom) and it's more inconspicuous than vlogging. 

 6. Watch (not binge-watch 5 seasons in one night) a tv series 

personally i know that if i watch a tv show as it comes out every week i'll get too distracted by it to focus on studying so normally i wait till a show is done then watch it in a few days. i've promised to start Supergirl season 2 with my brother starting Friday 

 7. Watch a series on Crash Course 

this channel is such a lot of fun, and they keep expanding ! personally i'm really excited to watch their mythology videos 

 8. Watch a biographical movie/show 

eg. 

The Imitation Game (Alan Turing) 

The Theory of Everything (Stephen Hawking) 

The Crown (Queen Elizabeth II) 

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela) 

Jackie (First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy) 

The Pianist (Wladyslaw Szpilman) 

Frida (Frida Kahlo + Diego Rivera) 

there’s actually a biopic on Oscar Wilde scheduled to come out this year too, which sounds pretty interesting. i also remember seeing something on Mary Shelley so yeah there’s loads of interesting stuff and these movies tend to have cool soundtracks and are pretty inspiring. call me cliche but personal fave is the theory of everything which has beautiful music by Jóhann Jóhannsson as well + Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones *heart eyes*

  9. Clean out your hard drives 

 10. Read Shakespeare 

i really like his play King Henry V 

 11. Exercise 

it's inevitable for almost everyone that your exercise routine gets thoroughly fucked over during exam season, so pull it back together 

 12. Text all the friends/family you've been meaning to 

 13. Learn a new language/ brush up on an old one 

Duolingo is pretty great for this 

 14. Listen to all those podcasts you said you'd listen to later 

 15. Go through all the shit you've bookmarked on tumblr 

 16. TED TALKS !

 and i think that’s it for now. hope we all get amazing results come august 💙

-ari x

#hypaatia #mine #studyblr #studyspo #exams #exam season #study #student #gcse #igcse #a levels #a level studyblr #hey sareena #nehrdist #katsdesk #studyblr community #obsidian study

[debrahnesbit]

The LawBytes Podcast, Episode 19: Canada’s Quiet Success Story: Irene Berkowitz on the Canadian YouTube Creative Sector

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez recently appeared to pre-empt the government’s broadcast and telecommunications legislative review panel in his response to the panel’s interim report. Rodriguez indicated that the government will move to mandate new contributions and Cancon requirements for online services regardless of what the panel recommends. New creators leveraging online platforms don’t typically participate in government consultations, but that doesn’t mean their voice and experience should be ignored. Ryerson’s Irene Berkowitz recently released Watchtime Canada, a report on the role YouTube plays in fostering opportunities for creators. The study found an eco-system that provides thousands of Canadians with full-time employment opportunities and export strategies that outshine the traditional creative sector.  She joins me on the podcast this week to discuss the report and what it might mean for Canadian cultural policy.

The podcast can be downloaded here and is embedded below. The transcript is posted at the bottom of this post or can be accessed here. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify or the RSS feed. Updates on the podcast on Twitter at @Lawbytespod.

Episode Notes:

Watchtime Canada report

Credits:

Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, May 2, 2019 Unbox Therapy, This Smartphone Changes Everything Gigi Gorgeous, This is Everything How to Cake It, GIANT Juice Box Cake with JUICE INSIDE The Icing Artist, Mini ANIMAL CAKES Vanoss Gaming

Transcript:

Law Bytes podcast – Episode19 | Convert audio-to-text with Sonix

Michael Geist: This is Law Bytes, a podcast with Michael Geist.

David Yurdiga: Are we prepared for the the YouTube generation. I like to call because that’s the that’s the medium they’re playing in at this point.

Scott Hutton, CRTC: Our suggestion is we need to legislative changes and new tools to be able to help the regulatory system adapt to those particular environments. YouTube can contribute to Canadian content. You know we can all post there and it is contributing and that means right now Canadians can. It’s it’s one of the more open systems Canadians can post and receive revenue from from YouTube. On that element but an example in that case is how does one find that Canadian story and the sea of what is available on on YouTube. So for example that’s why we’ve raised many concerns with respect to discoverability is sort of the term that everybody is using as to how do you find that piece of Canadian content in the plethora of content that is available.

