#your interest are fluid but your identity is rooted in something beyond them. Right | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jungkookiebus · 4 years

Text

Hellblazer 2.5 | jjk

Genre: demon!au Pairing: demon!Jungkook x FemConstantine!reader Word Count: 2.6k Rating: PG Summary: Now that the true identity of the new Prince of Hell has been revealed to you, you are left back on Earth, wandering aimlessly through life hungry for another taste of him while being repulsed by his memory. You find your health failing and in one last attempt for help, you drag yourself to the Vatican only to find yourself falling deeper into the darkness surrounding you. Ever so slowly, you’re slipping towards a death you didn’t think would come so soon. Author’s Note: I hope you guys still find this interesting. I guess this can be seen as “filler” to progress their relationship, but I find it really starts to expose true feelings here. More to come!

Sluggish. Languorous. Torpid. Stagnant. Those four words and more were how you would describe your life right now. It had been three months since your last encounter with him. You had woken up in your bed just as before; sore and almost lifeless. Before, he haunted your dreams. Now, he was all you wanted and your worst nightmare. You felt pushed and pulled in two directions.

Lost.

Utterly lost.

You were seeing him more and more, standing under the massive altar in the Basilica, sitting at the same table at the coffee shop, just around the corner in the bookstore, and basking in the sun at Trevi Fountain. The few people you knew, because you didn’t have any friends, were noticing your declining health. You became withdrawn and idle. Just living each day, sometimes eating, getting out of bed when needed, and spending less time outdoors as the months rolled on.

Even the Pope came to see you, worried about your health. At first, you felt good knowing someone cared but then you reminded yourself he only liked you for information. His visit didn’t go quite as he had planned when the thought dawned on you and you cursed at him, demanding he get the fuck out of your house.

You had never planned on staying in Rome this long. Yes, it was the hub of your line of work, but you didn’t want to be here, yet you felt tied. You felt as if you left then you’d never see him again, but then again, you didn’t want to see him. Not really.

You were starving, but not for food. If you had a soul it would probably yearn. This was a different kind of pain; something deeply rooted into your heart. Your body was lacking something, and you weren’t sure what.

When you were ready to throw yourself off the nearest cliff, you trudged reluctantly in the direction of the Vatican. Your limbs felt like they were filled with sand. People gave you strange looks as they passed. You knew you hadn’t brushed your hair in a hot second nor had you really been concerned about your personal well-being either. The closer you got, the worse you felt. You found yourself stopping and leaning against a wall more than once trying to catch your breath. It felt as if you had been running when you could barely walk. By the time you got to the Vatican Obelisk, you were stumbling, struggling to stay upright. A Swiss guard recognized you despite your unkempt appearance and rushed over immediately, calling out for assistance.

The bright summer sun, a flash of pink, and what you had thought was him were the last things you saw before you succumbed to that falling feeling. Peace. Finally, you were able to rest.

When you awoke again, your limbs were just as heavy if not heavier. You heard the faint beep of a machine and the whir of air conditioning, but beyond that was silent. Your eyelids felt as if they had weights on them as you struggled to open them. Finally, you were able to peer into the semi-darkness. Blinking a few times, you slowly scanned the room. It was very nicely decorated, with a fireplace, and your guess was confirmed when you saw the framed picture of the Virgin Mary. An IV stand was next to you and you followed the tube of fluids to your arm. Wiggling your fingers a little, you made sure you weren’t paralyzed for some reason. As if by divine intervention, a nurse came scooting in backwards with a cart. You watched as she blissfully hummed and then turned towards you, jumping back in surprise as you looked at her.

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, holding her hand over her heart. She moved closer to the bed, first looking at the machines, and then back at you. “Hey, are you okay?”

You nodded. Your throat was so dry you didn’t think you’d be able to say anything.

“Let me get you some water!”

She turned away again and to a pitcher that was sitting on a table, filled a glass of water, and made her way back to you. She held the glass to your lips as she held a cloth under your chin. You drank gratefully and sighed as the cool water soothed your throat.

“What happened?” you finally asked once you were able to speak properly.

“The guards saw you stumbling around outside. You collapsed right in a crowd of people!” She threw her hands up excitedly as she recounted the story to you. The Pope had insisted you stay in the ”house of the Lord” in case what was happening to you was “demonic” in nature.

He knew better.

“How long?”

“Oh, let’s see,” she paused. “About a week and a few days now.”

No wonder you felt as if your muscles hadn’t been used in a million years. You still felt just as bad, if not worse than before. Before you knew it, you were slipping slowly. You wanted to stay awake, you feared falling asleep again, but your body was giving up. Slowly, darkness overtook you.

When you awoke again, you felt as if you couldn’t breathe. You half expected a paralysis demon to be perched atop you when you were finally able to open your eyes.

The room you were in was the same, but this time there were more machines. You looked down to see that your hair had grown a considerable amount. Panic washed through your body and you heard the rapid beat of the machine as your heart sped. A small alarm sounded as your blood pressure rose. You were being thrown headlong into a full blown panic attack. The same nurse as before came rushing into the room and was at your side, checking the readout on the machine, and then reached into a small refrigerator for a glass bottle. She pulled the cap off a syringe, pulled the liquid into it, and then pushed it into your IV line. Your body immediately relaxed. She held her hand on your forehead as she grabbed her stethoscope. After she determined that you were okay, she laid a hand over yours.

“He wants to talk to you. I’ll be right back.”

What? You had just woken up after god knows how long and she’s worried about someone wanting to talk to you? You were so thirsty.

The Pope came rushing through the door, dressed casually, and looking both distressed and surprised.

“____!” he exclaimed as he rushed to your bedside. “It’s been months.”

Months? Surely…not?

He turned his head to where you couldn’t see his face, but you saw the look of surprise on the nurse’s face as she nodded and then left the room. He turned back to you; concern written in his features.

“____,” he began again, as he pulled a chair to your bedside. “When did you meet him?”

Your brows knitted. You had already told him when you met the new Prince of Hell.

“The Archangel. God’s general.”

Your blood ran cold. How did he know?

“You have the sigil,” he said reaching out just a little, “behind your ear.”

For fuck’s sake. You were getting peed on by everybody in Hell. You wet your lips a little. Or tried to. Realizing that your mouth was probably dryer dirt, he grabbed the pitcher. Funny, one of your last memories was almost this exact same situation months ago. Once again, you were fumbling with your voice, having not used it for some time. He sat patiently as your mouth moved robotically. You were frustrated that you couldn’t just spit it out and you felt helpless as you lay there with your overly heavy limbs.

“He fell,” you finally croaked.

“What?” He didn’t believe you.

“The demons. In Rome.”

You saw him piecing things together with your minimal words. He had warned you that things were happening in Rome.

“You mean…,” he trailed off in disbelief.

“War.”

It wasn’t a secret that there was a war in Heaven before when Lucifer fell. You had met a few demons that fell with him, recounting the day in vivid detail to you. Now there was going to be another one. God’s greatest ally had betrayed him.

“But then…” He glanced towards the spot behind your ear. “Those are meant for protection.”

You half shrugged. You weren’t about to admit to him what had happened…twice.

“Get your rest, _____.” He patted the back of your hand, stood, and left from the room without so much as a backwards glance.

The Pope stood before the statue of the Archangel taking down Lucifer with his golden spear. His heart was tight in his chest as he prayed.

“Dear God,” he was at a loss for words as he gazed above him. His voice echoed in the cavernous expanse.

A low, menacing laugh filled the space as soon as his voice died out. The darkness suppressed around him and fear filled his heart. He clutched to the rosary in his hand as he turned around. The laugh seemed to be coming from every direction, bouncing off the walls, and doubling back in on itself. This type of darkness was one that he felt deep inside of him.

“There’s no point in that,” he heard whispered amongst the laughs that were slowly dying out.

