#... later i might add a pic of data

[daddy-ul]

🍄🐈🥞

🍄 Mushroom: What is a quote you find comfort in?

I wanted to put a quote from the finale of s4 of Black Sails... but that show it's too good to be spoiled so, I'm gonna put one for everyone, and that quote for who is swearing on their favorite metallica song that they will never be interested in BS or they've already seen it fjdshsjkf deal?

"Reality doesn't owe you to give you what you expect from it"

.... which is very fucking freeing, in my book.

SPOILER FOR BLACK SAILS!!!

“They paint the world full of shadows... and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it. And who has been so close to doing it as we are right now?”

END OF SPOILERS!!

🐈 Cat: Do you have any pets? Are there some pets you really want?

I have a orange cat named Data, as you can see he isexactly like that emoji and he doubles as a vogue model hfjsdhfsjk and uhhhhh, i would love to have a raven but not as a pet, but as a friend? Like, i would provide for him but it would live free, outside, and we just... hang out? go for walks/flying together. It can ride my shoulder if it's tired or whatever.

I am not a very... dominant person? like, i dont think i am the owner of my cat? he is my cat, i am his human but that's it? he lives with me, we love each other, i provide for him of course but... it's not ownership in my head? i'm not his mother or father or whatever? it's strange hfjdfhsjkh long story short: I dont want to owe anymals but I would gladly befriend some ravens or a hawk! I wouldnt mind another cat, but Data wouldnt take it very well fhjskjf so Data and the random spiders around my house are enough for me.

(.... fuck, now i get why when i did a sort of tag meme on fb everyone said i had witch vibes --between cats, spiders, long hair....)

🥞 Pancake: What is your favorite breakfast food?

I dont eat breakfast usually bc when i wake up i can barely swallow and my stomach is completely closed, i dont even get hungry till lunch. I usually drink 700ml/1l of water for breakfast jdhfdhs and that's it. (i know it's not normal fjsdkfjsk but i am a fucking sponge fsjdhfksd)

that said, I am a glutton for sweets, so i will force myself to eat if there is some good stuff for me, but my top tier sweet breakfast, that i would like to eat forever is... granita alle mandorle servita con la brioche calda col tuppo.

which means "almond sicilian granita served with croissant with tuppo"...

I am v italian, what can you do? this is a special type of granita that they make in Sicily (but now even in the rest of italy with... not always great results) that is usually eaten with a warm specific type of croissant, that one! It's so fucking good, you can get it in basically any summer flavour that you want. It's fresh, wet, warm and fills you without making you sick. Perfect for the summer! I tasted it the first time when I went on vacation there with my parents when I was... 13? I think? and at breakfast it was the highlight of my day everyday ddfhjdfhsjf i tried them all, in every city we visited

[procrastinatorproject]

Holo-Tech Database

Over the last seven or so months, I have watched through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s the first time I’ve seen the entire series, there were quite a few episodes in the later seasons I’d never seen before. Quite an enjoyable experience on the whole.

But because I’m me, of course I didn’t just watch TNG. Instead, I took notes every single time the holodeck or any other piece of holo-technology played a part in the plot, were the setting for even the briefest of scenes, or so much as got mentioned. Essentially, I’m building towards a database of every little scrap of canonical information about holo-technology that I can get my hand on. And this was a start.

I haven’t had the time or energy to look through all of my notes in detail. There is a lot of information in there already. Of course, I’ll only be able to draw any real conclusions once I add in all the data from DS9, Voyager, and PIC, (since I’m interested in the state of technology at the time La Sirena is in operation, because of course that’s what this is about), but it’ll be quite a while before I get there.

So, in lieu of any detailed analysis, here are some quick impressions of my first foray into holo-episode-tracking!

[Image ID: a table showing the number of total holo-episodes for TNG is 58, and breaking that number down for each season. Season 1 has 10 episodes, season 2 has 8, season 3 has 6, season 4 has 9, season 5 and 6 both have 8, and season 7 has 9 episodes. /end ID]

My observation aren’t limited to the holodeck, but also to other instances of holo-technology. An example for an entry might be:

S03 E04 - Who Watches the Watchers

Archaeologists watch a pre-warp civilzation from an outpost that is hidden behind a holo-projection of a rock

The projection is powered by a 4.2 Gigahertz generator, which is failing.

When the projection is reinstated, it is solid to the touch and indistinguishable from the surrounding rock

In total, my notes about TNG (including episode titles) come out to 18.417 words, though my notes did get more elaborate the later the season. I still think I made a note of every time holo-tech was mentioned, even if it was just in passing. Though only a full rewatch would confirm that, of course, and I’m not there yet 😅

One interesting factoid I have pulled from the data so far is whether the holodeck/holo-tech is the main focal point or main setting for the episode, whether it’s importance is only secondary (only a short scene, inclusion has no bearing on the plot or characters, etc.) or whether it is merely mentioned but is not actually seen on screen.

[Image ID: a pie-chart titled “Role of Holo-Tech in the Episode”. Over have of the pie are episodes labeled “secondary”. The wedge labeled “Offscreen” is about a fifth of the pie. The wedge labeled “Main” is slightly larger than the “Offscreen” one, and comes to a quarter of the pie when you add the very small wedge labeled “Main (questionable)”. /End ID]

So this is what I’ve been working on - and why watching all of TNG has taken so long. I frequently got stuck when an episode hit a holo-moment and I didn’t feel like getting out the notes, or when I knew the next episode was one of the designated Holodeck Episodes 😅

But I’m still glad I’m doing this. Research!!!

Next: The TNG movies and DS9!

[swiftgronmasterpost]

GRYLES!!!

Rebuilding the Gryles Timeline expertly crafted here because I’m always afraid of broken links and people going private and losing data.

Not only is there a ton of great evidence that these guys were dating such as Harry leaving Nick’s place in the morning wearing the same clothes as he’d worn the night before, I’ve also got a friend who works in the UK music industry and she did tell me these guys did date.  Nick is 100% out as gay so it really does all add up.

Gryles very obviously takes place during Haylor, debunking Harry as the 1989 muse, and if it’s not Harry you do have to wonder... who with green eyes and an obsession with Alice and Wonderland was heavily featured in Taylor’s life and then disappeared before 1989 - a breakup album about someone with green eyes who seems to relate to Alice in Wonderland drops?

You get it.

Anyway here’s Gryles:

This is a little game I like to call "let's talk about Nick/Harry dates and how they line up with Harry leaving and entering the country".

06. February 5th 2012 - Harry and Nick go to a Super Bowl party together.

One Direction in Sweden February 12th - 14th. (Came home by train on the 14th.)

07. February 14, 2012 - VALENTINE'S DAY!

08. February 18, 2012 - Stella McCartney Fashion show with Nick's mom.

09. February 21, 2012 - Brit Awards!

10. February 22, 2012 - They attend a party together. (Nick might have been DJing?)

11. February 23, 2012 - Harry spotted leaving Nick Grimshaw's flat in the same outfit he was wearing the night before.

The morning of February 23rd One Direction flies to the US for their tour and doesn't return to the UK until April 24th, 2012.

This trip is supposedly where Haylor 1.0 happens.  Harry supposedly meets Taylor at the KCA’s on March 31 and they fall for one another.  Taylor supposedly goes to NYC to be with Harry (even though she spends the whole time with Dianna) during the first week of April.  Then they supposedly enter into a long distance relationship that is broken up because Harry was seen out with another girl.

All the while the last thing Harry does before he leaves the UK is spend the night with Nick and then the first thing he does is goes back to him.

Yeah, I’m not buying Haylor 1.0 it seems pretty clear to me that Taylor wanted to pin I Knew You Were Trouble on Harry as a big pop anthem to support her transition to pop.  I think it’s even possible they faked Harry being spotted out with that girl or perhaps he and Nick had some kind of agreement.  I’m not saying Gryles was always exclusive (they may have been), but regardless I don’t see Red era Taylor being cool enough to share her boyfriend with a man.

12. April 25, 2012 - Nick and Harry out together the morning after he returned.

Harry also calls into Nick's radio show on the 25th and confirms that the first thing he did upon returning on the 24th was meet up with Nick and Matt Fincham for drinks so one can theorize he probably crashed w/ Nick that night.

Harry goes to LA by himself on May 1st and returns to the UK on the 5th.

May 5th, 2012 - Harry out with Annie Mac and Nick. (Thanks to my anon for clueing me into this little gem of information.)

13. May 7th, 2012 - Harry and Nick out with friends

One Direction goes to Sweden from May 10th to May 16th.

14. May 17, 2012 - The Sun reports Harry driving Nick to work.

Also out shopping together

15. May 19, 2012 - Nick posts a picture to his instragram from the Kanye West/Jay Z show at the O2.

Who cares right? So he went to see a show. But then.

Hey guess what happened the very next day? One Direction flew to Boston on May 20th, 2012 to start their summer tour in the U.S. They're gone from the 20th to July 3rd.

16. July 5, 2012 - Nick and Harry attend the launch of Tinie Tempah's shoes line.

There's some downtime and vacation time here where Harry disappears for a week while Louis is France w/ Eleanor, Niall goes to Spain, Liam and Danielle are on vacation, etc and then One Direction goes back to work July 11th recording and doing photo shoots.

17. July 19, 2012 - Harry goes out with Nick and Aimee and tweets this.

18. August 10, 2012 - Harry attends Nick's 28th birthday party at La Bodega Negra.

Pregaming before the party!

Outside La Bodega Negra

19. August 11, 2012 - Primrose Hill picnic

20. August 20, 2012 - One Direction visit Nick at BBCR1 to announce their headlining of the BBC Radio 1 Teen Choice Awards.

21. August 25, 2012 -

Nick and Harry go to lunch. (Would also like to point out that they are switching places and that Harry is going to the driver's side of Nick's car :333)

and then to Reading Festival

then Nick accompanies Harry to Liam's party at Funky Buddha

and then they leave together and go see Rita Ora at G.A.Y.

22. August 26, 2012 - The morning after, Nick tweets a shot of his hangover breakfast from Harry's Range Rover (Nick owns a Mercedes).

then a lunch date with several people

They spend this entire day together and this is the day the pics of them in the grocery store  are taken where Nick buys Harry a banana, etc

and then Harry drops Nick off for his nighttime show and picks him up again to take him to/stay with him while Nick DJs at Wonderland nightclub.

(Although, lbr. Given what we learn from Nick's final nighttime show about how often Harry hung around the studio, he probably never left.)

Wonderland! (the only time that fucking song has any bearing on Harry and he’s off being a MLM king)

23. August 28, 2012 - Leaving Nick's flat

spotted in the studio w/ Nick at BBCR1

24. August 30, 2012 - Harry films the Breakfast Show advert for Nick's #Team Grimmy commercial and then they go to Mahiki Club that night.

25. August 31, 2012 - Harry goes with Nick to his DJ gig at Paradise

and then to karaoke afterward

The lo and behold One Direction flies to Florida the very next day to film their Pepsi commercial. They're gone until September 11th.

on September 6, 2012 Taylor has Sushi with Ed and Harry in LA supposedly signaling the start of Haylor 2.0 as if Harry is not fully boyfriends with Nick.

26. September 12, 2012 - Nick's final nighttime show. (this was a gif of them being cute and playing around but I was too lazy to bring it over, you get it they’re touchy, flirty, and playful):

Nick and Aimee go on vacation together from the 14th to the 18th.

27. September 18, 2012 - This dude says he spotted Harry Styles waiting in arrivals at the airport while waiting for his sister's flight to arrive insinuating perhaps Harry was traveling with Nick and Aimee:

28. September 20, 2012 - iTunes Festival where One Direction was interviewed by Nick and Annie Mac

29. Harry calls into Nick's first Breakfast Show on September 25, 2012. Then they meet up after to see Perks of Being a Wallflower together. I can't find the tweets from the ladies who saw them there, but Nick and Emma Watson confirm later that Harry was indeed there.

30. September 29, 2012 - Spotted at Waitrose together and then the following morning Nick regales his listeners with the tale of a Spinach pie he made for a ~friend~.

31. October 5th (or 6th?), 2012 - Preparation for Ladz FM

But also on October 5th, Taylor is on Nick’s show:

32. October 6, 2012 - Ladz FM

Supposedly on this show Nick gives Harry hell for Taylor, the Haylor timeline I like puts it this way:

“One Direction and Harry make an appearance on Nick’s show the following day, and they talk about Taylor on-air for 4 minutes straight. Nick teases Harry by saying “Ol’ Swiftyyyy” over and over again when she is brought up in the conversation.” Yup that’s right, Nick was giving his own boyfriend shit about his fake girlfriend 😭😭😭 this is why I fuck w Nick’s energy.

then they went for lunch in notting hill (no Taylor? why not Harry aren’t you so happy to be back with her and in love w her?)

33. October 7, 2012 - BBC Teen Choice Awards

One Direction doing promotion for the new album.

Paris - October 11, 2012

Ireland - October 12, 2012

Manchester - October 16, 2012

Leeds - October 17, 2012

34. October 19, 2012 - Lunch in London

October 31 - One Direction in Spain

Early November One Direction goes to the US for Ellen, X Factor USA, and The Today Show. After The Today Show Harry flies to LA while the rest of One Direction goes back to London. Harry writes a song with the lead singer of Snow Patrol and rumors start flying about him hooking up with Taylor Swift.

Harry arrives back in London on November 16, 2012.

35. November 16, 2012 - Children in Need benefit concert

November 30th One Direction goes back to the U.S. for one off shows and MSG show. Haylor happens.

Harry returns to London on December 8th via Taylor's private jet and plays the Jingle Ball with the rest of One Direction. Harry and Taylor tour the UK together until December 15th when Taylor leaves for France.  Meanwhile Dianna heads out on a mystery 14 hour long flight on December 14th.

36. December 16, 2012 - Roast Dinner!

One Direction returns to the U.S. for the X Factor USA finale. Harry stays in the U.S. and goes on a ski vacation with Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Selena Gomez.

He returns to the UK on December 24th.

37. December 25, 2012 - Late night Christmas leftovers. (Yes they’re spending Christmas together, that’s boyfriend behavior!)

Harry and Nick both leave London on the 29th (Nick for Puerto Rico and Harry for NYC) Harry spends New Years with Taylor and Nick spends New Years with Pixie, Aimee, and the rest of the hipster crew. Harry and Taylor then fly to Gorda British Virgin Islands where they are supposed to vacation until the 7th. Taylor leaves on the 4th and Harry goes to Necker Island alone. Tabloids say Harry and Taylor have broken up.

And that’s it for Haylor!

Harry arrives back in the UK on January 8th

38. January 8, 2013 - Sushi lunch date! (tweet confirming nick was also there.)

and harry with the girl who tweeted it.

39. January 10, 2013 - Tinie Tempah's GQ dinner.

The party was for people on the British GQ best dressed list (Nick was on it. Harry was not.)

Jessie J puts a picture of the table cards from her table on instagram. Harry doesn't have one which, you know. I'll just be here imagining him as Nick's + 1.

One Direction fly to Ghana on the 12th or 13th and return on the 15th. On the 16th Harry calls into Grimmy’s show to talk about how Fincham DOES NOT LOOK LIKE A MEMBER OF ONE DIRECTION. Finchy asks Harry when he’s back and Harry says “in a couple of days”. (Small side note here that I don’t think Finchy and Harry are at the level of friends where they keep track of one another’s schedules so the only way Finchy could have known that Harry was heading back out of town to Japan that very day is if Nick told him.)

One Direction in Japan from January 16th to the 20th.

I'm not going to count this as a time they were together because I have no hard evidence, but the night of January 20th Harry was spotted in a grocery store buying wine and Annie Mac mentions on her show that Nick ditched coming over for dinner that evening to have a friend round to his house instead. We assume it was Harry, but w/o actual proof I don't want to say it concretely.

40. January 21, 2013 - Baking for Radio 1! (Tweet confirming the friend was Harry.)

Nick tells this story the morning of the 22nd about how he forgot he had to bake, so he got up from bed, went to the store for supplies, and forgot eggs. So, he texted his friend who was coming over to bring eggs and then Nick baked while his friend yelled at him to add more butter.

41. January 22, 2013 - Watching Great British Bake Off

Do what you will with this one. Obviously there is not definite way to tell if this is Harry or not, but given the evidence of the amount of time they spend together that has been laid forth thus far, I feel comfortable saying those are indeed Harry's legs.

42. January 31, 2013 - Out for Harry's birthday at La Bodega Negra (the same place they celebrated Nick's birthday.)

Nick also went to Groucho Club afterward with Harry and mentioned on his show this morning that he hadn't slept at all. (He was still wearing the same outfit.)

43. February 1, 2013 - Aimee tweets about being in the car with Nick en route to play Laser Quest. (Can't imagine who they might be playing with.)

