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a-nice-and-interpretive-fanzine · 3 years

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[ID: A cream-colored banner that says "A Nice and Interpretive Fanzine: essays and art about the meanings we've found in Good Omens." There is a photo of a book page with a key on it behind the banner text. The photo source is rosy_photo on Pixabay. /end ID]

A Nice and Interpretive Fanzine: Information Masterpost

Welcome!

This is a zine for those of us who love the subtle, complex work that is Good Omens, and who’ve enjoyed the thoughtfulness of the fandom as people interpret how the many moving pieces of the story come together, creating a slightly different meaning for each of us.

To put it simply, it’s a book full of the fandom’s own analysis and commentary about the Good Omens TV show, enhanced with illustrations from our brilliant artists.

This zine is analytical in the sense that all the writers are expressing their own nonfiction thoughts and feelings about the show, rather than writing fanfic, but it is not meant to be heavily academic. Anybody who likes to pick apart the series and discuss it should be able to enjoy it.

The zine will contain essays by fans who are passionate about analyzing and interpreting different parts of Good Omens - the characters, the plot, the writing techniques for the book and script, the cinematography of the TV show, the popular content of the fandom itself. Accompanying these essays will be black and white illustrations from our artists.

How are you organizing this process?

May 1-May 15: Everyone submits their application to do writing or art through a Google form. Behind the scenes, I’ll be setting up a separate email and Discord.

May 16-20: Applicants will be screened during this time.

May 20: I’ll email everyone to let them know the outcomes of their applications. The final participants will get a link to the Discord server for the zine (totally optional, of course).

May 21: If there’s any clarification or solidifying of ideas that needs to happen, I’ll contact you and discuss with you by this point. This is also when artists will be matched up with essays.

May 22 to August 14: This will be a period of just working on our essays and art. The Discord chat and Tumblr will be there for support and for exchanging ideas!

August 15: Participants need to email their full works to the zine’s email address by this date. No special formatting is needed; I’ll do that in InDesign.

August 15 to August 31: I’ll be putting the zine together in InDesign.

September 1: Preorders will open.

September 30: Preorders will close.

October 1: The zine order will be placed!

October 15: Assuming all goes well with printing and shipping, the zines will be shipped out in waves starting on this date. If the printing or shipping from the manufacturer is delayed, then shipping will just start ASAP.

Writer Application HERE Artist Application HERE Asked and Answered Questions on Tumblr The Fanzine's Page on Twitter

Read below for more detailed information about the zine in a Q and A format!

What are the specifications for the zine contributions?

For writers, I’m starting with 3k words or fewer per essay (approximately 10 pages at the size of this book). This depends heavily on how many participants we actually get, so it may change!

For artists, I’d be looking at black and white works, 300 DPI, 5.5 x 8.5 inches or smaller. If your art is supposed to fill up the entire page (i.e. no white space), please make it a total of 5.75 x 8.75 inches with nothing too important around the edges to account for bleed during the printing process.

Can I submit an essay to this zine if I’ve already posted it on Tumblr?

Not as you’ve already posted it. We don’t want to just copy/paste the exact thing that hundreds or perhaps even thousands of people have already read.

However, it IS fine and maybe even a good idea to take the same thought from your post and refine it, preserving your same thesis. For example, a lot of Tumblr posts are just us fans jotting down 5 or 6 paragraphs of random thoughts at 2 AM, but some of them are really cool thoughts! Expanding them and turning them into a bona-fide Essay would make those posts into excellent zine chapters. And you can copy small pieces of your own language as long as the whole thing isn’t just pasted word-for-word.

How long do essays have to be? Is there a limit?

With the number of writers we have, I've calculated that each person should ideally keep their essay to about 6000 words. There is wiggle room.

There’s no real minimum for your contribution; some analytical ideas are really good but can be expressed concisely, so it’s okay if your essays only come out to a few pages typed. For reference, with our book size, a page is about 300 words.

What happens if the zine sells a lot and you end up not only breaking even, but turning a profit?

It’ll go to charity. While I’ll ask the participants what they want to do for certain if we do make enough money, my suggestion will be donating it to Alzheimer’s Research UK in honor of Sir Terry Pratchett.

I’m not really comfortable calling this a “charity zine” up front since I simply don’t know if it will raise a significant amount. For the most part, I just want the thing to physically exist, which means breaking even, and don’t want to make it more expensive for buyers than it needs to be to afford the printing costs.

What kinds of essays are you talking about? What could be included?

In short, any analytical thoughts about the Good Omens TV show - and possibly even the fandom as it interacts with the show - are possible inclusions for the zine.

To expand a bit, think about the meta posts you see floating around Tumblr. Often these involve analyzing characters, or picking up on patterns in the plot. Sometimes fans use their own background knowledge to write posts about the significance of certain costume choices or the way music plays into each individual scene. Some posts examine the ways the series approaches gender, while others might discuss ways that the characters present as neurodivergent. That’s how diverse the pool of possibilities is for subjects in this zine.

How does art come into this?

Images will be black and white, to match the bookish mood of the project overall. Images can range in size from a half page to a full page.

I’m planning to talk to the artists and authors and loosely pair artists with essays that appeal to their personal interests.

I know how to illustrate a story, but how do I illustrate an essay?

There are infinite answers to this! I’ve seen some beautiful symbolic artwork in the fandom already (e.g. a number of takes on Aziraphale munching on an apple with Crowley in snake form curving around him), and there are tons of symbolic motifs to draw from, but these are not the only options. An artist illustrating an essay about cinematography, for example, could draw a well-known scene from an alternative angle. An essay about Heaven as a capitalist corporation could be illustrated with a cartoon of Gabriel giving some sort of excruciating PowerPoint presentation. A character analysis could be accompanied by a simple portrait. And on and on. I’m not interested in limiting the possibilities by trying to make a list, but just know that there are many and you don’t have to make it complicated if you don’t want to.

If the writers can reuse their essay ideas, can artists reuse their drawings?

Similarly to the writers, if you already have an interpretive drawing that you’re in love with, artists can use the same ideas and the same fundamental composition that is present in their own existing work. However, it has to be redone in some significant way. Whether it’s taking something you drew in 2019 and redrawing it using an updated style, taking a sketch and turning it into a lined and shaded piece, or redoing a full-color drawing so it presents more strikingly in black and white, it shouldn’t be identical to the thing you’ve already posted.

So how are you choosing participants here?

It’ll be based on what people are interested in writing about (or illustrating). I’ll be looking for people who are passionate about their essays, but I’ll also be looking for variety. It all depends on what people want to offer, so I won’t know for sure what it will look like put together until everyone’s application is in.

For artists, I’ll be trying to figure out whose style looks like it would adapt well to illustrations in black and white, and also who demonstrates an interest in the same subjects as the writers.

If we don’t get a lot of applicants, I’d love to simply include everyone, but I can’t commit to that without knowing for sure how many people are involved.

Do I have to use a formal writing style to participate?

No. You should use a style that makes your thoughts and ideas as clear as possible, but as long as it’s understandable, you can also get a little artistic with it. You can “write like you speak,” though perhaps in a more organized way. You definitely don’t need to worry about stylistic rules like not using the first person. This is not academia.

Is this zine going to center only on Crowley and Aziraphale?

That remains to be seen! It depends on what ideas show up in the applications. There will be a lot of the ineffable partners for sure, but whether the whole zine will center on them or whether there’s plentiful stuff about other characters will depend on what the participants suggest.

Do we have to agree with all your personal interpretations of Good Omens to be in the zine?

No! In fact, I’m assuming that a number of essays will contradict each other, too, and that’s perfectly okay. The zine is a sampler of fan interpretations meant to inspire, not instruct. It’s not “Here’s a fan-made guide on how to understand this TV show,” it’s “Look at all these moving parts and how many meanings we can find in them. What does it mean to you?”

However, there are some basic rules and assumptions by which I’m working here.

I don’t personally have the energy to include essays that are highly critical (“negative”) in this zine. It’s analytical but also meant to be fun.

I’m pretty focused on the TV adaptation. This isn’t “no book analysis allowed” but just that the essays will end up being weighted toward subjects that apply to either the TV show or both the book and the show.

Each writer should focus on making their own points over disproving other fan interpretations. If you’re writing in an expository style, it’s normal for the essay to contain rebuttals to opposing ideas, but these should be minor supporting points, not the heart and soul of your essay. For reference, I’d say the majority of meta I see floating around on tumblr would follow this rule just fine.

Essay ideas that seem to contain bigoted or exclusionary sentiments will not be accepted (no TERFy stuff, for example).

What kinds of editing will go into the zine? Are you going to argue with us about the contents of our writing?

While I might ask you to elaborate on certain points in your writing or clarify your thoughts about your subject, I’m absolutely not here to ask you to change the thesis, opinions, or headcanons on which your writing is based. If I really have a problem with your initial idea, I’ll tell you that up front and politely decline the contribution.

While formatting the zine, I’ll make minor edits if I think I see a typo or misspelling, something small and obviously unintentional. As with any other zine, your content won’t be changed without consulting you.

Is this a SFW zine?

Yes. If people want to discuss sexuality in a theoretical way, like erotic subtext, that would be allowed. There are canon references like Newt and Anathema’s moment under the bed that might come up, too. But there will be nothing explicit, and since these are essays instead of stories, there will be no “action” going on between characters. Let’s just say sex isn’t a forbidden topic, but it will be like discussing it in English class.

As for other topics that could make the zine NSFW, like gore or extreme language, I don’t think they will be an issue. Some dark topics, like abuse by Heaven and Hell, may be discussed, but they will be warned for, and these are not stories, so you aren’t going to see violent actions playing out.

Will there be any “extras” like charms or stickers?

I’m not sure yet. I’m most inclined to keep it simple, because of the nature of the zine, but would be open to including some bonus items if there’s an artist who’s really passionate about it.

With that said, I am pretty committed to making a hardcover edition of the book available, in addition to the standard softcover version.

You’re doing this with only one mod?!

Yes. I personally find it easiest. While I’ve worked on multi-mod projects in other domains and adore all of my co-mods, it’s a little bit different when it’s a project with this many moving pieces that includes real-life components like printing and shipping. Though there are a lot of individual things to be done, I am experienced with all of them, so it’s less overwhelming to just take on the whole project. That way, I know exactly what needs to be done and when, and there are no issues with assigning tasks.

What qualifies you to run this zine?

The résumé answer: in fandom, I successfully solo-modded a large not-for-profit zine in the past, the @soulmakazine2018, and while I can’t speak for the whole fandom, it definitely seemed to be well-received. <3 In real life, I’m a case manager and this involves coordinating and communicating with a lot of different people including my 100-person caseload, budgeting services, and filling out all kinds of paperwork on the fly, all skills that can be imported into zine work.

The practical answer: well, I’m the one who decided to start this project, so if you like the sound of it, you're stuck with me. I say with encouragement and enthusiasm that if you’d like to do a different take on a commentary zine, you should absolutely do it.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #ineffable partners #fanzine #good omens zine

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ooc-but-stylish · 3 years

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freezedive:

I think I said it in one of your other beautiful posts, but I thought I’d mention it again. All of the ridiculous cutscenes did give us a golden nugget of information on Luna that most of us who are brutally critical of her (like you and me), suspected all along: Luna openly admits to Gentiana that she doesn’t think she has anything to offer Noctis outside of being an oracle. And Gentiana makes it worse by speaking in fancy words by saying some bullshit about her being the oracle is her being human or something and that she is fulfilling her true calling and that is what Noctis needs? Idk but it reeked of emotional manipulation.

I hold little to no regard for Ravus because there’s evidence Luna was being brutally beaten right under his own nose while he was busy being the Emperor’s lapdog thinking it could maybe give him the power to save his sister? The man should have opened his eyes and defended her against the men that kept them jailed

I happened on this reply to roxainn’s post while trying to recapitulate all my other FFXV critical posts and reblogs on the way to making new ones.

Crawling back to find anything about this point, I find that it was posted 3 years ago. But at least I reblogged the reply to it.... and missed that it was literally @ ME. Goddamn did I slack.

But here’s my reply, 3 years late, which should elaborate on where I stand on this.

Yes, the flashback that gets triggered by a random creepy little girl in Tenebrae is about Luna and Gentiana. Somehow the little girl knew about that conversation even though she wasn’t there to witness it first-hand? Or maybe Noctis was imagining what the conversation would be like between Gentiana and Luna off of the vague suggestion from the girl, and it’s just him telling on himself that his imagination of Luna says all that? Otherwise the not-altogether-tinfoil-hat theory says it’s Gentiana in the form of a little girl, telling Noctis something that IMO should piss him off but just makes him sad and guilty because Luna loved him so much, don’t you see. She loved him so much that after wrapping her entire life around him, she’d just want to keep that going for the rest of their lives!

Gentiana opens the conversation with, “At first, the father had mourned the fate of his chosen son. Yet in Tenebrae, the two found solace. It was not the Oracle who assuaged their fears. But the girl…she holds…the true power.”

Then Luna replies, “I have little to offer a king, other than the voice afforded the Oracle. Nevertheless…” She turns to look at the wedding dress. “And—I’m afraid he might find this foolish… But…to be together with Noctis again, even if only for a short while… It…would mean the world to me. I do not seek to guide him, merely to stand beside him.”

The exchange is all types of fucky.

First off, she was twelve. What comfort could she have offered Regis and Noctis? What comfort was she capable of when Sylva was right there, an adult with experience of an Oracle and a personality thanks to a presumable full life not hampered by grooming of the gods?

Second, every other scene of Luna as a child is of her telling Noctis his duty, and that it was her duty to see it through. Did that assuage his fears-- the fears he didn’t have at the time since he never knew the entire meaning of his fate and was being told a saccharine, embellished version of it by Luna right there? Did that comfort Regis, knowing a little girl would also die to protect his son if the gods wanted it, but that she wouldn’t have the will to avert their fates whatsoever?

Third, even she thinks Noctis would think her desire to be with him is foolish. So... was she expecting that Noctis himself didn’t have feelings for her or want to spend time with her of his own volition for reasons outside of her job? She was looking forward to a marriage with no emotional security, where her desires are one-sided and unreciprocated, and the man she cares for think she’s worthless outside of her powers? She would’ve been willing to put herself through that, given a choice?

We know what we know and think what we think, but the fact that this was placed right in the vanilla game and no one thought that was wrong, and instead they doubled down on it in patches, is pathetic on their part.

Moreover, what does The Girl have, that was separate from The Princess and The Oracle? Every facet of her being wrapped around Noctis since age 4. She was nothing but her duty by the time Noctis met her; they had no scenes where they acted as children would. Even supplemental/promotional art for other XV media and related locales cement that. Little Luna serves Little Noctis pastries, she’s not seen eating with him. Luna teaches Noctis how to play piano, she’s not playing with him. Dawn of the Future came out with its own art, and Noctis is afforded the liberty to sit in a chair, and his son(?) sits on his lap, while Luna and her spitting image child(?) are both on their knees, looking up at the dudes.

In most of their art together, Luna and Noctis are either not meeting each other's gazes, she's bending or kneeling to him, or he's supposed to be holding her close but he hover-hands her, or there’s that one time where they took a selfie and the picture was of their Pocket Edition versions. They’re still not looking at each other in that one. And it’s not canon.

Anyway yeah, any conversation Gentiana has with Luna about Noctis is emotional manipulation on Gentiana’s part, but the writers manage just enough to make everyone involved seem creepy and reprehensible in their own way.

In DOTF, Luna has a death soliloquy that confirms she sunk into the water at the end of the game’s Chapter 9, but the soliloquy is about how she was prepared to die even at the age of 12, and she put on a smile and resolved to be strong for Noctis’s sake, so that he wouldn’t remember her having a look of despair. There’s a line there about how she would cry herself to sleep but Gentiana would wipe her tears. Gentiana does nothing else except allow her to cry and wipe her tears afterward, and makes no effort to save her from her fate or at least take her out of terrible situations so that she would cry fewer tears. But there is cut dialogue from the game, and used in the novel, where Gentiana revealed herself as Shiva when Luna was <16 (probably still 12 at the time), when she thought she was being held back from forming the covenants, so there’s that. And Luna still somehow ignored that this meant Shiva allowed Sylva to die, and thanked this useless goddess for her nonexistent generosity.

For whatever reason they had to add a passage where Luna superimposes the image of an eight-year-old Noctis onto the adult version-- quote, "the image of him as a child, burned into my eyelids, overlaps with his now-grown face"-- even though Noctis has canonically sent her photos of him as a teenager (15-16, around the time he met Prompto in high school, see: Brotherhood). Granted, that's a translation from Luna's voice actress reading an excerpt as if it were first person POV. The English version says she sees the child image first, then the adult version is superimposed. Then not much after that there's a passage where Noctis smiles as his child self and it was "that smile she loved that had been in her heart all these years, giving her strength, always and forever".

So she was groomed and turned into a shell since age 4, believes she has no value outside of her job and turned her grooming on a similarly vulnerable child, and her strongest image of him, the one she fell in love with and kept in her heart, is of the helpless boy that promised her the world without knowing the cost. The smile of the carefree boy that didn't know his journey would end with his soul annihilated. It couldn’t have been that hard to have her see an image of him as the 30 year old True King of Light that he would become. At least she'd sound a little less like a weirdo who continually places herself (and is placed by the narrative) as below him, unworthy of him, etc. but also has strong feelings and memories toward a goddamn child.

Re: Ravus: you already got a reply to that, but for real? Ravus was also shafted by the plot and beaten down by terrible, amateur writing. The narrative shits on him as if it’s written by a high schooler or otherwise emotionally arrested adult trying to push a Mary Sue Protagonist. The modus operandi for those stories is that everyone who disagrees with the protagonist in any way has to suffer tremendous humiliation including but not limited to death, because the Protagonist Is Just So Good And Perfect And Always Right.

Nothing Ravus does justifies his treatment in-game or in-fandom like he’s a one-note out-and-out villain who wanted nothing but to kill Noctis and disrespect his sister, to the point where his corpse is defiled multiple times in Chapter 13 and he’s twisted into a perversion of himself that begs to die.

Chapter 13 has Noctis land next to Ravus’s corpse and all his letters to Luna, and Noctis has piss all to say about it, either out loud or to anyone. He looks at the Sword of the Father, glances at Ravus, and without a word takes the Royal Arm and lets the Magitek arm-- still dripping, still gross-- fall onto Ravus’s body and doesn’t even move it.

He had no way of knowing beforehand that Ignis and Gladio knew of Ravus being killed. WE didn't even know they saw security footage until Ch13V2 was added in. Noctis happening on his late fiancée's dead bro sounds, I don’t fucking know, like something you’d want to tell everyone else about later. Along with the letters he wrote evidencing that he intended to return the Sword of the Father to Noctis!

An aside: The Letters from Ravus are just weird to behold; it isn't 100% clear whether Luna ever received all of those letters. She had to have received the first one, at least. But the idea that Ardyn intercepted even one other letter so that Luna never heard from her brother between Tenebrae and Altissia is farfetched. He shouldn’t be able to intercept those messages as if they were delivered conventionally. Luna has a pair of magic space-bending Shiba Inu that send letters instantly across continents. If she’s sparing their use to send Noctis one-liners and stickers but can’t afford that for Ravus to send her discrete updates on Noctis’s status, she’s a piece of shit.

They do meet in Tenebrae as Ravus wanted her to, and they have the conversation where he gets on her case about her “throwing [her] life away” for Noctis. So chances are higher that Ardyn only got a hold of all three letters after Luna received them and no sooner, but then he shouldn’t be tossing letters from Ravus at the dude’s body when it makes more sense for him to toss down letters to Ravus, since the writers wanted to make a point of Ardyn having a vicious streak. It makes way more sense for Ardyn to deprive Ravus of Luna’s writing, then insult him with them post-mortem, unless Ravus’s notes were really all he could acquire, meaning Luna never once wrote back to her brother.