Out of the darkness and through the pews of one of the service areas walked a man, dressed darkly, and even darker than the murkiness around him. The candles that had been lit on the altar went out one by one. A heat filled the basilica that had him sweating under his night robes. A smell so pungent that he recoiled filled his nose and it was soon replaced by the sickly sweet smell of roses.

He emerged into the dimly lit expanse of the area before the main altar and he was able to see his glowing eyes and pale skin contrasting against his black suit. His hands were clasped behind him as he walked slowly. His footsteps didn’t make a sound. His smile was malevolent. As he approached closer and closer, he began to faintly smell burnt wood. By the time he was within feet of him, it was as if someone had snuffed out the fire in a fireplace. The smoky smell filled the area and assaulted his senses. A usually comforting scent was now going to be reminiscent of this new fear he felt.

“Where is she?” he asked, leaning in close.

He saw the sigil on his lapel as it caught the light.

“A-are you…?” he stammered.

“You know exactly who I am. Now, answer my question, Your Holiness.”

He stared into his dark eyes and saw nothing there. Only emptiness.

“I’m not giving her to you.” He held onto his rosary tighter as he willed himself to be brave in the face of evil.

His smile spread, but then suddenly turned down at the corners. He could see where he was once beautiful, but now he was beautiful in a terrible way.

“If you want her to live, you will.”

He was shaking as he held out the hand that clutched the rosary. The Prince looked down at it in disgust before speaking again.

“Your trinkets won’t do anything to me.”

“Why do you want her?”

“She belongs to me.”

“Your sigil is meant to protect. What are you doing to her?”

He sighed as he brought his hands in front of him, intertwining his fingers and holding them to his lips. The Pope saw the tattoos that you had mentioned, and it further confirmed his fears.

“The real question is, what are you doing to her?”

He suddenly became defensive in the face of the Prince.

“I have been protecting her and keeping her alive for these last few months.”

“Have you, though?”

“Quit talking in circles, demon!” He was red faced now, utterly angry. He was angry that a Prince of Hell was here on hallowed ground and he was angry that he seemed to think he had some claim over you.

“This space you feel like you’ve created for her to heal is killing her,” he said simply.

You had no soul. Heaven couldn’t protect you and now that it was weaker, they would be no closer to doing so.

“The sigil…”

“She’s dying on holy ground. If I take her, she won’t.”

The Pope was torn. What he said made sense, but what if he were lying? He had no reason to tell the truth. But why would he want you?

He slowly removed the brooch from his lapel and suspended it in the air between them, but the Pope refused to reach out and take it.

“I promise you protection. On my word.”

“I don’t make deals with devils,” he said snidely.

“It’s in your best interest to do that now. There’s going to be a war soon and Earth will suffer just as many consequences. You’ll want to find yourself on the right side.”

The Pope walked briskly down the carpeted hallway with the Prince walking closely behind. None of the guards were around as they turned corners and he knew it was his doing. When they reached the door to your room, he looked back at him tentatively. He seemed eager for him to open the door. He pushed it open, stepping inside, and to the side. He watched closely as he crossed the room and to your bedside. You were asleep, laid back amongst the pillows, and looking as frail and drawn as ever.

“How could you let this go on for this long?” he asked as he undid the IV at your arm.

The Pope was frozen to the spot as he watched him quickly detach you from any and all machines, alarms going off left and right. The nurse came running down the hall in her robe. He held out his arm in front of her as she crossed the threshold and froze to watch the scene in front of her.

He was lifting you from the bed gingerly. You had lost so much weight that you were very easy to carry. He turned with you in his arms, curled against his chest, and the Pope saw a shadow of who he once was. His expression was soft, yet worried, giving him a glance at the Archangel he used to pray to.

“You have my protection,” he said before seeming to disappear into thin air. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, leaving the Pope and nurse dumbfounded.

The next time you awoke, you felt lighter. Your breathing came easier and your mouth didn’t feel as if it were on fire. The pain in your head was starting to subside and overall, you felt as if you might survive whatever was wrong with you. You moved your fingers over the sheets beneath you and felt an all too familiar silkiness. Your heart raced with both fear and some unfound excitement. Slowly, you opened your eyes and you were met with the same grey stillness of the bedroom that haunted your dreams. You were afraid to move but you desperately needed to see if you imagined the presence behind you. You quietly and gently as possible turned your head.

He looked so peaceful.

Fast asleep, mouth slightly agape, he laid beside you, hand rested on the pillow. He had saved your life, but that was only because he had marked you. You hadn’t asked for this, but you were starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe, it was what you wanted all along.

#bangtanarmynet #btswriterscollective #ficswithluv #demon!au #demon!jungkook #jungkook x reader #reader insert #femconstantine!reader #constantine!au #constantine x bts crossover #bts #hellblazer #hellblazer 2.5 #nonidol!au

570 notes · View notes

punkrockpolitix · 4 years

Text

Strap in for an Ugly Ride

by Mitch Maley — This week, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden did the most Joe Biden thing left to do in announcing that centrist NeoLiberal Senator Kamala Harris would be his running mate. The establishment left swooned and suburban liberals rejoiced, while the lunatic right clutched their collective pearls at such a “radical” choice. Meanwhile, the rest of us yawned as the stage was set for an absurd, bizarro world, alternative-reality election that will take place in the midst of the most unstable American society in modern history.

The chaos created by the 45th President of the United States has a way of wearing the reasonable mind rather thin. After all, who aside from the angry mobs of nativists does not long for a return to the normalcy of the early aughts when all we had to worry about was forever wars in the Middle East, an infinitely-expanding wealth gap, 50 million Americans without healthcare, and trade policies that had hollowed out the middle class. Sure, the children of white collar elites would continue to thrive (so long as they could avoid pill mills and heroin needles). Meanwhile, the offspring of former factory workers who couldn't afford an increasingly cost-prohibitive college education would toil in Amazon warehouses with few benefits and no shot at the kind of modest defined-benefit pensions that had allowed their parents to enjoy some modicum of prosperity in their twilight years and increasingly gloomier chances of even enjoying the social security payments that have kept millions more from abject poverty once their working days were behind them, but that was certainly a little easier to swallow than 2020 has thus far been.

Sure, automation had already begun eating away at more jobs than even offshoring had, we'd done nothing to address the climate crisis beyond symbolic, feel-good policies that avoided pissing off the wrong special interests, and the only amber waves of economic growth in the past 30 years had been driven by engineered bubbles. So what? Wall Street was happy (the stock market tripled under Obama) even if the big party was being floated by artificially-cheap credit, and besides, we could all go to sleep each night relatively certain that we wouldn't face a zombie apocalypse type situation on any given morning which is more than you can say about our current situation.

But let's not forget where things had gotten by 2016 when populist spasms on both sides of the ideological spectrum saw our traditional two party-driven political process totally upended. Harnessing the power of the internet had been largely responsible for President Obama successfully splintering the Democratic establishment in 2008, but let's not over-romanticize the grass or the roots. Obama was the product of an inter-party schism that saw a large number of career Dems break from the Clinton dynasty and its requirement for complete fealty to the party's grudge-bearing first family.

Obama was not an anomaly. He was Wall Street approved, Bilderberg-blessed and mainstream media anointed because, regardless of what others projected upon him, he was a typical center-right Dem who wouldn't rock any of those boats. Yes, the right labeled him a dangerously-radical liberal, but those who paid attention in the 2008 primary will recall that the actual semi-progressive candidate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, had to be actively cropped out of the debates in order for that narrative to take hold. After all, it wouldn't do to have Kucinich onstage talking about Medicare for All and explaining how to get out of Iraq tomorrow any more than it would do for Ron Paul to be onstage in Republican debates calling out the NeoCon likes of Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Under Obama, the war machine kept rolling, taxes remained at historic lows, deportations skyrocketed and we expanded warrantless surveillance and other Big Brother police state tactics, including sending "surplus" tanks and other military armament to your local police forces. In other words, most of the things liberals hated most about the Bush era continued only they didn't hate them as much anymore. That said, institutional norms remained in place, our allies were quite happy and Americans, or at least those who weren't driven mad by the thought of someone with brown skin holding the highest public office, could hold their heads high knowing that they had an intelligent and articulate statesman at the helm who wouldn't embarrass them with Bush's tangled English or Clinton's infidelities. He was a family man who loved his wife and children and treated even his most vile-mouthed opponents with the courtesies of polite society. Yes, it's easy to grow nostalgic for such normalcy in the age of Trump.