Nick tweeted this :)

Never

Getting

Over

This

February 19, 2013 - PreBrit Awards Dinner Hosted by Nick!

THEIR SMILEY LITTLE FACES. :3

Legit SHARING A TAXI ON THE WAY HOME

2/20/13 - At the Brit Awards together!

Leaving an after party!

taking a cab to Nick's house so Nick can change for work

hands hands hands

At Nick's flat

 2/21/13 - On The Breakfast show the morning after the Brits!

Harry on The Breakfast Show!

2/23/2013 - Nick attends One Direction's first show at the O2 in London

THE DROUGHT IS OVER!!!

8/21/2013 - Nick interviews Harry, Zayn, and Liam for TBS

Then Nick and Harry hook up later for dinner.

September 12, 2013

Harry gets off the plane from LAX, gets on the tube and meets Nick at an Elton John concert

Harry and Nick's dad at the concert, posted to Nick's instagram.

September 13, 2013

This person says they saw nick and Harry at Apartment 58 (members only club) together

https://twitter.com/LightbownL/status/378610145271771136

But, Sadie Frost also posted a picture of her and Nick getting ready to go out for LFW with no mention of Harry, so the tweet could be false facts.

But then! September 14, 2013

Sadie posts this picture of Nick sleeping on her sofa

Followed by this picture of Harry posing with her daughter

And then Nick and Harry went to Henry Hollands show at LFW together

Then to a pub with Gemma, Kelly Osborn and others

Then to dinner with James Corden and his wife

September 15, 2013

September 17, 2013 - Fashion Show East in London

November 9, 2013 - Breakfast with Anne and Robin at the Wolseley.

So Anne tweeted this in the morning. You can see the Wolseley logo at the top of the plate.

Then this girl got a pic with Harry at the Wolseley during his breakfast with Anne and Robin.

and she confirmed that Nick was eating with them https://twitter.com/alexandra_imper/status/400204985222193152

Then off to Selfridges to shop!

At Alexa Chung's birthday party!

November 10, 2013 - Ladz instagram and Aimee Phillips birthday party!

LADZ VIDEO!

November 30, 2013

Harry playing with Puppy at Nick's house.

Poppy Delevingne's hen party!

Leaving Groucho club.

December 1, 2013

Primrose Hill lighting ceremony!

Nick with Daisy Lowe and his dad!

Then this girl met Nick

https://twitter.com/rpcheald/status/407224559687852032/photo/1

and saw Harry

https://twitter.com/rpcheald/status/407209332858552320

Class of '92 movie premiere

Nick and his dad on the red carpet

Harry meeting Beckham!

December 4, 2013 - London Fashion Awards

February 17, 2014 - Taking a random taxi ride?????

and leaving Nick's flat

March 29, 2014

Sleepover at Harry's house!

Nick posted this on instagram

http://instagram.com/p/mHpTBdPJyt/

At the time we weren't sure it was Harry's drive but...

https://twitter.com/cuppanarryx/status/481310537817399296/photo/1

Hiya, doggie.

Also Nick's tweet from the morning after just because.

https://twitter.com/grimmers/status/449814322399940609

May 24, 2014 - Radio 1's Big Weekend

May 28, 2014 - Barry's BC London

And link to post about the other tweets x

June 8, 2014

Nick attends One Directions show at Wembley Stadium.

June 12, 2014

Harry at Nick driving around London in a Ferrari.

and another tweet about the Ferarri sighting.

https://twitter.com/ItsJustMikey/status/477133631602065408

Then later that evening Harry went to Nick's for his World Cup barbecue and fans took pics with Harry outside Nick's house.

[dealmeout]

how to make an episode of m*a*s*h with HD video, but no laugh track: an advanced guide

(under a readmore, because it's extremely long and technical)

(you've been warned. also i wish i could put a pic up at the top here but i can't upload any more images 😔)

welcome one and all to my silly guide. i feel kind of goofy because im sure someone's done this already, like... it's m*a*s*h... but at this point i feel like i've got the process working well for my own personal use, so i might as well detail it. let's jump right in!

you'll need:

two (2) copies of your chosen episode -- one 16:9 HD copy w/ laugh track, and one 4:3 SD copy without. any file format should be fine, MKV and MP4 are what i personally work with

audacity (+ffmpeg) - https://www.audacityteam.org/download/

mkvtoolnix gui - https://mkvtoolnix.download/downloads.html

disclaimer -- i'm not responsible for you nuking your m*a*s*h episodes/computer/etc. as a result of this guide. (it's pretty safe and we're not going to be saving over any existing files tho)

also i tried to write everything like i was doing it for the first time, but if stuff is glaringly wrong or you run into issues, please shoot me a DM/ask and i can help

lastly, this is definitely like... kind of a technical process, and i'm probably bad at explaining it. again, nothing is really at risk here, but if you don't feel comfortable doing it you might want to stick to your single SD/HD copy. and hey, i'll take requests -- if there's a scene you really want to see, just let me know!

still here? cool. there are two parts of this process:

create a properly timed audio track

add this audio track to our existing HD video track

part 1 - create the audio track in audacity

(first time only) audacity + ffmpeg setup:

install audacity

go to this page and follow the steps under recommended installer -> https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_ffmpeg_for_windows.html

now we can import our episode's video files into audacity 👍

90% of the work is in this part. we're gonna be doing s04e08 (the kids) cause i wanna watch it later. let's start:

open audacity

drag and drop both of your video files in there. i recommend doing HD first, then SD

when it's done, you should see something like this:

okay SO

we're looking at a visual, spectrogram view (aka a spectral) of the audio track of the entire episode. when you see "hotter" colors like white-yellow-orange, that's basically like... the stuff that you and i can hear, so dialogue, music, all that. the height of the spikes correspond to the frequency of the audio. this is all getting kind of technical but you can read more about spectrals here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram

i also made this picture and i think it's cool so im including it. imagine hawkeye explaining spectrals to you... wow he's so smart :)

ok back to what we're actually looking at. i've annotated it a bit below to show roughly how a typical ep is split up -- you can see we have our theme song, our 2 main parts, our end scene, and the ending theme.

the red highlighted areas are where we'll be working. if you zoom in on either pic, you can see that our sections are split up by black vertical lines -- in the world of spectrals, black = silence. these silent sections are where commercials/ads would be added in, and it's also where our 2 audio tracks fall out of sync.

most importantly, this is where we'll be deleting or generating parts of the audio track -- only inside these silent portions (which will be much bigger when we zoom in.) we don't want to touch any portions with actual audio data, cause that might make things sound weird.

important note/technical explanation: there are 4 spectral lines total because each audio track is stereo and has 2 channels -- left and right. when i say "top track" or "bottom track", i'm referring to the 2 L+R channels as one track. don't worry too much about left vs right channels individually, they're gonna be the same.

the process starts at the very beginning, with the opening theme:

move your mouse over to the very start of the spectral portion

a yellow line should pop up. (it doesn't matter which track you're on.)

click once

at the top of the main audacity window, find the "zoom in" icon (it's the magnifying glass with the plus sign) and click 8 or 9 times

you can also hold the ctrl key and scroll with your mouse wheel. the scrollbar at the bottom will let you move around horizontally

your view should look like this now -- we want to be seeing around 3 to 6 seconds at once.

check out the specs. the 4 main "points" of yellow/orange/pink literally correspond to the 4 guitar notes of the opening song... i think that's kinda cool. doo doo doo doo...

see how the top track is a little bit misaligned from the bottom track though? we need them to line up exactly, so...

find a common point or peak that you can recognize on both the bottom and top tracks

on the bottom track, click at the start of this peak

drag your mouse until the guideline hits the start of this peak on the top track. do your best to line it up, it might take a few tries at first

i’ve created a cute little gif so you can see how i do it:

now that we have our selection, we have to find out the exact difference in timing. look down at the bottom left, where it says "start and length of selection" -- we need the second small number there. this time it's 74ms, which honestly isn't a very big time difference at all (it's usually between .5 and 3 seconds)

but regardless, we need to remove these 74ms from the bottom track to make it sync with the top. but we don't want to remove any actual audio data. so:

in the bottom track, click and drag your mouse and create a selection with that magic number, but only in the area of silence, as shown below:

hit the delete key

the audio tracks should be in sync now, and the peaks should (more or less) match up

one way we can check is to click at the beginning, then hit space to playback. you should hopefully hear the theme song (it might be a little louder than normal since we're playing it twice)

if it doesn't sound right, or if your peaks didn't end up matching, hit ctrl-z to undo and try again

let's do the next part, which is after the theme song ends -- about 50 seconds in. zoom out (use the buttons, or ctrl + scroll your mouse) to find it, then zoom back in until you get a comfortable window where you can see the peaks

we can see that it's not matching up again, so follow the same procedure:

click and drag on the bottom track to make a selection

match your peaks

get the timing

remove that length of time from the bottom track

check that it matches the top

now i'm gonna talk about adding time to the bottom track, as opposed to the deleting that we've been doing so far.

so here we are about halfway in, between parts 1 and 2 -- we can see the tracks are waaaaay off, and this time our bottom track is ahead.

this time, click and drag from the top track. this is so we get our handy guiding line to come up on the bottom track. here's another gif:

our time difference is 2.766 seconds, so pretty substantial! to add time to the bottom track, just do this:

on the bottom track, click anywhere in the silent portion

select Generate -> Silence from the top toolbar

key in your duration (the time difference)

click OK and you should be all matched up!

and that's kind of it. you'll need to zoom out again and look for another section of silence, then realign the audio tracks. generally this needs to happen 5-6 times per episode, but it goes quicker once you learn your way around audacity

other tips and tricks:

if your finished SD audio ends up being a teensy bit longer than the HD, just clip it at the end to match the HD track (we want to match the HD audio track's length cuz we're using its video track.) select what's there and hit delete (audacity should "snap" to the end with a yellow line)

(i've only seen this in SD s1/s2 so far) you might have tracks with near-continuous audio, so no black portions at all. just do your best with silence generation/deletion, and always play it back so that you can tell by ear

if you notice an extremely substantial time difference (± 30 seconds) between files, or your black lines aren't matching up at all, this method probably won't work :( (this is actually what made me realize my copy of SD s4 was sped up)

i've only done this for seasons 1-4. i don't think 5-11 would be that much different, but you never know

will not work out of the box on s04e01 welcome to korea if your SD version is the whole thing but your HD version is the one they split for syndication. (i might try to cobble something together though)

probably won't work with gfa if it's split the same way? i dont want to think about gfa right now guys, i just got here

once you're done and it all sounds good, here's what you need to do to export your audio:

close out your HD (top) track by clicking the X next to the file name

click File -> Export -> Export Audio

save it wherever

for file type, pick FLAC file

level = 8, bit depth = 16-bit

click Save

click Clear, then OK

ok NOW we're done with part 1. you're a hero if you've made it this far, and your toil will be worth it. think about all the gay little jokes you'll be able to watch in sexy modern 1080p!

part 2 - combine audio + video in mkvtoolnix

(first time only) mkvtoolnix setup:

install it

all right all right this is super duper easy

open up mkvtoolnix GUI, you should see a big screen. drag and drop your original, HD video file in there

it should populate a little list of the elements that make up your video file -- so subtitles, video track, and audio track. uncheck the audio box to exclude the HD audio cuz we don't want her

go and find the audio track you made in audacity, drag and drop that in there too (if it says something about a new source file, just make sure the top bubble is selected and click ok)

here's what it should look like, more or less:

hit "start multiplexing" at the bottom

that's it!

watch your episode and have fun :) if it doesn't sound or look right to your eyes, you can always go back and mess with it again

...so yeah there you have it. i don't do this for every episode i watch because you are missing out on stuff visually with a 16:9 crop, but idk, it's kinda fun to do and zen-like once you get quick at it. i'm insane btw

some final notes/thoughts:

i know the spectral stuff is the biggest learning curve, but imo, doing it this way is probably least harmful to the source video/audio, since we're only cutting or generating audio in silent portions. the video track isn't changed at all

as you probably noticed by now, this was all done on windows, but audacity/ffmpeg/mkvtoolnix GUI is available for macOS/linux, so you could probably do this on those platforms too

if you have the DVDs a fresh rip would probably be the best source possible for the SD audio. i'm trying to get my hands on them now bc the audio in my SD copy definitely doesn't sound as good as the HD 😔

i know this whole guide is on how to remove it, but i swear i don't even hate the laugh track THAT much, like it's fine. i just like doing weird stuff on the computer

you don't need to remove the HD audio track in mkvtoolnix. if you want both audio tracks, you can just toggle between them

(only audio nerds will care about this) i really REALLY hate doing lossy -> lossless (FLAC) for the audacity export because it's just inflating the file size for no reason, but i'm not sure if there's a better alternative? like... personally, i would rather have a lossless copy of the lossy audio rather than risking an additional lossy transcode on it. but if that doesn't worry you you could probably export as higher-quality AAC and it would be fine, yolo

sooooo that's all for now! if you end up actually cutting an episode this way and the guide worked PLEASE tell me i would love to know... or if you have suggestions/comments/DMCA takedowns....... ok bye 🍸☮

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Explains Bones - Part 4.1

(These are all under the KyidylBones tag.)

Sorry for the pause in this series....it’s difficult to produce these when I don’t have my meds and I ran out.  But I refilled them, so now we continue! 

Anyway, today we’re covering something that is, if possible, even more complex and thorny than sex determination: race determination.  

Ethical Statement: Race is not a biological reality.  Now, hear me out before you run away.  Race isn’t a biological reality, but that doesn’t make it *not real*.  Race absolutely is real and effects how society interacts with an individual.  But between these two statements, which gives you more information about a person: 

“I’m white.” 

“I’m white and I live in 21st century America.” 

The second, obviously.  Because skin color tells us virtually nothing about an individual.  Ethnicity - where they’re from, what social groups they might have interacted with, how society might have treated them, etc. - is a lot more valuable than knowing the color of their skin.  HOWEVER.  And this is a big however.  However, in a modern person’s understanding there is a lot of crossover between race and ethnicity.  And, in fact, as with sex, when a set of remains is being evaluated for identification we must at least attempt to identify the race because that’s how they’ll be categorized in the missing persons’ database.  And identifying race in archaeological remains helps us track human social interaction and migration because ethnicity doesn’t really survive intact outside of grave goods (and those may or may not be present.).  And, yes, if you’re wondering, DNA tests can confirm a lot of the data that we attempt to glean anatomically but for the most part we don’t have the money to do DNA tests on remains, or they don’t have anything surviving that has intact DNA (you can have a nearly complete set of remains and not have any DNA because damage to the outside surface of the bone and/or teeth causes damage to the DNA inside it and causes it to break down.). 

So since race isn’t a biological reality but it is a social reality, it’s helpful to attempt to determine the race of the individual in question.  And, obviously, that’s before you even take into account that people interbreed all the time.  So how can we begin to do this with any degree of accuracy, since the classifications are social and not biological? 

Short answer: we can’t, but we try anyway because of the reasons I mentioned above.  And there’s something that I should have added to the post about sexing a skeleton but I didn’t because I’m human and I make mistakes sometimes: we don’t ever refer to a set of remains as definitively X sex or definitively X race (well, we do when we’re with other scientists who have an understanding of what I’m about to say for brevity’s sake.), we say “this individual has _____ features consistent with or indicative ______ race/sex.” Sometimes the features are very stereotypical and we’re fairly certain that they definitely are X race or sex, but other times they’re not.  And the markers that we use are based on averages, so obviously within those averages there’s a huge amount of variation - that’s why we use so many different markers.  So like with any science, it’s good to remember that there’s always room for change and that it’s all theories.  

Also if you want to do some reading on it, you’ll see that these determinations are still hotly debated among anthropologists because we are well aware of how racist and shitty it all is and we hate that we have to engage in it but at the same time it’s important for the reasons I mentioned above, so we’re always trying to find new ways that are more accurate and less racist.  

Categories

Essentially, we have a list of anatomical features that tend to be similar in geographic regions and we go through these features and grade them according to which race category we think they most closely match.  There are three, sometimes four, categories: 

Caucasoid/White/European depending on what reference you’re using.  

Black/African (Outdated term: Negroid. We all hate it but it’s in the literature, especially older stuff, and if you do any reading you’ll run into it.)

Asian (Outdated term: mongoloid. Same as above.) - This includes Native Americans because their anatomy is so similar to Asians, especially eastern asians, that it’s well-nigh impossible to distinguish without a DNA test.  Mostly we know based on the context the remains are found in.  

Aboriginal - This is specifically for indigenous pacific groups, especially in Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand. In this lab we use the indigenous name.).  They have some interesting anatomical differences that are only found in that area of the world.  Obviously it’s not going to be as used in the rest of the world tho so it’s often not covered.  Plus their biggest differences are brow bone size and tooth size so while it’s different it’s not AS different as the other three categories.  