The Doylist explanation is that the writing team sucks and couldn't be assed to think of anything for Luna to say because they didn't think of her at all. The Watsonian explanation is that Luna’s a piece of shit and that tracks with her in Kingsglaive watching her brother burn alive in response to the Ring, but ignoring him and running to Regis’s aid instead, but then the rest of the plot presents her as morally pure through her white clothing and “unconditional, self-abnegating love” for Noctis.

Back to the topic: I don’t know, maybe I’m being old fashioned, but Noctis should’ve given more of a shit that his dropping the Magitek Arm on Ravus’s body was probably what turned him into a mutated abomination begging to die, and he thought so little of Ravus that the dude isn’t even in the glimpse of "people who helped me get this far" in the Beyond. Ravus doesn’t even get a spot to wish Noctis and Luna well on their afterlife wedding, not that it makes any sense for any of them to have words to say since Noctis is already dead, no one was there with them, and none of the bros expressed any sign that they knew that Noctis was bound to get married after his sacrifice (he sure doesn’t mention it in the final campfire scene and that’d be a better place than any). But anyway, Regis is in the Beyond at Noctis’s side even though he never told Noctis a damn thing and still never spoke to him from within the Ring, but Ravus? Nah, he’s the real asshole somehow and doesn’t deserve any recognition whatsoever.

The only other characters I know of that have a remotely similar dynamic to Noctis, Luna, and Ravus (lovers, but the girl has a straight-edge protective brother working for the bad guys) is Nero, Kyrie, and Credo (see: Devil May Cry), but as much as I think the writing in that series is hokey as fuck, at least the writer(s) for DMCs 4 and 5 had enough sense to make the love story simple and based it from a line from Amagasaki City-- “I love you, so I love the city that you love.”-- and opted against portraying Credo as an outright villain because if Nero killed him, Kyrie would resent him for it even though she knew Credo was working for the same Order that threatened her life.

Shouldn’t Noctis care about the shit Luna cares about even if he has no personal investment in it or it’s inconvenient to him? Shouldn’t he care about Tenebrae and its prosperity? or about Ravus? Nah, it’s okay, Noctis doesn’t have to respect Luna’s love for her brother or her kingdom because for all intents and purposes, she doesn’t care for Ravus or for Tenebrae as much as she loves Noctis. Her love for Noctis and her looking forward to the wedding is what matters here.

The yaaaas queen vicious clapback from Kingsglaive!Luna about how Ravus is the Empire’s dog is especially rich coming from her when she’s fellating the gods all through the game even though Eos’s equivalent of The Holy Bible says the Hexatheon’s Revelations destroy cities and that undoubtedly means people are killed by the gods, and their summoner is complicit, because there’s no such thing as a perfect evacuation. See: "Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin," noted in the Cosmogony long before the True King even exists.

Luna herself didn’t see a problem with this and helped in the effort, with no regard to the collateral damage she would cause with the summoning: bonus points for the part where Leviathan is hostile to humanity and threatens to eat every living being if Noctis fails! She had even less regard to the damage Niflheim would cause in their attempt to kill the gods even though she was first-hand witness to them sacking Insomnia. Waking and defeating Titan deprived Lestallum of the meteor they derived power from. Waking Leviathan destroyed Altissia. Luna’s refusal to leave Insomnia when told to by Regis led to her being used as bait and taking the whole of the Kingsglaive out of Insomnia in time for their Face Heel Turn and Insomnia being destroyed. Everything else leads to the eventual World of Ruin where people also die.

All because she killed herself prematurely from the covenants and didn’t hold back the longer nights as she promised to the public’s face and on her honor as Oracle she would do. Her dying words in Chapter 9 were her being completely satisfied with her fate because “[her] prayers were answered, [her] calling fulfilled”, even though the calling requires that she dies and she should’ve known better than anyone that her death, even if it was for Noctis’s ascension, would endanger the rest of the world for 10 years and helped the Starscourge spread. But instead of fighting for her own life to stem the plague for as long as possible, she let herself die under the belief that "Noct can handle this" to give him the chance to be the revered King of Light. She also didn’t make a single appearance on the world of the living in her spirit form during those ten years until Noctis needed help with a piddly imitation of the Magic Wall, only then does she come down in her ghost form with seemingly all of her power intact, and summons five of The Six as if Noctis can’t easily do it himself.

But Ravus is the lapdog? Luna’s the one with her “ends justify the means” behavior and what looks like general neglect for actual human beings.

Anyway, Ravus stabs Caligo in the back and kills him, and that move only makes sense in light of the idea that Caligo was manhandling Luna as seen in the Dawn trailer. Ravus was 16 when Tenebrae was overrun, and there’s no reason to believe he was magically immune to institutional abuse, so there’s a high chance that he was abused by the Empire too, held resentment of that, and waited for the time he’d be able to retaliate with no repercussions. Gentiana as a goddess is 1000000% more on the hook about letting Luna be beaten than Ravus is, since he saw his mother die in front of him while Regis ran away. Regis had the power of the Ring and could have used elemancy to put out that fire, or void magic to banish Glauca and his MT army, didn’t do that, but he totally spares enough magic during the treaty signing to toss around Thunder spells straight from his hand, cast barriers, and summon some Royal Arms straight at Iedolas, and that’s bad enough. Gentiana who’s been the Fleuret family attendant since Luna was born and also is Shiva who can freeze people with her fingertip had even less excuse to let that fire rage, to let Sylva die protecting her son, and to stand by and allow her ward(s) to get thrown around by some random Imperial soldier.

#freezedive #ffxv critical #ffxv criticism #lunafreya critical #gentiana critical #regis critical #lunafreya nox fleuret #ravus nox fleuret #regis lucis caelum #ravus deserved better #long read

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maximelebled · 3 years

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How I encode videos for YouTube and archival

Hello everyone! This post is going to describe the way in which I export and encode my video work to send it over the Internet and archive it. I’ll be talking about everything I’ve discovered over the past 10 years of research on the topic, and I’ll be mentioning some of the pitfalls to avoid falling into.

There’s a tremendous amount of misguided information out there, and while I’m not going to claim I know everything there is to know on this subject, I would like to think that I’ve spent long enough researching various issues to speak about my own little setup that I’ve got going on... it’s kind of elaborate and complex, but it works great for me.

(UPDATE 2020/12/09: added, corrected, & elaborated on a few things.)

First rule, the most golden of them all!

There should only ever be one compression step: the one YouTube does. In practice, there will be at least two, because you can’t send a mathematically-lossless file to YouTube... but you can send one that’s extremely close, and perceptually pristine.

The gist of it: none of your working files should be compressed if you can help it, and if they need to be, they should be as little as possible. (Because let’s face it, it’s pretty tricky to keep hours of game footage around in lossless form, let alone recording them as such in the first place.)

This means that any AVC files should be full (0-255) range, 4:4:4 YUV, if possible. If you use footage that’s recorded with, like, OBS, it’s theoretically possible to punch in a lossless mode for x264, and even a RGB mode, but last I checked, neither were compatible with Vegas Pro. You may have better luck with other video editors.

Make sure that the brightness levels and that the colors match what you should be seeing. This is something you should be doing at every single step of the way throughout your entire process. Always keep this in mind. Lagom.nl’s LCD calibration section has quite a few useful things you can use to make sure.

If you’re able to, set a GOP length / max keyframe range of 1 second in the encoder of your footage. Modern video codecs suck in video editors because they use all sorts of compression tricks which are great for video playback, but not so efficient with the ways video editors access and request video frames. (These formats are meant to be played forwards, and requesting frames in any other order, as NLEs do, has far-reaching implications that hurt performance.)

Setting the max keyframe range to 1 second will mildly hurt compressability of that working footage but it will greatly limit the performance impact you’ll be putting your video editor’s decoder through.

A working file is a lossless file!

I’ve been using utvideo as my lossless codec of choice. (Remember, codec means encoder/decoder.) It compresses much like FLAC or ZIP files do: losslessly. And not just perceptual losslessness, but a mathematical one: what comes in will be exactly what comes out, bit for bit.

Download it here: https://github.com/umezawatakeshi/utvideo/releases

It’s an AVI VFW codec. In this instance, VFW means Video for Windows, and it’s just the... sort of universal API that any Windows program can call for. And AVI is the container, just like how MP4 and MKV are containers. MP4 as a file is not a video format, it’s a container. MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264) is the video format specification you’re thinking of when you say “MP4″.

Here’s a typical AVI VFW window, you might have seen one in the wild already.

In apps that expose this setting, you can hit “configure” and set the prediction mode of utvideo to “median” to get some more efficient compression at the cost of slower decoding, but in practice this isn’t a problem.

Things to watch out for:

Any and all apps involved must support OpenDML AVIs. The original AVI spec is 2GB max only. This fixes that limitation. That’s normal, but make sure your apps support that. The OpenDML spec is from the mid-90s, so usually it’s not a problem. But for example, the SFM doesn’t support it.

The files WILL be very large. But they won’t be as large as they’d be if you had a truly uncompressed AVI.

SSDs are recommended within the bounds of reasonability, especially NVMe ones. 1080p30 should be within reach of traditional HDDs though.

utvideo will naturally perform better on CGI content rather than real-life footage and I would not recommend it at all for real-life footage, especially since you’re gonna get that in already-compressed form anyway. Do not convert your camera’s AVC/HEVC files to utvideo, it’s pointless. (Unless you were to do it as a proxy but still, kinda weird)

If you’re feeling adventurous, try out the YUV modes! They work great for matte passes, since those are often just luma-masks, so you don’t care about chroma subsampling.

If you don’t care about utvideo or don’t want to do AVIs for whatever reason, you could go the way of image sequences, but you’ll then be getting the OS-level overhead that comes with having dozens of thousands of files being accessed, etc.

They’re a valid option though. (Just not an efficient one in most cases.)

Some of my working files aren’t lossless...

Unfortunately we don’t all have 10 TB of storage in our computers. If you’re using compressed files as a source, make sure they get decoded properly by your video editing software. Make sure the colors, contrast, etc. match what you see in your “ground truth” player of choice. Make sure your “ground truth” player of choice really does represent the ground truth. Check with other devices if you can. You want to cross-reference to make sure.

One common thing that a lot of software screws up is BT.601 & BT.709 mixups. (It’s reds becoming a bit more orange.)

Ultimately you want your compressed footage to appear cohesive with your RGB footage. It should not have different ranges, different colors, etc.

For reasons that I don’t fully understand myself, 99% of AVC/H.264 video is “limited range”. That means that internally it’s actually squeezed into 16-235 as opposed to the original starting 0-255 (which is full range). And a limited range video gets decoded back to 0-255 anyway.

Sony/Magix Vegas Pro will decode limited range video properly but it will NOT expand it back to full 0-255 range, so it will appear with grayish blacks and dimmer whites. You can go into the “Levels” Effects tab to apply a preset that fixes this.

Exporting your video.

A lot of video editors out there are going to “render” your video (that is to say, calculate and render what the frames of your video look like) and encode it at the same time with whatever’s bundled in the software.

Do not ever do this with Vegas Pro. Do not ever rely on the integrated AVC encoders of Vegas Pro. They expect full range input, and encode AVC video as if it were full range (yeah), so if you want normal looking video, you have to apply a Levels preset to squeeze it into 16-235 levels, but it’s... god, honestly, just save yourself the headache and don’t use them.

Instead, export a LOSSLESS AVI out of Vegas. (using utvideo!)

But you may be able to skip this step altogether if you use Adobe Media Encoder, or software that can interface directly with it.

Okay, what do I do with this lossless AVI?

Option 1: Adobe Media Encoder.

Premiere and AE integrate directly with Adobe Media Encoder. It’s good; it doesn’t mix up BT.601/709, for example. In this case, you won’t have to export an AVI, you should be able to export “straight from the software”.

However, the integrated AVC/HEVC encoders that Adobe has licensed (from MainConcept, I believe) aren’t at the top of their game. Even cranking up the bitrate super high won’t reach the level of pristine that you’d expect (it keeps on not really allocating bits to flatter parts of the image to make them fully clean), and they don’t expose a CRF mode (more on that later), so, technically, you could still go with something better.

But what I’m getting at is, it’s not wrong to go with AME. Just crank up the bitrate though. (Try to reach 0.3 bits per pixel.) Here’s my quick rough quick guideline of Adobe Media Encoder settings:

H.264/AVC (faster encode but far from the most efficient compression one can have)

Switch from Hardware to Software encoding (unless you’re really in a hurry... but if you’re gonna be using Hardware encoding you might as well switch to H.265/HEVC, see below.)

Set the profile to High (you may not be able to do this without the above)

Bitrate to... VBR 1-pass, 30mbps for 1080p, 90mbps for 4K. Set the maximum to x2. +50% to both target and max if fps = 60.

“Maximum Render Quality” doesn’t need to be ticked, this only affects scaling. Only tick it if you are changing the final resolution of the video during this encoder step (e.g. 1080p source to be encoded as 720p)

If using H.265/HEVC (smaller file size, better for using same file as archive)

Probably stick with hardware encoding due to how slow software encoding is.

Stick to Main profile & Main tier.

If hardware: quality: Highest (slowest)

If software: quality: Higher.

4K: set Level to 5.2, 60mbps

1440p: set Level to 5.1, 40mbps

1080p: keep Level to 5.0, 25mbps

If 60fps instead of 24/30: +50% to bitrate. In which case you might have to go up to Level 6.2, but this might cause local playback issues; more on "Levels” way further down the post.

Keep in mind however that hardware encoders are far less efficient in terms of compression, but boy howdy are they super fast. This is why they become kind of worth it when it comes to H.265/HEVC. Still won’t produce the kind of super pristine result I’d want, but acceptable for the vast majority of YouTube cases.

Option 2: other encoding GUIs...

Find software of your choice that integrates the x264 encoder, which is state-of-the-art. (Again, x264 is one encoder for the H.264/AVC codec specification. Just making sure there’s no confusion here.)

Handbrake is one common choice, but honestly, I haven’t used it enough to vouch for it. I don’t know if the settings it exposes are giving you proper control over the whole BT601/709 mess. It has some UI/UX choices which I find really questionable too.

If you’re feeling like a command-line masochist, you could try using ffmpeg, but be ready to pour over the documentation. (I haven’t managed to find out how to do the BT.709 conversion well in there yet.)

Personally, I use MeGUI, because it runs through Avisynth (a frameserver), which allows me to do some cool preprocessing and override some of the default behaviour that other encoder interfaces would do. It empowers you to get into the nitty gritty of things, with lots of plugins and scripts you can install, like this one:

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Dither_tools (grab it)

Once you’re in MeGUI, and it has finished updating its modules, you gotta hit CTRL+R to open the automated script creator. Select your input, hit “File Indexer” (not “One Click Encoder”), then just hit “Queue” so that Avisynth’s internal thingamajigs start indexing your AVI file. Once that’s done, you’ll be greeted with a video player and a template script.

In the script, all you need to add is this at the bottom:

dither_convert_rgb_to_yuv(matrix="709",output="YV12",mode=7)

This will perform the proper colorspace conversion, AND it does so with dithering! It’s the only software I know of which can do it with dithering!! I kid you not! Mode 7 means it’s doing it using a noise distribution that scales better and doesn’t create weird patterns when resizing the video (I would know, I’ve tried them all).

Your script should look like this, just 3 lines

LoadPlugin("D:\(path to megui, etc)\LSMASHSource.dll")

LWLibavVideoSource("F:\yourvideo.avi")

dither_convert_rgb_to_yuv(matrix="709",output="YV12",mode=7)

The colors WILL look messed up in the preview window but that’s normal. It’s one more example of how you should always be wary when you see an issue. Sometimes you don’t know what is misbehaving, and at which stage. Always try to troubleshoot at every step along the way, otherwise you will be chasing red herrings. Anyway...

Now, back in the main MeGUI window, we’ve got our first line complete (AviSynth script), the “Video Output” path should be autofilled, now we’re gonna touch the third line: “Encoder settings”. Make sure x264 is selected and hit “config” on the right.

Tick “show advanced settings.”

Set the encoding mode to “Const. Quality” (that’s CRF, constant rate factor). Instead of being encoded with a fixed bitrate, and then achieving variable quality with that amount of bits available, CRF instead encodes for a fixed quality, with a variable bitrate (whatever needs to be done to achieve that quality).

CRF 20 is the default, and it’s alright, but you probably want to go up to 15 if you really want to be pristine. I’m going up to 10 because I am unreasonable. (Lower is better, higher numbers means quality is worse.)

Because we’re operating under a Constant Quality metric, CRF 15 at encoder presets “fast” vs. “slow” will produce the same perceptual quality, but at different file sizes. Slow being smaller, of course.

You probably want to be at “slow” at least, there isn’t that much point in going to “slower” or “veryslow”, but you can always do it if you have the CPU horsepower to spare.

Make sure AVC Profile is set to High. The default would be Main, but High unlocks a few more features of the spec that increase compressability, especially at higher resolutions. (8x8 transforms & intra prediction, quantization scaling matrices, cb/cr controls, etc.)

Make sure to also select a Level. This doesn’t mean ANYTHING by itself, but thankfully the x264 config window here is smart enough to actually apply settings which are meaningful with regards to the level.

A short explanation is that different devices have different decoding capabilities. A decade ago, a mobile phone might have only supported level 3 in hardware, meaning that it could only do main profile at 30mbps max, and if you went over that, it would either not decode the video or do it using the CPU instead of its hardware acceleration, resulting in massive battery usage. The GPU in your computer also supports a maximum level. 5.0 is a safe bet though.

If you don’t restrict the level accordingly to what your video card supports, you might see funny things happen during playback:

It’s nothing that would actually affect YouTube (AFAIK), but still, it’s best to constrain.

Finally, head over to the “misc” tab of the x264 config panel and tick these.

If the command line preview looks like mine does (see the screenshot from a few paragraphs ago) then everything should be fine.

x264 is configured, now let’s take care of the audio.

Likewise, “Audio Input” and “Audio Output” should be prefilled if MeGUI detected an audio track in your AVI file. Just switch the audio encoder over to FLAC, hit config, crank the slider to “smallest file, slow encode” and you’re good to go. FLAC = mathematically lossless audio. Again, we want to not compress anything, or as little as possible until YouTube does its own compression job, so you might as well go with FLAC, which will equal roughly 700 to 1000kbps of audio, instead of going with 320kbps of MP3/AAC, which might be perceptually lossless, but is still compressed (bad). The added size is nothing next to the high-quality video track you’re about to pump out.

FLAC is not an audio format supported by the MP4 container, so MeGUI should have automagically changed the output to be using the MKV (Matroska) container. If it hasn’t, do it yourself.

Now, hit the “Autoencode” button in the lower right of the main window. And STOP, do not be hasty: in the new window, make sure “no target size” is selected before you do anything else. If you were to keep “file size” selected, then you would be effectively switched over to 2-pass encoding, which is another form of (bit)rate control. We don’t want that. We want CRF.

Hit queue and once it’s done processing, you should have a brand new pristine MKV file that constains lossless audio and extra clean video! Make sure to double-check that everything matches—take screenshots of the same frames in the AVI and MKV files and compare them.

Now all you’ve got to do is send it to YouTube!