However, years of bailing out Wall Street banksters who'd crashed the economy, allowing hedge fund managers to pay lower tax rates than teachers and failed companies to hand out huge bonuses often paid for by the taxpayers themselves took its toll. Millions of Americans who'd seen their homes foreclosed upon were scolded for buying into the worthless products being pushed by those same banksters—reverse mortgages, sub-prime interest-only loans, etc.—and lectured about "personal responsibility" and the "moral hazard" of bailing them out, even as those same fat cats who'd been rescued themselves swooped in to buy up all of those empty houses for cheaply-borrowed pennies on the dollars in order to make money hand over fist renting them back to the creditless schmoes who'd been kicked to the curb. It turns out a lot of people were fed up.

Enter Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump, two men, as different as can be, who nonetheless each managed to harness enough of the sometimes dangerous power of populist anger to finally upset the apple cart that had been two-party politics. While their platforms were radically different, the essential nature of their messaging was the same: you're getting screwed and have been for a long time. Their message was particularly well-received by working-class whites in formerly industrial states who'd been ignored by both parties for decades, beyond rhetoric from the right about it being the fault of illegal immigrants and rhetoric from the left about educational programs that would retrain the working class for the jobs of tomorrow. Regardless of whether they believed in or even understood the solutions either candidate was offering didn't matter so much as someone at last acknowledging that the reality they'd been experiencing actually existed.

The Clinton machine, with the DNC's foot on the scale and the MSM distorting perception, was able to (barely) keep Sanders at bay. Meanwhile, the GOP may have been able to do the same had it not been for the sheer giddiness of legacy media outlets like WAPO, the New York Times, MSNBC and CNN for what they saw as the death of the modern Republican party should it actually nominate a crass, foul-mouthed blowhard of a third-rate reality TV star (who'd until recently been a Democrat) for President. Make no mistake, Clinton's people desperately wanted to take on Trump, believing it amounted to not only an easy win, but a path toward retaking Congress, despite having been gerrymandered out of contention (for those of you who came to politics late, the GOP's electoral success in 2010, saw them take over a majority of state legislatures just ahead of the once-every-decade reapportionment that follows a census, allowing the party to gerrymander Congressional districts to such a degree that Democrats could not gain ground, despite regularly receiving millions more total Congressional votes than Republicans each cycle).

Everyone inside the beltway was caught sleeping in 2016. The Republican establishment never saw Trump coming and didn't know what to do with him when he arrived. Remember how sad Jeb Bush seemed in the debates? Remember how ineffective Marco Rubio was when he tried to sink to Trump's name calling? By the same token, the Democrats were so tone-deaf as to who Bernie was appealing to (far more aging New Dealers and working-class labor Democrats than the teen radicals they imagined) that they actually thought making trans-bathroom laws a wedge issue would drive turnout for their side. Imagine living in Michigan and working the counter at a Dollar General because the stamping factory you used to work at moved to Mexico, wondering whether your kid's rehab from Oxycodone would finally stick this time while being told that the real fight to be won was about where the gender fluid would take a leak.

That's not to say that trans rights aren't a worthy issue, so much as to point out how out of touch you would have had to have been to think it was a winning one in that moment of time. And if you think there was something more altruistic behind it, ask yourself how much energy has been expanded by the party on the same subject since. Like abortion-related ballot referendums used by Republicans to drive evangelicals to the polls, out-of-touch Beltway Dems thought that identity politics was the path to uniting the left-wing of their party and getting the Bernie crowd to turnout for Hillary, even after the DNC got caught smoothing her path to victory. After all, the donor class Dems never mind looking woke, especially if it prevents them from having to get behind things like a living minimum wage that might actually mean less coins falling into their coffers. And that my friends is what created the relatively small yet curious "I voted for Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general" demographic, not sexism, spite or misogyny.

Fast-forward to 2020 and Bernie is finally poised to emerge as the resistance candidate. Despite the MSM again selling alternative facts that kept explaining away his success, his path to the nomination looked inevitable until the Democratic establishment again intervened, this time with Obama in the role of Clintonesque king maker, convincing moderate establishment favorites Pete Buttiegeg and Amy Klobuchar to take one for the team ahead of Super Tuesday so that a path could be cleared for a sputtering Biden campaign to claim the nomination. For his part, Biden's 40-year record is as right of center as a Democrat can be without going full Joe Lieberman, so the remaining question was how not to repeat 2016 in alienating so much of the left-wing as to ensure Trump another four years.

Then, like a gift from the political gods, Trump began shooting himself in the foot so frequently in his responses to the pandemic and civil unrest that his approval rating—which has never even hit 50 percent even once during his presidency (not surprising considering he won the White House with a smaller share of the vote than either Romney or John Kerry managed in losing)—sunk to a pathetic 35 percent, convincing the NeoLiberal bosses that it was no longer necessary to kiss any rings on the far left. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and even Tulsi Gabbard and AOC had already bent a knee to Uncle Joe, imploring their supporters to vote blue no matter who, so why not instead go after the moderate Republicans and Bush-era Never Trumpers whose ideology make the Democratic donor class feel much more comfortable than the progressive left’s anyway?

Enter Kamala Harris, who, to the Democratic donor class at least, signals nothing less than a female Barack Obama. And they’re not exactly wrong in that she’s a highly-articulate, ideologically-flexible politician capable of putting a friendly, progressive veneer on the modern NeoLiberal platform. That’s probably why the left-leaning corporate media outlets tried so hard to give her a push in the primary, even though voters simply didn’t find her to be a compelling candidate. Despite a healthy fundraising machine and the focused attention of MSNBC and CNN, Harris didn’t even make it to Iowa, dropping out ahead of what surely would have been a bottom tier finish in her home state of California. In that sense, it’s hard to see what she brings to the ticket in terms of electoral success. Fortunately, she won’t have to deliver her home state, but while much has been made of the fact that she’s the first woman of color to be on a major party ticket, it’s worth noting that there’s little to suggest she’ll help turn out the African American vote as most polls had her fourth of fifth even among black voters, who preferred Biden, Warren and even Sanders over the Senator from California.

As long as we’re on the subject of Harris’s race, however, it’s worth noting that the we're-not-racist right immediately went down the rabbit hole with birther conspiracies disgustingly-similar to those used against Obama that, within moments of the announcement, were used to question her eligibility to ascend to the presidency and fear monger that it was all a plan to install Nancy Pelosi when an aging Biden stepped down soon after being elected. Harris was born in the United States and, furthermore, born to two U.S. citizens. Her eligibility shouldn’t be in question to anyone who’s taken a junior high civics class, yet from what we’ve seen already, I’m sure it won’t be long until someone asks to see her birth certificate.

That said, despite the RNC's painting Harris as the most radical choice possible, her politics are no more progressive than Biden's, as evidenced by the two articles in the Wall Street Journal about Wall Street “breathing a sigh of relief” at her selection. In fact, one of the audition rounds for the veepstakes included hosting a Biden fundraiser and insiders have suggested that it was deep-pocketed Obama donors and not Uncle Joe himself who put her over the top. In Harris, the NeoLiberal establishment has all but cordoned off the progressive wing of the party, perhaps for a decade to come. Like Obama, she allows them to market a progressive package to make affluent suburban liberals feel good without making Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Tech, or the military industrial complex the least bit nervous. In fact, in a communication to investors, Goldman Sachs essentially said that even if it means the Trump tax cuts go away, the stability and predictability of a Biden administration would be at least as good for the 1 percent's bottom line.