So as we go through the markers, we add them to these groups and then at the end average them out to see which one the remains most resemble.  

The Anatomy

There are a lot of markers of race on remains, and more are being studied all the time, so I’m going to cover the most common ones in the interest of length.  Also, pretty much all race markers are on the skull, so I’m not really going to get into the rest of the skeleton, even tho there ARE markers on the post-cranial (means exactly what you’d think: not skull.) skeleton.  And like with physics ignoring friction for the sake of illustration, we’re going to ignore cultural changes to the bones ala the slavic squat and pathologies.  We’re gonna start in on the bone pics in a hot second, so time for a cut.  

I went back and forth on the most concise, easy to understand way of doing this and it took me a bit to figure it out, but I think it’s going to be like this: I’m going to tell you what we look for generally, and then give specific examples in each category as we go through race by race.  So, there are a lot of things that can indicate race in a skeleton, but I’m only going to cover the easiest to digest.  Understand though that there’s a lot of smaller indiciations.  Like with sex, these are graded on a scale in relationship to how stereotypical they are of a given feature.  And, unlike with sex, it’s much easier for the opinion and biases of the examiner to alter the results because a lot of these comes down to “what shape is this thing and which shape is it closest to”.  This is, of course, subjective.  The ones I’m going to cover are: 

Eye orbit shape and sharpness. 

Prognathism (the amount that the “muzzle” area of the face sticks out.  Eg., how flat is or isn’t a face?)

Nasal shape

Nasal sill (this is the bit that sticks out at the bottom of your septum, and the “floor” of your nose/top of your maxilla in your nose.

Nasal bridge

Unique racial features.  

First, I’m gonna use some screenies from my ipad to be very specific about the area of the skull I’m talking about here.  These all were taken by me in essential skeleton and edited.  

Eye orbit shape: 

I think this one is one of the more accessible things to understand without a skull in your hand.  If you think of the way that people look IRL, there are physical features that tend to be more common in various populations, and that translates to the skull (and in case you’re wondering: no, white is not treated as the baseline here, but you’ll see.).  Here it’s the shape of the eye socket.  

Eye socket sharpness: 

When you hold a skull in your hand, if you run your finger over the part of the eye socket between the lines (really, the whole edge, but the effect is more pronounced at the bottom and on the lateral edges), it’s sharper on some races than on others.  Again - this is a skeletal marker of physical features that you can see in a living person.  I’m not going to point this out in the example skulls because you won’t be able to see or feel it in the images, but it’s a pretty easy to understand way of adding another racial marker to your tools.  

Prognathism: 

So the easiest way to understand this is twofold.  First, how far does the chin stick out in relationship to the top of the nose? This shows how far the face protruded in life.  Here you can see the angle is 88 (although honestly i’ve never known anyone to measure this - I’m using it to illustrate the point.), and I only know that because the ruler tool I used to draw the lines told me so, lol.  The easiest way to see this is to look at the curve of the profile like I’ve illustrated with the green line.  

Nasal Shape: 

The shape of the nasal opening varies between racial groups.  We look at the height and width from the places I’ve illustrated above.  Sometimes we also look at the shape of the sort of upside down heart area I’ve outlined, because human variation means that you’ve gotta have a couple of ways of doing things.  

The Nasal Sill gets two images cause it has two parts: 

The top one has a landmark called the anterior nasal spine highlighted (honestly I think of it like the pointy nose thing).  The degree to which it sticks out  varies by race.  It is part of the maxilla, and together with the two portions of the maxilla that i’ve circled forms the nasal sill.  A lot of textbooks refer to the nasal sill as having a “height”.  I found this confusing and I found the pictures confusing too, so I’m gonna try a different tactic with you guys.  So first of all, you can feel some of these bones in your face.  Pinch the bottom of your septum where it meets your upper lip and wiggle it.  Feel how there’s a harder bit under the cartilage? That’s the pointy nose thing...er, nasal spine.  Now - and this is a little gross but it’s ok I won’t tell anyone - if you feel down into the bottom of your nasal passages you can feel where this blends into your maxilla.  The cartilage rises up and that forms your nasal passage.  On a dead person, that cartilage isn’t there.  So the hard bone that you feel there is all we have.  Well, the angle at which that slopes deeper into the nasal passage varies by race (because nose shape varies by race).  In some individuals, the anterior edge of that opening is sharp and lifted, forming a sort of dip in the area I’ve circled above.  This is the nasal gutter.  And if you google that, you will be hard-pressed to find anything that explains it with any clarity, especially because you don’t have a skull in your hand.  But it’s one of those things that’s useful to know because it can be really distinct and easy to see the differences in.  

The Nasal Bridge: 

Because the shape of the nose changes the bones all around it, another indicator is what I’ve shown here.  The angle of the curve of that red line, and the length of the blue line.  That’s basically the length of the nasal bones.  You can also tell with the shape of them, and the shape of the place where they connect to the frontal (the suture that connects them to the brow bone.), but I’m not going to cover that.  We have enough nose things.  

I’m going to cover unique features when I get into the examples of different races.  You might be thinking that this is a lot of attention paid to the eyes and nose, and you’d be right, because although there are distinct differences in mouth shape and size they don’t translate to the bone.  And, fun fact, the most accurate indicator of race is actually teeth - but we’ll cover that in the entry on teeth.  But for now, I’m going to stop here and split that into its own post because this one is long and picture-heavy.  So come back in a couple hours after I’ve finished and posted that one.  

[nattikay]

hey wanna hear something that SUCKS

So a while back I made some customs Sims4 poses for my Jlaire family, so they could have a cute lil family portrait y’know? Well, since then their family has grown a bit and some of the older kids aged up to teens so I decided, hey, let’s make a new one with the updated characters. So I set to work putting it all together in Blender.

After two days’ of work neatly posing all the characters, I started saving everything out to export into Sims4Studio. I had a bit of a scare when I accidentally saved over the wrong filename and had to restore a backup--but luckily that got sorted in the end.

Finally I had my pose pack, and I opened my game. but SURPRISE! MY SAVE FILE WAS CORRUPTED! Trying to play the Trollhunters household resulted in Utter Brokenness. I tried restoring older saves, but alas, even the oldest backup was broken in the same way. So I had to start do a lot of finagling to reset everything while loosing as little information as possible. In the end, I had to save the lot to the gallery, save the household to the gallery (after separating it into two cuz I’ve used mods to add twice as many Sims as are technically allowed), bulldoze the lot, re-place the lot from the gallery, re-place one of the household-halves from the gallery, re-place the other half in a different lot, take some from the main lot over to re-claim the other half into the family, and BOOM. Finally, the lot and all the characters are working! I lost my clubs and some relationship levels, but those are fixable enough I guess.

Finally time to test my new pose pack. But it’s raining outside...no worries, I’ll just take the pic inside. Except...wait a minute...ALL MY LIGHTS AND FIREPLACES HAVE DISAPPEARED!

Well, that’s annoying, but it’s probably just from all that finagling I had to do to get stuff working. I guess I can just replace the lights. So I go into Build Mode and...can’t place any lights. It says I’ve bought them, but they don’t actually show up. Phooey!

Time to consult Google. Apparently this a glitch that’s been happening to several people since a recent update, and to fix it you have to Repair Game in Origin. Guess I’m doing that now. Naturally, my internet connection pulls some shenanigans and this takes longer than it should have, as well as an Origin restart cuz it froze the first time. But finally it works and I can re-launch the game (twice cuz repairing disables mods so I had to turn them back on which requires a restart to take effect). 

Ok, my lights and fireplaces are still missing, but at least I can place new ones now, so I re-light my lot. Probably not as nicely as the original but hey, I can edit it later.

FINALLY, for real this time, I can try my pose pack!

I set up the teleporter, summoned all the characters, applied my poses....aaaaand...

it’s broken. Or, well, sort of.

This time it was my fault, unfortunately. See, I’d done a lot of scaling with the rigs to cheat heights/sizes so that everyone looked their proper relative age. I assumed this would work because I thought I’d seen downloadable pose packs where people had shrunk toddlers down to baby size, since you can’t really do anything with actual babies in S4.

Turns out, Sims4Studio does not actually import any scaling data from Blender, so while it might look nice in your editor, no scaling edits will actually show up in-game. The folks who made the poses with shrunk toddlers and the like apparently had to use special custom rigs, the making of which is far beyond my technical capabilities. So when the non-scaled versions were applied in game, everything got jumbled. Characters were too big or too small, or floating, or had their feet buried in the ground, or were awkwardly clipping through each other. And the only thing I can do to fix it would be to completely re-do all the poses with no scaling data--which could work for some, but definitely wouldn’t give as clean a result when it comes to cheating heights etc. and overall just would not be worth the hassle.

So I uh. just wasted several hours of my life, basically. Ain’t that fun. 🙃

[nereol]

I’ll Be Your Animal (4/8)

Next part of my Val / Emmerick fic!

You can read this on AO3 or on my WorldAnvil page (with pics, music and other stuff).

“How are you?” Claire sounds worried while looking at Val. “Do I look that awful or why does everyone ask me that?” Val sits down on a bar stool and frowns. “You...” Claire hestitates. “...you look like you haven't slept in days.” “Mhm...” Val shrugs. “Maybe. What day is it?” She smirks, like she always does - but without the spark in her eyes.

This’s the Hurt/Comfort chapter: collapsing (but still stubborn) Val, kinda soft Emmerick

It has been one week, maybe two, since her breakfast with Emmerick. Now Val enters the Afterlife like usual - she opens her jacket, takes off her aviators and puts it into the front of her top. The loose neckline's pulled down a little bit and shows more of her chest-piece. Emmerick smirks slightly as he sees her and today he is the first who says something. "Hey", he says, unusually friendly, as if him greeting a costumer isn't unusual enough.

But Val pays no attention, just answers mechanically: “Hey.” She doesn't look at him and has almost passed him when Emmerick asks frowning: “You okay?” Val stops, now standing besides him and turns around a little to look up to him. “Why?” she asks defiantly.

Now as he sees her up close she seems tired and exhausted. He looks at her with a frown. “You look tired.” “Yeah, thanks.” She turns away and shows him a finger over her shoulder while she passes the door.

---

“Hey, V!” Claire greets her as Val walks over to the bar. “Haven't seen you in a while.” But now Claire can see her up close and the dim neon lights making the dark shadows under her eyes even bigger. “How are you?” Claire sounds worried while looking at Val. “Do I look that awful or why does everyone ask me that?” Val sits down on a bar stool and frowns.

“You...” Claire hestitates. “...you look like you haven't slept in days.” “Mhm...” Val shrugs. “Maybe. What day is it?” She smirks, like she always does - but without the spark in her eyes. “Seriously, you should take care of yourself. You need a clear mind in your biz.” Val groans and rolls her eyes. Claire adds quickly: “And I'm not tryin' to tell you what to do.” She takes Val's hand in hers for a moment. “I care about you.”

Val sighs but her face becomes softer, less aggressive. But this way she looks more tired, too. “I know... just... gimme somethin' with caffeine. Lil' more work and I can get some sleep.” Claire still looks worried and Val adds: “Just talking, no gig.” “Okay...” Claire hands her a cola.

---

Two or three hours later Val leaves the Afterlife. She doesn't pay attention to Emmerick but he eyes her carefully. She walks slower than usual and she doesn't swing her hips like all the other times his gaze was drawing to her bottom.

At the first staircase Val winces. “Oh, shit...”, she gasps. Then she stumbles and falls at her naked knees, trying to hold herself with one hand at the wall. A few other customers are looking, but Emmerick is faster. “V!” With a few long, quick strides he's at her side. With his arms around her shoulders he holds her and helping her to stand up. She leans forwards, eyes closed, heavy breathing, looks like she's in pain. He can feel her shiver.

Emmerick has no idea what to say. “You okay?”, he asks carefully. What a gonk question. “No!” Val's voice is quite but defiant, almost aggressive. She opens her eyes and looks up at him. So much pain in her eyes. Then she's gasping for air, turn away from him and coughs in her sleeve. Breathing heavily she lowers her head and he can see blood at the sleeve of her jacket.

“You should see a ripperdoc.” He sounds worried. “My ripper knows about it.” Val tries to get rid of him, but is to weak to shake him of. “Just let go... just some air and I'll be fi...” And then Emmerick feels how she gets limp between his hands. “Oh no, you won't” he says firmly. Then with calm voice, almost caring “...come here...” and he picks her up without any effort. One hand at her butt, one at her back he holds her close to his torso.

In every other kind of situation Val would've enjoyed this. His big hands, his strong arms, his hard chest. But now there was no time to enjoy anything. She needs all her concentration to just breath. Breath and try to ignore the pain in head and chest. A new wave of piercing pain in her head. “Fuuuck”, she swears with faint voice. Squeezing her eyes shut she leans her forehead against his shoulder while he carries her upstairs. He can feel her shivering and cold sweat at the skin of her naked legs.

Upstairs, Emmerick sends a few people away so that he can set Val down on the unused steps going up. “You should've not...” Vals voice trembles. She sits on the stairs with head down and forearms leaning on her legs. “It's part of my job...” He leans against the wall and looks down at Val. 'His job... as bouncer... of course... what was she thinking...' Val closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

And then she can't breath anymore. She coughs and Emmerick sits down next to her, lets one of his big hands rest an her back. She doesn't try to get rid of him. Then she spits out some blood at the floor between her shoes. She closes her eyes and concentrates on her breath again.

“You need somethin'?” He eyes her worried. She shakes her head. “Just a few minutes and I'll be fine.” Her voice is weak, but no longer trembles. She raises her head but she's not looking at Emmerick, just straight ahead. “If it were serious, I would've passed out by now.” He can see a small grin at her face.

“So this happens more often?” Now he sounds really worried. But Val shrugs just. “Really don't need anything?” He stands up and looks down at her. She shakes her head, still heavy breathing and doesn't look at him. Then she sees that some data being sent to her. Contact data. “Just gimme a call if so.” And then Emmerick walks down the stairs again.

Johnny appears glitching where Emmerick just stood. “Might have gotten his number easier...” “Oh, just shut up!” Val's shouting at him through her thoughts. Then she stands up. Her legs, already weak from being up for way to many hours, are trembling. She walks a few steps and leans against a railing to breath in the fresh air deeply. Well, as fresh as air in backyards of Night City can be.

---

Ten minutes later she sends a text.

I'm on my way - so not your problem anymore. V.

[cards98here-blog]

Business spins SellingFacebook Profiles Work around show

Audrey Mitchell is a 23-year-old New York City move from London. She's a happy model working at KFC. As shown by her profile on Facebook, where she has 921 mates, she favors the New York Knicks, the film Me and Wonderful and the Contracting Youthful grown-up, and the St. Paul, Minnesota-based hip-ricochet pair Eyedea and Cutoff centers. She's at long last single, at any rate her Facebook Dispatch inbox is meandering eccentrically out completed frail men sending her stickers, emoticons, jabbing messages, and dick pics. She respects cupcakes. Also: She doesn't actually exist.

I comprehend this reason for reality analyzing the way that few snaps and one direct $13 bitcoin exchange on a Russian site to purchase Audrey Mitchell and her acceptably advanced impression. After the exchange, an educated embellishment presented a downloadable record containing the general phone number Audrey's record was picked under, a confusing word, and a picked birthdate — the exceptional of the fundamental affirmations get to the record.

Inside 30 minutes I was controlling everything of Audrey's page, appreciating pictures, posting notice, and exculpating upsetting messages. There was little to suggest that the page was inauthentic — or that its supervisor was a 30-year-old producer in Montana.

Across Facebook there are wearisome others truly like Audrey — joke records with nearly made records, a little posting history, and a photograph show of real individuals taking guaranteed selfies. They exchange hands a goliath catch of phony record business centers, where, for somewhat complete, any enchanted appearance expert, blackmailer, or savage can add up to a huge number of clearly human profiles fit for outsmarting Facebook's district.

Referencing before Congress in April in the conceivable aftereffect of the Facebook political race shock, President Cutting Zuckerberg told theme arranged specialists "you're not permitted to have a phony record on Facebook." Despite then these phony profile business spins keep on winning around show on the web.

"There should be millions [of addresses sale]," one Facebook account dealer made in Europe assessed to BuzzFeed News concerning the size of the phony records market. "I go to these goliath business living spaces and see a couple thousand [profiles] in stock relentlessly. I was unable to say in case it was a goliath number or a tremendous number now Facebook kills a couple and individuals continue to make them. Continually." Correspondingly, when insinuated the number from counterfeit records I could buy from them at one time, the seller stayed aware of me, "I could send 5,000 records immediately."

"I could send 5,000 records immediately."