Michael Geist: Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez recently appeared to pre-empt the Government’s broadcast and telecommunications legislative review panel. In his response to the panel’s interim report. Rodriguez indicated that the government will move to mandate new contributions and Cancon requirements for online services regardless of what the panel recommends. While the comments signal a shift in policy – and perhaps that an election is on the way – they also suggest that the narrow view of the Canadian creative sector has taken hold within the government.

Michael Geist: New creators leveraging online platforms don’t typically participate in government consultations but that doesn’t mean their voice and experience should be ignored. Ryerson University’s Irene Berkowitz recently released Watch Time Canada a report on the role YouTube plays in fostering opportunities for creators. The study found an ecosystem that provides thousands of Canadians with full time employment opportunities and export strategies that outshine the traditional creative sector. She joins me this week on the podcast to discuss the report and what it might mean for Canadian cultural policy.

Michael Geist: Irene thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.

Irene Berkowitz: Thank you very much for inviting me. I’m sort of awed, honoured and I hope I can contribute as your other amazing guest have.

Michael Geist: Okay. Well it’s a pleasure to have you and this comes at a really important point in time. As you know we’re recording this about a week after the government’s broadcast and telecom legislative review panel released its “what we heard” report. The actual recommendations on reforms to Canada’s broadcast and telecom laws aren’t scheduled until 2020, but this report kind of provides as the title suggests what they heard from the various stakeholders who participated.

Michael Geist: I think it’s fair to say for anyone who’s paying attention to the report didn’t really surprise very much. There are many in the cultural community in Canada that see this this review as one of their best chances for new regulation in the cultural sector possibly mandated Cancon contributions maybe even site blocking, new taxes. And so there’s been a lot of emphasis there and certainly you see it in the report. But if you only read those submissions I think you’d be pretty surprised to learn that Canada is experiencing record spending on Cancon production right now. A lot of it supported by foreign investment. But even that is only part of the story. And well the reasons I’m so excited to have you on the podcast is that you recently released a study that examined the role of YouTube in Canada’s media ecosystem focusing both on Canadian YouTube creators and consumers and the data which frankly you don’t see in the what we heard report strikes me as incredibly important for cultural policy. So why don’t we start as a long intro but why don’t we start then with the background. What were you looking to study and how did you go about doing it.

Irene Berkowitz: Well thank you for asking that question because it actually has an important answer which was as you know and many other people who are probably listening know there has been you know hundreds if not thousands of reports filed on the legacy media system from its very beginning. Probably you have also read most of the documents from 1929 as I have and yet there isn’t there wasn’t a baseline study of YouTube which has been present in Canada since 2006 to take its place at that at that table and there’s a lot of generalizations made about new media giants without much specificity so we wanted to take a look at what is the role of YouTube in the Canadian media ecosystem.

Irene Berkowitz: What we found was quite remarkable we were not experts in YouTube. As you know I’m more of an expert in legacy media at the time. And just for further transparency to say that the report was commissioned by Google but contains no proprietary information we there’s 50 charts and lots of contextual information. And unless we omitted it accidentally a footnote all of it is done by reporting our original research or public public information that’s adequately or appropriately footnoted. In fact Google was quite explicit on numerous occasions saying that they would not want to interfere with our academic freedom.

Michael Geist: Ok. So just so that we know who the “we’ is in this case it’s yourself. But it was also with some colleagues from Ryerson.

Irene Berkowitz: Yes very important to mention my team the first team member is Dr. Charles Davis whose credentials are quite impressive. He’s the Edward S. Rogers Senior Research Chair in Media Management and Entrepreneurship. He’s also a professor in the RTA School of Media and the associate dean of scholarly research and creative activities here and my so he you know you can understand this was sort of the the royal oversight in this report as well as our second of our third of our three part team and Hannah Smith whose Phd student and communication and culture which is the same program from which I received my PHC in 2016. And she is a graduate researcher in audience lab which is an initiative started here it at faculty of communication and designed to study audiences with data both qualitative and quantitative research is done here.

Michael Geist: Ok. I wanted to make sure that we give credit to the full team and I’m glad that you that you noted that. Google provided support but had no input in terms of the outcome in the research itself in what’s a lengthy reports of some hundred thirty five pages of lays out the data that you found. Let’s let’s talk just that’s the why that is an area that’s not well understood and the who that was involved. What did you go about doing as part of the study.