For archival... well, you could just go and crank up the preset to Placebo and reduce CRF a little bit—OR you could use the 2-pass “File Size” mode which will ensure that your video stream will be the exact size (give or take a couple %) you want it to be. You could also use x265 for your archival file buuuut I haven’t used it enough (on account of how slow it is) to make sure that it has no problems anywhere with the whole BT.601/708 thing. It doesn’t expose those metadata settings so who knows how other software’s going to treat those files in the future... (god forbid they get read as BT.2020)

You can use Mediainfo (or any player that integrates it, like my favorite, MPC-HC) to check the metadata of the file.

Good luck out there!

And remember to always double-check the behaviour of decoders at every step of the way with your setup. 99% of the time I see people talk about YouTube messing with the contrast of their video, it’s because they weren’t aware of how quirky Vegas can be with H.264/AVC input & its integrated encoder.

Hope this helps!

#video encoding #video editing #encoding #x264 #megui #avisynth

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cindylouwho-2 · 5 years

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, May 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across from May 3 to May 30, although some may be older than that.

I am out of town June 10-16, so I cannot predict when the next edition will come out, but I will do my best to make it before the June trip. I’ve recently narrowed my reading list so that I can get through it more quickly and post these more often. If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know!

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

If you had your entire promoted listing budget eaten up by clicks on an item with “shoe” in the searchable keywords, contact Etsy to make sure you will be refunded.

Etsy was accidentally suspending some shops for not using Etsy Payments, but they are in ineligible countries. Some but not all drop ship or use fulfillment in countries with Etsy Payments, but that doesn’t appear to explain all the errors.

Mailchimp launches a new marketing platform that integrates multiple marketing needs, not just emails. Pricing will stay the same for existing customers for the time being.

On the same topic, here is a study of various email services, and their different deliver-ability rates.

Etsy is being sued after a child dies, strangled by an amber necklace bought on Etsy. [video & article] This is getting a fair amount of media attention. Not covered in many stories is the fact that the daycare employees didn’t call 911 at first, and the day home had more infants that day than they were licensed for.

Better media attention: disappointed in the long delay for the introduction of the Harriet Tubman $20 bill in the US, an Etsy seller designed a stamp buyers can use to cover up Jackson’s face with Tubman’s. “Harriet Tubman” is a trending search on Etsy frequently since these articles, so this media coverage is really bringing traffic to the site.

Amazon is now using packing machines in a few of its warehouses that replace 12 workers each. They have other warehouse automation, too, & just started work on their hub at the Cincinnati airport. If you need any more evidence that diversification is the key to successful businesses, remember that they make the biggest chunk of their profit on their cloud services.

ETSY NEWS

This year, Etsy’s Maker Cities program (US only) has joined up with Mastercard for their grants. Applications are due July 3, and there is a webinar on June 3 with more info and instructions. [links in article]

They’s also extended their Design Awards submission deadline to June 4. Check out their FAQ if you have any questions.

Etsy released a summer update to their spring/summer trends guide, with some useful search data. Clothing shoppers are interested in vintage styles, “with Etsy searches for “70s” and “90s” up 26% and 7% year over year.” I summarized the earlier report here.

In case you missed it, Etsy released their first quarter financial report for 2019, & I summarized it in the Etsy forum.

In related news, Etsy ranks 3rd in USA Today's list of the top 20 fastest growing retailers in the world, even ahead of Amazon.

Some businesses are competing based on delivery speed, but Etsy is able to do well with much slower shipping. (That’s a nice feature in an article they didn’t write; not all good promotion is paid.)

I can’t remember if I posted this interview with Etsy chief financial officer Rachel Glaser before, so here it is again. [audio file/podcast and short text excerpt. Please note I have contacted Etsy about the photos & search comment, but they have not yet replied, other than with the usual links to Etsy’s search guide.]

Short piece on Etsy’s approach to diversity. Spoiler alert - they like it, and the article links to other materials demonstrating why this is the best approach for businesses.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

If you want to get your website or blog material ranking faster, Moz has some tips for you. Note that the first part in particular contains advanced-level technical tips, but most of the rest is easier to grasp for non-techies. It’s worth a skim!

But don’t break Wikipedia rules to get your images on top - North Face got caught doing that, & had to apologize. But “[f]rom Leo Burnett Tailor Made's original statement, it seems the agency was anticipating such a reaction to the North Face effort all along. In stunts like these, the ensuing controversy and attention around it can be part of the overall campaign goal and strategy.”

Once your website starts getting Google traffic, it is not unusual for growth to start to slow or even stop completely, but there are things you can do to avoid that.

Despite many people insisting that longer blog posts are necessary for good Google ranking, there is no ideal length for a blog post.

Here’s a good list of free SEO tools; note that some are paid tools that have a limited free version.

Links on other high-quality websites still matter to Google. (Most of us won’t be able to do the link-building that this test did, but the test demonstrates how much the links are worth. So if you aren’t ranking, realize that other people linking to your page is probably a big factor.) Some of your pages might fit perfectly on a resource page/site, if they answer a question or uniquely fill a need. You can find link opportunities on Twitter through following certain hashtags and engaging with the users.

Google search results now include podcasts. “This feature doesn’t only search for the title or meta data of the podcasts but also can search for the audio – as Google transcribes them — directly within the podcast show itself.”

As of July 1, Google will use the mobile version of all new websites for their index, so make sure that you have a good mobile set up on any new websites (or old ones, for that matter, since most web traffic is mobile these days).

There was a possible Google search update around May 9, then May 22, and now maybe May 29th. Google updates its algorithm a lot, if you hadn’t already noticed. "To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change.” (and some people think Etsy tests a lot LOL)

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Have popular content on one platform/site? You can repurpose it to use elsewhere, for maximum reach. It’s less work than coming up with brand new ideas all of the time!

Micro-influencers may work best for most businesses, because they can speak directly to your target market.

There are proven ways to get more social media followers; it’s not just luck.

Up-to-date infographic on the ideal sizes for social media images, by platform.

Facebook announced several upcoming plans at their annual developer conference, including a desktop redesign. Facebook has also changed the video algorithm to favour posts that people watch for longer, and to disfavour posts that are just repurposing old video.

Tweetdeck is rolling out more updates, including emojis and the ability to set up polls within the app. I use it, & I like it - I wish they had a phone app!

If you are using LinkedIn, you may be missing some great tricks to get more attention.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Here’s how you can get better results out of Microsoft ads (formerly Bing ads)

There was a bug in Google ads stats for April 30 & May 1st; they are working on fixing it.

Google advertising can be very confusing, so here as some tips on mistakes you should avoid. [video with transcript] They also recently announced some upcoming changes.

Etsy shops can only buy their own Google Shopping ads through Etsy’s program, or you can let Etsy buy them for your shop, but if you want to advertise your website, here is a great starter guide.

Chrome is giving you more control over cookies so that you can avoid more targeted ads. Some point out this is not necessarily as user-friendly as it sounds - it means Google can stop other companies from tracking their ad performance while Google has all those records through Chrome & other tools.

Facebook is also giving users more control over tracking for ads, & advertisers are not happy.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

You are going to be surprised that Russian search engine Yandex has a really good Webmaster tools package.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Some people are comparing Walmart’s new online wedding shop to Etsy, "with tons of personalized wedding gifts to buy on a budget.”

The coverage of Amazon’s big announcement about one-day shipping with Prime (in the US) mostly missed the fact that Amazon can already deliver to 72% of the US population in one day.

Amazon employees told some third-party sellers that religious items were banned from the site - but it wasn’t true.

Big Commerce now has a plug-in for Wordpress blogs.

As promised, Zibbet has added Etsy to its integrations, which allows you to list on Zibbet and it will automatically be added to Etsy as well. This is only going to be useful once they add other platforms (since Zibbet has no traffic), so shop around if you are interested in this sort of tool, as other companies are doing the same things. Indiemade websites completely integrate with Etsy, for example, and they have more website tools.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

With increased discussion of free shipping on Etsy recently, this is a good time to review some of the more recent studies & surveys on the topic. One US report from January shows that buyer expectations in this area continue to increase. Shipping cost is a big factor in purchase decisions, & shipping costs are a common reason for cart abandonment. There are a variety of ways to calculate how to offer free shipping without losing money. (Thank you to Rebecca for the last link!)

If you want more shares on social media, this study on the top 5 reasons people share things online will be useful. But Americans are now more engaged by mobile games than social media, which has implications for app development and advertising.

Googly eyes make people donate more.

Smaller online businesses tend to make very specific types of customer service mistakes that harm your ability to compete. Although there isn’t always much you can do about the fact that “37% of customers expect a response within an hour“.

Can everyone read and understand your web page? Easy-to-understand English is an important aspect of accessibility.

Help Scout produces some fabulous material on customer service; here is a great article on value propositions, with examples, and another on how to collect customer feedback, including analyzing your stats package to see where customers are having trouble with your site.

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Trend alert: more professional women switching purses for backpacks.

You can now control how long Google retains data on you.

You can also join the class action against major US telecom companies that sold your location data.

Another example of a company getting people to post photos so it can develop facial recognition technology.

Some businesses are offering products & services based on your DNA & other biological markers.

Most people worldwide over the age of 15 have a cell phone, although not all are regular users.

If you are concerned about internet privacy, & hate tracking, the browser Brave may be worth a look. (I haven’t tried it yet, but it comes well-recommended from various tech people I respect.)

Burger King has trolled McDonald's in ads & social media posts for years, & it can be pretty funny. “When McDonald’s abruptly and surprisingly lost its trademark on “Big Mac” in the EU earlier this year, Burger King couldn’t help but rub some salt in the wound. BK’s Swedish operations decided to celebrate for a day by offering a menu of “Not Big Macs” such as “The Like a Big Mac, But Actually Big” and “The Big Mac-ish But Flame-Grilled of Course.”

#seo #search engine optimization #search engine marketing #etsynews #analytics #stats #social media #contentmarketing #ecommerce #smallbiz #cindylouwho2newsupdates

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thesevenseraphs · 6 years

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Bungie Weekly Update - 10/11/18

This week at Bungie, we started unboxing the decorations for Festival of the Lost.

Starting Tuesday, October 16, all Destiny 2 players are invited to join in on the festivities. Amanda Holliday will serve as your host, offering bounties, masks, and rewards for all to partake in. Guardians will be invited to confront their Nightmares in the Haunted Forest, a limited-time activity exclusive to Festival of the Lost. If you missed the announcement yesterday, head over to the blog article to get caught up.

Festival of the Lost isn’t the only thing starting next Tuesday. Tuesday is filled to the brim with updates to the game, live events, and more. Read on for details below.

Second Wave

Launching a game reveals what we did right and where we could have done better. With the first month of Forsaken behind us, we’re taking stock of what we’ve learned. Some of those learnings will manifest in game updates that we’re deploying in the very near future, but not every improvement can be made with code changes. We also want to make it less complicated for other Guardians to begin their journey in Forsaken.

Effective October 16, the purchase of Destiny 2: Forsaken will include the two expansions included in the Destiny 2 Expansion Pass. Every player of Destiny 2 who has yet to touch down on the Tangled Shore will need only the Forsaken upgrade. Our hope is that this will eliminate some of the questions that confront a player as they try to join our party.

“What about us?” we can hear everyone who has already purchased Forsaken asking. You’re our Vanguard. We appreciate you beginning the hunt on day one. You were there when the first raid finish changed the Dreaming City. You’ve been part of the conversation that has breathed enthusiasm back into the Tower. For you, and only the players like you, we have a collection of veteran’s rewards as an expression of our appreciation for being on the frontlines. Every Guardian who played Forsaken prior to October 16 will receive the following bundle of items.

The Tiger Stripe Black Shader and Veterans Nameplate emblem are exclusive to players who earn this bundle by playing Forsaken prior to October 16. The two Exotic emotes will be made available on Eververse sometime in the future. All item names are subject to change.

Thank you for playing, and thank you for being the first to experience what we’ve created. This package is currently slated to be delivered to Veterans in early December. When the new Guardians arrive, please join us in extending to them the welcome that has made this community so notorious as an awesome group of people.

Out of the Iron, into the Fire

Lord Saladin returns to the tower, just in time to witness Guardians donning their brand new Shaxx masks.

Iron Banner begins Tuesday 10/16, and ends Tuesday 10/23.

Coming with Destiny 2 Update 2.0.4, Iron Banner bounty objectives and rewards have been updated to address player feedback.

Each bounty will now offer a powerful reward

Bounty objectives have been updated to the following:

Lightbearer: Reduced Super kills to 20 from 25

Iron in the Blood: Reduced match completions to 15 from 30

Shine On: Reduced Orbs generated to 50 from 100

Iron Victory: Reduced match wins to 7 from 10

To Be Precise: Reduced precision kills to 50 from 100

All in a Week’s Work: Reduced kills to 150 from 250

Players will also unlock an item in Lord Saladin’s inventory for direct purchase with each bounty completion, featuring curated perk rolls. This time around, foxes and wolves will battle it out for a spot in your arsenal. Looking to earn some masterwork cores on top of everything above? For the duration of Iron Banner, Valor gains will also be increased.

Double Valor: 10/16–10/19

Triple Valor: 10/19–10/23

With all these rewards, there’s no better time to dip your toe into the Crucible. See you out there.

World Wide Web

If you’re reading these words in English, and you follow @Bungie, feel free to scroll on to the next section. If you don’t follow, by the way, you’re missing out on some sweet tweets!

If you’re reading a localized version of this blog article in another language, the same people who translated our words into your words might also lend a hand to help us throw our arms around the world.

Check out these new Twitter accounts:

Brazilian Portuguese Bungie

French Bungie

German Bungie

Italian Bungie

Korean Bungie

Mexico/Latin America Bungie

Russian Bungie

Spain Bungie

Japanese Bungie

Follow the one that makes the most sense to you!

Or follow them all if you want to see how worldly we’re becoming.

Wherever you are and whatever you speak, we thank you for being a part of this growing global community!

Get Your Mask On

We’ve already told you about masks your Guardian can wear, here’s a way you can join in on the fun in the real world: Download and print out the free papercraft chicken template, courtesy of the Bungie Store.

http://downloads.bungie.net/images/Festival_of_the_Lost_2018_Chicken.pdf

If you’re eager to change your look further, a three-pack bundle of papercraft mask templates will be available on the Bungie Store the day before Festival of the Lost launches, in both digital and physical editions. Each purchase of the 2018 Festival of the Lost Papercraft Masks will come with a Destiny 2 in-game emblem code for the Circles Entwined emblem.

Stay tuned to @bungiestore on Twitter for the latest updates.

Running the Schedule

Last week, we gave you a quick preview of some bug fixes we had planned for the month of October. Our first deployment is coming in hot, and Destiny Player Support has the details on when to expect your download to begin.

Update 2.0.4 Incoming

This week, in preparation for Destiny 2 Update 2.0.4, we conducted backend maintenance on the live game. One more maintenance window is required, however, to bring Destiny 2 Update 2.0.4 to players. Please see below for the Update 2.0.4 deployment schedule for Tuesday, October 16, as outlined on our Server and Update Status page:

7:00 AM PDT (1400 UTC)

Destiny 2 maintenance is scheduled to begin

No downtime is expected

Some Destiny Companion features will be unavailable on the web, mobile, and third-party apps

Update 2.0.4 will begin rolling out across all platforms and regions

9:45 AM PDT (1645 UTC)

Any Destiny 2 players remaining in activities who have not yet installed Update 2.0.4 will be removed from activities and returned to the title screen to take this update

10:00 AM PDT (1700 UTC)

Destiny 2 maintenance is scheduled to conclude

Destiny Companion features will be reenabled

Players who encounter issues should report them to the #Help forum

PLEASE NOTE

: Update 2.0.4 is required to participate in Festival of the Lost, which launches following the conclusion of this maintenance.

For the latest information during maintenance windows, players should stay tuned to @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed on help.bungie.net. For patch notes when they are available, players should keep an eye on our Updates page.

Petra’s Run and GUITAR Errors

In past weeks, Destiny Player Support reported an issue in the “Last Wish” raid where some players might sporadically encounter GUITAR errors as they made their way to the heart of the Dreaming City. While this issue is still under investigation, fireteams should be especially aware of it as they make their attempts at the “Petra’s Run” Triumph.

This Triumph requires fireteams to complete the “Last Wish” raid with no deaths. However, any player in the fireteam being returned to orbit due to any error will make all players ineligible for this Triumph on that run.

Destiny 2: Forsaken Known Issues

In addition to the items listed above, Destiny Player Support is tracking the latest issues reported by players on the #Help forum. Provided below is a brief overview of the latest known issues in Destiny 2: Forsaken.

BrayTech RWP Mk. II: We are investigating reports where the BrayTech Scout Rifle doesn’t appear in Collections for some players.

Ascendant Challenge Emblem: We are monitoring reports of the Ascendant Challenge emblem not updating correctly.

PC FPS: We are investigating an issue where some players are experiencing low FPS, which impacts their gameplay sporadically.

For the latest known gameplay issues as soon as they are available, players should visit our Forsaken Vital Information and Known Issues list. For the latest issues discovered on the PC platform, players should visit our PC Vital Information and Known Issues list.

#Destiny #Destiny the game #Destiny 2 #Destiny 2 Forsaken #bungie weekly update #long post

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

Did Republicans Riot When Obama Won

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-republicans-riot-when-obama-won/

Did Republicans Riot When Obama Won

Dow Opens Up 133 Points As Markets Look Beyond Us Capitol Siege

Protesters Today vs the Racist Republican Anti-Obama Protesters – #OccupyDemocratsReport

The major US stock indexes opened higher on Thursday, as investors continued to look beyond the storming of the US Capitol on Wednesday by supporters of President Donald Trump.

While Wednesdays chaos in Washington, DC saw US stocks move off of session highs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average still managed to finish in record territory.

The 30-share index continued its advance on Thursday, jumping more than 133 points at the open of trading on Wall Street to 30,962.95.

The S&P 500 edged up 0.70 percent at the open, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index gained 1.02 percent.

Speculation abounds as to why the stock market continues to move higher in the face of Wednesdays events.

Read the analysis of Al Jazeeras managing business editor Patricia Sabga here.

7 Jan 2021 – 15:08 GMT

The State Department Labels Cuba A State Sponsor Of Terrorism In A Last

The State Department has designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, a last-minute foreign policy stroke that will complicate the incoming Biden administrations plans for dealing with Havana.

With this action, we will once again hold Cubas government accountable and send a clear message: The Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of U.S. justice, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Pompeo was weighing the move and had a plan to do so on his desk. The action, announced with just over a week left in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba, calling its decades of isolation an archaic relic of the Cold War.

Once in office, President Trump acted swiftly to undermine Mr. Obamas policy of openness, which Republicans said Havana forfeited by failing to implement promised reforms and continuing to crack down on political dissent. The designation requires a finding that a country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism, according to the State Department. The move automatically triggers U.S. sanctions against Cuba, including limits on U.S. foreign assistance, export controls and financial restrictions.

Congressman Who Was Inside Capitol During Riot Says Extremism In The Us Is The True Problem

From CNN’s Josiah Ryan

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith said he quickly realized that extremism in the US is the true threat, as he learned the US Capitol building, which he was in, was being stormed by a violent pro-Trump mob.

“What was going through my mind is extremism is an enormous problem in this country, and Donald Trump is just throwing matches all over the powder kegs,” he said, speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett this evening.;

“The rest of the country that enabled him is what we really need to work to fix,” continued Smith,;who is the the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “You need to understand the dangers of extremism. We have gotten to the point we don’t understand rule of law matters.”

“It isn’t that you get your way all the time and if you don’t get your way you have to fight until you do.” he continued. “You play by the rules and when it’s over, you accept the outcome and you govern this country.”

“We need to push back on the extremism,” he concluded.

But Smith also reserved harsh words for President Trump.