To hear the Trump campaign tell it, however, Biden's selection of Harris is nothing less than a signal that, in his cognitive decline, Sleepy Joe has acquiesced to becoming nothing more than a puppet for far left radicals like Bernie, AOC and the rest of The Squad. In their narrative, if elected, he’d be doing the bidding of Antifa, while doing away with everything from God and religion to guns and even the suburbs, and the dangerously radical Harris is only further proof of that. In one of their weirdest turns yet, the Trump campaign is literally showing clips of what America has become under Trump himself and warning that this is what will happen if Biden is elected and only by reelecting the man that brought it to you in the first place and has failed to end it by uniting the country (or even trying) can you stop our present from becoming our future. When taken literally, it is a message that says the world I brought you is the world my opponent will bring you and the only way you can stop that from happening is by keeping the guy who brought it to you! If that doesn't make sense, congratulations, you're not an imbecile.

However, if you buy the narrative that the radical left has taken over the Democratic Party then I'm sorry to report that such may not be the case. Biden-Harris is literally the most Law & Order ticket I can imagine either party fielding. It’s the guy who brought us the Crime Bill, supported the private prison industrial complex and paved a smooth road for Clarence Thomas paired with the AG who wanted to jail young single mothers whose kids missed too much school, blocked access to DNA evidence of the wrongfully convicted, supported marijuana criminalization and pretty much accumulated the least progressive record any prosecutor could ever hope for.

So no, Harris's pick wasn't to appease the progressive left. It was a middle finger to them, just like the initial convention lineup which didn't even feature AOC or Andrew Yang, the two stars of that set. Meanwhile, NeoCon warmonger John “life starts at the first heartbeat” Kasich is in primetime, along with Jeb Bush acolyte Anna Navarro. AOC finally got space for a 60-second pre-recorded (read vetted) afternoon spot, and the Yang Gang was able to kick and scream until their candidate was given a low-billing slot as well. In other words, if you don’t see that the progressive left is not only not running the show at the DNC but is all but powerless in the party’s politics, you’re simply not paying attention.

Why are NeoLiberals more interested in Bush-era Republicans than the media rock stars on the left who seemingly hold the future votes of the party in their hands? Simple, there's less of a difference in platforms, which means unlike working with the left, they don't really have to give anything up to court NeoCons. That’s because the age of Trump has seen those Republicans give up on social issues they never actually cared that much about from gay marriage to abortion in exchange for a seat at the table on the issues they do—things like energy policy, deregulation, aggressive foreign policy and, above all, jockeying their snoots into the trough of money that the winning team gets to eat from.

Excited because a Black Lives Matter protester is going to Congress? Slow down, Ace, as the hallowed halls are also about to get their first QAnon member. We've reached peak lunacy under Trump, this much is true, but the wheel has spun back to same old song and dance, remixed for 2020. The American empire is falling apart and one side is offering four more years of the lunatic king, while the other is betting that such a thought will scare voters enough to accept the same brand of politics that brought us that President in the first place. All that remains to be seen in whether Dems finally got the calculus correct. Are progressives so infuriated by life under Trump that they'll vote blue no matter who, or have they picked off enough white suburban Republican women for it not to even matter? We'll find out, though likely not until weeks after November 2, assuming we aren't fighting each other in the streets by then.

Dennis “Mitch” Maley has been a journalist for more than two decades. A former Army Captain, he has a degree in government from Shippensburg University and is the author of several books, which can be found here.

#biden2020 #kamala harris #bernie or bust #aoc #nevertrump

1 note · View note

thefloatingstone · 5 years

Text

In 2012 I did not think I’d be able to make this list as I was convinced anime was on a permanent decline towards nothing but trash, but I am so happy that has changed! And so I give you a quick list of;

Favourite Anime made in the last 4 years!

Mob Psycho 100 (2016)

youtube

A no brainer, really. With a 2nd Season having JUST premiered earlier this week, MP100 is easily one of not only best LOOKING animes in a very very long time, but also one with an extremely strong empathetic message that’s completely opposite to most shounen anime. The theme of “having outrageous powers doesn’t make you any more or less special and important than any other human being” and how all the villains in the show are people, either super powered or not, who believe themselves “more important” than others is at the heart of its story. And our protagonist who is a person with horrifically strong powers, but who is trying to develop as a human being, and finds himself to be a rather emotionally brittle person who relies very heavily on others for emotional support. As well as focusing on the people willing to grant him that. It’s got some strong influential roots in the Earthbound and Mother 3 games and despite never saying anything along those lines, I can bet you anything the original Mangaka, ONE, drew heavy inspiration from their tone and presentation, as well as emotional core despite the oftentimes wacky setting.

The anime should also not be overlooked for its incredible Sakuga sequences, as well as using mixed media in its animation from pencil drawings, to paint of glass, to charcoal to sand, cementing it as easily one of the most visually interesting and ambitious shows in the last decade or so

Made in Abyss (2017)

youtube

An anime that understands concepts of Scope and Scale and manages to bring what is normally reserved for feature films to an episodic storyline. Made in Abyss’ entire theme and story is that of exploration of the unknown and everything in this anime’s power is honed to bring across that feeling. Its art direction headed by Osamu Masuyama whose previous work include working on the background art for both Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, is painstakingly rendered to bring as much gravitas to the setting as possible, aided by the soundtrack written by Kevin Penkin which is just as much atmospheric as it is musical in nature. Every ounce of talent is focused on making Made in Abyss’ world, culture and characters feel solid and real. And unlike other anime with cutesy art styles but dark subject matter, Made in Abyss’ darker tone is established right in the first episode and gradually builds to its first season’s climax, rather than blindside its audience out of nowhere.

I sincerely cannot sing this show’s praises enough.

It also doesn’t hurt that the animation itself is fluid and lively.

Re:Creators (2017)

youtube

When I gave this to an animator friend of mine, one who is NOT as big a weeb as I am, he referred to it as “if Ready Player One actually knew what it was doing.” Re:Creators is one of a trend of some anime where the narrative is extremely meta in nature, but rather than use this as a form of parody, Re:Creators instead focuses itself on using its meta storytelling to shine a light on Japanese popular media as a whole, both from the side of the creators who MAKE such things, as well as the side of the fans and not only their response to media, but their interpretation and addition to popular media. And unlike the more critical approach several horror anime have taken in the past, Re:Creators also shows the positive effect stories in the form of anime, video games, manga etc both on those who read it as well as those who create it. And show how fan creations and their responses and reaction to media are just as important and enriching to works like this as the very people who create them.

It’s also one of the first shows from any country that correctly portrays what online fan culture is like. Both good AND bad.

Erased (2016)

youtube

HOO BOY. The Big Guns. Most mainstream anime set in a modern setting inevitably seem to involve high school or at least characters who are high school aged. Erased, however, deals with a protagonist who is 28 years old. Due to time travel shenanigans, he is transported back to 1989 when he was 11 years old growing up in Hokaido. So already, this anime is complete skewing the generic setting for stories of its type, further hammered in by the fact that the show has no romantic subplot in it. There might be a smidge of something like “preteen romantic feelings” among the children but as far as “female hero the protag is going to fall in love with at the end” goes? Yeah there’s none of that.

Erased is an extremely dark anime, but not in the way Made in Abyss is dark. Whereas Abyss’ dark tone comes from things like getting eaten by monsters and body horror caused by the Abyss’ curse, the dark theme of Erased on the other hand is much more horrifying as it comes from “reality”. And it’s because of this I WILL have to warn people about its plot points because it WILL and DOES get uncomfortable.