Irene Berkowitz: Well we took a look at the key stakeholders in YouTube and with an eye on understanding what stakeholders are most often reported on in it in the legacy reports and we decide to take a look at the audience or consumers and the creators because they are the creators are obviously the focus of much of much of the regulation and discussion in the in the legacy system. There is a third stakeholder in YouTube which is the advertisers and that that part may be maybe coming eventually but we we started with this. It was a big job. You can see the results are big also. We did we ended up doing two surveys one with consumers. We did that first because was a bit easier from a process point of view and that had fifteen hundred responses with a demographic that was the same as Statscan, which we requested. And then we also did a study of survey of creators and that what that has round twelve hundred responses and we ended up with a dataset that was not certainly not big data. But it is for surveys it’s quite a large data set and we we proceeded to crunch the data and understand what our results were.

Michael Geist: Okay. So twelve hundred Canadian creators working on YouTube does sound like a really large sample size. Once you crunched some of that data, what are some of the some of the conclusions that you were able to come to in terms of just the scope or size of of Canadian creator presence on YouTube.

Irene Berkowitz: Yes. Let me just respond to sort of instinctively to you. The first part of your question then I’ll get to the key takeaway which is that by definition the creator survey had to be self selected because it had to be anonymous. So we’ve we were kind of amazed because we had heard that these kinds of surveys get 1 or 2 percent response. We weren’t really sure if we were going to get anyone. And as we saw these results coming in we were we were quite happy to be working with asking Canadians the subsidiary of Delvinia, who administered these surveys. As we saw the results coming in two hundred three hundred six hundred eight hundred. We were quite amazed. And it led me to think that we had struck a chord with Canadian creators on YouTube who really wanted to tell their story.

Irene Berkowitz: So they said that that’s not those are not the results. There are in the report I’m sure you saw there’s twenty one value propositions unique value propositions that YouTube seems to be offering into the Canadian media marketplace. I was quite amazed as I went through and and sort of tried to deduce each part of the report and I realized that wow this is actually for real. And then I tried to reduce it further into five insights and one key takeaway which I’ll just tell you what that is because then we can unpack that according to what you find most compelling.

Irene Berkowitz: So we found that YouTube in addition to facilitating the rise of a new group of Canadian creative entrepreneurs. That’s 160,000 of them by our estimation. They are inventing totally new forms of popular content. Youtube has also resulted in significant outcomes with respect to those creators with respect to diversity, employment, domestic popularity, global export, Canadian creators lead the platform and global access. And furthermore YouTube has achieved these results without requiring either the transfer of IP rights from creators which as you know is a highly controversial aspect the legacy system and largely in the absence of public funding and its associated costs which has been pegged by the former chair of the CRTC at 4 billion dollars per year.

Irene Berkowitz: The other thing is that we ask Canadian consumers about Canadian content. I think that there’s a lot of discussion about Canadian content but I’m not sure many studies have actually asked Canadians whether what they think what they’re wnd what what their practices are around it. So 90 almost 90 percent I think was 88 percent of Canadian consumers do not search for Canadian content on YouTube and in our almost 9000 qualitative responses from these surveys because both surveys had a few qualitative questions, the consumers made it very clear why: they’re searching for content that either helps them learn something, they’re searching or they’re searching for the content they want and they don’t really care where it comes from.

Michael Geist: It’s interesting consumer data and preference can come come back to some of the public’s perspective on that. I want to drill down focus a bit more intently on the creator side of course because that’s where so much of that policy for better or worse is focused when we start thinking about Cancon and cultural policy, although one would have thought that you’d be interested in what Canadians themselves are interested in. But let’s try to better understand the creator side because the hundred and sixty thousand creators is a is a big number. Of course the question that immediately follows for many in the sector would be well how many of those people or are able to generate some revenue coming out of that. If not as a full time career at least as a source of revenue. Do you have some sense of the data in terms of how many are sufficiently successful to be part of the partnership programs that then lead to the prospect of revenue.

Irene Berkowitz: Yes. That’s obviously very very important. Mindful that YouTube is a startup culture that about 25 percent or around 40,000 Canadian creators are what’s called eligible for monetization which is means they can join they are eligible to join the partner program, which means around a thousand subscribers a certain amount of watch time and obeying and those strikes against them in terms of their adherence or obeying the community guidelines that YouTube sets.