“Donald Trump, is a narcissistic psychopath, let’s just be clear about that,” said the congressman. “He stumbled his way into the presidency. What he believes from a policy standpoint is irrelevant. He is an egotist, cares about himself, period.”

Don’t Miss: Donald Trump Republicans Stupid

Army Officer Who Led Group To Washington Rally Now Under Investigation

The Army is investigating one of its officers after she led a group from North Carolina to the pro-Trump rally in Washington.

Commanders at Fort Bragg are reviewing psychological operations officer Capt. Emily Rainey‘s involvement in last week’s events that led to the;deadly riot in the U.S. Capitol.

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Rainey said she led 100 members of Moore County Citizens for Freedom, which describes itself online as a nonpartisan network promoting conservative values, to Washington to “stand against election fraud” and support Trump.;

She said she acted within military regulations and that no one in her group broke the law. Valerie Block

Shadowy Conservative Pac Pushed Supporters To Go To Rally March That Led To Riot

A political action committee once funded by conservative millionaire Robert Mercer promoted both the rally featuring President;Donald Trump;and the ensuing march on Capitol Hill that led to a deadly riot last week.

The PAC, called the Black Conservatives Fund, promotes itself as “committed to turning out the black vote and elect black conservatives at every level of government.” The PAC didn’t raise or spend any money in 2020, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. It has shifted primarily to encourage its followers to attend pro-Trump rallies, and it’s not clear who runs the group.

Through social media posts, the committee pushed tens of thousands of its followers to attend the rally in front of the White House on Wednesday and then to participate in the march on Capitol Hill that led to a riot, leaving at least five people dead, including a police officer.

The Black Conservatives Fund’s biggest previous donation came from Mercer in 2014. He gave;more than $150,000 to the committee;at the time. Brian Schwartz

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans Free The Slaves

Republican Voters Want To Impeach The President Good Luck With That

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and other Republicans calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama might want to take a look at the history books and the U.S. Constitution before getting too excited about the idea.

Congress rarely uses its power to impeach, and when it has, impeachment has only infrequently and in the case of a president, never resulted in removal from office. Congress has initiated impeachment proceedings more than 60 times in the history of the United States. Just 19 of those cases have been tried by the Senate, and only eight federal judges have ever been convicted and removed from office.

Although House Speaker John Boehner has maintained he is not interested in pursuing impeachment, a top White House aide said Friday that he expected House Republicans to do just that. And a recent HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that one-third of Americans and two-thirds of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached. These numbers reflect an increasingly popular view in conservative circles, which Palin gave voice to earlier this month when she claimed the recent surge of undocumented immigrants at the border was an example of the presidents rewarding of lawlessness.

So, why do some conservatives appear to think this would be more of a Nixon than a Clinton situation?

Rep. Bob Goodlatte , chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, earlier this month offered perhaps the most sober rebuke to the calls for impeachment.

Biden Harris Certified As Winners Of 2020 Election: A Timeline

Trump promises an orderly transition after the Congress certifies the Electoral College win of Biden and Harris officially making them the next president and vice president.

Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol as Congress gathers to certify President-elect Joe Bidens presidential win.

Four people are dead, 52 arrested as protesters entered US Capitol building as legislators meet.

Chaos comes after Trump encouraged the crowd to march to Capitol.

The US House and Senate rejected the Republican objection to Pennsylvanias vote results.

Heres Al Jazeeras coverage of the US elections. This is Tamila Varshalomidze taking over from Creede Newton.

We are closing this blog now. These were the updates up to 16:00 GMT on Thursday, January 7. For the latest news look here.

7 Jan 2021 – 16:10 GMT

Don’t Miss: How Many Senate Republicans Are There

Mcconnell: We Will Certify The Winner Of The Election

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered up a defiant tone when the Senate returned after rioters stormed the US Capitol, saying the Senate will not be intimidated.

We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats, McConnell said. We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation.

The US and US Congress has faced down much greater threats than the unhinged crowd we saw today. They tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed. They failed.

Now we are going to finish what we started, said McConnell. And we will certify the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Members Of Congress Inside House Chamber Told By Police To Put On Gas Masks

âThe GOP Is Now The Riot Adjacent Party,â Says Obama Campaign Vet | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

Members of Congress inside House chamber told by police to put on gas masks after tear gas dispersed in Capitol Rotunda.

The tear gas had been used after protesters entered the Capitol building.

Protesters broke windows looking into the House chamber, with images from inside the chamber showing security with guns drawn.

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Names

Trump Warns Of Riots Pulls Plug On Republican Presidential Debate

By Steve Holland

7 Min Read

PALM BEACH, Fla. – Republican front-runner Donald Trump warned on Wednesday of riots if he is denied the partys presidential nomination and pulled the plug on a scheduled debate among candidates, raising the temperature even more in a heated White House race.

The outspoken New York businessman scored big wins in primaries in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday, bringing him closer to the 1,237 convention delegates he needs to win the nomination.

Trump also claimed victory in Missouri but lost the crucial state of Ohio, and left the door open for those in the party trying to stop him from becoming the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election.

Trump might fall short of the majority of delegates required, enabling the partys establishment to put forward another name at the July convention in Cleveland to formally pick its candidate.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Trump said the party could not deny him the nomination should he fail to win enough delegates.

I dont think you can say that we dont get it automatically. I think youd have riots. I think youd have riots. Im representing many, many millions of people.

While the Republicans were mired deeper in turmoil, Hillary Clinton won victories in at least four states on Tuesday that put her in good shape to defeat Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and win the Democratic Partys nomination.

Related Coverage

Video Shows Trump Supporters Heckling Mitt Romney On Flight

A viral video shows Republican Senator Mitt Romney, one of the few vocal critics of the president in the party, heckled by a group of Trump supporters on a flight.

The group of Trump supporters, who reportedly on their way to the protest in Washington, DC, chanted Traitor! Traitor! Traitor at Romney on the flight from Salt Lake City, Nevada to the US capital.

Romney, who has criticised a Republican plot to object the certification of the Electoral College vote on Wednesday, was also approached by Trump supporters in the airport before the flight took off, video shows.

heres a clip purportedly of Trump patriots harassing Sen. Mitt Romney *ON A FLIGHT* on way to DC.

our Republic had a decent run.

Recommended Reading: Are There Any Republicans Running Against Donald Trump

Green Light For Bidens Nominees

While the filibuster will be a continued thorn in Democratic sides when it comes to legislation, it no longer applies to presidential nominations. That means Bidens selection for his administration, from the Cabinet on down, can be confirmed solely with Democratic votes . Thats good news for nominees who might have been controversial, like Neera Tanden, Bidens budget office pick.

Since several centrist Republicans have already said they will usually defer to the new presidents appointments, it should be smooth sailing for most of his nominees.

The same goes for Bidens judicial appointments, including any Supreme Court vacancies that open up in the near future. Donald Trump in his four years placed 234 judges on the federal bench, including three to the Supreme Court. That has given him a political legacy that will long outlast his one term in office. Biden, thanks to Georgia, should have the opportunity to start rolling back some of those gains.

The Nobel Peace Prize And Partisanship

In an effort to improve the image of the United States abroadwhich many believed had been much damaged during the Bush administrationObama took a number of steps that indicated a significant shift in tone. He signed an executive order that banned excessive interrogation techniques; ordered the closing of the controversial military detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, within a year ; proposed a fresh start to strained relations with Russia; and traveled to Cairo in June 2009 to deliver a historic speech in which he reached out to the Muslim world. Largely as a result of these efforts, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Yet some left-wing critics complained that he actually had adopted and even escalated most of the war and national security policies of his predecessor. Indeed, when Obama accepted the Nobel Prize in December, he said, Evil does exist in the world and there will be times when nationsacting individually or in concertwill find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. Notwithstanding that tough talk, there were others who criticized Obama for issuing only a mild condemnation of the Iranian governments crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents following a disputed election in June 2009. Moreover, the Obama administrations handling of national security was questioned by some when a Nigerian terrorist trained in Yemen was thwarted in an attempt to bomb an airliner headed for Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.

Read Also: Who Are The Moderate Republicans In The Senate

Pence: Lets Get Back To Work

Vice President Pence resumed the session of Congress, calling Wednesday a dark day in the history of the US Capitol.

The Capitol is secured and the peoples work continues, Pence said. We condemn the violence that took place here in the strongest possible terms.

We grieve the loss of life in these hallowed halls, Pence said. To those who wreaked havoc in the US Capitol, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the peoples house. Lets get back to work.

Trump Warns Of ‘riots’ If He Isn’t Gop Nominee

A contested convention could ‘disenfranchise’ millions of voters, he says.

03/16/2016 10:16 AM EDT

Donald Trump on Wednesday sounded like a man ready to take the stage as the Republican Party’s nominee by acclamation at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland come mid-July, delegate math and a debate scheduled for next Monday be damned.

Denying him the GOP nomination as part of a contested convention, he declared, would “disenfranchise” the millions of people he is bringing into the party and could spark riots. The only problem: Delegate math.

Trump, who flooded the morning television shows with a deluge of off-camera telephone calls after a night of big wins that knocked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio out of the race, said that even if he doesnt amass a majority of delegates by July, the party should unite behind him anyway. But Trump has a ways to go when it comes to getting to the magic number of 1,237.

At this point in the 2012 race, which began a month earlier than this year’s, Mitt Romney was already on his way to securing a simple majority of total delegate votes, though even he did not get there until a resounding victory in Texas on May 29.

Trump said he’s bringing in all kinds of new people to the party, and those voices must be heard or else.

Read Also: Did The Republicans Win The Senate Last Night

Trump Issues Dc Emergency Order To Support Inauguration Security

President Donald Trump approved a Washington, D.C. emergency declaration ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration from Jan. 11 to Jan. 24 to bolster security.

The order comes after violent rioters attacked the U.S Capitol last Wednesday, using online platforms to organize.

Trump’s declaration says an “emergency exists in the District of Columbia” and orders federal assistance to supplement Washington, D.C’s response efforts due to the emergency conditions.

Trump’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate all disaster relief efforts if required. Riya Bhattacharjee

Taryvon Martin And The Acquittal Of George Zimmerman

Republicans react to Obama’s success

Trayvon Benjamin Martin was an African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who, at 17 years old, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida. On the evening of February 26, 2012, Martin had gone to a convenience store and purchased candy and a canned drink. As Martin returned from the store, he walked through a neighborhood that had been victimized by robberies several times that year. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, spotted him and called the Sanford Police to report him for suspicious behavior. Moments later, Martin was shot in the chest. Zimmerman was not charged at the time of the shooting by the Sanford Police, who said that there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense and that Floridas stand your ground law prohibited law-enforcement officials from arresting or charging him. After national media focused on the tragedy, Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried in Martins death. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and of manslaughter in July 2013.

Don’t Miss: How Many Seats Did The Republicans Lose In The House

Obama’s Reaction To The Dc Riots Is Turning Heads

On Jan. 6, 2021, riots broke out at the U.S. Capitol building as supporters of President Donald Trump gathered around and within the building, creating a scene of chaos that left four people dead, according to CNN. The day was a symbolic one in the changing of hands between Trump and President-elect Joe Biden;because;Vice President Mike Pence was to count the votes from the electoral college, confirming Biden’s win.

The riots in Washington D.C. caused mayhem and havoc, and Pence was evacuated from the scene, reported;USA Today. The crowd broke through police lines and entered the building, leaving behind broken glass and battered doors. By 6 p.m. EST, the National Guard was called in to offer support to the U.S. Capitol police, who “used tear gas and percussion grenades” to stop the riots, per USA Today.

The situation was so intense that several political leaders, including Biden, spoke out against Trump and his followers, but it was former President Barack Obama’s comments that turned heads. Here’s what he said.

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tkmedia · 3 years

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2021 NBA free agency: 45 players who could be available, including Kyle Lowry, Kawhi Leonard, Mike Conley

Getty Images The 2021 free-agent class could have been flashier. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Paul George signed contract extensions before the season, Chris Paul seems unlikely to leave the Western Conference champions and Kawhi Leonard never seemed like a real free agent, even before his ACL injury. To the degree that there's buzz about superstars changing teams, it's about the trade market, not free agency. This class remains interesting, though, because of some of the veteran All-Stars and better-than-usual restricted free agents involved. The New York Knicks, Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs can all get in the free-agent game, and it's possible that the Dallas Mavericks, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls and Memphis Grizzlies could join them. This list of 45 free agents is not a ranking, but the players have been grouped into categories that (hopefully) make it easier to digest. It will be updated and expanded before free agency begins on Aug. 6.

Looking for an All-Star caliber vet?

Conley was a crucial part of the Jazz's spectacular regular season, and he can't reasonably be blamed for their exit in the playoffs. He's one of their few above-average defenders, and he finally made his first All-Star team on the strength of his best offensive season since 2016-17. Utah might have reservations about committing long-term money to a 33-year-old point guard, but it's not as if it would have cap space if he walked. Unless Utah is OK with taking a major step back, it should try to retain Conley and address the roster's lack of defensive versatility on the margins. Lowry arrived in Toronto in 2012, was almost traded in 2014, re-signed for a second time in 2017, won a championship in 2019 and was almost traded again this March. He's 35 years old, seeking a chance to compete for another title and what might be his last big payday. There's a case for him returning to the Raptors, but they'll have competition from contenders that see him as the missing piece and non-contenders that think he can be their Chris Paul. New York has a hole at point guard, Lowry is close with Miami's Jimmy Butler and he should have several sign-and-trade options on the table. He can play on and off the ball and remains one of the league's best help defenders. DeRozan, 31, is coming off the best playmaking season of his career, in which he averaged 7.4 assists and 2.1 turnovers per 36 minutes, to go with the refined midrange scoring and elite free throw rate he's known for. If his time is up in San Antonio, then the offense-starved Knicks are a compelling theoretical landing spot. He'd hardly solve their spacing problem, though, and he's not the cleanest fit next to R.J. Barrett -- any team interested in DeRozan needs to be able to put shooters around him and put the ball in his hands.

RFAs of intrigue

Collins could tell you why he deserves a max or near-max extension, but his playoff performance speaks for itself. Despite being out of his offensive comfort zone next to Clint Capela, Collins found all sorts of ways to help the Hawks, answering questions about his ability to affect winning. Collins' counting stats don't show it, but he improved this season, mainly on defense, and there's now a two-year sample of 40-percent shooting from deep. Twenty-three-year-old players this talented usually sign rookie extensions, and every team that can put itself in a position to issue him an offer sheet should at least explore it. Hard to imagine Atlanta not matching, though. Ball improved his 3-point volume and free throw shooting again, but his main strengths are still his main strengths: Passing, particularly in transition; defense, particularly off the ball; rebounding and top-tier basketball IQ. There will be a limit on how effective he is in the halfcourt until he becomes a scoring threat inside the arc, but he's just 23 and brings so much to the table in every other facet of the game. While he pairs well with Zion Williamson in New Orleans, it's unclear if the front office will be willing to invest heavily in him after adding guards Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Kira Lewis Jr. in consecutive drafts. Brown reinvented himself as a do-everything role player in Brooklyn, setting screens for stars and then hitting floaters and finding 3s and layups for teammates in the short roll. He has surely earned himself some suitors, but the Nets have his Bird rights and a deep-pocketed owner. It's not necessarily impossible for another team to pry him away, but it won't be cheap. In an era where specialists are almost extinct, Robinson is an exception to the rule. Sure, he's "just a shooter," but he's a 6-foot-7 shooter who can make contested, on-the-move 3s at high volume. His accuracy dropped from 44.6 percent in 2019-20 to a still-extraordinary 40.8 percent this season, and, if the contracts Joe Harris and Davis Bertans signed last offseason are any indication, his salary is about to rise from $1.7 million to 10 times that. The Heat have all sorts of options this summer, and Robinson's relatively low cap hold means that they should be in a position to re-sign him regardless of whether or not they operate as an over-the-cap team. A second-round success story, Graham's cap hold is only $4.7 million, which gives Charlotte some flexibility. Even if the Hornets elect to use their cap room to chase free agents, they can theoretically bring Graham back with his Bird rights. They have a lot of guards in the mix, including the next player on this list, but coach James Borrego turned that into a strength this past season. Small-market teams tend to hang onto players like Graham, and I'm curious to see whether or not he can get starter-level money. Graham can make plays out of the pick-and-roll, but he didn't expand his offensive repertoire this past season: 67 percent of his shot attempts were from 3-point range. And his 3-point percentage was virtually identical to breakout year, his accuracy on pull-up 3s fell beneath 30 percent. After a rocky first few years, Monk's fourth season was by far his best. This is a feat in itself, given that he got COVID-19 just before training camp started and wasn't in the Hornets' rotation until late January. He shot a career-high 40.1 percent from deep and seemed to find his place as an instant-offense sixth man, a role that was particularly important when Charlotte was without Gordon Hayward, in need of a credible threat off off the bounce. There is upside here given that he's just 23 years old, but the Hornets might be choosing between Monk and Graham, and Monk has a $16 million cap hold. On the surface, Markkanen's 2020-21 season seems impressive -- he averaged 19 points per 36 minutes on 61.9 percent true shooting, finally cracking the 40-percent mark from 3-point range after three years of inefficiency. His free throw rate, usage rate and assist rate were all career lows, though, and a career-high 85 percent of his made shots were assisted. He doesn't fit next to Nikola Vucevic, and if he's going to make good on the promise he has shown since his rookie season, he can't be reduced to a spot-up shooter. A sign-and-trade is probably best for both sides, but could be complicated to execute. Horton-Tucker's emergence was one of the few unequivocal positives to come out of the Lakers' 2020-21 season. A second-round pick in 2019, he earned his spot with a mix of shifty playmaking, defensive versatility and an appetite for getting into the paint. Horton-Tucker is only 20 years old, with one year of experience in an NBA rotation, and anyone trying to steal him from the Lakers will be betting on him turning into a shooter (or perhaps taking on a Brown-like role when off the ball) -- he made just 28.2 percent of his 3s last season and only attempted 3.6 per 36 minutes. The Lakers can use early Bird rights to sign him to multi-year contract starting starting at up to $11 million. Read the full article