Facebook uncovered to BuzzFeed News that phony records addressed routinely 3% to 4% of its 2.19 multi month to month dynamic clients during the last quarter of 2017 and first quarter of 2018, at any rate the course of action proposes that the records sold in such business conditions address scarcely any the phony records that Facebook screens. Know more here facebook账号购买

The association is inventively doing connecting with fake records. On Tuesday, Facebook expressed in a straightforwardness report that it hurt 583 million phony records and unlimited posts that included sex, spam, and scorn talk in the major three months of 2018. Regardless, then Facebook account business centers figure out some approach to manage supervise control work on show: A Google look for "PVA [phone-affirmed accounts] Facebook" returns various locales selling accounts that are picked with basic telephone numbers and are as such seen by the obliging relationship as bound to be certified records. These business places exist in direct infringement of Facebook's terms of association and revoltingly offer each and every advancement in this manner hoards for bypassing the collusion's advantage while utilizing counterfeit profiles.

While one record merchant uncovered to BuzzFeed News they had "never seen a business opportunity for taken records," it shows up, undeniably, to be the business districts have remained mindful of facilitators to try to take Facebook accounts from attested individuals. In one occasion reported by Erin Gallagher, an altered information essayist, an Egyptian maker broke into the Facebook record of a dead man to take and offer the profile to a business region. "In each record you get 20 pounds/individual who gets them since they need old records," the expert told Gallagher.

Facebook said it considers these phony record business centers, which the union notes are not novel to the stage. (A tremendous store of Twitter, Instagram, and email accounts are furthermore open for getting.) "We pleasingly outline online business spots to assist with upsetting cheats who attempt to sell counterfeit records. Our reenacted understanding developments assist with baffling goliath number of attempts to make counterfeit records every day, and we get customarily more once somebody tries to utilize them," Bill Slattery, Facebook's head of e-evil lead assessments, said in an explanation. Slattery in like way proposed that the phony records business centers might be detonating numbers or, a dash of the time, selling counterfeit data. "Since a record looks ready to move doesn't mean it's genuinely liberal or that it will if all else fails be utilized suitably without getting captured. We in like way work with law execution when fitting." The entire of the nine telephone demonstrated the veracity of records I bought from two separate business living spaces while looking at this piece worked and acceptably stayed away from declaration from Facebook while posting.

"A couple of days you will have a central number improvement demands."

The most major of the phony profiles ready to move are "softreg" accounts, which are genuinely auto-picked utilizing programming programs and have not a ton of additional things. These show up, plainly, to be bought in mass — in April, one Russian site was selling as much as 2,100 softreg addresses 5 pennies each. There are "stayed aware of" accounts, which are either really picked or made utilizing a softreg program and populated with mates containing a blend of bots and shared followback approaches. At long last, there are "made records," which request to have been set up some spot in the level of four and 10 years sooner. Across the business places, made records are completely more cutoff (running some spot in the level of $5 to $150 per account) as they're liberally less slanted to be hailed by Facebook's record seeing programming.

A Russian site called AccsMarket offers enchanted purchasers the chance to buy accounts chose as precisely on time as 2004 (the year Facebook dispatched) with 5,000 certainly genuine, non-bot embellishments for $150 each. Firmly when BuzzFeed News gathered check whether a record was preregistered and left apathetic or got from an authentic individual, the affiliation said just that the record was "deserted."

Now and again, it is dull where a phony record closes and an ensured single beginnings. In January, I purchased five profiles — including five procedures for colossal profile and photograph system pictures, in addition as Google Voice telephone numbers to request the records and outfit them with liberal characters — utilizing a made record business center. For each condition, the photographs gave were spellbinding pictures of clear individuals. A contrary picture look for one of Audrey's profile photographs uncovered that it seemed to have a spot with a Russian model named Yuliya Yanchenko, who didn't return a message proposing remark.

A Facebook profile seller uncovered to BuzzFeed News they all things considered buy pictures from a party in India that harvests photographs from places like the Russian individual to single correspondence site VK, which isn't recommended by Google and hence more hesitant to appear in an opposite picture search. The delegate uncovered to BuzzFeed News that they like to purchase photographs of join as one with ladies. "In the event that you post pics of a hot youth and send mate proposing Indian men, Center Easterner speakers, or South American men, they will see critical and some time later the total of their mates will demand you," the transporter said. "A few days you will have a beast number of pal demands."

For most purchasers, the key concern is that the phony records are reasonably ensured to the lacking eye and don't trigger Facebook's spam securities. To ensure the last started, epic levels of the submitted record buying questions offer express guidelines to "warm up" the records and cause them to show up, in actuality, to be tremendous. The site for AccsMarket tells clients they "should from the beginning play out some standard activities that a standard individual would do in the wake of picking. Model: balance the page, buy in a, couple of affinities, balance the page, fill in express photographs, make a couple reposts, remarks, and so on" The records carrier saw that one convincing approach to manage supervise direct control heat up a profile is to investigate political discussion. "I'd make the record attestation to be impeccable to Catalonian self-alliance and whenever you post anything about Catalonia and opportunity you get diverse enhancement mentioning from indepentists," the transporter said. "All them are Unimaginably vital and On an extremely essential level amped prepared for posting and sharing this sort of political radicalism."

Certain locale offer different insurances like VPNs, which cover IP regions and control evident record logins from various contraptions. A couple of fights even propose utilizing programming like RF_SCreater, a program that can pass on a phony checked duplicate of a Russian clear affirmation with the name, date of birth, nation, and city subject to one's own pheno

[mieszkaniowyk]

Przewodnik dla średniozaawansowanych po usługi remontowe poznań

Broadband: Understanding the Jargon And exactly how to obtain the Best Prepare

When you find yourself examining this short article on the internet, then odds have you been are no stranger on the extensive wilderness that's the internet. Uploads, downloads, weblogs, films, podcasts, pics, message boards, game titles, information, e mail, animation, flash, webmail, webcams and tunes can all make for an enormous and limitless genuine-time ecosystem that is continually altering. It is commonly the seemingly inexhaustible degree of sources which has several Web end users tearing out their hair because of strolling overall performance and prolonged loading time for articles. On the other hand, in lots of scenarios, the actual culprit isn't the written content or the web site by itself, but fairly The mixture of the ill-Outfitted relationship pace and an internet prepare that does not adequately handle precise consumer demands.

Ahead of roaming free from the Internet, just about every Net person need to to start with select a connection strategy and relationship velocity that should be able to accommodate both of those their spending budget and their person requires. The following post seeks to outline a lot of the simple regions that newbie people should really tackle when selecting to hook up with the internet. For some, it might seem to be commonsense, but for those struggling conveniently avoidable problems and prolonged load occasions it could make a entire world of variation.

Link Speeds

Prior to commencing it might first be smart to elucidate The 2 varieties of connection speeds and how they essentially vary. All methods of internet use throughout the globe only use both one or another of these sorts of connections.

Kbps: Would be the prevalent acronym for Kilobits for every 2nd. A Kilobit is a single thousand bits of data a little remaining one of the most fundamental type of binary code which makes up all information accessible both of those on the internet and on your property PC. Essentially, a tad is definitely the building block of all Laptop or computer technologies and interaction. In laymans phrases it is solely The mix of 1s and 0s that kind the language of computer systems.

Mbps: A much bigger device of information, Mbps refers back to the expression Megabits per 2nd. A Megabit is one million bits. This form of knowledge transference is used by each and every Connection to the internet above Dial-Up pace.

Types of Connection

Dial-Up: The most elementary relationship available, a Dial-Up relationship utilizes the prevailing cell phone line in a company or house to transfer facts at all over 56Kbps. Here is the slowest relationship currently available in Australia which is in the entire process of steadily becoming outdated resulting from more quickly connections getting far more greatly and quickly accessible for a reduced Price.

ISDN: Is anIntegrated Providers Digital Community which is 2 times the pace (at 128Kbps) of Dial-up. It can be challenging to get on account of its reliance on what exactly is rapidly getting to be out-of-date technologies. ISDN was basically the technological stepping stone involving Dial-Up and ADSL.

ADSL: Stands forAsymmetric Electronic Subscriber Line, also most commonly referred to once the expression broadband is used, and is also a one particular-way relationship the place the down load speed is much faster compared to the add speed. It is a frequent lure for the typical purchaser because the speed on the connection is often referenced concerning the most download speed (i.e how briskly a website page loads up / time it requires to save a file), as an alternative to the Substantially slower add velocity (i.e just how long it will require to send an electronic mail / deliver a file to a different Computer system)

Cable: The speediest connection obtainable for each business and residential use (Fibre Optic connections, which can be another degree up, are at this time distinctive to small business because of the substantial cost of putting in and keeping). Cable Net employs a similar procedure of connections to most shell out television providers. It is completely individual to your household mobile phone line and relationship speed is significantly a lot quicker for the two uploads and downloads. Nonetheless, velocity is often compromised by the volume of separate homes located in near proximity that use the same cable as only one cable is generally delivered for an entire neighborhood. Usually cable operates at all around 1.five 6 Megabits of bandwidth which happens to be significantly faster than ADSL.

Relationship Options and Common Traps

To keep up a steady and constantly rapidly link you'll want to acquire treatment in the selection of the plan. Acquiring chosen the telecommunications enterprise with which you would like to subscribe to the support you then have to have to choose a program based on the associated fee of putting in and retaining your connection, the sort of connection you want to own set up, the velocity with the connection, the down load limit, if any, and the consequences if that download Restrict is exceeded.

The down load limit or shaping of your system dictates the amount information and facts it is possible to entry from the online world in just a thirty day period just before getting subjected to either additional fees (which may be major) or slower connections (normally Dial-up).

In line with Miles Humphrys, IT Manager for Corporate Government Offices, among the most important Global chains of serviced workplaces all over the Asia Pacific Location, a typical pitfall when selecting with your World-wide-web approach is, not being aware of what it is that you, or your company, need to utilize the connection for. In accordance with Mr Humphrys, Prior to connecting the organization or user should to start with choose what their Key ways of usage might be. Will they be sending a substantial level of emails? Downloading Reside films or new music? Or simply browsing for information? Each one of these things must be weighed up before signing as many as a confined link or 1 using a capped amount of usage. Almost nothing is much more aggravating for a company, or house Office environment, than being crippled by an extremely gradual connection given that they have gone above their down load limit during the day-to-working day demands on the company http://cennikremontow.pl or person.

If you are Not sure of the level of info which you are more likely to obtain in a month ensure you choose a strategy that provides you sufficient down load potential to help you to then keep track of your usage with out panic of exceeding your limit. Make sure that your approach is adaptable more than enough to then adjust In case your download necessities are possibly significantly fewer or in excess of you expected.

The just one piece of recommendation that I might give for any person looking to connect to the online world possibly now or Later on, higher than all, would be to – go through the good print! The matters to look out for are capped plans, obtain limitations, shaping and especially added prices. If the thing is just about anything that looks somewhat odd, constantly inquire questions or check with an IT Qualified, concluded Mr Humphrys.

[crocifixio]

Quasimodo

You know that cliché shot – badass, multimillion-dollar contract action film star slowly making an appearance by walking out of that rise on the road, blurred by the hot fumes of the pavement. His leather pistol dangling by his side, wide-brimmed hat tipping down low. It is a cliché as old as cinema, a cousin of The Explosion Walk, and it works all the time. Only for that day, it was a stocky young man in a waway hat who had figured in my vision.

Three months had passed since our Tirad Peak hike and the misadventures surrounding it were almost wiped out now from our memory. In the next 48 hours we would be overwriting whatever clean slate we had with something much worse. I had my reservations about dwelling on the subject again but this is an honest journal and thankfully we would have none of the same misfortune involving local guides on our subsequent hikes.

I was again with my two regular hiking buddies Dirty Harry and Liquidator in this dilapidated sorry excuse of a bus out from Dangwa on a hot Good Friday morning. Whatever calories I might have stocked up on hours ago from Good Taste had been consumed by intermittent bursts of adrenaline as I imagine hurtling myself out of the windshield while I rode shotgun with the daredevil Kankana-ey driver. Dirty Harry and Liquidator were far in the back buried in boxes of live poultry. I was lightheaded when we got off the bus at the Kibungan municipal gate.

And then this kid in the waway hat. We had to figure out for ourselves that he was the assigned guide for us as he approached in his filmic entrance. We had asked him, but he just gave a grin and we took that for a yes. For the entirety of the hike he would be giving that menacing grin with his tobacco spit-stained crooked teeth, not making eye contact as half of his face would be shadowed by the brim of his hat (I later saw his eyes were misaligned). He would just launch on a low, continuous muttering every time we would ask him things. At times, I would ask him random questions just to get him into that state and annoy my two companions. Liquidator thought he acted like Gollum and was convinced he would kill us in our sleep. Dirty Harry on the other hand thought Quasimodo was more apt as he was wearing green, had little of a neck and had pants cut off just after the knee. But he also thought we would be killed in our sleep. I am all for benefit of the doubt, even if a number of villagers we would pass by had to shout ‘Ingat kayo dyan sa isang yan!’. After all, it was a joke common among Filipinos who would see friends in the company of unfamiliar guests.   

But Kibungan Circuit was such a beautiful hike that there was no effort freeing ourselves from all of our doubts about him. Never mind that he insisted we settle for Version 1 – we told him we were physically ready for Version 2 and that we were willing and able to add hours or days just to tab more miles and notch Mt Oten and Mt Tagpew, but his incessant mumbling told us he was not fit for it. So on we proceeded to what we would downgrade as just a relaxed hike, or ‘chill climb’ in local hiking parlance.  

We set off in a steady pace, and my two companions were all awe every step of the way. We passed by the cemetery, and the local who was tending the graves had to give out another ominous remark – apparently another warning to watch out for our guide. I was glad that my companions were too absorbed at the scenery to mull over the same worries again. The cemetery, which was sitting on a plateau, pans in a cinematographic way as you walk along the road while the nearby peaks at the background hung like painted cloth in this huge theater stage. I swear I could hear the The Ecstasy of Gold! Rest in peace, Ennio..

Packs down for early lunch in the first village we stopped by. You would think that we would get a lovely scenic spot for lunch but the guide pointed at a small corner of a cemented wall with about six inches of shade from the overhang of the roof, and then just left. Dirty Harry was furious after fully grasping the idea that the guide had meant for us to take our lunch on that spot. We moved to a more comfortable location, which was a charming Cordillera hut and shared our meal and coffee with the owner who was in his twilight years but still spoke fluent English from the Commonwealth era. The guide came back two hours later, still dazed from his siesta.  He had that troubled look that meant we were becoming too much of a burden already and he would show it once more come morning when he came back for us, two hours late again, at the Buga Campsite. I was glad we did not have to share tent space with him for the evening as he crashed in a nearby hut that was also the last water source. I had my whole A-type tent for myself, with a belly full of chicharon and Hainanese rice. Liquidator was up all night in the other tent, beside himself and his iPad all the time from the abundance of cellular signal all throughout the trail.

Speaking of strong cellular data signal in the vicinity, I remember running into the Bakun-Kibungan Traverse Team on our way down from Mt Tagpaya on the second day. I had initially considered joining them but could not yet find it in me to return to Bakun and wanted this hike to be all Kibungan. They were in high spirits, and were on their way to finishing their route opposite of us. About an hour after we had parted ways, we then ran into the tail of their group who did not appear to be as ecstatic and were in no rush to catch up. They told us they were sticking to the original itinerary after being voted off by the majority to cut their hike short by one day, suspecting everybody had spent all their power banks due to the abundant cell signal all throughout and were in a hurry to recharge batteries at the municipal hall. Five years ago, I would not have thought how the dynamics of a hiking team could be altered by this aspect of technology.

Meanwhile, Quasimodo would always advance ahead of us so he could stop by and smoke a cigarette while waiting for us to catch up. I would chase him and ask if he had another stick (to test him, because his cigarette pack was showing by the back of his pants, as was his buttcrack- insert coin here), not doubting he would say he had none left. We would repeat this process for a total of four times before we reached Tanap, where Quasimodo’s friend of a van driver was already waiting for us ‘for a reasonable fee’. I had my ViewRanger app open and could point to where we could cut the hike back to the municipal hall from the terraces, but Quamisodo insists he had contacted a van already. Reluctantly, I agreed because half of me would also like to see the exit from Lungsad Falls. I forgot how much we paid for it, but I asked the van driver in private when I had the chance if he was on his way back to Baguio as well and struck a deal. I knew Quasimado was up to something again, knowing that we had already missed the last trip to the city.