Michael Geist: We see large numbers of Canadian creators succeeding on YouTube. But the report does a really nice job of highlighting some of the major success stories some of some of them were household names but a bunch. Unless you’re I guess in this space aren’t necessarily so but they’ve got enormous numbers of views and presumably generating some significant revenues. Could you tell us a bit about some of the YouTube stars as it were that come out of Canada.

Irene Berkowitz: Oh I would love to. I’m actually glad that I didn’t meet these people in person until the launch of this report because anyone would fall so in love with their exuberance and energy that I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my scientific objectivity during the preparation of the research. Well you know someone like Shawn Mendes or Justin Bieber. These are household iconic names in Canada. What everyone. What people don’t know is someone like Shawn Mendes actually learned how to play the guitar on YouTube. There’s another household name is Lily Singh, who started as a funny and charming girl from Scarborough who is now made it to the top of royalty in the legacy entertainment system who just recently has been named as the host first only female host of a late night show on NBC. There is Lewis Hilsenteger.

Lewis Hilsenteger: Today is the day that the smart phone game changes. In front of me I have the future and it’s in the form of the Find x. This thing has been top secret and for good reason because it changes everything.

Irene Berkowitz: Unbox therapy is the top technology platform on the technology channel excuse me on the entire platform. There’s Gigi Gorgeous.

Gigi Gorgeous: My camera became my therapist and YouTube became my diary where I would post everything. If your parents don’t get you, if your friends think you’re weird, I love you and I want you to be exactly who you want me to be.

Irene Berkowitz: Who is the top transgender transgender creator on the entire platform. There are so many creators with billions of views such as How to cake it.

How to cake it: Welcome back to how to take it. I’m Yolanda and this week I have taken a juice box a giant juice box that you can take back to school.

Irene Berkowitz: Which is a lifestyle platform started by a group of Canadian creators whose frankly their show was was canceled and Yolanda Gallop has become a top creator on the channel. There’s fascinating export stories. The the icing artist.

Laurie Shannon: My name is Laurie and you’re watching icing artists.

Irene Berkowitz: By Laurie Shannon and her husband they were both cabinet makers. They literally learned how to decorate cakes on the platform. She started this channel and she discovered through data analytics that on YouTube studio that she had a lot of audience in the Middle East and realized well she’ll take away herself talking and she’ll add subtitles which is easy to do on on on the platform that’s that’s also enabled. And she saw her audiences go from 30 her subscribers go from 30 thousand to a million. Now she has three million. Her husband and her have both quit their day jobs. We see this a lot and they are supporting their family from YouTube. There VanossGaming who probably is Evan Fong from Richmond Hill.

Evan Fong: What is up guys. So today I have some Ghost Recon breakpoint gameplay and I’m playing with my friends wildcat Mu and asers.

Irene Berkowitz: Who launched his show on gaming. I don’t know if the gaming on YouTube isn’t gaming, its channels that what its videos that you’re watching other people playing video games. It’s gigantic. Anyway he has billions of views and he is actually earning. He had earned to 17 million in 2018 making him the seventh highest paid YouTube star ever. The list could go on. What we found in terms of the export data was that Canadian creators as I said earlier not only lead the platform in export but they have actually transformed historic disadvantage which is being next to the US if not a key motivator for the entire policy framework for the 20th century. They have transformed that into a remarkable competitive advantage and they are monetizing that you know like crazy.

Michael Geist: And I’m assuming that on the monetization side and I know that your report indicates that while some are generating less than ten thousand dollars you’ve got a sizable percentage of those that are able to generate revenue generating a hundred thousand dollars or more. It’s the millions of course are a small number of people. But nevertheless people literally being able to to to make this their full time occupation, to live off their creativity this ways is an amazing thing to see. And the report talks about not just about money that gets generated through advertising, but brand deals, sponsorship, appearances, book deals. All of these become part of the norm for some of the creators that find for that establish a global presence.

Irene Berkowitz: One hundred percent in fact. Thank you for for connecting those dots because we started out with the revenue sharing and exactly as you just said we found that it’s the norm even very early on, people are using a variety of highly creative variety of revenue streams to to to monetize their work on YouTube for instance. It’s not all about subscriber numbers sometimes. We came across a channel I won’t I won’t violate privacy but that only has 50,000 subscribers which doesn’t seem a lot compared to the hundreds of millions if not billions for for our other creators. But they are supporting a family of four because the advertising, the type of advertising that that this channel appeals to family advertising: Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Structure, are high paying advertisers. And so there are many many routes to success on YouTube and these the level of excitement about their work is positively contagious.