0 notes

orbemnews · 3 years

Link

Alibaba’s Big Fine Is a Warning Shot Beijing tightens the screws Over the weekend, Chinese officials fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion over antitrust violations. It was the biggest penalty yet as the Chinese government scrutinizes Jack Ma’s business empire — and it served as a warning for the country’s other internet giants. The fine was linked to Alibaba’s locking of merchants into its sales platform, according to the Chinese market authority, and vastly exceeds the agency’s previous largest fine, a $975 million antitrust penalty imposed on Qualcomm in 2015. A commentary published in the state-run People’s Daily minutes after the Alibaba announcement called such regulation “a kind of love and care.” The fine will likely curb Alibaba’s ambitions. Like its American counterparts, the company argued that its sheer size and wealth of services are a net positive for consumers. But smaller rivals are now likely to find support from Beijing if they accuse Alibaba of anticompetitive practices in the future. “We accept the penalty with sincerity,” Alibaba said in a statement, and executives held a call today to say the fine, worth about 4 percent of revenue, wasn’t material to the e-commerce giant’s finances. Shareholders appeared relieved. Alibaba’s shares rose by more than 6 percent in Hong Kong trading. Beyond the fine, the company agreed to stop violating antimonopoly rules and submit compliance reports for three years. And today, the company said it would lower the fees it charges merchants and provide additional services. Alibaba’s shares are still down sharply from late last year, when the antitrust rumblings began. Alibaba suggested that rivals could be next. “The penalty issued today served to alert and catalyze companies like ours,” the company said in its statement. “It reflects the regulators’ thoughtful and normative expectations toward our industry’s development.” Unlike Alibaba, shares in Tencent and Baidu were down today, as other big internet businesses in China feared that they might be next. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING An effort to unionize Amazon workers fails. Workers at a warehouse in Alabama overwhelmingly voted against the proposal, crushing one of the biggest drives to form a union in Amazon’s history. The lopsided result may prompt organized labor to try different tactics in the future. Jay Powell says the economy is at an “inflection point.” The Fed chair said on “60 Minutes” last night that the U.S. outlook had “brightened substantially” but warned that flare-ups in Covid-19 cases remain a risk. Speaking of virus risks: the South African variant may be able to evade some of the protection of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Microsoft may be close to striking another big acquisition. It is near a deal to buy Nuance Communications, the A.I. and speech recognition software company whose tech is tied to Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, Bloomberg reports. At a potential valuation of $16 billion, a transaction would be Microsoft’s biggest since buying LinkedIn for $26 billion. Preet Bharara is becoming a digital media executive. Vox Media agreed to buy Cafe Studios, the publisher behind “Stay Tuned With Preet,” the podcast hosted by the former Manhattan U.S. attorney. Mr. Bharara, who made his name prosecuting insider trading and terrorism cases, will join Vox as the creative director of Cafe. Two electric vehicle battery makers settle their feud. LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation reached an agreement to end their intellectual property dispute, with SK paying LG $1.8 billion in lump-sum and royalty payments. The settlement ends a fight that threatened the Biden administration’s climate agenda, as well as a big battery factory SK is building in Georgia. C.E.O.s talk politics Over the weekend, more than 100 corporate leaders held a conference call to discuss what they should do, if anything, to shape the debate around restrictive new voting laws under discussion across the U.S. Snap polls during the call suggested that most of the participants favor doing something, though what that would be isn’t yet clear. The voting-rights debate is fraught for companies, putting them at the center of an increasingly heated partisan battle. Ken Chenault, the former AmEx chief, and Ken Frazier, the current Merck C.E.O., urged the executives on the call to publicly state their support for broader ballot access, following their work gathering 70 fellow Black leaders to sign a letter calling on companies to fight bills that restrict voting rights, like the one that recently passed in Georgia. A new survey of Americans gives support for companies wading into politics. The data provided by Morning Consult was presented to the C.E.O.s on the call, which was convened by the Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. Here are some highlights: 62 percent of “avid” baseball fans support M.L.B.’s decision to move the All-Star Game from Georgia in response to the state’s new voting restrictions. Support was lower among all adults (39 percent), but if the league was worried about the effect on its most dedicated fans, this is an important finding. 57 percent of Americans think companies should cut back on donations to elected officials who are working to limit voting rights. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said that the government should ensure equitable access to voting locations. More than half of Americans said they were more likely to buy from companies that promote certain social causes, including racial equality and civil rights, although support among Democrats was stronger than among Republicans on many of these issues. Among the handful of issues that would make Republicans less likely to buy from a company were support for the Black Lives Matter movement, abortion rights, stricter gun control, transgender rights and gay rights. “However glad we are to see a new generation’s evolving perspective on investing, our goal is not to make it easier for them to pile into and rush out of speculative meme stocks.” — Ron Kruszewski, the C.E.O. of Stifel, in his annual letter to shareholders. On due diligence and flying taxis Archer, the electric aircraft company, said earlier this month that it’s facing a federal investigation over allegations of I.P. theft. That’s not just a potential problem for Archer, which denies wrongdoing, but also for the investment bank Moelis & Company, which announced in February that a blank-check firm it was backing would acquire Archer in a deal that valued the company at $3.8 billion. Questions arise about due diligence. Archer revealed the federal investigation on the day a rival, Wisk, sued the company and accused it of stealing trade secrets and infringing on its patents. According to Wisk’s suit, it informed Archer of its concerns last year, before Archer’s deal with the Moelis-linked SPAC, known as Atlas Crest Investment. “They had to be aware of this — so what did they make of it?” said Kevin LaCroix, a lawyer and author of D&O Diary. Moving too quickly? I.P. theft claims are common in nascent industries like the one for electric air taxis, and Atlas may have dismissed the matter as a competitive tactic from a rival. But Atlas’s due diligence took a little over a month, according to regulatory filings. The SPAC led by Reid Hoffman took almost three times as long to run the rule over its acquisition of another rival, Joby. What about incentives? Moelis not only backed the Atlas SPAC but also served as its financial adviser and placement agent for the additional funding alongside the merger — roles that could earn it $30 million in fees, according to filings. Moelis bankers, including the chairman Ken Moelis, own a “substantial majority” of founder shares and warrants in the SPAC, which would be worthless if a deal isn’t done. There are “huge incentives” for SPAC deals to close, Mr. LaCroix said. “Does that create its own logic which kind of creates sort of a runaway freight train so that, if problems do emerge, they kind of get glossed over? That is the risk.” Baseball on the blockchain A classic American pastime — baseball-card collecting — is getting a 21st century update. The blockchain platform Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX) and Topps, the collectibles and candy company, are launching NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, digitizing this season’s Major League Baseball trading card series. WAX minted more than a million NFTs for 75,000 digital card packs. The series, digitizes nearly 2,000 images to be sold in packs of six or 45 cards starting next week. William Quigley, WAX’s co-founder, said he expects “millions” in direct sales and a robust secondary market. For M.L.B., the tokens essentially act as an annuity, paying the league a fraction of every resale via conditions written into their code. That is a new source of revenue that didn’t exist with old-fashioned cards. Top Shots, the National Basketball Association’s NFTs, are among the most popular assets to take off in the recent crypto craze, generating nearly $150 million in sales over the past month alone, according to DappRadar. Digital tokens solve several problems, Mr. Quigley said. With standard cards it has been difficult to establish how many cards were issued and to ensure the authenticity of a supposedly rare one. NFTs have built-in authentication and verification data, and separate ownership from possession so that owners don’t need to amass physical goods in a world with “landfills worth of junk,” he said. Mr. Quigley himself is considering giving up on buying physical art. “I’m thinking I don’t like it,” he said. A home run in a hot market? Topps is riding high as the pandemic has driven new interest in memorabilia, especially trading cards. And NFTs are not the only hot trend Topps is betting on: the company is going public via SPAC in a deal that values it at $1.3 billion, DealBook reported last week. THE SPEED READ Deals Medline Industries, a maker of medical equipment, is reportedly weighing a sale that could value it at more than $30 billion. (WSJ) Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing giant, is said to have hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead its forthcoming I.P.O. in the U.S. (Reuters) Politics and policy David Cameron, the former British prime minister who became a top adviser to Greensill Capital, admitted to mistakes in lobbying policymakers on behalf of the recently collapsed lender. (FT) “We Asked Congress’s Freshmen to Give Up Stock Trading. Few Were Willing.” (NYT) Tech Court filings in Texas revealed that Google secretly used past bids for its digital advertising exchange to give its own ad-buying system an advantage over rivals. (WSJ) More than 500 employees of Alphabet signed an open letter demanding the tech giant change rules they say unduly protect those credibly accused of harassment. (The Verge) Best of the rest Don’t mistake a work colleague’s silent endurance for resilience. (NYT) Online schools are here to stay, even after the pandemic. (NYT) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #Alibabas #Big #Fine #shot #warning

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architectnews · 3 years

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US Architecture News: American Buildings

US Architecture News 2020, American Building Developments, Real Estate USA, Property Design

US Architecture News

Contemporary American Architectural Developments: Built Environment United States of America

post updated Nov 3, 2020

USA Architectural News

US Building News

Nov 1, 2020 Dry Creek Poolhouse in Geyserville, Sonoma

Oct 28, 2020 Mountain Wood House, Woodside

Oct 27, 2020 Pierce Brosnan’s House, Malibu Beach

Oct 26, 2020 Commonwealth Pier , Seaport World Trade Center, Boston, Massachusetts Design Architect: Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects image © Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects Commonwealth Pier Boston Construction has begun on the redesign of Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center, an expansive mixed-use development on historic Commonwealth Pier in the city’s Seaport District. Designed by Dansh architecture office Schmidt Hammer Lassen, the adaptive reuse project will introduce new ways to explore and engage with the waterfront.

Sep 24, 2020 Horizon Neighbourhood, Powder Mountain

Sep 21, 2020 Sky House, Flatiron Miami Property

Sep 21, 2020 Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, Dakota

Sep 6, 2020 Chandler Ullmann Hall, Lehigh University

Sep 3, 2020 Student Union at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

Sep 2, 2020 Puglisi Hall at University of Delaware, Newark

Sep 1, 2020 Southerleigh Fine Food and Brewery

Sep 1, 2020 Loft Apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia

Sep 1, 2020 The Ranch in Orlando, Florida

Aug 27, 2020 Hillside House near South Congress Ave, Austin

June 18, 2020 Westport Library Building in Connecticut

June 16, 2020 Stockman Bank Missoula Downtown, Montana

June 12, 2020 Box Factory in Jackson, California

May 31, 2020 Hancher Auditorium Iowa City Building

May 23, 2020 WHOOP Headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts

May 22, 2020 Waubonsee Community College Fieldhouse

May 19, 2020 Bryant Elementary School in Helena, Montana

May 18, 2020 Hotel and Private Club in Hollywood, California

April 28, 2020 Topfer Theatre at ZACH in Austin, Texas

April 27, 2020 Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana

April 23, 2020 St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum

April 22, 2020 Bennington College Commons Building, Vermont

April 22, 2020 Bigfork High School Renovation & Expansion

Feb 12, 2020 The Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas Design: Architecture Research Office photo © Architecture Research Office The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas One of the world’s most celebrated sacred spaces is due to reopen in June 2020, after undergoing a comprehensive restoration as part of the first phase of Opening Spaces, a $30-million master plan for its campus.

Feb 12, 2020 Modern Lodge on Weatherby Lake, North Kansas City

Feb 6, 2020 Telegraph Tower in Oakland, Northern California

US Architecture News 2019

Oct 25, 2019 The Heights School Building in Arlington

Oct 25, 2019 Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia

Oct 24, 2019 Hay Barn, Santa Cruz, California, USA Design: Fernau + Hartman Architects photography © Cesar Rubio Hay Barn in Santa Cruz, California University Perched on a shelf at the entrance to UC Santa Cruz, this American house greets visitors on their way to central campus, as they pass through the former ranch headquarters of the Cowell Lime Works.

Oct 23, 2019 Big Pine House in Mazama, Washington

Oct 16, 2019 Nims Bezaitis Residence in Portland, Oregon

Oct 15, 2019 Everett Grand Avenue Pedestrian Bridge in Washington

US Architecture News 2018

Sep 28, 2018 Lee’s Summit School District R-7 – Missouri Innovation Campus, Missouri Design: Gould Evans ; Associate Architects: DLR Group image courtesy of Chicago Athenaeum New Missouri Building

May 15, 2018 Kanye West Starts Architecture Studio

Controversial US Rapper Kanye West has announced he is starting an architecture firm, Yeezy Home, reports The Guardian.

The rapper posted on Twitter: “We’re starting a Yeezy architecture arm called Yeezy home. We’re looking for architects and industrial designers who want to make the world better”.

photo by Daniel Cruz Valle – Kanye West Central Hall, CC BY 2.0, https://ift.tt/2k0yaUX

Yeezy is West’s company, which currently gives its name to West’s clothing designs and a range of trainers made in collaboration with Adidas. In April he tweeted: “Yeezy is no longer a fashion company we should be referred to as apparel or clothing or simply Yeezy.”

“I hang around architects mostly, people that wanna make things as dope as possible … This is the reason why I’m working with five architects at a time.”

Kanye West Architecture Studio – Yeezy Home article in The Guardian

Feb 4, 2018 Housing Northwest Arkansas Initiative at Fay Jones School The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas announced In December that it would launch Housing Northwest Arkansas—an initiative supported by a $250,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation that aims to address the region’s lack of affordable, attainable housing, at all income levels. “The steady growth of Northwest Arkansas, as with many cities and regions across the nation, compels focused attention on new visions of housing design for the region,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School.

More US Architecture News online soon

US Architecture News 2017

Aug 1, 2017 Solar-powered US Border Wall with Mexico

President Trump has come up with a new idea for covering the costs of a proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico: build it with solar panels.

At a White House meeting Tuesday, Donald Trump floated the concept of “beautiful structures,” 40 to 50 feet high, that generate clean electricity from the sun — and would help cover the cost of the project, according to comments reported by Axios.

solar-powered Border Wall between USA and Mexico: image courtesy of Gleason Partners

The U.S. border with Mexico is almost 2,000 miles long. Donald Trump has said his wall will cover 1,000 miles, with natural obstacles doing the rest of the work.

Gleason Partners submitted a proposal to build a solar border wall, generating two megawatts of electricity per mile, at a cost of about $7.5 million per mile.

Fixing the panels vertically could lead to an efficiency loss of around 50%, the analysis says, with the angle at which the sun would hit the wall losing an additional 10% in efficiency.

However less than 2% of the U.S. population live within 40 miles of the US – Mexico border.

source: US Border Wall with Mexico

Jul 24, 2017 American Architecture Prize Firm of The Year Deadline

Extended Early Bird deadline: enter before July 31, 2017 across the categories of architecture, interior design, landscaping and urban design to save on entry fees. The AAP is open to submissions on a global level, accepting entries from architects and designers all around the world.

Apr 23, 2017 The American Architecture Prize Deadline

Regular Deadline: April 30, 2017

Recognizing the excellence of architecture firms around the globe.

There are two weeks left until the Regular Deadline to enter the AAP Firm of the Year 2017!

The AAP Firm of the Year Award recognizes the excellence of inspiring and innovative architecture, interior, and landscape design firms around the globe. The Firm of the Year Award honors the total body of work of small, medium, and large companies in their own unique categories based on firm size and area of expertise.

American Architecture Prize Firm of The Year

Apr 7, 2017 American Architecture Awards Winners in 2017

photograph © Paul Warchol

American Architecture Awards News

Seventy-nine shortlisted buildings have won the prestigious 2017 American Architecture Awards ® for the best new buildings designed and constructed by American architects in the U.S. and abroad and by international architects for buildings designed and built in the United States.

The American Architecture Awards are the nation’s highest public awards given by a non-commercial, non-trade affiliated, public arts, culture and educational institution.

Mar 29, 2017 The American Architecture Prize

The American Architecture Prize Extended Early Bird deadline is approaching on March 31st.

If you don’t have enough time to create your entry in the next few days, here is a tip: You could pay for your entry now and upload the PDF later. This way, you can take advantage of the discounted price now, and do the work a little later. Just leave the “Upload PDF” page blank, and proceed to make your payment.

The AAP offers a graphic designer service for Firm of the Year entrants for a limited period of time. A designer will help you create your submission document, at no charge to you. Please email [email protected] or visit the AAP website for more information.

AAP – The American Architecture Prize 550 N Larchmont Blvd, Suite 100 Los Angeles, CA 90004 USA

Website: The American Architecture Prize

Mar 12, 2017

US Building News

US Architects React to Border Wall RFP

With President Donald Trump taking further executive action to build the controversial wall across the Mexican-American border, protesters are beginning to rally and speak out.

At Yale University, specifically, students are displaying an anti-Trump message on campus.

The phrase “We won’t build your wall” is written on large windows at the school of architecture.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the American Institute of Architects issued an incendiary statement of congratulations and support for the yet-unknown infrastructure agenda of the Trump administration, state Yale School of Architecture professor Peggy Deamer and students David Langdon and Melinda Agron in an op-ed piece in the Architectural Record.

The architecture community loudly and publicly denounced what they saw as a “greedy and spineless compromise” of professional responsibilities, and #NotMyAIA began trending on Twitter. Within days, AIA CEO Robert Ivy rescinded the organization’s statement and apologized.

(Also, see our post from Feb 6 + 5, 2017 further down this page – ‘Major Architects Object to President Trump’s Travel Ban’)

Two weeks ago President Trump issued a preliminary RFP—request for proposals—for design prototypes of the long-promised border wall. In the days that followed, dozens of prominent architecture and engineering firms threw their hats in for a chance at the multi-billion-dollar project.

The concerns that architects voiced in November 2016 of professional collusion with the administration’s partisan agenda proved dishearteningly prescient and well-founded.

The Architecture Lobby—a forward-thinking alternative to the AIA organized in 2013 by a collective of students, practitioners, and academics—has proposed that March 10, the day the first round of border wall proposals are due, cannot witness business as usual.

Article in full: US Architects React to Border Wall RFP

Feb 20, 2017 Svigals+Partners Merges with Lynn Brotman Interior Design Sandy Hook School building, Connecticut: photo Courtesy Svigals+Partners

New Haven, Conn.–based architecture firm Svigals+Partners has announced a merger with Lynn Brotman Interior Design in an effort to make “interior design a seamlessly integrated aspect of current and future projects”. Previously, the two architectural firms collaborated on the recently completed Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn.

images Courtesy Svigals+Partners

“Our collaborations with Svigals+Partners have always been the most rewarding,” Brotman said in the release. “We look forward to working even more closely with these amazing architects and designers, to create spaces that help people to be the best they can be.”

Lynn Brotman will join as an associate principal.

Feb 14, 2017 Four Midcentury Landmarks Revitalised

The Hall of Science, Queens Richards Medical Research Laboratories, Pennsylvania Greeley Memorial Laboratory, Yale University Manton Research Center, Massachusetts

The Hall of Science, in Queens, New York, is one example of the sculptural exuberance of many midcentury buildings. Designed by Harrison and Abramovitz Architects for the 1964 World’s Fair, it was conceived as a permanent museum devoted to science and technology. An eggcrate-like reinforced-concrete wall undulates and bends to define a nearly 90-foot-tall volume, reports the Architectural Record. Todd Schliemann, a partner at New York–based Ennead, who completed the hall’s restoration in 2015, describes its interior as abstract and almost scaleless, like outer space.

The Hall of Science, in Queens, New York: photo © Jeff Goldberg / ESTO

Not all midcentury buildings exhibit the same kind of adventurous and organic forms found at the Hall of Science. Instead, another significant work from this period—Louis Kahn’s Richards Medical Research Laboratories (1961) at the University of Pennsylvania—demonstrates a commitment to order and rigor articulated in brick, concrete, and glass. The building was recently designated a National Historic Landmark.

Many scholars have noted that Kahn’s model for this open working environment may well have been the architecture studio, says David Fixler, a principal in the Boston office of EYP Architecture & Engineering. His firm created the preservation standards for Richards and performed the first phase of the still-ongoing project. (The Philadelphia office of Atkin Olshin Schade Architects won a competitive bid for the subsequent phases.)

Christopher Williams, a New Haven, Connecticut–based architect, faced many of the same problems as the Richards team in his recent renovation of Greeley Memorial Laboratory, a 24,000-square-foot research facility designed by Paul Rudolph for Yale University’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Since its completion in 1959, Greeley had suffered a number of unsympathetic alterations.

Pietro Belluschi’s Manton Research Center (1973) is located on the campus of the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. This granite-clad library and study facility has a somewhat blocky exterior, Manton was “well-conceived,” says the architect for the just-completed renovation, Annabelle Selldorf, principal of Selldorf Architects in New York (acting with Gensler).

Article in full: US Midcentury Buildings News

Feb 6 + 5, 2017 Major Architects Object to President Trump’s Travel Ban

Three architecture firms have released responses to President Donald Trump’s executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” issued on Friday, reports https://ift.tt/10WVIg7.

Studio Libeskind, founded by Daniel Libeskind, AIA, and based in New York and Zürich, and Steven Holl, FAIA, both issued statements earlier this week criticizing the ban.

American-Norwegian firm Snøhetta also criticized Donald Trump’s executive order.