The plot of Erased is our 28 year old protagonist gets hurled back in time to when he was 11 years old in Hokaido, as I said. In the winter of 1989 there were a string of child abductions and murders, and it’s up to our main character, again in his 11 year old body, to solve these crimes to prevent a tragedy in modern day. Not only does the show deal with the very uncomfortable topic of child abduction and murder, but a MASSIVE part of the plot revolves around the would be murder victim, Hinazaki Kayo, who is living with her physically abusive mother. And unlike shows like “Magical Girl SITE”, the abuse is not shown as “suffer porn” and blown up to be so over the top in how bad it is, ut is instead extremely grounded and feels waaaay to real to the point of being very upsetting. However, the abuse is not there to make the audience sad. The abuse is in the plot to further press upon the audience the borderline helpless state our main character is in. As a child, he has to rely on his experience and ability to think like an adult to try and prevent the serial murders, as WELL as try and get Hanazaki out of her abusive situation. It also serves as a learning experience for our main character, and him figuring out how he hasn’t changed at all since he really was a child, and how his own stagnation in life itself needs to change and be redirected. The show is bursting with tension and every episode exists to turn the stakes up just a little bit higher.

I’ve heard some people are extreme disappointed by the show’s ending which I will not spoil, but personally going into it completely blind, I didn’t find any of it to be a let down and its very quickly become one of my favourite anime of all time.

The Ancient Magus Bride (2017)

(I actually don’t like the intro to Ancient Magus Bride so it only gets a link since I can only embed 5 videos)

https://youtu.be/KuZbmLLv1vM

Based on a manga by Kore Yamazaki, who has stated that her reason for writing the story was out of frustration that in “Beauty and the Beast” type stories, the beast always turns back into a human at the end. However this anime is far more than just a monsterfucker’s romance novel (although it... DOES follow a LOT of those tropes but hear me out.)

Set in the English countryside (although our female MC, Rise, is herself Japanese) the show makes heavy use of english folklore. Faeries are a constant presence throughout the show, and these are not the “nice” kind of faeries you’d see in Disney. Despite theyr good nature and honest want to help, these are the kinds of faeries that will kidnap you to their realm if you so much as let your guard down. We also have excellent portrayals of Titania, the queen of the faeries, and her heated relationship with her husband Oberon. Several other creatures from folklore make an appearance too, as well as old traditions such as faerie rings, seeing stones and the magical properties of herbs and flowers.

But beyond all of that, and even beyond the romance tropes or monster protector who is also a threat and powerful lead female who also needs protecting, the core theme of the show is on life. Or more specifically, death. Rise is a girl who is suicidal. And despite her not making any kind of suicide attempt in the show, this is a fact. The majority of the show is focused on Rise learning to “be alive” again, as well as process what life is, as well as what death is in its many forms. The show is a slow build of Rise reclaiming her will to live, not because of a romantic partner, but for herself. Reclaiming her own importance as a person removed from who she could be useful towards, and a slow coming to terms with a truly terrible event in her past and letting go of a traumatic past.

The show has some pacing issues here and there, but I still qualify it as one of the better modern anime shows to have come out in years, and can only praise its life-affirming message it’s trying to tell.

Osomatsu-San (2015)

youtube

I am.... not entirely sure how to explain Osomatsu-San.

Based on a manga published in the 1960s by Doraemon Creator Fujio Fujiko about 6 identical sextuplet brothers and their friends... the current and newest anime adaptation has borderline nothing to do with its original incarnation which was more your typical Showa era “hi-jinx” type gag manga. I think the very first episode of Osomatsu-San (which is not available for official purchase last I checked due to copyright issues) sets up the entire show perfectly, as the 6 boys and their friends learn they have a new anime adaptation coming up and realise that nobody in the modern age will want or even understand Showa era manga. So, instead, in an effort to be like “a real anime” they go about parodying literally every popular trope and show that’s out at the time. From yaoi-incest baiting to Jpop boy band to Attack on Titan to Sailor Moon, they keep cranking up the “modern anime” aesthetic until it literally explodes and collapses in on itself. And after realising they don’t have what it takes to compete in a modern anime word, the characters resign themselves to being losers who will never achieve anything in life.... and that’s where the show starts.

I can only refer to the show as “Millennial humour: the anime.”. 90% of it is just comedy with our 6 main characters who are, at their core, pretty terrible people. However, their issues and struggles of trying to be adults make them some of the most relateable anime characters out there. The show bounces from parodying popular culture both in anime as well as in movies to outlining the problems of trying to be a late 20-something year old in modern society to actual hard hitting drama that actually makes you angry because how DARE this stupid show actually make you FEEL things???

It’s borderline impossible to try and explain this show because, just like its 6 protagonists, it doesn’t seem to have any direction in its life. Which is exactly the point.

#anime #Long post #image heavy #video #recc #modern anime

39 notes · View notes

supere1113 · 4 years

Text

The Conflict Within Myself - Track 11: Stretched and Compressed

Wow. What do you follow such a climactic song as Polaroid with? Well, it could go either of two ways: The conflict within the person consumes them and they are corrupted and destroyed (.ie dying by suicide), Or.... they are somehow saved from their darkness and led on a different path. Shall I continue the story?

****TRIGGER WARNING****... again. probably the last one, though.

So last time I left off, It was early October 2017, I had just survived the closest-call suicide attempt of my life. After I didn’t die, I knew that if I were to try again, I would get even closer, and closer, and closer till I actually died (didn’t have that far to go that last time, but still). I didn’t want that to have to happen, so I decided that if I was going to go on, I would need help. Of some kind. I doubled down on getting my parents to understand what was going on with me by writing a letter and printing it out for them to read that night. It blew up in my face, and I lost a chunk of hope a little bigger than most of the other ones I was losing almost daily (At this point, they thought I was trying to drop out of school, potentially to pursue music full-time. That couldn’t been further from the truth. I can’t give one passion up for another, I’m a renaissance man. I mean, have you heard my song Multipotentialite from the last album? It surprised me that that didn’t click for them. I imagine they were scared too, though; whether they’d ever say it out loud to me or not. Sad situation it was). All that happened during a weekend where I went home to visit my parents. After I got back on campus, my mood swings continued to intensify. I every time I was in an extreme state, I would quarantine myself in my dorm (I feel sorry for my sophomore roommate. Thankfully, he was out doing things around campus during my most rapid descents into madness. I won’t say his name here, but I love you, bro. Thank you) and I eventually only left to eat... occasionally. My psych evaluation finally came on October 17th. I was mentally close to death. My mom brought me over there, I did the evaluation, and then, knowing what she did about my current mental state, the psychologist asked me if I wanted to be hospitalized, saying she could make it happen, even if my mother still didn’t get it after that. I went in the car, waited for my mom and the psychologist to finish their conversation and then, after she got in the car, mom called dad and said she “wasn’t playing around with this anymore.” She was finally willing to go through with getting me the help I needed, the way I needed it at that point. The unfortunate part is that after you’re so far gone, meeting with a counselor each week just isn’t enough. Though I wasn’t in immediate danger, I was still quite suicidal, and my parents couldn’t guarantee to the psychologist that they could protect me from me, not long-term. So, mom drove me home, and that night brought to my family the full impact of what was happening with me. Since may parents couldn’t keep me safe enough, I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital near my childhood home the next day. My dad never wanted either of his children to be institutionalized in any way, so this was especially crushing to him. We didn’t know how long I’d have to be there, so for that reason, among others, I was medically withdrawn from school. While I was there, my results from my psych evaluation came in. I was diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder with psychotic features and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Crazy. In every sense of the word. You could smell the stigma on me.