Irene Berkowitz: So I mean, overall for me, the key takeaway was I wouldn’t say that our study is RCT or randomized clinical trial of what would happen in the absence of protection or support but you couldn’t do that anyway. But it is somewhat sort of like that because here we have Canadian creators sort of let loose naked into the globe into a global platform. And if it comes down to whether protectionism or competition builds strength in terms of content that is popular. Well it seems like we have an answer because Canadian creators truly are thriving on YouTube.

Michael Geist: I’m glad that you know you made that connection because that’s really what we’re talking about law and policy. That’s kind of in a sense the next question. Once you’ve managed to canvas the waterfront of what’s taking place in YouTube and the report goes into far more detail on on a lot of these kinds of issues uncovers this thriving ecosystem with thousands of Canadians succeeding. The question if you’re on the broadcast telecom review panel or government or policymaker or someone who is concerned with what cultural policy looks like, is whether or not you need policies that are responsive to this. What sounds like you’re suggesting is that we’ve seen this kind of success really in the absence of those sorts of policies this is in a sense that opportunity to compete on the global stage and doing so without new kinds of taxes or mandates, but rather doing so by the kind of creativity and finding an audience.

Irene Berkowitz: Well finding an audience. A case a strong case could be made that for the 20th century it was building an industry on the broadcasters side and on the independent production side and those all those quotas and regulation. I mean clearly the framework was brilliant. Beginning with you know the sort of I call the two the two pillars are really simultaneous substitution, which delivered 30 percent of a boost to the broadcasters, and then on the other hand we have the 30 percent investment and then we have the independent production community that is sort of anchored by the point system which took four years. I’ll just say that those were 20th century goals in the 21st century, that’s not the challenge. The challenge is the market is global.

Irene Berkowitz: I did want to make sure to ask whether or not you asked about regulation. So if we could see how this has succeeded in the absence of regulation did you ask those that are actively engaged in this whether or not they pay attention to these policy issues, whether they think regulation is needed. They haven’t been a vocal part of the policy process to date, but is this something that they think very much about or they’re just busy creating.

Irene Berkowitz: I think that what we did at we did ask one question of creators and we also asked about it asked it to consumers. We were careful not to take up too much time in the surveys with too many of these questions because as you just indicated most people in the industry and in the world just want to pay their mortgage, get through their day and they’re not thinking about these issues the way you and I might as a giant fascinating puzzle that needs to be rejigged for the 21st century. But we did ask. We did ask creators that whether they’re content if their content was promoted in Canada but that meant it was demoted in other countries which would which would be the type of thing that would happen because the platform is global. They what how this would impact their experience. And the answer was overwhelmingly negative because they depend on these larger markets to fund their Canadian creativity and they depend on these audiences.

Irene Berkowitz: We also ask consumers about whether they thought the government should have a role in in regulating what they can see on YouTube and what they felt was that sixty five percent of Canadian consumers value YouTube as the best place to watch the same video as anyone else in the world. And a majority also believe that also 65 percent no government or other organization should determine what they can watch on YouTube. Now we asked that in the context of YouTube. We didn’t ask it in the context of protections around harmful content defined you know in many different ways. So I want to be clear about that, but it seems that you know in terms of YouTube’s ability to leap the walled garden, Canadian consumers and Canadian creators are quite protective of their right to access the global market.

Michael Geist: Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.

Irene Berkowitz: Thank you so much.

Michael Geist: That’s the Law Bytes podcast for this week. If you have comments suggestions or other feedback, write to lawbytes.com. That’s lawbytes at pobox.com. Follow the podcast on Twitter at @lawbytespod or Michael Geist at @mgeist. You can download the latest episodes from my Web site at Michaelgeist.ca or subscribe via RSS, at Apple podcast, Google, or Spotify. The LawBytes Podcast is produced by Gerardo LeBron Laboy. Music by the Laboy brothers: Gerardo and Jose LeBron Laboy. Credit information for the clips featured in this podcast can be found in the show notes for this episode at Michaelgeist.ca. I’m Michael Geist. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

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