“Our office of 44 people based in NYC & Beijing has a staff representing over 18 different languages. We are dedicated to an architecture of openness encouraging human potential.

This action, by the loser of our citizens’ popular vote, actively works against the diversity and dialogue essential to this mission and violates the United States Constitution. This president who repeatedly tells lies, fights human potential for good and defies the constitution must be impeached.

We have now worked on five continents pursuing our mission (currently working on our first African project, a library for a new campus in Malawi, which is deeply rooted in our core principles). Today, more than ever, we need to pursue our values; green architecture for the environment of future generations, formation of social space, and realization of new spatial energies.

– Steven Holl

“The Trump travel ban is an affront to our freedom and core values,” he said. “It affects our employees, colleagues and collaborators.”

– Daniel Libeskind

Also US School of Architecture have reacted:

Harvard Graduate School of Design:

“Let me be clear that the intolerance and prejudice signaled by this action cut against the core values that the GSD stands for. Its spirit runs counter to our collective commitment to inclusion and to cultivating a diversity of people, ideas, and perspectives, the necessary ingredients of healthy and productive discourse and responsible citizenship.”

– Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, an Iranian-American

UCLA School of Art & Architecture:

“The Dean’s office condemns in the strongest possible terms the executive order around visas and immigration released by the President this past weekend.” – David Roussève, Interim Dean

The Southern California Institute of Architecture and Taubman College, University of Michigan also release statements:

https://ift.tt/2kqgdOH

Jan 28, 2017 Assemblywoman seeks to bar border wall companies from doing business in New York

With Donald Trump taking executive actions to make good on his campaign promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, one New York legislator has proposed a pushback, reports Metro.

Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, who represents eastern Queens, introduced a bill on Thursday that would ban the state from doing business with companies involved in building the border wall.

Under the bill, the state would track businesses involved with the wall and prevent them from obtaining in-state contracts or assets. New York currently has similar restrictions on companies that boycott Israel or do business in Iran.

Article in full: New York Border Wall Reaction

Related article on e-architect:

Nov 30, 2016 US / Mexico Border Solutions Design: Twelve students at UT Austin in parallel with two classes at Universidad Autonoma Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico

Since the start of the current presidential campaign, immigration has been a central issue. President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal of building a wall between Mexico and the United States, and his call to deport undocumented immigrants, has turned the country’s attention to the complex issues surrounding our southern border.

image courtesy of UT Austin

US / Mexico Border Solutions

Jan 27, 2017 Harry Macklowe on New York Real Estate

Harry Macklowe, the real estate titan is “riding the wave of successful sales” at 432 Park Avenue — said to be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere — and forging ahead with new projects, reports the New York Times.

Sales began this month for a residential condominium in Midtown and he plans to convert One Wall Street, an Art Deco office building, to residential.

At 80, Mr. Macklowe has had a career spanning almost six decades, marked by extreme highs and lows.

Yet each time, he has pulled off a resurrection. At his latest comeback, the 432 Park Avenue Building, which Macklowe Properties developed with CIM Group, a penthouse sold in September for $87.66 million. The tower proved that Mr. Macklowe continues to be a formidable player in the real estate arena.

Article in full: New York Real Estate Update

Related recent US Architecture News on e-architect:

Jan 19, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump taps two rich developers to oversee infrastructure plan

Donald Trump has chosen Richard LeFrak and Steve Roth, “two of the wealthiest men in real estate” according to Forbes, to head a “council of builders and engineers”. This new council will be tasked with overseeing Trump’s plan to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure, reports archinect. The Republican infrastructure plan relies heavily on private-public partnerships, so it’s not really a surprise that developers will be involved.

Roth founded Vornado, one of the most prominent real estate trusts in New York and Washington. Tornado is merging with JBG Smith, which is one of the shortlisted bidders for the development of a new FBI headquarters, a $2 billion contract. The LeFrak family has played a major role in developing New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles and Miami.

AIA American Institute of Architects News

Jan 24, 2017 514 Eleventh Avenue Buildings In place of the original 1,000-foot spire, Silverstein Properties is looking to build two towers at 514 Eleventh Avenue, reports www.crainsnewyork.com: 514 Eleventh Avenue New York Towers

Jan 18, 2017 685 First Avenue, Murray Hill Building 42-Story, 556-Unit Mixed-Use Tower at 685 First Avenue, Murray Hill

image : bloomimages

Construction is now five stories above street level on the 42-story, 556-unit mixed-use tower designed by Richard Meier & Partners Architects.

The building is under development at 685 First Avenue, located between East 39th and 40th streets in Murray Hill, reports newyorkyimby.com.

Building permits indicate the project will encompass 813,813 sqft and rise 460 feet in height.

There will be 10,088 sqft of ground-floor retail space, split between two units. There will be 448 rental apartments across the 3rd through 27th floors, followed by 148 condominiums on the 28th through 42nd floors.

Solow Realty & Development Group is the developer. Completion is expected in 2018.

Jan 17, 2017 The Ellipse The Ellipse, Mixed-Use Tower, Tops Out at 1-25 14th Street, Jersey City

LeFrak’s 43-story building in Newport, Jersey City, designed by Arquitectonica, Miami: image : Arquitectonica

Construction has topped out on the 43-story, 376-unit mixed-use tower, dubbed Ellipse, at 1-25 14th Street, located in the Newport section of Jersey City, N.J., reports newyorkyimby.com.

The structure, which is now receiving glass installation on its 27th floor, can be seen thanks to photos posted to the YIMBY Forums. The 592,800-sqft tower’s apartments will be rentals, ranging from studios to three-bedrooms. There will be 24,000 square feet of amenities, as well as a retail component near street level. The LeFrak Organization is the developer. Arquitectonica is the design architect and Haines, Lundberg & Waehler (HLW) is the executive architect. Completion is expected later this year.

source: https://ift.tt/2jHCqKH

Jan 10, 2017 Liberty Museum New York Competition Winners

Winners: First prize: Jungwoo Ji, Bosuk Hur, Suk Lee (Korea and USA) Second prize: Maherul Kader Prince, Nabila Ferdousi (Bangladesh) Third prize: Yuxin Zhang, Shujuan Tang, Yiran Wang (China)

Jury Panel: • Jeffry Burchard, Principal, Machado-Silvetti, Boston, USA • Christian Remes, Plus+Bauplanung, Stuttgart, Germany • Adrian Welch, Chief Editor, e-architect, London

First prize: Jungwoo Ji, Bosuk Hur, Suk Lee (Korea and USA)

Liberty Museum New York Competition Winners

Jan 5, 2017 Second Avenue Subway Stations in New York Design: AECOM-Arup photo © Charles Aydlett courtesy AECOM-Arup JV Second Avenue Subway Stations in New York City The first major expansion of New York City subway system in nearly a century, the 1.8 mile stretch of track runs between 63rd and 96th streets and consists of three new stations, plus one upgraded station.

More US Architecture News welcome on e-architect

US Architecture News 2016

Nov 28, 2016 120 Nassau Street, Downtown Brooklyn Tower image from architects Construction is now 24 stories above street level on the 33-story tower designed by architects Woods Bagot. The 270-unit mixed-use building at 120 Nassau Street, located on the corner of Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn, report yimby.com. The latest building permits indicate the 425-foot-tall tower will measure 312,093 sqft. The base will include 57,904 square feet of commercial space, in the form of retail on the ground floor and office space on floors two through eight.

Nov 28, 2016 281 Fifth Avenue Building rendering : Rafael Viñoly Architects Foundation work is now underway on the 52-story, 141-unit mixed-use tower under development at 281 Fifth Avenue, located on the corner of West 30th Street in NoMad, report yimby.com. The latest building permits indicate the project will stand 728 feet in height and encompass 266,963 sqft.

Nov 23, 2016 MoMA / P.S.1 YAP 2017 Program Finalists MoMA / P.S.1 YAP Program Finalists – Bureau Spectacular, led by Jimenez Lai – architect Ania Jaworska – design collective Office of III, comprised of Sean Canty, Ryan Golenberg and Stephanie Lin – Jenny E. Sabin, director of Sabin Design Lab – SCHAUM/SCHIEH, led by Rosalyne Shieh and Troy Schaum.

Nov 8, 2016 Sales Launch for 287 East Houston Street, NY Design: AA Studio, Architects image from developers 287 East Houston Street Manhattan Building Development partners Hogg Holdings and Vinci Partners USA announce 28-unit residential condominium building has come to market on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Oct 27, 2016 HFZ Capital Group tops out The Bryant, 16 West 40th Street, NY, USA Design: David Chipperfield Architects image : Miller Hare Columbia University Manhattanville Campus Expansion

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wherespacepooh · 7 years

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Yuzuru Hanyu 2017-18 Media Day: Master Post

This post consists of excerpts from news outlets and TV wideshows as information from TCC media day came through from 8.09-10. Magazine reports & longer broadcast specials that come out later will have their own posts with links added in this post for organization––last updated 2017.8.29.

Feel free to repost with credit and link - gladi.

URL: https://wherespacepooh.tumblr.com/post/163950208929/yuzuru-hanyu-2017-18-media-day-master-post

Long Program: SEIMEI (8/09 7:50 Sponichi Annex)

Layouts & other notes (last updated 8/11 4:42 Japan Time)

Perfect SP (4Lo // 3A, 4T3T), all jumps landed. (8/09 10:29 Jiji) 📺: SP footage from 02:14 on 8/09 TBS N Sta (cr. to yuzu_pino@twi)

LP:

5 quads planned

SEIMEI was done in separate parts to music on Day 1. Landed opening 4Lo and 4S. For second half, landed 3 quads including the 4T combo cleanly. (8/09 10:29 Jiji)

“has not done musical arrangement” (8/10 Kahoku, see Q&A 4 below)

📺 TRIPLE FLIP shall not be ignored (cr. pon91491240@twi)

📺 All five quads in SEIMEI starting at 05:31 in the video from 8/10 News Every (cr. yuzu_pino@twi)

📺: 4T-lo-3S, some choreo (cr. spread_wing0217@twi, Tokudane)

📺: 4T3T, spins, etc (cr. anipooh1@twi, Tokudane)

📺: SEIMEI 3A-2T into SE, 3A (cr. yuzu_pino@twi, FUJI Mezamashi)

Misc

Brian Orser: Hanyu in best ever pre-season condition (8/09 Yomiuri)

approx 80 people (update: 95!) attended Media Day (8/09 9:00 Sankei)

David Wilson was sick from fever and did not attend (8/09 BBMook)

📺 Video message on ANA SNS [1] [2]

📺 4T3T(rippon) from NTV Sukkiri (cr. yuzu_pino@twi), 📺 different angle from 8/13 Fuji Heros’ (cr. anipooh1@twi)

📷 A great set of photos from Day 1 Seimei session by Taketazu Atsushi from Yomiuri Shinbun

📺 Day 2 footage (in red UA) from 8/13 Fuji Heros’

Translation of interviews, articles and news clips:

Emphasis mostly on word from Yuzuru and his team, plus other miscellaneous tidbits. Loosely reverse chronological order.

Shae-lynn Bourne Interview

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ARTICLE: Yuzuru Hanyu: I am at 20% right now (Number 934-5)

Despite still trolling with one single 3A, the brat (you’ll see) shows his tender side (you’ll also see) in his pursuit of figure skating mastery and ideals…This is quintessential Hanyu––calm, confident and thoughtful as he discusses the Olympics, his programs and the significance and meaning of skating itself.

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ARTICLE: The Secret of Prestigious Champion Maker (TCC) where Hanyu Yuzuru Trains (2017.08.18 Yomiuri)

In-depth look into the Cricket Club as a training environment and what the team, the grounds, the rivalry all mean to Hanyu. Plus, a quote from Shae-lynn implying, perhaps, some new choreography? *-* *-* *-*

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ARTICLE: Yuzuru Hanyu’s legendary masterpiece. Reason for challenging SEIMEI once again in Olympics (2017.08 Number Web)

An in-depth look into the thought process behind SEIMEI as an Olympic strategy and an unflinching take on the season’s challenge, focusing on the performance itself. Plus a more extended quote from Tracy Wilson \o/ - gladi

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ARTICLE: Hanyu. Evolution. Confidence without conceit (2017.08.18 Kahoku)

A really, really nice read with good detail and perspective. Quite poetically written. - gladi

“This time around, withSEIMEI, ‘[he] will bring out every detail with movements of his hands, his legs, his upper body, all the way down to the character’s background.’”

“In his bid toward a successive victory for the first time in 66 years [of Olympic history], there is no conceit. Only self-confidence.”

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ARTICLE: Brian Orser speaks about Olympic prospects (2017.08.18 Kahoku)

Hanyu is in great shape, team communication is stellar. Men’s figure skating, watch out! - gladi

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📺 Special: Fuji HERO’S (Day 2 footage, exclusive interview) Hanyu section

8/13 (cr. to yuzu_pino@twi), 03:49 - 07:43 Hanyu’s section

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ARTICLE: “Who will be the protagonist in Pyeongchang?” (Snippets from Hanyu section)

8/12 Nikkei (Print edition, apologies no link to source available)

- Coach Tracy Wilson: “Hungry. That’s a personal trait of Hanyu’s. When [skaters] get the gold medal, there’s a period of respite, but Yuzu only looks forward.”

- Coach Brian Orser and choreographer Shae-lynn Bourne on the change in Hanyu over the past three years: “He has grown up, and is more open now.”

- “Hanyu has his own strong views about skating and there are also cases when he disagrees with the coaches. “Should we say I have gotten used to the environment? When Brian said ‘do this, do that’, I would add only a little bit extra (t/n literally "plus alpha,” a Japanese English term that has its roots in baseball was used, eg. the “change” part in “1000 and change”) of my own thoughts on top of his—-that was [how it was] around Sochi Olympics. Now, we discuss, bringing both our opinions to the table. 1+1 now yields 3 and 4.“

- Regarding the music choices, Brian was initially hesitant: "Chopin was an immortal masterpiece, so Brian agreed. The music for the free program has such strong personality, in the world of the figure skating, it is not a ‘warhorse’. A program that is prominently Hanyu-esque, and ‘the fact of skating to two familiar programs’ would be tricky, according to Orser. After discussion and coming around to the choice, Orser now says this, 'this free program has been well evaluated by many, and the program itself means a lot to [Hanyu]’. On top of performing it, the performance must be on a level of a complete different dimension.”

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ARTICLE: Hanyu Yuzuru on his Olympic strategy. To choose “programs where he can be himself.” (Full trans linked)

Web Sportiva 2017/08/11

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📺 Special: NTV Sukkiri (Seimei Shrine special, 4T3T rippon, comments from Aya Kawai, FS commentator + Nagano ID representative)

8/10 8:00 (cr. yuzu_pino@twi)

04:21 -

4T3T rippon \o/ (yuzu_pino@twi also clipped it out here)

04:29 -

Hanyu visited Seimei Shrine on 6/04 and left an ema: “May I bring performances as I’d envisioned, and, may happiness come to everyone, through my performances. 2017.6.4. Hanyu Yuzuru” (04:29 in video)

04:30 -

The production team visited Seimei Shrine on 8/09. According to Chief Priest Yamaguchi, Hanyu visited to give thanks as he had used Abe no Seimei as theme in his performances the season before the last, to express gratitude that he was able to do it. Thinking back, Yamaguchi thought he might already have held the thoughts of using the music of Seimei in his chest, and had come before the altar to report these thoughts to the gods. (04:30)

05:53 -

When Hanyu visited two years ago in July, he had gone to see the portrait of Abe no Seimei (usually made open to the public once a year in September). Yamaguchi recounted that for around ten minutes, Hanyu was silently looking at the portrait, in seiza (kneeling with tops of feet flat on floor and sitting on the soles) with his back very straight, tauter than the usual. Seemed to have many thoughts. Yamaguchi thought perhaps Hanyu had at that point been practicing with the image of “Hanyu” and wondered if, seeing the portrait, that image had become something new. (05:53)

07:21 -

Many fans came to wish for his health and a gold medal in Pyeongchang Olympics. The production team interviewed a (male) fan: “He is really amazing, isn’t he? I hadn’t watched much figure skating, but when I saw his performance, I began to find figure skating interesting. So I hope he’ll be in perfect condition in face of the Pyeongchang Olympics.”

10:32 -

Aya Kawai (Nagano Olympics Ice Dance representative, FS commentator): Because the sense of novelty is lost when music is reused, it makes it hard to impress the viewer. He got many 10s in his components two years ago, but there’s the possibility that 10s won’t come so easily. So in order to get 10s, he must put out an amazing performance, clearly superior to the last time.

11:07 - (Narrator/caption: About bringing 5 quads into the program this season)

Isn’t it exactly Hanyu’s figure skating that always evolves and goes beyond the current limits?

11:21 - (Narrator/caption: The evolution seen in the practice footage is…)

The opening Loop gives off such an increased sense of stability. It’s the newest quad to him and the most difficult. But for a second, I thought it was a triple––it looked that secure. It was such a good jump that, if I were a judge, I would want to give him all the GOEs.

12:10

Reporter at media day: What’s your goal at the Olympics?

Hanyu: First... first... I have to be chosen as Olympic representative...*laughs* I think *laughs more*

Reporter prompting: And beyond that?

Hanyu: Well. If I’m chosen as representative, the gold medal... of course I want to aim for it. *giggles* I [made the quote] difficult [for you] to use >”<

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ARTICLE: Perfect jumps at [8/08 EST] open practice, no mistakes, [programs with] competition-ready finish...as witnessed by assigned reporter

8/10 8:00 Sports Hochi

(Skip opening paragraph because you all know he is skating to SEIMEI)

The familiar sounds of taiko and flutes reverberating in the rink alone brought back the sense of exultation. It was that music, the one that twice-renewed the world’s highest score in successive competitions. Powerful jumps, graceful movement and supple limbs. I was immediately drawn into the world of Hanyu Yuzuru’s SEIMEI. “There are many people who think ‘I love this program’. In my opinion, certainly everyone wanted to see it again.” These are Coach Brian Orser’s words.

On the eve of the 15-16 season, Hanyu had asserted, “Amongst the current Japanese men, I alone can bring out a wa-themed program to such extent. [Senses of] delicacy and strength that are brought out because it’s me. Then, a program precisely as described was completed. “I would like to bring performances that don’t make people think ‘this again?’ in competition.” Hereafter, how would he proceed to weave the five quads into the fabric of the program? A new challenge has begun.

Although it has been the same way each year, Hanyu only holds open practice once a year. Since it is the last chance before the Pyeongchang Olympics, a press corps of around 80 people from Japan rushed over. Responding to questions from TV stations and news outlets combined for over thirty minutes, he spoke with a smile throughout. Cutting a different, more relaxed figure than in competition venues.

At the two open practices, each an hour long, he opened by landing a perfect 4T without warning, right at the start. The SP run-through was deftly clean. “The most important thing is to skate clean. If I can do that, results will come.” His first competition is Autumn Classic International (Opens 9/20 in Montreal).

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ARTICLE: (Hanyu Q&A4) Wants to defend title. Can exceed world’s highest scores. (repeated ones are skipped)

8/10 06:32 Kahoku

(Skipped opening paragraph)

–––– You will be repeating both SP and FP. (t/n additions bolded) "I have been warming up for the season. Have not done musical arrangement. People may think ‘this again?’ right now, but I [aim to] show performances that won’t make you think this way in competitions.” "With Olympics, there is no time to skate and get into a new piece of music. I want to be at a good place right from the starting line, and gain further mastery from there.”

–––– Isn’t it difficult to work with the possibilities of giving viewers a sense of deja vu? "Even with the same music, the content is completely different. It feels like I am doing something completely different. So I think everyone’s sense of discomfort will gradually fade away.”