I never wanted it to be that way. I mean, I got access to the help I needed, but at what cost?! Even over 2 years later, there’s a lot about that that I’m still, even if only a lil bit, angry about, which surprises me. It was just a crazy time. And in the time after the realization, I would hear for the first time my parents say to me that they missed something. That shook all of us.

~~~~~

Anyway, the end of Polaroid marks the beginning of a new phase, a new suite in the album (Act III: The Explosion). This song, along with the remainder of the album, takes place in a psychiatric facility, and, similar to Polaroid, kind of explores my thoughts while I was in there, and what changes were finally able to take root in me (fitting for an album titled ‘The Conflict Within Myself’ to explore inner thoughts, huh?).

Stretched and Compressed is really a song about the general realization that I had mental illness. My own, mostly. Even though that realization occurred long before I was hospitalized, I simplified the sequence of events on here to make the album more universal, as I stated before. As a result, S&C also explores my parents realization of my new mental reality. This was unintentional, but this song could potentially be divided into two distinct halves, The first being Stretched, the last being Compressed. The music even corresponds to those titles. The sounds of the Stretched half heave upwards as if they are being stretched by a magnet. It’s meant to channel the surprise and pain of realizing, and accepting, a new reality. In contrast, the Compressed half covers moreso the small part of you that dies in the face of that reality, and the grief, the sadness and the depression that can flood your life when you realize that this is not the way you thought your life was going to go, nor what you intended, or after something traumatic happens.

I put a little nugget in the Stretched half that I think will be looked on in awe in the future. Just before the second verse, you can faintly hear me say “I’ve been suicidal, you can’t kill me ‘cause I tried it.” This is a direct reference to a line by one of my favorite rappers, Itsdink! I call him Cody. He and I have been friends for over a decade in 2019, and earlier in the month of October of this year, he dropped on Soundcloud what I believe to be his best work yet: Want Me Dead. This album was therapeutic for him to make and for both of us to listen to because it showed all the struggles he had endured since we last saw each other face-to-face (as I stated in my song Normal off my last album, The Artist In Me, I had to leave our childhood school in 2010. Cody and I haven’t been in the same place together since then). I had been through different things than him, but much of the mental damage that ensued, we had in common. Anxiety, depression, paranoia, Suicidality, all that. It broke my heart that he had to go through that, and also blessed my heart to know that he went through it and it didn’t consume him. We were both survivors, and we were both going to drop the albums that chronicled and helped us through our struggles on opposite ends of the same month: October 2019. I wanted to connect these albums so that history may remember Want Me Dead and The Conflict Within Myself as transcendent projects, connected to each other.

The Compressed half of Stretched and Compressed is even more somber than the preceding half. This is when the stigma of having multiple mental illnesses (or even just one) really hits me; and it hits hard. When I was in the hospital, I thought I had lost everything, and in a sense, I did. My sanity, my grades, an important part of my relationship with my parents, my ability to be a good student (or any student for that matter), my scholarships, my certainty, and a whole lot of other things associated with those things. I was relieved I was getting help, while being frustrated that it got so bad that I had to be there, saddened by that fact and just in a general state of shock from all that I had endured. Those mood swings I was talking about, that was what people in the mental health community call Mania. I was manic ever since July of 2017 when Chester died. The Mania is the high end of those mood swings. Depression is the low. And being manic doesn’t always mean being happy. I describe mania as being an amplifier to whatever you’re feeling. So if you’re happy and Manic, you are ELATED! If you are angry or irritable and manic, you get beyond furious and so irritated that you may turn suicidal. Actually, though. I suspected I had bipolar, but who ever wants to be right about that?

I had a lot of fun making Stretched and Compressed, especially the last 2 minutes. That transition from Stretched to Compressed is crazy. You ever heard something like that? then when the drums and plucky mental, metal guitar kick in on Compressed.... it’s over, bruv.

Stretched and Compressed is interesting because, much like Synchronized Sound and When Your Brain Is Fried, its instrumental was thought out years before Conflict even came out (the idea, though not yet carrying the S&C name, is probably as old as songs off of Identity, so circa 2015)! The pain of the Stretched half gave me Stephen Richards and Aaron Lewis vibes from their performances on P5hng Me A*wy and Krwling respectively off of Linkin Park’s remix album Reanimation. So I channeled them in the choruses (sprinkled a little bit of Jonathan Davis from Korn in there, too. ;) He also featured on that album on 1Stp Klosr). The Compressed half is much more genre-fluid than the Stretched half. But among many others, I was really inspired by the work of MUNA and The Red Hot Chili Peppers for that part of the song.

So you’re admitted to a hospital. You’re getting help, but you’re still reeling from all that led you there. Where else could the mind take us, I wonder...

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

The blockchain is in the middle of a major hype cycle at the moment, and that makes it hard for many people to take it seriously, but if you look at the core digital ledger technology, there is tremendous potential to change the way we think about trust in business. Yet these are still extremely early days and there are a number of missing pieces that need to be in place for the blockchain to really take off in the enterprise.

Suffice it to say that it has caught the fancy of major enterprise vendors with the likes of SAP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon all looking at providing some level of Blockchain as a service for customers.

While the level of interest in blockchain remains fluid, a July 2017 survey of 400 large companies by UK firm Juniper Research found 6 in 10 respondents were “either actively considering, or are in the process of, deploying blockchain technology.”

In spite of the growing interest we have seen over the last 12-18 months, blockchain lacks some basic underlying system plumbing, the kind any platform needs to thrive in an enterprise setting. Granted, some companies and the open source community are recognizing this as an opportunity and trying to build it, but many challenges remain.

Obstacles to adoption

Even though the blockchain clearly has many possible use cases, some people still have trouble separating it from its digital currency roots, and Joshua McKenty, who helped develop Open Stack while working at NASA and now is head of Cloud Foundry at Pivotal, sees this as a real problem, one that could hold back the progress of blockchain as an enterprise technology.

He believes that right now bitcoin and blockchain are akin to Napster and peer to peer (P2P) technology in the late 90s. When Napster made it easy to share MP3 files illegally on a P2P network, McKenty believes, it set back business usage of P2P for a decade because of the bad connotations associated with the popular use case.

“You couldn’t talk about Napster [and P2P] and have it be a positive conversation. Bitcoin has done that to blockchain. It will take us time to recover what bitcoin has done to get to something that is really useful [with blockchain],” he said.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Newsmakers – Getty Images

A recent survey by Deloitte of over 1000 participants in 7 countries found that outside the US in particular this perception held true. “When asked if they believed that blockchain was just “a database for money” with little application outside of financial services, just 18 percent of US respondents agreed with that statement versus 61 percent of respondents in France and the United Kingdom,” the report stated.

Richie Etwaru, founder and CEO at Hu-manity and author of the book, Blockchain Trust Companies sees it as a matter of trust. Companies aren’t used to dealing from a position of trust. In fact, his book argues that the entire contract system exists because of a total lack of it.

“The hurdle [to widespread blockchain adoption in the enterprise] is that those who have traditionally designed or transformed business models in large enterprise settings have systematically and habitually treated trust and transparency as second, sometimes third level characteristics of a business model. The raw material needed are the willingness and executive level alignment and harmonization around the notion that trust and transparency are the next differentiators,” Etwaru explained.

The volatility of new technology

Blockchain was originally created as a system to track bitcoin (digital currency) ownership, and it’s still used extensively for that purpose, but a trusted and immutable record has great utility to track virtually anything of value and enforce a set of rules. We have seen companies like po.et trying to use it to enforce content ownership, Hu-manity, which wants to enforce data ownership, and the IBM TrustChain consortium to track the provenance of diamonds from mine to store.

Photo: LeoWolfert/Getty Images