Back at the población, the washrooms were all occupied by the Bakun-Kibungan Team so I decided to gather everyone instead for a little snack by the adjacent grocery store after paying the guide fee. As we walked to the store, Quasimodo made the offer for us to get the same van back to the city for two thousand pesos. I did not reply. Moments later while having our snack and sodas, he would make the offer again, so I spoke directly to the van driver to clear it up as we already made a deal for six hundred pesos only. Quasimodo went back to the van driver in a mix of Kankana-ey and Iloko, and then back to us practically begging to just pay 1,500 because it was already late. I told him and the driver that if the terms were to change, we were better off spending the night at the municipal hall. The van driver told Quasimodo (from the little Iloko that I could decipher) to just shut the hell up as ‘kwarta na magiging bato pa’. Feeling defeated, Quasimodo let out a wail and threw his arms in the air like some vessel dispossessed of demons. I honestly thought he had given up right there, when, upon seeing Liquidator paying for the snacks, he asked the storekeeper for a fresh pack of Marlboro and sniggered at us, motioning to put it in our tab. Liquidator snatched the pack from Quasimodo and said something along the lines of an expletive and kanina ka pa ha!

 All pics in this post by Dirty Harry, Canon EOS 60D

Quasimodo, in the green shirt, fortunately with his buttcrack covered at this moment

Mt Tagpaya

My Canon G12′s sd card conked out early into the hike and was dead weight since

A lot of segments were like snippets of Bakun, this one reminded me of Mt Kabunian

This was to be the last time I would be wearing this brand, in the following months I would be signing up as Ambassador for two other local hiking apparel companies.

[hutchingsb]

fake political trophy husband AU for diego & hutch 👌😉

Diego Rodríguez García is a young upstart and the name on everyone’s lips. He’s got connections, he’s got wit, and he has the ability to put a crowd at ease. He came out as bisexual two weeks ago to further his campaign, to the shock and awe of the public. But more than anything else, he’s got the polls on his side. He’s going to win.It’s all Momma needs, a martini clutched in her hand, to latch onto an idea.

She stirs her martini slowly as if it’s necessary and not that she’s buying her time to make this whole thing stick. Hutch doesn’t mention that it’s not strictly necessary to convince him, he knows he doesn’t really have a say in the matter. The Booth-Bakers’ image has been falling. Small scandals build up, and the gossip never really goes away. Momma needs something to change, her ambitions not yet sated. Her campaign is going well, but she needs that push. These are hard times, and no one is completely sold on Mrs. Booth-Baker’s reelection as governor, not now that she’s newly without her husband.

“Don’t you think Mr. García could use some additional funding?” 

Momma takes a sip of her drink through her smirk. Hutch sighs. He owes her, he knows. After the stunt he pulled when his father first left, he owes her something good; something she can use.

“When do I meet him?”

Later that night, while he lies in bed, he will think, ‘it doesn’t have to be real.’

                                                             - 

Momma moves quickly because there is no time to waste when you’re down in the polls. She reaches out to the García campaign, offers them a fundraiser – hosted, of course, by the Booth-Bakers, for the charity of Mr. García’s choice. They would be fools to turn it down, and Hutch does not take the up-and-coming congress hopeful for a fool.

The campaign’s formal reply is an immediate yes, and Momma makes the arrangements. The woman’s connections know no bounds.

Two days later, Hutch gets a text that Diego (and when the fuck did it become Diego, and not Mr. García) is interested in talking about a mutually beneficial “business” deal, and Hutch tries not to throw his phone across the room and go back to sleep. But there’s a knock on his front door a couple minutes later, and he knows it’s some immaculate suit that his mother has picked out because it will match the color of Diego’s eyes, or some shit. He begrudgingly opens the door. At least he can pretend to entertain himself with work before this hellish night begins.

                                                              -

The suit is perfect. For all her downfalls, his mother knows style, and Hutch feels like he belongs at this party. Like he, too, is a political player, and not just some research analyst for his mother. He holds his own for a while, drifting between senators, the senators’ wives, and journalists. They’re all waiting for something big and newsworthy. And Hutch sighs, because it’s not a something, it’s a someone. And when the door opens and Diego Rodríguez García finally steps through the door, the whole party halts, waiting.

Except for Momma. She waits for nothing.

She is by Diego’s elbow in seconds, handing him a glass of something and talking to him quickly, quietly smiling as she gracefully manhandles him around the crowd. The whispers begin and Hutch suddenly feels like downing the glass of whiskey that he’s had for hours now. 

It takes her some time, before his Momma makes her way towards him. But the buzz in the room starts to intensify, and Hutch does his best not to fidget.

“Mr. García, have you met my son?” Momma coos loud enough for those around to hear. She knows full well that Mr. García has not.“I can’t say I have had the pleasure.” Diego’s tone is pleasant, but his smile is genuine when he turns to Hutch with an outstretched hand. Hutch grabs the man’s hand and mimics his smile. Diego’s hand is warm and strong, and not even the least bit sweaty. His smile is perfect, white teeth and smile lines. His eyes are a dark brown and Hutch realizes that, once again, he was right. His dark navy blue suit compliments the future congressman’s eyes to a T.He truly hates his mother.

“The pleasure is all mine.” Hutch lets his voice be just loud enough to be heard. He may not be a player, but he knows how to play the game. Diego’s smile becomes guarded again as Momma lays a hand on the other man’s upper arm.

Hutch spends the evening by Diego’s side, at his mother’s demands. But he finds he quite likes it. He’s a quick study. Starts to pick up on when Diego’s tone gets a little too tense, or when his laugh almost sounds genuine. At the end of the evening, Diego slips Hutch his number and leaves him with a gentle squeeze of the arm.And Hutch cannot help but think oh God, I’m so fucked.

                                                              -

Diego texts him two days later, suggesting a lunch. Something public, in the middle of the daytime. Hutch likes the little bistro he’s recommended but doesn’t add that in his text back. Sends a simple sure, instead. Diego comes back with a time, and just like that, it’s a date.

                                                             -

The lunch itself sneaks up on him. He lets Clover parade him in different outfits through their shared apartment. She keeps snapping pics of him and texting them to Mar; loudly explaining that he has to look good if he’s going to be on the cover of whatever gossip rag his Momma sells this story to. He hates her because he knows she’s right. He says as much, and she smirks at him. When the outfit is sufficient, she snaps one last picture and shoos him out the door.

“Good luck! Remember you shouldn’t put out on the first date.” 

He flips her the bird.

                                                            -

The conversation is easy, the food divine. Hutch, for all his nerves and fears, finds Diego incredibly easy to talk to. They talk about Diego’s career, his family, his childhood best friend. Hutch laughs at a story of Diego almost getting set on fire.Diego asks him about his work; how it is, living with Clover; what’s the last book he read.

For a brief second, Hutch can convince himself that this is a date. That Diego is genuinely interested in what he has to say. Time passes quickly, easily, and Hutch begins to savor the moments he makes Diego laugh – but it isn’t long until it all comes to a screeching halt. They pay the bill – or rather, Diego pays the bill – and, as they exit the bistro, he slips his hand into Hutch’s. And it’s then that Hutch sees her. The photographer is well disguised, likely to not cause so much disturbance as to be kicked out. His heart sinks a little as he remembers why this whole charade started in the first place.

Diego turns to him, lifts their joined hands to his mouth and plants one quick kiss on the back of Hutch’s hand. His heart lurches as he realizes with surprise just how dangerous of a player Diego is in this game, why Momma’s so fond of him in the first place.“I had a very nice time with you.” Hutch tries to force down his stupid smile at Diego’s words. (Later, he’ll tell Clover it was for the camera when she flashes him a shot of him looking particularly starstruck.)“Yeah, me too.”

As he walks away, hand stuffed in his pocket as if trying to physically distance himself from the offending member, he realizes that this is going to suck.He’s going to fall in love with this man.Diego will break his heart.

                                                           -

Momma greets him with a hug and a smile, which means good news.She doesn’t have a drink in her hand this time, which means great news.

She ushers her son in, herds him into the living room and then further still into her office. It’s more full than it usually is, papers and monitors cluttering the way from the door to her desk. Raine throws up a hand in greeting before he’s pulled back into work by Eric. Eric doesn’t acknowledge Hutch’s presence, but that’s not anything completely new. He bites back a sigh as his mother, with all her grace, flutters back over to him, a tablet in her hands. Eva must have handed it to her from over the desk.

“Look at these numbers,” she coos at him, and Hutch just nods approvingly. He knows he doesn’t need to speak. Not really.

“And for Mr. García as well.” Eric is by his side in a second, brandishing a different tablet.

“Hello to you too,” he mumbles quietly, and Eric flashes him a smile that’s got too many teeth in it.

He is shown numbers until it all bleeds together: projected wins, voter statistics, who might prompt Mrs. Booth-Baker’s reelection. It’s enough for Hutch to get the memo – he’s doing a good job, and more importantly, he should continue to fulfill it.

He pulls out his phone when he thinks no one is looking and whips out a quick text.

>> Have I ever mentioned I hate my mother’s choice in data analysts??

He shoves his phone in his back pocket quickly, as Eva approaches with a smile and yet more data. His phone buzzes almost immediately and he smiles.

>> Yes.>> On multiple occasions.>> But please do let me know what the grievance is today, I’m on the edge of my seat.

Texting Diego makes the evening go by faster, somehow. Hutch pretends he doesn’t realize that he’s never texted the man for anything other than planning outings before. It feels too new. Eva, the saint that she is, doesn’t comment on his goofy grin every time his phone buzzes, but her eyes sport a knowing look.

                                                           -

They are in the back-stretch of the campaign, and the tension that follows is palpable. Hutch can see how stress lives in Diego’s shoulders, how he fights more to keep his face happy and charming. When they’re alone, Diego slumps more. Lets his eyes close as he breathes.Hutch hurts for him. For all the stress Diego’s under, Hutch can do so little to help.

“There’s a party,” Diego starts, shooting an already sympathetic look towards Hutch. They are alone in his office – Lola is the only one still in the building, and she’s more than busy managing what could be the next big PR scandal (but won’t be). Hutch just nods. He knows his part by now. He is Diego’s date, the little bit of joy that his followers can latch onto and root for. Because really, who finds love in the middle of a campaign? “We don’t have to stay long…” Diego says, and Hutch realizes he’s tuned out most of what Diego’s been saying. He smiles, pats Diego’s hand where it rests on his arm. “It’s fine.” It feels like that’s all he can say at this point. All he’s been saying, because it is fine. It’s fine because Diego needs him and he’s asked. “Maybe it’ll even be fun.” They both laugh, and Hutch’s heart clings to the sound.

                                                          -

For the most part, the party is in fact fine. Mostly, Hutch entertains himself by shooting pictures of incredibly drunk senators to Mar and Clover. He’s lost Diego thirty minutes ago after he ducked out to grab them another round of drinks, and the alcohol has already provided him with a warm buzz. He stands to the side snickering at Mar’s latest reply, without Diego next to him, and he is a nobody. No one gives him a second glance.

He looks up only to spot Diego, all fine-tailored edges and welcoming smiles. Hutch offers him his drink, places a quick peck on the other man’s cheek. Under the mask of professionalism, Hutch can see something is off. He presses in closer to him, wraps his arm through Diego’s.

“You must have some sort of plan, right, Mr. García?” Hutch drags himself away from studying Diego to listen to the conversation at hand. “The girl was from your district, was she not?” And suddenly it clicks.

“We are working hard to help the police in their search for miss Tarry.” It’s a canned reply, something Hutch has helped Diego practice. Hutch hears the strain in the other man’s tone. His heart lurches. The stranger opens his mouth to speak again, something more insistent, and Hutch acts before he can stop himself.“I’m terribly sorry, but I think I need some air.” The reporter’s mouth snaps shut, shifting to form a thin smile, but Hutch doesn’t let the sincere apology drop from his features. He turns and tugs Diego along with him. “Babe– if you don’t mind.” And before Diego even has time to react, Hutch is pushing him out of the ballroom and into the hallway.

“Are you okay?” It’s just the two of them, and all pretences can be dropped. Diego’s shoulder slumps forward, and Hutch pulls the other man to him as the tension finally rushes out of Diego in a wave.Hutch pulls him towards another door, opening it with the hand that isn’t clutching Diego, and pulls the pair of them into a coat closet. He feels Diego breathing against his throat as the other man struggles to retain composure, and Hutch wants to scream that he doesn’t have to. He cannot do much for all the stress and pain he knows Diego feels, but he can do this. Let me do this.

It is quiet for a long time, in the dark of the closet, Diego resting against Hutch’s chest until finally, he pulls away. There is a pain in his eyes when he looks up to meet Hutch’s gaze. A broken sob catches in Diego’s throat as he speaks.“I didn’t do enough to save her.”

Hutch doesn’t know more of the story than what he’s heard on the news. Doesn’t know the part Diego’s played in the case of the missing girl. He didn’t want to push. Didn’t feel like it was his place to do so. He doesn’t fully recognize this version of Diego, this broken version with too many self-sabotaging things on the edge of his tongue.

Diego opens his mouth to speak again, and Hutch pushes in. Closes the distance between them to let their lips crash. He feels Diego freeze underneath his touch, but as Hutch brings his hands to fist into Diego’s hair, he softens. His mouth goes pliant and willing, and Hutch takes. 

He cannot do much for this version of Diego, but he can do this. He’s always been able to do this.

Hutch cannot stop the little moan that follows when Diego licks into his mouth. He pushes at the shoulders of Diego’s suit jacket until the other man gets the message and lets it slip to the floor. Hutch closes the gap again, slipping between Diego’s legs to press as much of his body against the other. He lets his teeth sink ever so gently into Diego’s bottom lip and sucks, and the gasp that follows is worth it. He can feel it in his gut, a new warmth that spreads through. He can do this. “Let me do this,” he whispers, biting down at the spot where Diego’s jaw meets his throat, earning him another gasp.

Hutch drops to his knees and smirks at the groan that accompanies it. A hand comes to lay on his head and scratches down, and Hutch pretends the mewl that comes out of him isn’t at all embarrassing. He hears him swallowing thickly, as he lets his own hands dance over the waistband of Diego’s slacks. He cannot help the wolfish grin that finds its way to his face. He glances up, seeking Diego’s approval, and he gets it with a small nod and a sigh, and Hutch thumbs open the button on Diego’s pants and slides them down.

He mouths at Diego’s hip bone, nips his teeth against the skin; runs his hands along the newly discovered territory of Diego’s thighs. He lets his lips ghost over the fabric separating him from Diego’s half hard-cock. Diego’s hips stutter forward, chasing the feeling, and Hutch lets his forearm stop the motion. When he looks up, Diego has his head thrown back against the wall, and he cannot stop himself from relishing the sight.

In one, slow pull, he pushes down the boxers, emboldened by a rare-found confidence. He lets his tongue drag over his own lips, before he lets them catch around the tip of Diego’s dick. There is a stunted sound that happens above, and a sharp scrape of dull fingernails over his scalp again– and Hutch can’t stop himself, he sinks down in one quick movement taking all of Diego into his mouth. It doesn’t take long after that. He clutches at Diego’s hips to steady himself as he begins to bob his head, the rhythm growing faster, the sounds dirtier. Diego has his hand in his mouth, biting down hard to stop from making too much noise. And his breathing is ragged, broken; a beautiful contrast to the earlier heartbreak.

Diego’s hands slip to Hutch’s neck as he swallows, a calculated move that earns him the moan he was looking for. Diego’s hands move to Hutch’s head, pushing him slightly. It’s a warning, Hutch knows, but he ignores it. Takes him deeper still, lets his throat tighten and flex around the intrusion. Diego comes with a broken sob.The sound is even better, this time.

                                                         -

The drive home is quiet, but not painfully so. Hutch cannot bring himself to look at Diego, only manages to shoot sideways glances from under his eyelashes. Diego does not look at him, either. The car stills in front of Hutch’s house, and he moves to undo his seatbelt. A hand stops him, Diego’s thumb and finger forming a loose circle around his wrist. “Thank you,” is all he says, letting his thumb shift to the pulse point on Hutch’s wrist. His heart jumps and he wonders if Diego can feel it. Hutch nods, no words able to form when he cannot take his eyes off of the point of contact between them. Diego squeezes once before he pulls his hand away, and the skin on Hutch’s wrist burns. He excuses himself from the car.

It still burns as he stands on the sidewalk, his hand holding his wrist, as the car speeds away into the night.

                                                        -

The room is buzzing with it: they’ve won. Hutch isn’t sure when he started thinking of himself as so involved.

The only one still working is Evan, frantically putting the finishing touches on Diego’s victory speech, while the rest open a bottle of champagne. Lola shoots them all a look, a warning that speaks to the fact that they still have an event after this and that no one is to get too drunk. Hutch is silently amazed how much she can portray with just one glance. The twins have four glasses between them already, and Hutch tries not to wince when he sees champagne pooling on the floor. Even Grey has come out from behind their computer with a drink in their hand. They deserve it; they’ve worked hard for this.

He’s caught up in the thrill of it all, sipping on his second glass, already feeling lightheaded, when Diego grabs his hand and pulls him along. Hutch laughs freely and follows, the alcohol already making him feel light and loose. He lets himself be guided, their fingers entwined, and Diego smiles, bright and happy. He doesn’t stop pulling until they’re both in Diego’s office and he’s so goddamn happy it hurts.