–––– There are expectations of [you achieving the] world’s highest combined score? (t/n additions bolded) “I don’t feel much pressure. With this piece, I am confident that I will be okay. Skating to it feels pleasant. I think the world’s highest score can be exceeded.”

––��– You carry the burden of expectations from your hometown, Miyagi. “Toward the disaster areas of the Tohoku earthquake, I carry these thoughts of ‘let’s take on new challenges!’ and ‘let’s go hand in hand from now on!’ And that overlaps also with skating. Because I have experienced the earthquake, I was able to overcome even during tough times. I want to produce results that bring encouragement to everyone.”

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ARTICLE: Hanyu resurrects Onmyoji for Olympics! “[Will] of course [aim to] defend title” (Partial)

8/10 05:05 Sanspo Page 3

- There is a reason for such confidence. Off-season. Hanyu continues to be in face of skating [in his university courses]. Ergonomics, Medicine, Ethics––he reached out in all directions seeking hints for [further] evolution. Sometimes applying his own jumps into mathematical expressions, analyzing their “moments”––the turning effects of forces. “I aim to be a skater whom, any way they slice it, [people would have to say], ‘Hanyu is just so good.’” The ambition to aim for the top of the podium drives the 22-year-old.

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ARTICLE: (Hanyu Q&A3) There was a lot on my mind at Sochi, but my direction is clear now.

8/10 05:32 Sports Hochi

(Skipped opening paragraph)

–––– Unlike in Sochi Olympics, you are in the position of being chased. “I don’t especially think I am in the position of being chased. Compared to Sochi, the competition for a medal is much fiercer. Everyone right now has their own attributes, and we encounter and clash as fellow [competitors], so it’s a lot of fun. My identity is as an all-rounder, with high quality in everything, and I would like to properly leverage my own weapons and fight.

–––– What is the difference in approach? “At Sochi it was a lot on my plate, but my own path [that I should take]––something like that––has become very clear now.

–––– What is the difference in approach? “Recently, I was looking at videos and articles of interviews before and after Sochi. ‘So that was what I was thinking back then’, ‘Oh, I was trying not to be bound by my past self” and so forth. These are all my own experience, so it’s quite advantageous after all.

–––– As for the 4Lz? (t/n: repeats Hanyu QA2 from Sanspo except for a little addition in bold) “I’m able to jump [4Lz] and practice is going fairly well, but I’m not considering it for now. [First] settling everything nicely with the current layout, attacking each [element] properly and completing it is what I want to do.”

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ARTICLE: (Hanyu Q&A2) Strategy of “exception” is “to dispense with unnecessary thoughts”

8/09 18:44 Sanspo

(Skipped opening paragraph)

Hanyu, who announced his programs for the Pyeongchang Olympic season, responded to questions from the press with a sunny expression.

–––– Both the SP and the FP are repeats from the past. Were there any doubts regarding your choices? “I may have been a little hesitant with the SP, but for the FP, I’ve thought to use it before last season started.”

–––– About bringing 4Lz into your program(s)... “I’m able to jump [4Lz] and practice is going fairly well, but I’m not considering it for now. I'll [first] settle everything nicely with the current layout.”

–––– Both SP and FP were programs with which you got the world’s highest scores. [Do you feel that] you must go beyond that? “I don’t feel too much pressure. [The programs] are extremely pleasant to skate to. Jumps, spins, steps––it is a program where I can skate like myself with all of these elements, and not have to think about unnecessary things.

–––– What is necessary in order to defend an Olympic victory? “The most important thing is to skate cleanly. If I am able to do that, the results will come. I want to power up.”

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📺 NEWS CLIPS (8/09 Evening Round)

8/09 17:49 FUJI Minna no News (cr. to yuzu_pino@twi)

- Reporter, “What is your forte?” Hanyu, “Everything.” at 2:37

8/09 18:48 TBS N Sta (cr. to yuzu_pino@twi) has Chopin footage from 2:14 onwards, SEIMEI before that, loud Brian laugh sandwiched in between.

8/09 18:12 EX J-Channel (cr. to yuzu_pino@twi)

- Hanyu: “Although I seemed to have debuted [being known for] jumps, originally my specialty was spins. When I was young, I trained with a great emphasis on skating. So, perhaps I can say with confidence that everything is my specialty. I want to be the kind of skater where people say "Hanyu is just so good" no matter what part [of my skills] they look at, even in isolation. In that sense, I take pride in that everything is my weapon.” (02:25)

8/09 16:59 NTV news every (cr. to yuzu_pino@twi)

- BO: “There will be some critiques about this decision. I know it’s the right decision. Because, again, that piece deserves to be at the Olympics.” (04:16)

- Hanyu speaks about the technical side to this program: [The current layout] is definitely several cuts above the layout at the time, so, well, if I properly deliver on the current layout with this program, 100% I should be able to exceed [that score] (slight laugh)––that’s what I really think. (04:33)

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This is a transcript of the “mixed zone style” Q&A. Probably 70% of the content has been covered in the SEIMEI announcement section below, but this gives a better sense of what was asked and what was answered.

ARTICLE: (Hanyu Q&A1) Determination and Challenge toward Reenactment. “To achieve performances that don’t make you think ‘again?’” (QA translated in full)

8/09 12:27 Daily Sports Online

–––– Your programs?

“SP is Chopin’s Ballade No.1, the same as I have skated during the summer ice shows. As for FP, I was thinking let’s do SEIMEI once more. The [decision] process was that I had decided that I wanted to reuse this program in the Olympic season ever since I was able to achieve great performances with SEIMEI in the 2015-16 season. I decided almost without any hesitation. I might have been a little hesitant about the SP, but as for the FP, I had decided right from the start, before I even started last season. I feel like I have warmed up for this season.”

–––– What are the new challenges?

“Doing three quads in the second half, so it’s a total of five. Actually, although I popped a first-half jump into a single at World Team Trophy back in April, I had gotten a sense for putting 3 quads into the second half, and I also gained confidence that you could only get after having succeeded in competition. I consulted with Brian, but for me, I felt like I could put 3 into the second half without any hesitation.”

–––– Apart from jumps, what were other things you had brushed up?

“What do I want to show? How do I want to perform this piece? How do I feel?––I’ve come to dig deeper [in these questions]. Ballade No 1 is for the third time, so after listening [to the music] countless of times, I’m in the stage of training where I’m dealing with how I want to express this piece, how I want to do the jumps, and so forth. Maybe you still think ‘this again?’ at the moment, but I want to achieve performances such that you don’t think so when you see them at competition.”

–––– August 9th (local time is 8th) will be six months before the Pyeongchang Olympics. What are your thoughts on the Olympics?

“Of course I have the desire to defend my title. When I utter words such as “defend title,” I think that there are some sort of bindings from the past, from having won the Sochi Olympics. But, my own sense is that exactly because there was the past, that I have come to practice this way right now. I was thinking I’d like to have it all work together right from the first half of the season, and so that’s how I trained.

The important thing now is to first be chosen as representative in a condition where I am healthy, without injury, and capable of bringing out my true abilities with the best effort possible. If I am chosen, I would like to do my best, and aim for gold.”

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ARTICLE: Hanyu’s Specialty 3A will be a “contingency plan just in case” (Full apart from opening para)

8/09 13:20 Daily Sports Online

(Skipping introduction paragraph)

Although it was the same music, the content was different. When he got the highest ever (at the time) free program score of 219.48 at the 2015 GPF, he did 4S and two 4T, for a total of 2 types and 3 times. But this time, he is planning to do 3 types and 5 quads in total, including 3 in the second half where the Base Value is multiplied by 1.1.

“What I currently have in mind is to jump the 4Lo and the 4S in the very beginning, followed by the 3F in the first half. Spins and steps. The first jump in the second half will be 4S3T combo. After that, 4T1Lo3S combination, and then 4T from a little steps. At the end of the second half, I’ll enter and exit a 3A combination with spread eagle, and in the very end, it’s okay if I do 3A for recovery, or 3Lz normally,” Hanyu explained as if reciting an incantation.

The big change from last season would be to reduce the number of 3A down to one, and increase the number of 4T up to two. Hanyu’s 3A has even been said to be the world’s most beautiful, and is a strong weapon that Hanyu himself has said he has deep sentiments towards.

Probably, the reason he decided to take it out nevertheless is that, as a contingency plan, there is nothing as reassuring as the 3A. For figure skating, there is a rule that the same type of jump may only be repeated once, and only two types of jumps may be repeated [in one program]. When skaters fail, they have to consider things like type of jump and number of rotations, making corrections while performing. Because Hanyu’s 3A garners many GOE points, even if he messes a quad up, he can make up and “recover” with this “quad-equivalent” jump.

Providing is preventing. Behind the challenge is risk management––assumption of various situations at each phase of training.

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ARTICLE: Hanyu on Full Gear toward Pyeongchang. Perfect SP (Partial)

8/09 10:09 Daily Sports Online (missed this little one, about the SP)

- “It’s a level of completion unthinkable at pre-season. At the runthrough of the SP “Ballade No 1″, after he landed the opening 4Lo, he also successfully landed in the second half the 3A, followed by the 4T combo. Although certainly he is familiar with the program, having had it for two seasons, the jump layout at the time was 4S, 4T3T, with a 3A in the second half. Even as he raised the difficulty by a lot, Hanyu landed all the jumps in the program and showed us a perfect performance. According to Hanyu, ‘I was thinking I’d like to have it all work together right from the first half of the season, and so that’s how I trained.’“

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📺 NEWS CLIP (SEIMEI announcement)

8/09 9:31 FUJI Tokudane (Interview already in articles below) - Clip of SEIMEI 4T-lo-3S, some choreo (cr. spread_wing0217@twi) - Clip of SEIMEI 4T3T, spins, etc (cr. anipooh1@twi)

8/09 7:58 FUJI Mezamashi - Video clip of SEIMEI 3A-2T into SE, 3A (cr. yuzu_pino@twi)

ARTICLES (SEIMEI announcement) (Partial)

8/09 10:29 Jiji (missed out a paragraph, bolded) - “[SEIMEI] practice was done in separate parts, to music. For quads, he landed the opening 4Lo and 4S, and landed three (including the 4T combo) cleanly in the second half as well. - “Together with the SP using Chopin’s Ballade No 1, a reenactment of two seasons ago when he got a combined 330.43 points. Hanyu stated, ‘How do I want to show, how do I want to express––I’ve come to dig deeper [than before]. I want to achieve performances that, when you see them in competition, don’t make you think, ‘again?’”

8/09 10:04 Sankei (some photos :D but no extra content) 8/09 10:15 NHK (another photo but no extra content) 8/09 7: 55 Asahi Shinbun (Interesting last paragraph added. Bolded) - “Riding upon the melody of Japanese flutes and taiko, Hanyu began to skate. He showed a born-again onmyoji as he easily landed 4T three-jump combo, 4S two-jump combo and more.” - “The reason to Hanyu’s choice is that ‘it is a program that is very much like himself no matter in the way of breathing, or jumps, or steps.’ And, when asked what his forte is, declared decisively, ‘Everything.’”

8/09 7:50 Nikkan Sports, 9:15 Nikkan Sports (Similar. New bolded.) - To Hanyu, [SEIMEI] is a program that “allows him to be himself, and skate comfortably.” - “Regarding concerns over a familiar program, Brian Orser who coaches Hanyu disagrees. ‘Not only is it a program that wows no matter who sees it, the choreography has also been updated. But, there is a need to raise the level.’ Hanyu too, ‘without any extra prompting, still wants to skate to it again.’”

8/09 9:00 Sankei - Around 80 people came from Japan to report on Media Day - First quad [in the LP performed today]––a quad loop––was landed, and adjustments has been smooth as well. - Hanyu: “desires to repeat his [Olympic] victory.”

8/09 9:06 Daily Sports Online - “Although he uses the same piece [with SEIMEI], Hanyu’s ‘consistently practicing at a high level’. And as he says, he plans to bring 3 quads into the second half of the program, for a total of 5 quads in his layout.” - “[Hanyu] expresses his determination to “first be chosen [to represent Japan in Olympics] in a condition that is healthy, without injury, and capable of bringing out his true abilities with the best effort possible. If [he] is chosen, he would like to aim firmly at the gold medal.”

Mako Hara from Nikkei (nikkei_haramako@twi) - [Hanyu] said clearly, “The difficulty is different, I will show a different performance.”

8/09 Daily Sports Online - Hanyu, firm and clearly: “Since the time when I achieved good performances in 15-16 season, I’ve decided that I wanted to skate to it in Olympic season. I decided without any hesitation.”

8/09 7:50 Sponichi Annex - BO: “Both jumps and skills are going up. It’ll become a high level program” displays confidence at performance that exceeds two seasons ago.

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ARTICLE: Hanyu is fully prepared for five quads: With half a year left, [Brian Orser] speaks about strategy and the field (Full trans)

8/09 Yomiuri Morning Post (Chiba) (cr. takarahako@twi)

I’m going into my sixth season as Yuzuru’s coach. He is naturally talented technique-wise. He jumps 3A’s and quads perfectly, as if he were superman. But he is never satisfied [with the status quo]. In order to bring good skates, in order to live up to expectations surrounding him, he continues to aim high with all his might. In that sense, I feel that he is a special existence.

During the three years after the Sochi Olympics, although there were two seasons where he wasn’t World Champion, he has grown exponentially. Thirsty for victory, wanting to improve, he has pushed forward in training. Having regained the world title after three seasons, there is no doubt that he has regained confidence that his past efforts were in the right path. It’s the best condition to be in, facing the Olympic season.

For the men’s, the age of however many types of quads being attempted left and right have come. This development is probably going to continue this season as well. During the off season, we have done many runthroughs, and worked hard to increase his stamina. That is in order to do five quads––one more compared to last year––for the free program. But, it is not just about the number of quads, we also hope you’ll pay attention to the high quality of the skating and the jumps.

Sochi Olympics was a one-on-one battle between Patrick Chan and Yuzuru, but this time more faces have surfaced to compete for medals. Beginning with Javier Fernandez who he trains with, youngsters such as Nathan Chen, Shoma Uno, and Boyang Jin have come to the fore. I am looking forward to the existence of rivals leading to even further growth from Yuzuru.

I know he is looked upon to repeat his win at the Olympics. He wants to meet every expectation, and is devoting his full effort towards it. In terms of pre-season condition, it’s been the best ever. There is still half a year, and I am looking forward to see how far he’ll grow. (fin)

#yuzuru hanyu #hanyu yuzuru #羽生結弦 #figure skating #2017

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siva3155 · 4 years

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Need to refer WordPress website: https://wordpress.org/news/category/releases/ 11. How to Secure WordPress? Security in WordPress is taken very seriously, but as with any other system there are potential security issues that may arise if some basic security precautions aren’t taken. You need to read “http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress” carefully to understand WordPress security. 12. Template Files List for development WordPress Theme? Here is the list of the Theme files recognized by WordPress. Of course, your Theme can contain any other stylesheets, images, or files. style.css: The main stylesheet. This must be included with your Theme, and it must contain the information header for your Theme. rtl.css: The rtl stylesheet. This will be included automatically if the website’s text direction is right-to-left. This can be generated using the RTLer plugin. index.php: The main template. If your Theme provides its own templates, index.php must be present. comments.php: The comments template. front-page.php: The front page template. home.php: The home page template, which is the front page by default. If you use a static front page this is the template for the page with the latest posts. single.php: The single post template. Used when a single post is queried. For this and all other query templates, index.php is used if the query template is not present. single-{post-type}.php The single post template used when a single post from a custom post type is queried. For example, single-book.php would be used for displaying single posts from the custom post type named “book”. index.php is used if the query template for the custom post type is not present. page.php: The page template. Used when an individual Page is queried. category.php: The category template. Used when a category is queried. tag.php: The tag template. Used when a tag is queried. taxonomy.php: The term template. Used when a term in a custom taxonomy is queried. author.php: The author template. Used when an author is queried. date.php: The date/time template. Used when a date or time is queried. Year, month, day, hour, minute, second. archive.php: The archive template. Used when a category, author, or date is queried. Note that this template will be overridden by category.php,author.php, and date.php for their respective query types. search.php: The search results template. Used when a search is performed. attachment.php: Attachment template. Used when viewing a single attachment. image.php: Image attachment template. Used when viewing a single image attachment. If not present, attachment.php will be used. 404.php: The 404 Not Found template. Used when WordPress cannot find a post or page that matches the query. 13. prefix of WordPress tables by default? By default, wp_ is the prefix 14. Plugin for Multi-language features? WPML Multilingual Plugin. URL: https://wpml.org/ 15. Alternative CMS of WordPress? Joomla Drupal Ghost Movable Type Silver Stripe 16. How is creating a site on wordpress.org different from wordpress.com? Most of the things are similar in both except the choices of themes and the usage of plugins. 17. Why wordpress.com is considered more secure than wordpress.org? WordPress.com is considered more secure than wordpress.org because they limit the themes and also does not allow installing plugin’s. However the security is more dependable on how the hosting company is hosting your website(wordpress.org) & also Define what are the steps they are taking to prevent the security problems. 18. Does de-activated plugins slow down a WordPress site? No, de-activated plugins cannot slow down the WordPress site. WordPress only loads the active plugins and ignores everything else. 19. In Define what case we cannot recommend WordPress to our client? We cannot recommend WordPress on following situation: If client is working on non-CMS base project If site wants complex or innovative e-commerce In case of enterprise intranet solution Sites requiring custom scripting solutions. 20. Explain what are the essential features you look for a theme? Theme selection differs according to the requirement, but an ideal theme would be something that would not restrict to use the number of pages, plugins or static homepage. 21. How Custom theme is different than Normal theme? Custom theme allows for SEO search, but with a SEO plugin available it would not make much difference to normal theme. One benefit using the Custom theme is that it allows to make the changes without going much into the coding part. 22. How you can create a static page with WordPress? To create a static page in wordpress, in the page section you have to upload a php files to the server in the theme folder, and then select that as your template. This allows you to add any page and look that you wanted for your blog and it will remain static. 23. Is there any other CMS better WordPress? WordPress is no doubt a good CMS, but Drupal and Joomla are among the best CMS you can work with. 24. Which is the best multi-lingual plugin for wordpress? Keeping all the limitations in mind, WPML would be the best multi-lingual plugin for wordpress . 25. Can you update your own content on the site? It depends on the type of the site or project, but yes one can update their own content on the site. 26. Define what are meta-tags? Meta-tags are keywords and description used to display website or page information. 27. What should one use for plugin development — custom post types or custom database tables? There is no specific preference for plugin development; it depends on Define what type of plugin’s one has to develop. Though few recommend custom post type, as it has few benefits comparison to custom database table. 28. Can you host WordPress using Amazon web services such as EC2, RDS, EBS etc? Yes, you can host using Amazon web services. 29. Is there any way to write series in WordPress? You can use organize series plugin to write series in wordpress. 30. Define what are the reasons why one should not hack WordPress core file? The best reason not to hack the core files is that Define whatever you might be doing has to be reworked as a patch. WORDPRESS Questions and Answers Pdf Download 31. Define what are the template tags in WordPress? A template tag is code that instructs WordPress to “do” or “get” something. Like in header.php we will use the tag bloginfo(‘name’) to get “Site Title” from wp-options table which is set in Setting > General at WordPress dashboard. The the_title() template tag is used to display the post title. wp_list_cats() is for display categories. get_header() for getting header. get_sidebar() for display the sidebar on page. get_footer() for get the footer content on page. 32. Define what are rules to follow in WordPress plugin development? Find a unique name Setup a prefix (related to your brand) Create the plugin’s folder Create sub-folders for PHP files, assets, and translations Create the main plugin file and fill in obligatory header information Create a readme.txt file Use proper constants and functions to detect paths to plugin files Create additional PHP files and include them inside the main one Create activation and deactivation functions Create an uninstall script 33. Define what are the steps you can take if your WordPress file is hacked? Install security plugin like WP security Re-install the latest version of WordPress Change password and user-ids for all your users Check your themes and plugins are up to date 34. In which cases you don’t see plugin menu? You can’t see your plugin menu when the blog is hosted on free wordpress.com as you cannot add plugin there. Also, if you do not have an account of an administrator level on your WordPress dashboard, it is not possible to see plugin. 35. Define what is the difference between the wp_title and the_title tags? wp_title() function is for use outside “The Loop” to display the title of a Page. the_title() on the other hand is used within “The Loop“. 36. Define what do next_posts_link() and previous_posts_link() do? Because post queries are usually sorted in reverse chronological order, next_posts_link() usually points to older entries (toward the end of the set) and previous_posts_link() usually points to newer entries (toward the beginning of the set). 37. How to create mailchimp or vertical response campaign for newsletter subscribers & link with WordPress ? First Create List & Campaign on mailchimp/ WordPress account . Then subscribe users from WordPress in mailchimp list by plugin or manual hard code webform. 38. Define what options are there to implement a multi language site ? WordPress has no bi/multi-language feature built in by default. The other road would be to extend the site with Add-ons like plugins and themes that have multi-language features built-in. 39. How can I stop WordPress from prompting me to enter FTP information when doing updates? If you edit your wp-config.php file you can preload these FTP settings as constants read by WordPress. Keep in mind, on a shared host, you should be mindful of possible security implications. 40. Define what’s the difference between site_url() and home_url()? The site_url() will always be the location where you can reach the site by tacking on /wp-admin on the end, while home_url() would not reliably be this location. The home_url() would be where you have set your homepage by setting General > Settings “Site Address (URL)” field. 41. Define what is the Difference Between Posts vs. Pages Posts vs. Pages Posts are timely vs. Pages are timeless. Posts are social vs. Pages are NOT. Posts can be categorized vs. Pages are hierarchical. Posts are included in RSS feed vs. Pages are not. Pages have custom template feature vs. Posts do not. 42. how to store the post title in variable? $page_title = get_the_title($post->post_parent); 43. How to Generates a random password of the specified length in WordPress? 44. How can we backup or import our WordPress content from admin panel? For import content from wordpress admin panel goes to WordPress admin -> Tools -> Import 45. Can wordPress use cookies? Yes, wordpress use cookies.WordPress uses cookies, or tiny pieces of information stored on your computer, to verify who you are. There are cookies for logged in users. 46. How to disable wordpress comment? Look in to dashboard under Options –> Discussion. There is a checkbox there for “allow people to post comments on the article” Try unchecking that. 47. how to insert the values in wordpress database.? insert query to use store the values in wordpress database. global $wpdb; $wpdb->insert($table_name,array(‘author_id’ =>$author_id,’author_name’ =>$author_name,’author_email’=>$author_email,’created_at’=>current_time (‘mysql’, 1)),array(‘%d’,’%s’,’%s’,’%s’)); 48. If we are hacked in wordpress but steps have to do for prevent it? The various steps have to do when you hacked:- Change passwords for all users, especially Administrators and Editors. Re-install the latest version of WordPress. Make sure all of your plugins and themes are up-to-date. Install security plugins like wp security for safe from hacked. 49. Define what is the special meaning of _sleep and _wakeup? _sleeps return the array of all variables than need to be saved, while _wakeup retrives them. 50. Why wordpress is better than blogger for blogging? Customization and Flexibility Hosting Opportunities To customize the tiny image that people see in their address bar when they visit your blog, upload a blavatar. The more tag allows you to display excerpts of your posts on your main posts page, instead of revealing the entire post. To expand the text editor and hide the modules on the publishing screen, enable Distraction Free Writing. Reproduce fully-functioning tweets — not just static screenshots of tweets — in posts, pages, and even comments with Twitter Embeds. You can customize your post and page slugs, which can be handy when you want to create a URL that’s easier to remember (it’s also a good way to make posts search-friendly). Note that if you change a post slug, the old link will still work. Reproduce fully-functioning tweets — not just static screenshots of tweets — in posts, pages, and even comments with Twitter Embeds. Read the full article