Rob May, who is CEO at Talla and whose company helped launch a blockchain called BotChain to track the authenticity of bots, says finding good use cases could help ultimately determine the technology’s success or failure. “Blockchain has a bunch of different use cases, and they are usually either all lumped together or poorly understood separately,” May said.

He believes that in many instances today, companies don’t understand the advantages of blockchain, which he identifies as immutability, trust and tokenization, the latter of which can help finance blockchain initiatives (but which can also contribute to confusion with digital currency use cases).

“Right now, businesses are missing real blockchain opportunities and instead throwing blockchain in places where it doesn’t belong. For example, they are trying to use it for smart contracts, and that stuff isn’t ready. They also try to use it for cases that require a lot of speed, and again blockchains aren’t ready,” he said.

Finally, he says, if you don’t require immutability, trust and tokenization, you might want to consider a different approach other than blockchain.

Please identify yourself

Like any network, identity will be at the core of any blockchain network because it is imperative that you understand whom you are communicating with. Charles Francis, a senior analyst at Accenture says for now blockchains will remain private for the most part, but authentication will become increasingly important as we eventually have blockchain-to-blockchain communications.

Photo: NicoElNino/Getty Images

“Initially blockchain-to-blockchain connections will be manually set up and you will manage your network in a private model and bad actors will be immediately obvious,” he explained. But he believes that we will require a system in place to ensure we are authentically who we say we are as we move beyond private networks.

Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and VP of Blockchain says that there will come a time when there are multiple networks and we will need to set up systems for them to communicate. “There won’t be one blockchain network to rule them all. It’s a very safe bet. Once you make that statement, these systems need to work together,” he said. “All [the different pieces of networks] need identity and the identity better play across networks. My identity on one network better be the same on another network,” he explained.

For Etwaru it comes back to trust, and a trusted identity would be a natural extension of that. “Transformational blockchain use cases require a network of trading partners to start to operate in a more trusted and transparent way, not just one individual,” he said.

Moving toward adoption

All this said, there is still a steady march toward adoption in the enterprise. As Talla’s May says, there may be open questions, but that just represents a big opportunity for smart companies. “If you are interacting with a network instead of a single company, whose throat do you choke when something goes wrong? I think you will see many companies in the blockchain space do what Red Hat did for Linux. Enterprises need consulting help and better frameworks to think about how [blockchain] networks will work, since Ethereum isn’t a product per se in the traditional sense,” he said.

Gil Perez, SVP for products and innovation, as well as head of digital customer initiatives at SAP says he’s seeing companies with real projects in production. “It is beyond just wanting to do something. We’re doing large scale implementations and pilots. For example, we did one in the pharmaceutical industry with over a billion transactions,” he said.

In fact, SAP has a total of 65 companies working on various projects at different stages of progress at the moment. Perez says the next level of adoption will require a way to involve multiple parties, not just a single company, as with a supply chain example, which involves moving goods and paperwork across multiple countries involving many individuals.

Photo: allanswart

He also points out the importance of making sure there is good data because ultimately, if you have bad data in an immutable record, that is going to be a serious problem. That requires the companies involved to come together and agree to a common system to enter and agree upon each piece of information that moves through the system and that is a work in progress.

May sees blockchain technology transforming the way we do business in the future and providing a more standard way of interacting than today’s hodgepodge of vendor approaches.

“Now that blockchain is here, what if we could launch a standard and have shared marketplace by all apps in a space? So as a developer, you write your [application] add-on one time and it works with any [similar application] that supports that standard, and they share one giant marketplace. But how do you get them to share a marketplace? Blockchain and tokens provide decentralization and incentives such that, if you set the right rules, maybe you could do it. That could be transformational,” he said.

As with any new technology, the more it scales the more the tools and adjacent technologies are required. We are still in the early stages of discovering what those are, and before the technology can take off in a big way, we will need more underlying infrastructure in place. If that happens, blockchain could be just as transformational as May suggests.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

thehowtostuff-blog · 6 years

Link

Obstacles to adoption

Photo by Spencer Platt/Newsmakers – Getty Images

The volatility of new technology

Photo: LeoWolfert/Getty Images

Finally, he says, if you don’t require immutability, trust and tokenization, you might want to consider a different approach other than blockchain.

Please identify yourself

Photo: NicoElNino/Getty Images

Moving toward adoption

Photo: allanswart

May sees blockchain technology transforming the way we do business in the future and providing a more standard way of interacting than today’s hodgepodge of vendor approaches.

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Lgw2YU

#How To Stuff #Blogger

0 notes

cryptnus-blog · 6 years

Text

The blockchain begins finding its way in the enterprise – TechCrunch

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/07/the-blockchain-begins-finding-its-way-in-the-enterprise-techcrunch/

The blockchain begins finding its way in the enterprise – TechCrunch

Obstacles to adoption

Photo by Spencer Platt/Newsmakers – Getty Images

The volatility of new technology

Photo: LeoWolfert/Getty Images

Finally, he says, if you don’t require immutability, trust and tokenization, you might want to consider a different approach other than blockchain.

Please identify yourself

Photo: NicoElNino/Getty Images

Moving toward adoption

Photo: allanswart

May sees blockchain technology transforming the way we do business in the future and providing a more standard way of interacting than today’s hodgepodge of vendor approaches.

0 notes

nofomoartworld · 7 years

Text

Art F City: We Went to Frieze, Part Two: Pussy Hat Show Flops, Anti-War Hard On Holds Up

Frieze entrance

Yesterday we discussed the overall look and feel of Frieze and concluded that this iteration of the fair is far superior to previous years. Lots of lively inventive work and short on the kind of soulless work in a frame that can make these events so tedious. Today we take a deep dive into a lot of the art we saw. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Anton Kern, Installation view.

Paddy: A booth full of a-list artist work, but none of it looked like crap they had left over from an old show. The lighthearted Nicole Eisenman statue heads with peace necklaces look like simplified characters derived from the Simpsons. The Anne Collier photograph to the left pictures a woman’s eye and a lone tear on her cheek. I felt uncomfortable viewing this work—like I was staring at a stranger crying on the subway platform.

Michael: I didn’t realize these sculptures were Nicole Eisenman until you pointed them out to me! I had no idea she made 3D work, and I actually think they’re better than many of her paintings, which may have fallen into a bit of a rut on account of how prolific she is. At times some can feel a little formulaic to me, like her mark making and form language become muddled by a desire to read as both illustration-like and painterly. Sometimes the result is a painting that feels like dated graphic design. The sculptures don’t have that problem. It’s funny how often that happens with painters—I almost always think they make the best sculptors.

Tala Madani, “The Emblem,” Oil on linen, 2017.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s plenty of painterly, illustration-like 2D work I like. And this year, Frieze had a plethora of examples. Yesterday, I mentioned that Tala Madani painting at David Kordansky Gallery of the naked man crawling away from the viewer. There’s something so fluid yet awkwardly descriptive about the way the figure is rendered with an economy of wet strokes, utterly other from the alien “landscape” he’s crawling across—which is dry brushed and looks like silkscreen ink. There’s a logic to the difference in textures between the organic and inorganic that’s so simple yet rewarding.

Paddy: I also thought there was a good showing of sculptural paintings. For example, there were a bunch of small Llyn Foulkes paintings at Spruth Magers that resemble those on view at the New Museum a couple years ago that stand out. Most of these are the repurposed second hand store paintings he collages and builds up their surface, but there was also a Mickey Mouse painting. Foulkes sees Disney as the root of all evil, so sometimes the political message of work veers into dopiness, but the sheer technical virtuosity of these works gives them a faux-naive feel. In other words, the simplistic message seems important to understanding the paintings.

Left: Kiki Kogelnik, “Express”, 1972, oil and acrylic on canvas. Right: Kiki Kogelnik, “Untitled (Still life with hand), 1964, enamel and india ink on paper. Simone Subal Gallery.