“We did it–” The way Diego’s voice hitches like it’s only just now settling in makes Hutch’s heart stop and start.“You did it,” he agrees, nodding as he smiles. And he cannot stop smiling. He meets the other man’s eye, and it’s like a tipping point. Diego pulls him closer, wraps his arms around him and sighs into the crook of his neck. He freezes for a moment, before he lets himself fall, soften; clenches his hands at the back of Diego’s finely pressed dress shirt, the fabric clutched in his fists.

“I couldn’t have done this without you,” Diego whispers like it’s something for just the two of them. A confession. And for a second, Hutch believes him. Believes that Diego needed him, not just Momma’s money. “Thank you.” Diego pulls back, cups Hutch’s face with his hand. “Thank you,” he repeats, letting his thumb trail slowly over his cheek. Hutch tries not to gasp.

And then someone calls on Diego from outside, and he pulls away; out of the door and into the fanfare, and all Hutch can do is watch.

His traitorous brain supplies the rest for him. This is it, it sneers, this is the end of you being needed.

                                                       -

He’s still pining when Lola all but forces the group out of the door and into six matching Ubers. One day he’ll ask how she manages all this so effortlessly, but he knows he won’t get a true answer from her anyway. She’ll fix him with a look and a smile, maybe pat his arm.

He ends up sandwiched between Diego and Evan. They’re talking over him, pointing at the recently finished speech, and Evan has a pen in his hands. Diego keeps looking to Hutch for his consensus on something or the other, and all Hutch can do is nod and try not to focus on how Diego’s leg hasn’t stopped moving since they entered the car.

                                                      -

The speech ends to a deafening roar of applause, and Hutch has been smiling so damn much. But then Diego turns to look behind himself, searching the few members of his staff for something – someone. His eyes lock onto Hutch’s and he reaches out his hand, and Hutch is a fool because he takes it. Diego pulls him to his side and flashes those pearl-white teeth – and then he’s leaning in towards him, Diego’s lips finding Hutch’s own, and he parts his mouth and sighs into it, lets his eyes flutted closed; lets himself have this.

The hoots and hollers from the crowd amp up tenfold: he is the voice of the young LGTBQ+, now, and they came here in droves.

“And,” Diego turns to the mic, his face plastered with his Professional Smile, so different from the one he shared with Hutch in his office hours ago. “–I couldn’t have done it without this man.”

It’s the same sentiment from Diego’s officer earlier, but out here? For the consumption of these strangers? It feels wrong. It feels too much like an act. Hutch smiles, holding on to Diego for dear life, but his gut twists into something ugly and sad.

His parents played this game: Mr. Booth-Baker, the rock that stood behind Mrs. Booth-Baker; the two of them shining in their leading roles as a loving couple. But the world did not see them at home, his father, gone all hours, and his mother, drunk and crying when she thought Hutch had gone to bed.He told himself he would not become another pawn in this game. He would never let his mother use him as such. But it took mere seconds for Diego to unravel his resolve, and Hutch feels used. Raw. Broken.

And– fuck– in love.

The rest of the night goes on without much incident. But Hutch feels like he’s traveling through a fog. He feigns a migraine when Connor comments on his distance, and it’s easy enough – the champagne is already making his temples throb. He tries not to meet Diego’s eyes whenever the other man shoots him a quizzical look.

He excuses himself early, and doesn’t respond to Diego’s text.And if he curls into bed and tries not to cry, so be it.

                                                     -

Mar all but drags him out of bed. Clover must have called in reinforcements. Which is only fair, he muses. It’s been three months since Diego won his seat and Hutch has been useless ever since.Mar sits at the end of his bed scowling as he shuffles through his clothes, delaying the inevitable. “We’re going to The Last Drop, not your funeral,” she admonishes. She’s perfectly put together, but it looks effortless, as if she’s just rolled out of bed. Hutch has always been envious of her easy style.“I’m moving as fast as I can,” he whines, but it’s not believable.And, as if right on cue, Clover is at the door, “–No, you’re not.” She has her phone out in her hand. “I told Raine we would be there ten minutes ago, and if you make them wait I’m never forgiving you.” Hutch sighs and throws on a shirt Mar has tossed his way.

                                                    -

“So, you’re still pining right?” It’s Raine that breaks through his fog-addled thoughts, and Clover is outright laughing at him. He grimaces at her before turning back to Raine. “I’m not pining.” He grits his teeth as Clover laughs harder. Raine’s face twists in confusion.“I thought you guys were in love or something,” they manage, and if Clover wasn’t already doubled over, she would be by now.“Oh, they are,” Mar responds. She doesn’t even look up from her phone. She’s texting her new boyfriend, Sam, who was meant to meet them here later. She doesn’t even dignify Hutch’s scoff of disagreement. “But our friend Hutch here is a big fuckin’ idiot.”Raine nods knowingly, an oh falling from their lips. He’s known the Booth-Bakers for a while, working for Hutch’s mother. They know that to be true.“I did not come out to be belittled.” Hutch huffs, slinking down into his seat more.“Then maybe you should tell your fucking boyfriend how you feel.” Clover has stopped laughing to look at him pointedly.

Hutch sighs and takes a drink. Pointedly doesn’t say anything about Diego not being his boyfriend, not really anyway.

                                                   -

By the end of the night, he’s almost having fun. Almost. 

                                                  -

It’s the last event on the calendar. Hutch has been dreading the day as it approached, faster and faster. It’s a simple wrap-up interview, something to solidify Diego’s success story. To make it consumable for the masses. It will have no mention of the Booth-Baker money that helped finance his campaign, but it will have many a mention of Diego’s heartstopping romance that made the man seem so goddamn human during the whole campaign. Hutch has to come as a show of support: the gossip rags have more than noticed his recent lack of presence in Diego’s life.

The magazine is not a gossipy thing, but a legitimate paper and the journalist is good – DeSouza, Hutch thinks his name is. Momma vetted them all and picked this one, so he has that going for him. And he starts the interview off easy, makes a few passing jokes at Diego, asks him to call him Romeo. Hutch tries to stomach the jealousy he feels at the easy conversation that he so dearly misses. He’s been responding to Diego’s texts more, guilt after his night of drinking with Mar and Clover, but it isn’t the same.

“And what about your man?” Romeo laughs at the foolish wording at it, and Diego joins him. Hutch’s heart lurches forward in his chest.

“There is so much to say.” Diego is still laughing, and Hutch cannot help but feel like he’s being cut open. This is fate’s sick joke for agreeing with his mother’s meddling; he’s sure of it. “He stood by me through everything.” Diego searches behind the lights for Hutch’s eyes, finding them and smiling, big and true. “He’s the reason I’m here.” Hutch closes his eyes, and breathes. Tries to stop the flood of emotion, but he can’t. Not here, not now.He runs.

Diego catches his hand before he can truly escape. He’s only made it so far as the hallway anyway. Diego looks hurt and confused and apologetic all at once like he’s not quite sure what Hutch needs from him – and all Hutch can feel is his manic need to getaway. “What’s wrong?” Diego is still too calm, even as his voice hints at the distress under the surface.It stops Hutch dead in his tracks.

“How can you lie like that?” 

He wants desperately to be angry, to throw it into Diego’s face, but he can’t. He’s tired and heartsick and all he can manage is something that sounds so desperate he wants to hide.Diego looks at him with confusion, and then deep, heartbreaking understanding. His face softens into a gentle smile, the kind Hutch has only ever seen when they’re alone. “I’m not lying.” He tugs on Hutch’s hand, and Hutch gives in. Because he’s a fool, but… maybe he’s not a fool about this.“You weren’t lying?” he parrots back, and Diego chuckles softly, bringing a hand up to cup Hutch’s face.“No.” 

It’s all he needs to hear, he pushes forward catching Diego’s next laugh with his mouth. And he sighs. 

He’s a goddamn fool.

[vapormaison]

2019 Best Press 3/4:  カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title by TANUKI

While for many vaporwave vinyl is doubtless equal parts collector’s item and audio source, I don’t want to lose sight of the goal of this blog here: developing a canon of the genre for high fidelity enjoyment. That said, when I come across something remarkable or noteworthy about a particular piece of wax, even if it is not a “purely audiophile” object, I want to make mention of it.

And TANUKI’s カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title wax release is not only noteworthy, but contends for hi-fi consideration despite it’s status as a picture disc.

But let’s back up slightly.

Going back to the previous thesis on why we buy records, sometimes you just want to own a vinyl just because. Just because you’re a collector trying to compile a discography on wax — or, better yet, just because you truly love the album art. For me, カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title (Double EP) was undoubtedly all of the three “just be-causes”.

A while back, I noticed that the LP was going into its 3rd press, and decided to snap up a copy because I like Tanuki, I like Lum, and because of those other just becauses. Unfortunately the only format available was not the pink vinyl, but the picture disc. As I’m sure is well-known (because audiophiles are very loud about things they dislike), picture-discs are a big no-no in the audiophile community. This is because while a beautiful objet d’art, a serious listening session of a picture disc release will usually produce greater amounts of surface noise than any other type of vinyl. You can, of course, with the right system, neutralize and mitigate this process slightly, but true-blue hi-fi heads pursuing that elusive muse of “pure sound” would never give a picture disc a second look.

I’m not one of those people.

Tangentially, I’ve heard whispers of ghosts of rumors from when I was living in Shenzen, China — that various record suppliers (small batch Makers) are working out manufacturing and material processes that minimize these issues on pic discs to create appealing records that cover all the bases: hi-fi suitability, collector oriented visual esoterica, and price. I should also admit I have no idea where those companies are in terms of R&D and/or producing these. I end up catching a lot of very fast talk from extremely motivated enthusiasts, but Chinese is still as elusive a language to me at times as “pure sound” can be. With that in mind, however, it’s logical to surmise that advances in technology will eventually render the differences between picture discs and traditional black wax undistinguishable. So long as the world isn’t destroyed in some cataclysmic climate disaster (very real possibility), or -- as we are watching evolve now: World War 3. My view is that it’d be pointless to dismiss the format out of hand when there are active attempts to innovate it as we speak.

That all said, I know what to expect when a contemporary, big-label picture disc plays. During my college days, I used to spin wax at the university radio station. One of the previous catalog managers had a fetish for this “collectible” format, and was convinced he was doing the station a favor by purchasing all these vinyls, noting a pre-supposed resale value later. I remember throwing these on the well-worn Technics SP-10 we had as our main turntable, and listening to the occasional scratch, frequent popping, and constant surface noise, that for the uninitiated (bless you), sounds like a sustained “cracking” in your Rice Krispies — or for those born in the analog age, CRTV static.

So when I sat down with the Tanuki picture disc, I had this laundry list of preconceptions and prejudices about the format. I thought that I could listen to a moderately scratchy record once or twice, keep it as more a visual boutique item and then eventually include in an article where I bemoan the poor quality of the genre’s releases.

But then, I actually listened.

And it sounded… well, I won’t get ahead of myself. Here’s the full review:

THE MUSIC

BABYBABYの夢 — is doubtless the reason why many of us have bought the EP from a sonic perspective —especially if the band-camp reviews are indicative of trends. I still maintain that this is the Mariya Takeuchi sample/remix work par excellence. Tanuki hits all the essential notes here, a genuine respect and love for the sound-staging of its original source, Yume No Tsuzuki. I still get echoes of the original arrangement in my system, (ever so slightly) with a bright and dance-infused collection of unique sounds — particularly in that delicious, wide mid-range — that flesh out the track into its own sort of masterpiece.

何がGoin' On — the curatorial and conspiratorial side of my brain tells me that Goin’ On will probably go down as one the under-appreciated vintage bangers of this era of future funk. I can envision hipsters two or three decades from now sussing out a neophyte with pretentious questions about this track’s pitch-shifted sample draws from. It has that sort of vibe that you know hits with a certain subset of electronica fans — rich & vibrant, making the tweeters on your system work out in all the best ways — it’s just great.

がんばれ — Tanuki is at his best when he gets playful with brass samples. I firmly believe that the titans in this genre each have their go-to piece in their best arrangement — like Dan Mason’s creative vocal array, or greyL’s manipulation of micro-samples. For Tanuki, it’s whenever her gets a horn — synthesized or otherwise, into his production workflow.

ファンクOFF — continues Tanuki’s magic act, taking another city pop track more iconic for its soulful electric guitar riff and turning it into the most slap-worthy single on this EP. I prefer it when Japanese pop samples are fundamentally re-imagined, although I can see how the perfectionist tweaking of someone like Yung Bae is more appealing for some. Tanuki is undoubtedly one of the innovators of this genre, and there’s no more solid evidence of that talent than this track.

腕の中でDancin’ — if I ended up hosting a sort of mythical vaporwave grammies or something like that, (I’m available, folks!) I would probably go off on a Ricky Gervais style rant on how artists aren’t in touch with “the people” (read: me) because all we really want are more remixes of Meiko Nakahara songs — who given her impact on City Pop should have way more play in this genre than she does. This one, like most of the Meiko mixes I’ve heard, is a banger with an absolute fire bass riff punctuated throughout.

Radiant Memories — this might be my first certified “hot take” in the publication (they’ll be many more, I imagine) — but as far as I’m concerned this is the superior Plastic Love edit. I’ll just leave my thoughts there, so they can soak in with a portion of the fanbase who split my reddit account on an open fire of downvotes for suggesting that other artists than Macross 82-99 (Praise be upon him!) are allowed to touch this song as well. While Macross’s mix is definitely the more up-temo of the two, and that for some is the very essence of the genre, this slightly down-mixed version is both the perfect conclusion for the EP and ideal antithesis.

THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE

Signal to Raise ratio on the following albums:

カタカナ・タイトル + Kanji Title:  ~61.9db (1 db MoE)

Tron Legacy, Daft Punk:  58.4db

Love Trip, Takako Mamiya, Kitty Records Press: 65.8db

(ratings based on averages 5 minutes of sustained play on the testing unit, the machine actually complied this data on its preset, which is another fascinating part about this sort of vintage press-testing tech). The margin of error is because the machine, according to my mentor Dr. Juuso Ottala formerly of Harman International, informs me it was never meant to give accurate readings of picture discs, and to add about a dB of error margin.

One of the benefits of growing up in New England and, subsequently, New York, is that there are no shortage of heritage professional audio brand HQs in operation around a 200 mile radius from Manhattan to Boston. Off the top of my head, there’s Harman/Kardon, Boston Acoustics, Bose, NuMark, Marantz, and Rane headquarters within an hour’s drive from my two hometowns. Early on in my audiophile quest, I got my hands on some cool vintage gear — vinyl lathe testing equipment that has collected dust in both an old Harman technician’s storage unit, and now my parent’s basement. Over the holiday, I recently brought it out to do some surface noise testing on it to get a rough confirmation of what I was explaining in yesterday’s hi-fi guide. The innards of the machine looks eerily like a plinth-less linear tonearm and plate pair attached to a monitor. After making sure I’m not violating some kind of Harman International trade secret, I’ll post it on instagram.

Wanting to also get a firm idea on just how good my ear-test sounded, I grabbed another picture disc vinyl I had received as a gift a few years ago from my brother — the Tron Legacy OST. While I found the film passably enjoyable, my own preconceptions about pic discs, and a general exhaustion with french house — left me with no discernible desire to spin the thing. I hadn’t even broken the seal on the plastic wrap, so it seemed like as good as a blind test as any. I also grabbed what my ears tell me is a “good”, “heavy” press, a 1982 original dead-stock copy of Takako Mamiya’s Love Trip LP pressed by Kitty Records Japan. I’ve played it maybe a half dozen times since I bought it, so it’s as close to “new” 80s audiophile pop record as you can get. The Japanese are infamously anal about low SNR on their vinyl.

And, well, the results speak for themselves. The sweet spot for most black vinyl records is between 60-70db depending on age, weight, and a host of other frankly uncontrollable factors that aren’t worth getting into detail here, as I’d go on forever. The main takeaway here is that Neoncity’s and Tanuki’s record sat at the low end of the audiophile vinyl reference spectrum. Which in itself is a remarkable achievement for a pic disc. It’s worth taking a look at Tron Legacy, which just barely scratches 8db above a cassette tape, and 7db a Japanese vinyl from 1982.

This is all in an effort to say: damn, this is pretty good.

This also somewhat counters the usual “picture discs sound like shit” narrative that’s prevailed pretty consistently in the audiophile community. Tron Legacy? Yeah, that probably sounds like shit if I could bother to suffer through a listen. But whoever Hong-Kong based Neoncity is using actually makes “good” — if such a qualifier needs to be attached — image-pressed records. And that devotion to audio fidelity should be rewarded.