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winterolympicssports2018-blog · 6 years

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Metropolitan Police launch appeal for identities of 15 West Ham fans

Click here for More Olympics Updates https://www.winterolympian.com/metropolitan-police-launch-appeal-for-identities-of-15-west-ham-fans/

Metropolitan Police launch appeal for identities of 15 West Ham fans

The Metropolitan Police want to speak to 15 people involved in West Ham chaos

Ugly scenes marred West Ham’s Premier League defeat to Burnley on March 10

Five fans invaded the pitch while a coin was thrown at co-owner David Sullivan

Max Winters For Mailonline

Published: 16:58, 30 March 2018 | Updated: 16:58, 30 March 2018

The Metropolitan Police have called on the public to help them identify 15 individuals they wish to speak to in connection with ugly scenes that marred West Ham’s defeat to Burnley on March 10.

Burnley’s 3-0 win at the London Stadium was over-shadowed by chaotic scenes as five fans invaded the pitch to take out their frustration on the Hammers players.

Co-owner David Sullivan was also struck by a coin after a protest in front of the directors’ box turned nasty.

The Metropolitan Police have called on the public to help them identify 15 West Ham fans

In a statement released on Friday, the police called on the public to share any information that could help them identify 14 men and one woman who they wish to speak to.

They also released grainy images of the fans, all believed to be West Ham supporters, to help the public identify them.

West Ham are conducting an internal investigation into the incidents, which also saw captain Mark Noble clash with one supporter after he ran onto the pitch to vent his anger at the players.

Burnley’s 3-0 win at the London Stadium was marred by chaotic scenes at the London Stadium

Supporters hurled missiles towards the director’s box, and some struck David Sullivan

Five fans invaded the pitch and took out their frustration on the players during the heavy loss

West Ham have given further details of the enhanced security measures put in place for Saturday’s game against Southampton at the London Stadium.

There will be an increased police and security personnel presence this weekend while additional security gates have also been installed to limit fans’ movements around the stadium.

A statement from the club read: ‘Every ticket-holder is an ambassador for this club and we would like to remind those coming to London Stadium on Saturday of their responsibilities to themselves, their fellow supporters, the team and everyone associated with the club to support West Ham United in a passionate, respectful manner.

‘Lifetime bans were issued to individuals who crossed safety barriers to enter the field of play during the Burnley fixture, while a number of others were banned for life for violently throwing coins or objects with intent to injure or harm on the bridge directly in front of the directors’ box.’

Anyone with any information should contact the Public Order investigation team on 020 8246 9386.

Alternatively, contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or at crimestoppers-uk.org.

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thenewsrabbit-blog · 6 years

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WWE® Mixed Match Challenge™ Returns for a Second Season on Facebook Watch

Check out the latest post http://thenewsrabbit.com/wwe-mixed-match-challenge-returns-for-a-second-season-on-facebook-watch/

STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Facebook and WWE (NYSE: WWE) today announced that the in-ring series, Mixed Match Challenge™, will return for season 2, streaming live exclusively on Facebook Watch on Tuesday nights beginning September 18 at 10 p.m. ET. The series will be available in the U.S. and, for the first time, now stream live on Facebook Watch in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, Thailand and Vietnam. Fans can follow the Mixed Match Challenge Facebook Page to add episodes to their personal Watchlists.

New elements for season 2 include: 14 episodes, each 30 minutes in length; a round-robin elimination format; two matches in each show; and an interactive pre-show beginning at 9:50 p.m. ET. In addition, the season 2 finale will take place during WWE’s TLC pay-per-view event on Sunday, December 16.

“We’re excited to partner with WWE to bring back Mixed Match Challenge for a second season and introduce the series to fans in 10 new countries,” said Devi Mahadevia, Facebook North America Live Sports Programming Lead. “This season will build off the success from the first one, with fresh interactive elements designed to bring fans even closer to the action and their favorite Superstars.”

“We’re thrilled to expand our strategic partnership with Facebook, which reflects our innovative approach to content distribution and fan engagement,” said Jayar Donlan, WWE Executive Vice President, Advanced Media. “Season 2 of Mixed Match Challenge will continue delivering live action-packed, family friendly entertainment our passionate fans are accustomed to while offering more opportunities for our fans to engage with WWE on Facebook.”

Mixed Match Challenge Participants

Mixed Match Challenge season 2 is a round-robin mixed tag team tournament, where male and female Superstars from Raw and SmackDown Live team up to determine which combination of strength, skill, athleticism and experience reigns supreme.

Monday Night Raw

SmackDown Live

Alexa Bliss™ and Braun Strowman® AJ Styles® and Charlotte Flair® Alicia Fox® and Jinder Mahal™ The Miz® and Asuka™ Kevin Owens™ and Natalya® R-Truth® and Carmella™ Bayley™ and Finn Bálor® Jimmy Uso™ and Naomi® Bobby Lashley® and Sasha Banks® Rusev® and Lana®

Each season 2 episode will reflect a progressive approach to production, with elements optimized for mobile consumption and social interaction, including the ability for fans to engage with Superstars during the show. Fans will also have the opportunity to vote on different aspects that directly impact the action for all 14 episodes on Facebook Watch throughout the season.

The unique storylines for Mixed Match Challenge season 2 will continue between episodes across WWE’s Facebook Pages with short-form videos and social content. WWE will also promote and recap each episode across its extensive digital and social footprint, including on the Mixed Match Challenge Facebook Page.

Mixed Match Challenge season 1 generated more than 35 million views in the U.S. alone, and resulted in WWE Superstars The Miz and Asuka winning $100,000 for their team’s charity, Rescue Dogs Rock.

WWE is a powerhouse on social media with nearly 1 billion followers globally. WWE has nearly 500 million likes across all Facebook Pages and WWE’s main Facebook Page has more than 39 million likes. WWE Superstar John Cena® is the #1 most-followed active U.S. athlete on Facebook with more than 44 million likes.

About WWE

WWE, a publicly traded company (NYSE: WWE), is an integrated media organization and recognized leader in global entertainment. The company consists of a portfolio of businesses that create and deliver original content 52 weeks a year to a global audience. WWE is committed to family friendly entertainment on its television programming, pay-per-view, digital media and publishing platforms. WWE programming reaches more than 800 million homes worldwide in 24 languages. WWE Network, the first-ever 24/7 over-the-top premium network that includes all live pay-per-views, scheduled programming and a massive video-on-demand library, is currently available in more than 180 countries. The company is headquartered in Stamford, Conn., with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Dubai, Munich and Tokyo.

Additional information on WWE (NYSE: WWE) can be found at wwe.com and corporate.wwe.com. For information on our global activities, go to http://www.wwe.com/worldwide/.

About Facebook Watch

Facebook Watch is a place to discover and enjoy shows on Facebook. Home to a wide range of shows – from scripted comedy and drama, to competition and reality series, to individual creators and live sports – Facebook Watch is a video platform where episodic content, community and conversation come together. This is a personalized viewing experience, where you can discover new series based on what your friends are watching, and catch up on the shows you follow. Facebook Watch is available for free on mobile apps across Apple and Android, on desktop, laptop and on TV apps listed here: https://videoapp.fb.com/.

Trademarks: All WWE programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, trademarks, logos and copyrights are the exclusive property of WWE and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks relating to: WWE Network; major distribution agreements; our need to continue to develop creative and entertaining programs and events; a decline in the popularity of our brand of sports entertainment; the continued importance of key performers and the services of Vincent K. McMahon; possible adverse changes in the regulatory atmosphere and related private sector initiatives; the highly competitive, rapidly changing and increasingly fragmented nature of the markets in which we operate and greater financial resources or marketplace presence of many of our competitors; uncertainties associated with international markets; our difficulty or inability to promote and conduct our live events and/or other businesses if we do not comply with applicable regulations; our dependence on our intellectual property rights, our need to protect those rights, and the risks of our infringement of others’ intellectual property rights; the complexity of our rights agreements across distribution mechanisms and geographical areas; potential substantial liability in the event of accidents or injuries occurring during our physically demanding events including, without limitation, claims relating to CTE; large public events as well as travel to and from such events; our feature film business; our expansion into new or complementary businesses and/or strategic investments; our computer systems and online operations; a possible decline in general economic conditions and disruption in financial markets; our accounts receivable; our revolving credit facility; litigation; our potential failure to meet market expectations for our financial performance, which could adversely affect our stock; Vincent K. McMahon exercising control over our affairs, and his interests may conflict with the holders of our Class A common stock; a substantial number of shares which are eligible for sale by the McMahons and the sale, or the perception of possible sales, of those shares could lower our stock price; and the relatively small public “float” of our Class A common stock. In addition, our dividend is dependent on a number of factors, including, among other things, our liquidity and cash flow, strategic plan (including alternative uses of capital), our financial results and condition, contractual and legal restrictions on the payment of dividends (including under our revolving credit facility), general economic and competitive conditions and such other factors as our Board of Directors may consider relevant. Forward-looking statements made by the Company speak only as of the date made, are subject to change without any obligation on the part of the Company to update or revise them, and undue reliance should not be placed on these statements.

#Business #News #Science & Technology

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tkmedia · 3 years

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2021 NBA free agency: 45 players who could be available, from Chris Paul to T.J. McConnell

Looking for an All-Star caliber vet?

RFAs of intrigue

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pauldeckerus · 6 years

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Ethical Exif (EE) for Wildlife Photos

One of my least favorite shots from Sani lodge now serves as a constant reminder of poor practice to me. This subject was one of many subjects collected by Tropical Herping working on a photographic field manual of Herps in Ecuador. This parrot snake (Leptophis ahaetulla) was played with.

It was grabbed by the tail and gently swirled in circles. Then it was gently batted about the head, to engage in defensive gaping (an open-mouthed threat display). This occurs naturally to a certain extent, but with more stress, the defensive gape is held for longer.

There were more than 30 different individuals, each experiencing greater or lesser amounts of abuse, and all held in sub-standard conditions over the course of days. Held in plastic or cloth bags, they were stressed out, mishandled, at least one died to my knowledge, and at the end, they were translocated beyond where they were caught.

Although I wasn’t involved in the project (the guidebook) or capture, I still photographed some of the species and offered my logistical help to them on where they could find other species. It’s one of those unfortunate incidents which was an eye-opener for me, and really forced me to look at my own practices and question them, even small actions and arthropod subjects. They may appear small or insignificant, but it speaks to an overall respect for nature, and it can be a slippery slope into poorer and poorer practice.

The tacit approval I gave amounted to an endorsement and I consider myself as much to blame as those doing the collecting and abuse. These practices are rife within macrophotography, and one should not expect experience, professionalism or status to be an indicator of a person’s ethical standards. Always question whether something needs to be done and if it doesn’t, don’t support it and if it continues, speak up. These experiences helped mold and form my concept of Ethical Exif.

The respect with which we treat wildlife – whether it is a charismatic and emblematic species like the Jaguar, the common or under-appreciated backyard denizens, or even vilified pest species – our treatment is a reflection of us and our values. Nature, though wild, is a looking glass through which we can gaze upon our own humanity, a mirror to our human nature.

Ethics is a contentious and complicated subject, full of pitfalls and paradoxes, logical fallacies and fabrications. The ‘right’ course of action is often mutable, subject to situation and current social mores which not only differ from country to country but from one year to the next with the emergence or reversal of scientific data.

My stance on the matter, in brief, is transparency. Allow anyone viewing the photo to determine for themselves whether the ‘ethical specs’ of the photo align with their own personal standards by detailing the ‘behind the scenes’ treatment of the subject.

The symbols displayed below, or any variant thereof constitutes what I am calling “Ethical Exif” or EE. While EXIF information denotes the technical details of a photograph (aperture, shutter, ISO, flash fire, lens used, etc…) and is present as metadata embedded in the photo, the EE is meant to clarify the ethical standards used in the taking of the photo.

The elements which I have identified as being both relevant and important are as follows:

1. 🄷: Health injury/stress levels (scale 1-9 with ☠, the death of subject, substituting for 10)

2. 📷: in situ

3. 🖐: Subject Manipulation (either in the field or in a studio) *Updated 03/07/2018 to replace 📸)*

4. ⏳: time in captivity

5. 👣: Translocation (Capture, transport, and release of a subject from one location to another)

6. 🎨: Use of cloning or extensive post-processing

7. ↺: Image rotation

8. : Playback (Used primarily in bird photography, the science is currently inconclusive as to the long-term impacts on behaviour)

The health scale uses the following criteria to determine the numerical 🄷 value:

🄷1: Subject is unaware of the photographer’s presence, engages in normal, undisturbed activity.

🄷2: Subject is aware of photographer’s presence but either ignores, or is habituated to photographer’s presence, and engages in normal behavior.

🄷3: Subject is aware of photographer’s presence and modifies its behavior as a result (no immediate physical harm).

🄷4: Photographer engages with the subject Eg. Manipulation of position, translocation to a studio environment, etc. but with no physical evidence of damage to the subject.

🄷5: Defensive stress response Eg. Striking/defensive gaping

🄷6: Physiological response affecting an individual’s short-term loss of fitness Eg. vomiting, tonic immobility.

🄷7: Physiological response affecting an individual’s medium-term loss of fitness Eg. Thanatosis (loss of limbs or digits), physical damage (recoverable)

🄷8: Immediate catatonia or unresponsiveness with manipulation, long-term loss of fitness – Revival and partial recovery aftercare and stress-free environment are provided.

🄷9: Immediate unresponsiveness with manipulation, partial revival but with permanent loss of fitness.

☠: Death of subject

The Rationale

Though one might perhaps strive for unobtrusiveness with a watermark, as is traditionally the case with signature identifiers, the purpose of EE is to convey information. Therefore it should be applied in a consistent, predictable and clear manner. To that end, I have opted to standardize the watermark’s position (top left), opacity (25), Scale (25), Colour (White or Black, depending on the background), and Font (Century).

Leaf-mimicking katydid from Mindo cloud forest, Ecuador. Copyright Paul Bertner 2017.

EE takes the form of a watermark, because despite being intrusive, the watermark ensures that the message will remain intact regardless of the platform, and unlike a caption, which can become divorced from its image through sharing, and image copying, the watermark continues to provide some indication of methods of production, as well as provenance.

Furthermore, it will come as no surprise that the current means of ingesting media content (Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) encourages clicking without thinking. This means that captions often go unread and that a photo is evaluated based solely on its aesthetic, rather than its message. EE, therefore, attempts to bridge this gap and imbue the image with information related to its creation. Ultimately, the watermark is meant to remove the obstacle and the excuse of ignorance.

This EE has already evolved within a short period of time through several iterations. The story of the origin of Ethical Exif can be read in this 2017 Facebook post. The use of Emojis is useful to:

a. Enable a near universal understanding or inference of most of the symbols and their meaning where language may be a barrier

b. allow a shorthand notation where space is limited

c. Allow multi-platform explanation eg. Twitter (limited to 140 characters)

d. Save time for the photographer when applying EE to their photos

This watermarked EE will be found on all of my most recent photos, with further expansion and explanation (when 🄷 value exceeds 🄷3) to be found within the caption, like the parrot snake photo introducing this section.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to adopt this standard with respect to your own photography.

About the author: Paul Bertner is a wildlife photographer based in British Columbia, Canada. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can find more of his work and writing on his blog, portfolio, Facebook, and Flickr. This article was also published here.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2018/07/16/ethical-exif-ee-for-wildlife-photos/

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