Paddy: This booth of Kiki Kogelnik paintings falls into the trend of wacky figuration we identified yesterday in part one of our post. Kogelnik is considered to be Austrian’s most important pop artist, though like many pop-artists, she sometimes disputed the label.

The majority of the works in this booth come from her “Women” series, which pictured women as they were portrayed in commercial advertising. Knowing this made me wonder if the current trend of figuration might be informed by similar interests. Millennials are likely to be influenced by Instagram and Facebook, but the end result is similar—pictures of people looking happy.

Jeppe Hein, “Please Participate”, 2015, Neon Tubes, transformers, 303 Gallery

Michael: I don’t think I have ever had such a visceral immediate reaction of hatred to an artwork as this one. Is this like a parody of bad inspirational meme decor? What the hell is “SVING” and why do I need to do it after yoga?

Paddy: It’s so bad. This work was centered in the vortex of bad text art at the back of the fair and at some point, I think both of us had ended up walking in circles trying to figure out how to escape the area. It needs to be quarantined for the protection of fair visitors.

The best Jeppe Hein works I’ve seen take a jab at the “white cube” while simultaneously evoking the universal. Olafur Eliasson and Dan Graham are often cited in reference to Hein, and when his works fail, typically it’s because they are retreading well worn territory of 70’s art making. This cringe-worthy work fails in the same way an Eliasson might fail—striving for a universal by offering up prescriptive verbs associated with being content and self-aware. The problem, of course, is that it removes all the day to day bullshit that all this self-care is meant to deal with. It’s so simplistic a message it’s offensive.

Michael: This is what I imagine would hang over the reclaimed wood counter at the gluten-free macaron bakery that opens to signify a neighborhood has gentrified to the point of being uninhabitable to all but the least self-aware. Or, in 10 years, their genetically engineered dogs with self-cleaning hair.

Karl Holmqvist “untitled” at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Michael: Gavin Brown’s Enterprise’s blindingly-bright booth is a bit of a head scratcher. It’s dominated by these massive Karl Holmqvist marker paintings with phrases like “HUG A HIPPIE; IT’S ALL THAT” and “HUG A HOE; HE’LL LIKE IT!” I’m not sure what to make of this and I am not sure anyone else did either—including the gallery staff, who at times seemed almost embarrassed by the booth?

Paddy: This is reminding me how little of the text art on view succeeded. Are these paintings supposed to thwart identity stereotypes and preach a message of acceptance? I assume these paintings are made with marker as a gesture to the protest signs we’re all spending our weekends making now. Fair enough, but they don’t translate well to an art fair environment. Protest signs are democratic by nature—these are just vessels for the uber rich to park their money.

Michael: It’s a shame these dwarfed Verne Dawson’s recent series of small oil paintings. Each of them is a bleak scene of low income quasi-rural-quasi-suburban sprawl. At first glance they seem to reference pastoral romantic landscape painting. Then it becomes apparent that all is not right: there’s a subtly acerbic clash of colors, the brushstrokes feel violent and unresolved, and the landscape is marred by highways and hastily-painted trailers. They’re a little hard to look at despite the fact that they’re great paintings. They feel very of this era—I think they reflect the unease (guilt? horror? sociological curiosity? alienation?) with which “our America” has been forced to look at “other America” since the election.

Paddy: While I agree this booth is a head scratcher, I actually think think those Dawson paintings held their own against the Holmqvist—no small feat considering the difference in scale. (Dawson’s paintings were no more than 18 inches wide while Holmqvist had an entire installation.) We both drew a lot of out of those Dawson works—but the other works in the booth, a series of crude renderings of Japanese homes received virtually no attention from us. I had to look up the photos to remember what they looked like, I have no image of the label and can’t find them anywhere else online. Those were the works that were forgettable—as is evidenced by the fact that we forgot them.

Cheim & Read, “Pink”, installation view.

Jenny Holzer, Truism on a marble bench

Paddy: In honor of the Women’s March and the sea of pink hats, Cheim & Read put together a booth of works defined by the color. I support the impulse here, but the result is a clear miss. For one, at first glance, the booth looks like a boutique outfitted for spring. Very little in this booth looks like it’s worth the money they’re charging for it. For another, the text based works they had available—all by Jenny Holzer—either suffer from sentimentality or were simply too aggressively weird for viewers to feel anything but awkward. (I’m speaking specifically here of Holtzer’s tattoos, which contained messages like “I find her squatting on her heels and this opens her so I get her from below” paired with “I have the blood jelly”.) I overheard a sales consultant hilariously straining to spin Holtzer’s truism on a bench positively. “This one— “It is in your self interest to find a way to be very tender”—[pause] is a more uplifting message.” She smiled awkwardly.

Michael: So many of the Holzer tattoos left even me (notoriously immune to the gross-out) feeling icky. There’s lots of references to sex acts with questionable levels of consent, predatory stalking, menstrual shame, violence, and death… these deserved a much more seriously curated booth of feminist work beyond the “everything is like, totally millennial pink!” theme here. Of course, Louise Bourgeois’s fleshy bas relief of giant nipples was the booth’s stand-out highlight. Hung at head-level, they suggest the adult viewer could just open wide and get a squirt of breast milk, which is both funny and disgusting. Cheim & Reid missed a curatorial opportunity here. Starting with Holzer’s tattoo pieces and the Bourgeois, they could have seized on the body horror aspect of Trump (“Grab em by the pussy,” etc…) and run with that as a curatorial thread rather than fuzzy pink hats. This is actually an almost offensively reductivist approach to contextualizing feminist art.

Paddy: I totally agree with you. The whole point of this booth is to activate people against the misogyny of the Trump administration. Pink isn’t a concept—it’s a color. It’s unsurprising then that most of the work felt neutered.

(Left to Right) Ha Chong-Hyun, “Conjunction 01-2-8,” oil on hemp cloth, 2001; Chung Sang-Hwa, “Untitled 88-7-28,” acrylic on canvas 1988; and Park Seo-Bo, “Ecriture No. 68-78-79-81,” pencil and oil on hemp cloth, 1968.

Michael: At the other end of the color spectrum (or rather, off it), New York’s Tina Kim Gallery teamed up with Seoul’s Kukje Gallery to present a booth heavy with the big names of Dansaekhwa (a movement of monochromatic abstraction that arose in postwar Korea). I’m fascinated by Dansaekhwa for a few reasons. The use of cheap materials, emphasis on non-objective “labor,” and resistance to “beauty” makes the work feel like a bit of a sneaky protest against South Korea’s brutal 1970s dictatorship. I love the idea of seemingly inoffensive abstraction as a subtle rebellion against authoritarianism (how very different from Ray Bradbury’s vision of the art world in Fahrenheit 451!). The genre’s prisoner-number-like titles and dreary palette contribute to the dystopic vibe.

Ha Chong-Hyun, “Conjunction 15-150,” oil on hemp cloth, 2015 and “Conjuction 14-135,” oil on hemp cloth, 2014.

And seemingly, the art market loves Dansaekhwa too (there have been countless retrospectives on the movement at commercial galleries in recent years). It makes sense: everyone wants an excuse to frame collector-friendly abstraction with a good guilt-free backstory, particularly if it exists just outside the Western art history canon. I was a little taken aback by how many of the Ha Chong-Hyun works were from the 21st Century (I’m sure his older work’s been snapped up by collectors by now) and how it didn’t feel at all out of place with his peers’ work from decades ago. I like the idea that these artists (now quite elderly) have kept up this somber practice for longer than I’ve been alive and now they’re finally getting recognition (and seriously big paychecks) outside of a small-ish Seoul scene.

Yan Pei-Ming, “President-elect Trump,” 2017. At Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Michael: Speaking of anti-authoritarian impasto monochrome paintings, pussy-grabbing, body horror, and protest booths, I feel we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Yan Pei-Ming’s horrifying portrait of Trump (one of the few on-the-nose political works we liked). This is America, directed by David Cronenberg.

Paddy: We can’t escape Trump—not even on an island art fair for the rich.

Gerd Stern, “Hard On for Peace,” 1963 at Carl Solway Gallery.

Michael: Actually, this is my favorite political work. In the Spotlight section of solo booths, Carl Solway Gallery had a really nice Gerd Stern retrospective with this “Hard On for Piece” slightly tucked away in a corner. I laughed out loud when I saw this, because it’s such a direct way of messaging desire—even for a goal as noble as the anti-war movement.

When one of the people working the booth noticed me taking a picture, he remarked “Pretty impressive, eh?” and seemed to imply that the sculpture was a cast of the artist’s actual erection, gesturing across the booth towards the real, live, in-the-flesh Gerd Stern. The artist, for his part, just shrugged “What can I say? I was a younger man in the 1960s!”

from Art F City http://ift.tt/2q8D6Mt via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Art F City

0 notes