It might be time for me to re-asses picture discs on the whole, and that mind-expanding moment is something I owe to the fine folks at Neoncity.

[migleefulmoments]

I don't think anything of what the cc fandom posts anymore is "continued optimism". It looks like sheer terror that they're losing their game. Abby is in pure desperation mode, trying to rally the troops because she can see Darren's life is turning out to be nothing like she predicted. She can no longer validate that Darren NEEDS her, he keeps going against her. They're losing their grip. This isn't optimism, it's because everything Darren is doing equals Abby losing control of the narrative.

I agree with that they were in panic mode since the wedding but the 72 hours or so after Hollywood was announced they were euphoric that this was proof that Darren would be coming out soon.  That has worn off already and they are back to their normal crap but for a few days, they were giddy. They were even speaking about a divorce in very near future.

I am going on record, I like AW and I like her a lot.  She is team D, I really have no doubt and everything she is showing is that she is on his side and around to protect him often and frequently. 

Yes she is giving us the illusion that she and PBB are besties that love to take intimate photos together but in reality she is showcasing exactly who M is, how much she lacks chemistry with D, some really not so pretty moments behind the scenes btwn D&M (there was some golden footage from European trip number 1 includng that video from the fireworks where E is all snuggled into her man and D&M look like virtual strangers), she flew to that island to babysit, and she announced the business family honeymoon.

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. 

AW is team d. She is a hard working, extremely successful men’s stylist with a pretty impressive client list at this point.  And while she would absolutely have loyalty toward D, as she built her career styling him, she should not be this involved. A friend just reminded me that her other client, FW is currently promoting the J/udy Ga/rland movie.  That is something AW usually would accompany her clients to, she follows D everywhere.  yet no one questions why instead of being with FW she spent 2 days in a row with PBB.

I think she and d are working together and i believe she provides d with comfort. She babysits M, she works as a buffer, and unlike so many other enablers, she has D’s back.  She is smart, she knows how to play M and her stans.  On the surface she looks like she might almost be in love with M (seriously she has way more chemistry with her than D), but it is all a mirage, done for show. And if you look behind a lot of what she posts, it is harmful to m/iarren.  

I know I have repeated the same think a lot over the past 48 hours, but I am so scared to allow myself to believe that change is ahead. And i got burned with ACS because I BELIEVED with my entire being this was the beginning of change and then everything escalated to full on disaster.  But I still think no one got burned more than D&C because I am fairly certain they thought change was ahead as well.(Again the narcissism just has to rear it’s ugly head). 

But I cannot stop myself from being optimistic and it is not just the RM partnership.  It is the totality of the circumstances. It is watching the past 7 months since the sham mockery.  It is seeing how they past 7 months were designed solely to promote her, not D, and done mainly using people only seen by fandom (her employees/friends, SK, PBB’s team).  She got the massive exposure and the press from the “wedding” and some RCs as the “wife” but not much more and has now been relegated to mainly being promoted by the aforementioned. And that is only seen by fandom. Add, for the past several months, D himself has hardly tried.  A random good pic here and there, but otherwise he orchestrated group honeymoons, barely touched her even when kissing, the jerk, bitch glare, the back turn.  D has gained nothing until now. He certainly did not do this for a show he sold 3 years ago that is being written by, like them or not, Hwood novices.   I hardly think he needed a wife to score the TB commercial. And SA doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who cares who d’s partner is, it was just a great collaboration.

And here we are, September, D is filming R/oyalties and we get the announcement that he is collaborating with RM again, not just as the star, but exec producer of a show that largely involves, based on early press, LGBT+ themes.  And I have to HOPE.

The stage is set.  D “married” her.  He has been set up to take the blame as well as his team, thereby absolving RM.  And it would make a lot of sense for RM to now step in and play the “hero.”  We know the truth. D and C know the truth.  But RM has the power to smooth what is going to be a difficult narrative to navigate. And it is a win for D&C and a win for RM.  The m/iarrens are going to be devastated, as they are so invested in being right and D being straight (No we aren’t)(again the narcissism and her soul-crushing need to be right-is this about Darren or Abby?).  And even if we just get a separation it will all be questioned. Because M is the only thing that makes him straight (not true, Darren identifying as straight is what makes him straight).  Everything else points at the opposite.  Add the press has not helped him at all on his path to come out, so it is going to be difficult to navigate.  Having the “king of television” in his corner speaks volumes.

And then there is his horrific, abusive, incompetent team. And they haven’t just fucked with him, it seems with their no queer article they fucked with RM.(Huh? What?) I really hope they live to regret it.

Karma is a bitch.. May she rear her ugly head and finally give these people what they deserve. If i am sitting here a year from now and nothing has changed, I will be heartbroken for him.  And wonder if maybe he did choose career.  I just can’t believe that is who he is. I think he is a fighter and everything he has ever shown confirms that (DELUSION-ville) thought even if there was some confusion when the fraud in NOLA first occurred.  

Here is hoping nonnie.  Here is hoping.

I think a major decision like this was made together.

Read the book when it comes out in Oct 1. I thought c references RM. now I’m near positive.

And Hwood itself was initially announced in February.  I immediately thought this was the project RM was cooking up (curious if FW and CF join the cast).  But then there was silence for months,

And the first 8 months of 2019 were a complete shitshow that included that absolute fiasco in NOLA, excessive PBB promo, ads, ads, ads, TB, and SK.  Not a single one of which were worthy of D’s time and attention.  And to all onlookers, we were dazed and confused.  utterly and completely and not sure what to think or believe.

But putting the pieces together prior to last nights announcement, logically and rationally looking at everything, it seems to me that finally D was tying up loose ends.  While I do think D himself was dazed and confused in the first few weeks after that fraud occurred, it has been clear to me that starting with the work family group honeymoon (I think of all the arrows to m/iarren that have been shot, this might be my favorite) something shifted.  How anyone can not see that that woman was being way over promoted is beyond me (Because “promotion isn’t a thing, Abby”). But clearly the 1st 8 months of 2019 were devoted to giving her everything and anything she ever wanted.  Add in SK, the biggest enablers, that are being rewarded, first by raising an obnoxious amount of cash, and now with R/oyalties with D’s writers being his partners in the business. All of these things are massive pay out.

And last night we get this announcement from D.

notes-from-nowhere

do you want to know what I find very intriguing in all of this? The fact that all of that has been said in this topic pretty much sums up what we have said in the last 15 months if not more.

The latest news only uncovers the thread that keep all of “out theories” together. Of course something might be wrong, misplaced or misunderstood but the big picture is there for all to see (No, you don’t say?).

I do think it is too soon for me to fully embrace the idea that finally things are on the right path but well, please, excuse me for my optimism after a year and a half of struggle.

I’m going to root for D to have back his life and to finally be free to make his own choices. I hope this career advancement (or for better wording: this career extension) will give him what he wants and the power to just be his fully self and spread his wings.

I will watch what’s unfold in front of my eyes with interest from now on and a reneview wave of hope. 

I do trust D is going to take the best decision ever among those available to him. My only fear is that those options may not be the one I hope for him but all I can do right now is wait and see. Hope for the best and expect the worst. Is the wiser thing I can do

ajw720

@notes-from-nowhere it’s impossible to not be skeptical. I didn’t see that “wedding” a 1000 miles away. (SMH) I care way too much (a me problem). I felt like my heart broke that day and I need to take care of me and be cautious. But I’m leaning this is good and I do think the public evidence to date supports this.

This is what euphoria looks like in cc fandom.  

It’s interesting that she convinced herself this is Darren coming out when she thought he would come out during Hedwig based on this:

He and C were very relaxed, joking at interviews when G/lee was ending, both in France at the same time, the C/ol-Fur joke, the repeated telling of mandate.  Everything seemed to point to a positive resolution.  C even scheduled his book tour to be finished the day prior to d’s last performance. and then D was nominated for an emmy and everything seemed to shift and spun out of control and here we are, 4 years later.

She “rationally analyzes” the data and comes to the conclusion he’s coming out rather than understanding he’s just living his life. 

[fortisfiliae]

Against the Odds - Part 2 [James Potter x reader]

Prompt: College AU ❃ Jocks are disgusting. Too good looking, too aware of it, too drunk and too dumb. Or so you thought.

A/n: This is the second part for @marvelcapsicle ‘s writing challenge. Pic is not mine (also look at this smiling cutie). If you need to zoom in on the texts, just click on the picture to do so.

Find the other parts on my Masterlist linked in my bio!

Warnings: swearing, mentions of alcohol, mentions of needles and blood donations

Word count: 2.8k

Part 2 - My sandwiches, my soda, my blood

Sunday:

So James had texted you. He really had. Wow. And he had managed to come off even more confident by only using six words and a winking smiley-face. Douchey. But somehow still cute. How he managed to be arrogant and sweet at the same time would forever be a mystery.

You lay in bed and read those six words over and over again, your fingers hovering above the keyboard on your phone. What should you answer? Should you answer at all? Or should let a couple hours pass, to not seem like you waited for him to text you? Oh, this texting-etiquette where everyone wanted to come off as not interested at all, was a huge load of crap. Still, you contemplated what the right thing to say was. 

You weren’t even sure if you wanted to see him. Alone at least. You didn’t know him so it would be really unsafe, wouldn’t it? He could be a mass murderer after all. But he was Remus’ friend, so he probably wasn’t. It would be so easy to decline. Just a “No thanks”, or simply blocking him, like he had suggested yesterday. But there was something about him. Something that made your tummy tingle. So you kept on thinking. He wanted to meet on Wednesday. Wednesday, Wednesday... Oh damn, Wednesday! You had plans already. Convenient for the part of you that didn’t want to meet him, frustrating for the part that did.

Yikes. That sounded rough. Better add something to make it less bitchy.

Good. A reasonable explanation. Not mean, just honest.

That was... Nice! Nothing a mass murderer would say. Right? Probably not. You smiled to yourself and put the phone back on the nightstand, your attention wandering back to your laptop. You went for a couple of episodes of The Office, something light and funny. It was good, made you laugh here and there, but you caught yourself looking over to the nightstand a couple of times, just checking if a text had arrived that you hadn’t noticed. 

Some hours later your roommate Louise returned from her boyfriend’s and plopped down on her bed.

“Hey,” she mumbled into her pillow. She’s seen better days for sure.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

She raised her head, her hair tousled and makeup smeared across her face. “I am. Just a rough night.”

“Where have you been?”

“The frat party,” she said and scratched the back of her head. “Hey, is it possible that I’ve seen you there?”

“Um, yeah. I’ve been there.”

“Really! I knew it. I saw you sitting on the couch with these guys. First I thought it might be someone else because I’ve never seen you at the frat before. But then I saw you talking to this Remus guy and I know you’ve told me you’re friends with him once.”

“Yeah, he invited me. It was nice actually. Very loud and stuffy. But fun.”

“Are you going out with him?”

“With who?”

“Remus.”

“No. No, no. We’re just friends. He’s really nice though. Introduced me to some people.”

“Oh, I see,” she said and grinned mischievously. “Well, good. Glad you had fun.”

“Thanks! Glad you had fun too!”

“Ugh, yeah.” She sat up with an effort and went to open the drawer with her toiletries. “I smell and feel like shit. I’m going to take a shower. See you then.”

Monday:

A few minutes past 11, you were in bed already and listened to Louise breathing slowly in her sleep. Lights were out, it was completely dark in your room, you were on the verge of sleeping, but checked your phone one last time. Just in case some jock had texted you. Not that you were thinking of him, or anything. Just in case. 

Tuesday:

It’s been a long day. You were reunited with your laptop again, watched this futuristic horror-show and tried to overhear Louise on the phone, talking to her boyfriend. How much time could a couple spend together until they’d start hating each other? What did they even have to tell each other anymore? She had come to your room twenty minutes ago and was talking to him for at least ten now. That means she had last seen him about half an hour ago. Well, everyone’s talented in their own ways. You tried to push your headphones further into your ears and put the sound up a little more, to concentrate on the plot of the episode, when your phone vibrated once. 

Wednesday:

You went to the blood drive at 8.30, half an hour before it would open, so the staff could show you around once more. The red cross had pitched up a huge tent, in which you had to sit at the entry to welcome the donors. A guy in his fifties handed you the sign-up sheets and told you what questions you had to ask each person. Easy peasy. It was pretty quiet all morning. Not a lot of people could be bothered to wake up early if they had a day off of school apparently. Some freshman came, probably to skip classes, since all of them asked for an attendance note. It got quite busy around noon - the line of people got so long from time to time, that some had to wait outside.  The afternoon was when it got tiring. Not because there were more people, they came and went in waves. But you were hungry and asking the same questions all day had become annoying. You felt your concentration fading with each sheet you gave out and were looking forward to closing and go home.  It felt like an eternity had passed until the older guy, who had shown you around in the morning, came up to you and told you that there were only a few people left in line and they would be done for the day when those one’s had donated.

Finally. You didn’t even know how late it was, probably around 6 p.m., when the last person in line eventually came up to you. You looked up and saw a familiar pair of brown eyes behind some wild, black curls. James.

“Wha- Hi.” You said and caught yourself raking your fingers through your hair. “You here?”

“Hey,” he said and grinned, his hands hidden behind his back. “Last person for today, huh.”

“I guess so,” you said, a smile on your face as you slid a sign-up sheet across the table. “I got to ask you two questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“Did you drink and eat enough today?”

“I have.”

“Did you drink alcohol in the last 24 hours?”

“I haven’t.”

“Didn’t you say you had a beer last night?”

“Oh yeah. Root beer.”

You frowned. “Root beer?”

“Yes, root beer.”

“Did you really plan to come and donate?”

“I did, on Sunday.”

Had he planned it since you had told him about it? “Good.” You cleared your throat. “You need to fill this out, please. There are some more detailed questions on the list. The guy over there has to check your answers before they’ll draw your blood.”

James nodded and bent over to fill in his data while putting a brown paper bag on the table. He started scribbling his name and day of birth when he asked: “Did you donate too?”

“I wanted to do it before I’d go home, but I think I haven’t eaten enough. Practice what you preach, you know.”

He chuckled and pushed the paper bag closer to you. “I bought you a sandwich.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I thought maybe you wouldn’t have time to eat, so I figured I’d bring one. And a coke, for later.”

You opened up the bag and looked inside to see a cheese tomato sandwich and a can of soda, which looked like a five-course meal at that moment. “Oh my god. Thank you so much. You don’t know how much I need this right now.”

“No problem, darling.”

Darling. He was the only person to ever call you that. You cleared your throat again as you opened the plastic wrap of the sandwich. “Do you want some?”

“No,” he said and grinned again. “I’ve had mine on the way. Eat up. And fill out your registration. I don’t want them to stab me alone.” 

It was quiet in the back of the tent - only a few people were left to donate. They were all lying down on what looked like portable hospital beds, while five of those beds were empty already.

A short woman with curly blonde hair brought you over to two of the empty beds. “Alright, who wants to go first?”

James looked at you as if he wanted to ask if he should volunteer, but you said: “Can I go first? So it’s over faster.”

“Sure. Ladies first.”

You sat down on the bed, while James did the same on the one beside you when the woman started to arrange the needles and other props. After rolling up your sleeve and positioning your arm so she could insert the tube into your vein, you tried to avoid looking at what she was about to do. The thought of it alone made you nauseous. You let your head fall back, looked up to the ceiling of the tent and inhaled heavily.

“You okay?”, James asked from the side.

“I’m nervous,” you said. “Not a big fan of needles.”

“Alright. Look at me.”

You did and watched him pushing up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He just sat there and stared back, looked into your eyes and tilted his head slightly with a tiny smile on his lips.

“Aren’t you supposed to distract me?” you asked jokingly.

“I am. Look. It’s all done.”

The lady nodded and handed you a small plastic ball, that you had to squeeze until the bag attached to the tube in your arm was full. She went and did the same to James, who turned to look at you, one eye squeezed shut. 

“Not my favorite thing to do either,” he admitted.

“Alright, you two. Here’s your ball, Mister. You can keep them,” the woman said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes. The devices next to the bags will beep when it’s done.”

You watched her go looking after the other donors. She seemed tired as well but was better at hiding it than you were. It was a strange sensation, squeezing the ball and feeling warmth leaving your arm. You tried to distract yourself from this thought again and looked over to James, who was looking around aimlessly as well.

“You have no idea how bad I want to drink that coke right now,” you said after a while. “Thanks again by the way. That was really sweet.”

James smiled, his eyes lit up for a brief moment and he looked like he wanted to high-five himself. “Anything for you,” he said playfully. “My sandwiches, my soda, my blood.”

Even though you rolled your eyes, it made you laugh and a minute later the devices attached to your blood bags started beeping.

“So, are you going back to your dorm now?”, James asked when you had left the red cross tent.

“Yeah, it’s only five minutes away.”

“Mind if I walk you home?”

“Uh, sure. Yeah, sure!” you said and took the can out of your bag. Finally. The low hiss that escaped when you cracked it open was worth every ounce of blood. “You want some?”

“No, it’s yours,” he said as you started walking.

“Come on, you’ve earned it.”

James laughed, took the can and had a sip. “Thanks.”

You walked slower than usual, sharing the drink after every other sip and wondered why Netflix suddenly didn’t have the same appeal anymore. Conversation ran surprisingly smooth. It was like he always knew what to say. James sure was funny, but he was really good at making small talk interesting. Maybe that’s why Louise talked to her boyfriend non stop.

You could have easily gone for another five (or forty-five) minute walk, but no matter how slowly you tried to walk, you eventually took the last sip of coke and arrived at the doorstep of your dorm.

“So,” you said and turned around to say goodbye.

“So.”

“Thank you for coming today. I really appreciate it.”

“Anytime darling. It was a pleasure to be stabbed next to you,” he answered and winked. What a dork. “Text you tomorrow?”

“Sure. Or tonight?” 

He suddenly took a step closer, a sly smile on his face - you didn’t know what was going to happen. Would he kiss you? What was he doing? Before you knew, he placed a peck on your cheek, quickly turned around and left.

James turned his head after a few steps and called: “Bye darling.”

You watched him go, grinning stupidly but unable to answer, and looked down to the can in your hand. It was crushed. 

Find the other parts on my Masterlist linked in my bio!

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[ebaeschnbliah]

THE  BIG  QUESTION

________________________________________________________________

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF REICHENBACH

Some time ago I wrote about the three solutions presented in The Empty Hearse (Solutions or Choices) and about the possibility that those three explanations for the ‘fall’ represent actually three different choices for Sherlock to solve his problem. Let me phrase my former statement again:

Sherlock dismisses LOVE/Molly and SEX/Jim as fake and decides instead to team up with BRAIN/Mycroft.

But what is the cause for this decision? And if this is some kind of metaphorical equation Sherlock is experimenting on, what can be found on the other side of that equation? What exactly happens on Bart’s roof and why? Who is involved?

This is a metaphorical reading of events before, at and after Bart’s roof. It deals with the veiled surface level of the story, as I call it, based on the assumption that everything that is shown on screen, is told and coded by the ‘language of Sherlock’s mind’. 

Enjoy (this theory) if you like under the cut ..

Reichenbach = Rich Brook = Richard Brook = Jim Moriarty

Rich Brook in German is Reichen Bach – the case that made my name. (Sherlock TRF)

Nothing made me.  I made me.  (Sherlock TAB)

“I am you. You are me.”  Reichenbach made Sherlock’s name. Rich Brook made Sherlock’s name. Rich Brook is Jim and Jim therefore …  is Reichenbach. 

Falls of the Reichenbach, Turner’s masterpiece, thankfully recovered owing to the prodigious talent of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.  (TRF)

TURNER …. turning = changing a position.  A turner = a changer/someone who changes. 

Sorry, boys! I’m soooooo changeable!  (Jim TGG)

“Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age.  (ACD  His Last Bow)

John is the ‘fixed point’. 

Jim/Rich Brook/Reichenbach is ‘the masterpiece of the turner’ … the changer.

Jim/Rich Brook is a storyteller ... like John. 

Jim/Rich Brook changes stories and writes his own versions ... like Sherlock. 

Maybe also important: Rich Brook’s initials are R.B. … RedBeard?

But what happens on Bart’s roof ….

Jim threatens to kill Sherlock’s only friends ... John, Mrs. Hudson, DI Lestrade. Who/what might they represent on a metaphorical level? Who else is involved?

Mycroft - he is the BRAIN and represents logic, reason and intellect. He is the observer, the investigator and collector of data … in his most inhuman form mirrored by Magnusson. The cold, hard DATA stored inside a massive mind palace. At the same time Mycroft is the BRAIN that worries constantly and tries to work in the most optimal way for his human body … Sherlock. Hence the Janus-faced behaviour, which mirrors the massive inner conflict of someone who want’s to be a snow-capped mountain but is actually a volcano.

Jim Moriarty - thankfully Jim says who he is. He is MR SEX. And he behaves like it throughout the whole story. No reason to doubt him.

DI Lestrade - he is also rather easy to decypher, I guess. He represents the WORK.

Mrs. Hudson - she represents LOVE. Martha Louise Hudson has the same initials as Mummy Holmes ... M.L.H.  And she behaves like a mother for Sherlock since the beginning. 

John Watson - what does he represent? Is it LOVE? Yes, it is.  And his main mirror, in almost every facet, is Molly Hooper. They differ just in one aspect … while Molly expresses her romantic feelings for Sherlock activly right from the beginning, John constantly denies such feelings when they are hinted at by other people. 

In ancient Greece there were four different meanings of LOVE 

agape (unconditional love for god, children, a spouse)

eros (sexual passion, intimate love)

philia (affectionate friendship between equals)

storge (empathy and affection within a family)

This is just a short summary but I think it is very important to distinguish the different types of love in this story. According to those distinctions, I equal LOVE-philia with FRIENDSHIP in this post, while LOVE-eros means love mingled with sexual desire. 

The fixed point in a changing age

John Watson is the fixed point when everything else around him changes. What does this mean? What has never changed since the birth of Sherlock Holmes, more than hundred years ago? His friendship with John Watson. And exactly this is how Sherlock BBC begins as well. John starts as flatmate and colleague and very soon he becomes the friend, the only friend, the best friend, the best man and finally family. And though Sherlock makes this statement at the wedding in TSOT:

All emotions, and in particular love, stand opposed to the pure, cold reason I hold above all things.

... he declares just moments later, that he is ‘one of the two people who love John most in all this world’. This is almost the same wording John uses earlier, when he asks Sherlock to be the best man at his wedding …. that Sherlock is ‘one of the two people that John loves and cares about most in the world’. The third person mentioned in both statements is each time Mary. As ‘best man and groom’ and in the presence of ‘the bride’, the statements of both men turns automatically into a declaration of a loving FRIENDSHIP.

And that’s the crux of the matter, I think. The friendship of Sherlock Holmes and Dr.  Watson is one of the greatest and most famous in literary history. In canon as well as in the many adaptions. There’s rarely an occasion where one man appears without the other. Sherlock himself puts it in a nutshell in His Last Vow:

If you know who I am, then you know who he is …

Another adaptation, different words but the same meaning.

The pic above is from ‘The Incident at Victoria Falls’ with Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee as Holmes and Watson (1992)  In this adaptation a real heap of little things can be discoverd, that remind strongly of Sherlock BBC … actually, more than there are in TPLOSH. 

There is friendship and there is love, between Holmes and Watson. Ever has been ... unchanged … for more than hundred years. I guess no one would deny that. But a loving friendship is not the same as a romantic and sexual relationship. And the missing factor in that equation is, well ….. SEX. 

But what happens, if one adds SEX to the longstanding, classical formula of FRIENDSHIP and LOVE(philia)?

Back to Bart’s roof ...

... and to Sherlock’s special problem. This time with John representing those famous FRIENDSHIP/LOVE-philia. Reading it like this, I get:

Sherlock is terrified that SEX might kill FRIENDSHIP and as a consequence LOVE and WORK

No unrealistic fear, I would say. This can indeed happen. If friendship turns into a romantic/sexuell relationship …. and if then this relationship fails … the friendship is most likely gone as well. And it looks very much as if Sherlock has exactly these concerns. The ‘skip code’, delivered to him by his FACADE, in The Empty Hearse, seems to confirm that assumption.

John or James Watson? Saint or Sinner? James or John? The more is Less?

John/FRIENDSHIP or James/SEX? The more is less?  

Beware Sherlock, what you choose, because it will have consequences and if you really want MORE you could get LESS in the end.

Right from the start, SEX lurkes at the margins of this story. First as the barking dog in the night (for the subtestual reading of ‘dogs’ in this story I recommend @sagestreet ‘s excellent  Follow the Dog metas). Then Jim Moriarty appears, the criminal mastermind who seems to pull each and every string. 

The introduction of Holme’s famous archenemy Prof. Moriarty, right at the beginning, is the first major divergence from canon in this adaptation. In Sherlock BBC, John Watson and Jim Moriarty enter Sherlock’s life at the same time. While John makes Sherlock’s aquaintance and soon becomes his flatmate, colleague and friend, Jim sponsors serial killer Hope and causes the ‘pink case’, the ‘great game’ and then ‘Reichenbach’ … Rich Brook …. himself.

From the beginning then ….

Source of promo pic S1  X   (Feature of interest: the E next to Sherlock)

Sherlock enjoys FRIENDSHIP and is at the same time fascinated by SEX. This changes only at the pool in TGG, when he begins to assume that SEX might harm or even kill FRIENDSHIP. And so he starts to investigate SEX more closely. 

The woman woman

The case of Irene Adler/MRS SEX is the first obvious sex-case of the story.  Significantly, it is Mycroft/BRAIN who summons Sherlock to eliminate the scandalous problem. John/FRIENDSHIP and Mrs.Hudson/LOVE are seriously threatened by the ‘archer, while Sherlock himself gets beaten and drugged by Irene/MRS SEX. 

The simple but dangerous ‘chemistry of love’ runs through his system. And though Mycroft/BRAIN demands insistently that he should stay out of the matter from now on, Sherlock investigates further. Mycroft/BRAIN tries to defeat terrorists/EMOTIONS. But the ‘neat’ plan turns out to be a boomerang which backfires at its creator and Jim/MR SEX wins the game. As a consequence Sherlock’s fear gets unleashed by his own BRAIN and the HOUND breaks free. This leads to the second sex-case of the story ….

The Hound is loose

Simple dogs and monstrous hounds … the ones are used as symbols for plain and simple sex and the other ones represent a deep-seated fear of sex. 

The nameless, red Irish Setter, right at the beginning of THOB, is the first real dog in that episode. Henry Knight, Sherlock’s mirror, screams in terror when he comes eye to eye with it. At that point, the little boy has already replaced the simple dog with the monster from hell …. 

Near the end of the episode Sherlock imagines Jim/SEX to be the creator of the fear inducing aerosol that poisones the air. The chemistry of LOVE (eros) fills the air and awakens the desire for SEX. Episodes later Mycroft/BRAIN will ask Sherlock to remember a name …. RedBeard.  And that name gets a shape for the first time in HLV. RedBeard will turn out to be a red Irish Setter. 

RedBeard, the Irish Setter, seems to be an important Holmes family issue. Mycroft, Sherlock and Eurus definitely know about the dog. Appart from them, there are only two other characters involved with RedBeard.

Jim/SEX - Eurus points very clearly in this direction when she uses the name RedBeard in Jim’s presence in TFP. Is she passing on a secret or does she call him by his real name? Exaggerated by fear, Jim/SEX turns into the HOUND. But beneath that monster from hell should exist a simple dog … and the memory of something Sherlock witnessed as a boy, something that most likely had to do with sex.

John/FRIENDSHIP - has also very close connections to RedBeard. @devoursjohnlock explains this wonderfully in The Dog Philosophy . RedBeard the dog is expected to be in the well. But instead of dogs bones, Sherlock finds the two persons in it, whom he calls ‘best friends’. John and little Victor Trevor. Both look too similar to be just a simple coincidence.

Again, Jim and John are closely interwoven. The double coding happens, because in this adaptation John/FRIENDSHIP is 'infected’ by Jim/SEX - the virus in the data - from the first episode onwards. Emotions, romantic feelings, sexual desire … first unnoticed, then unacknowledged and unrequitted.  For Sherlock, Jim/SEX, becomes his very personal HOUND, his deep-seated fear that SEX might kill FRIENDSHIP. And the cause for that fear seems to be located in Sherlock’s past.

Twenty years ago …. something disappeared

Twenty year old disappearance; a monstrous hound? I wouldn’t miss this for the world!  (Sherlock, THOB)

The kid who owned these trainers came to London from Sussex twenty years ago and left them behind … Oh … Carl Powers … It’s where I began.  (Sherlock, TGG)

It looks like Carl Powers’ death and the death and disappearance of Henry Knight’s father (his body was never recovered) happened at the same time. Coincidence?

The ancient hound 

Dog-sounds in the night, missing shoes, a monstrous hound …. who would not instantly think of ACDs famous novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Someone steals shoes to send a hound. 

According to the ancient tale, the monsterous hound appeares because of the unfulfilled sexuell desires of Sir Hugo Baskerville. That man prescribes his soul to the devil, if only he can lay hands on the object of his lust again, who was able to flee his clutches. Sir Hugo … ‘found the cage empty and the bird escaped’ (ACD Hound). Has the devil granted him his wish? The girl is dead when the men find her, but apparently she wasn’t killed by the hound. It is Sir Hugo whose throat got ripped out by the monster. 

Unsurprisingly, even the hound in canon has to do with sex. 

Showdown on the roof ...

In the wake of the hound-episode, Jim/SEX unfolds all his power, breaks into the most secure places, opens the doors for dangerous criminals (emotions) and reaches for crown and sceptre of the king. This happens in The Reichenbach Fall - the third sex-case of the story. Sherlock comes to the decision that it’s enough, that he doesn’t want to lose FRIENDSHIP(philia), LOVE (storge) nor WORK ... that he is too clever to become ‘a prisoner of his own meat’. And so he acts accordinly. Sherlock forces Jim/SEX into suicide. He rejects his own sexuality. But by doing so, he willingly kills an important part of himself. Hence his own ‘suicide’ at the same time. 

SEX/Jim is kept inside a padded cell, chainded to the wall with an iron leash and a collar round his neck, fitting for the HOUND from hell Sherlock sees in him.

LOVE(philia)/John is guarded from now on by a strong FACADE/Mary. 

LOVE(eros)/Molly - John’s mirror, is reduced to UNREQUITTED LOVE and to suffering but stays a friend.

EMOTIONS are locked up in Sherrinford (Sherlock’s innermost core) behind elephant glass. 

FACADE/Mary - is raised as a guardian to keep unwanted emotions and memory at a distance. There has to be a ‘gap’ between that kind of suff and Sherlock.  Always ‘mind the gap’ ...

Everything should be fine and secure. John/LOVE(philia) doesn’t burn to ashes and the gigantic bomb, placed in the underground transport system, beneath the seat of the government, of Mycroft/BRAIN, is switched off in time. As it turns out, there is always something that gets overlooked. There’s a virus in the system … and the snowcapped volcano is rumbling. 

Guy Fawkes and Lord Moran

Both men are known for their attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Guy Fawkes as a historical character. Lord Moran in Sherlock BBCs The Empty Hearse.

Lord Moran - this character is based on Colonel Sebastian Moran from ACDs story The Empty House. In canon, Moran is the right hand man of Prof. Moriarty and described as the second most dangerous man in London. Using this special character for the role as ‘big rat’ behind the planned attack on the government in The Empty Hearse, connects the whole event automatically to Jim Moriarty …. even in the absence of the criminal mastermind himself. 

Guy Fawkes - has no personal appearance in this story but …. the whole sequence with the explosive carriage in the underground/Underground (and a little bit more) is taken from the movie V for Vendetta, featuring a futuristic Guy Fawkes character. Furthermore, the main event of the episode is set round the historical date 5th of November (remember, remember) …. the Guy Fawkes Day. And the ‘guy’ who almost burns to ashes in the bonfire is nobody else but John Watson. ‘John is quite the guy’ … that’s also one of the music-titles for this ep. 

By using the intermediaries Lord Moran and Guy Fawkes, the key characters of the story, Jim and John, are not only cleverly concealed but also both closely connected to the explosion of the parliament/Mycroft/BRAIN, while John, at the same time, is also in great danger to burn in the bonfire. Exactly what Sherlock probably fears could happen …. that FRIENDSHIP and LOVE would burn to ashes if ‘philia’ mingles with/turns into ‘eros’ …. if the FRIEND becomes the LOVER. 

Three solutions - three choices

“Beware Sherlock, what you choose, because it will have consequences and if you really want MORE you could get LESS in the end” …. and so Sherlock dismisses LOVE(eros) and SEX and chooses BRAIN to keep LOVE(philia) safe.

With this in mind, isn’t it interesting what Sherlock says episodes later, near the end of The Lying Deteective?

Must be something comforting about the number three. People always give up after three.  (Sherlock, TLD)

Does this mean that Sherlock has found a fourth solution, a fourth possible option for himself and his problem? In S4 …. after adding the ‘eurus factor’ to his equation? It almost looks like it.

Good old Dr. Watson ….. back to the beginning

Sherlock uses those words in PILOT, when it becomes clear that the police has arrived in front of 221b, alerted by his new aquaintance, John Watson. At that time, he knows the doctor for just a couple of hours. A very strange choice of words in a scene right at the beginning of Sherlock’s and John’s relationship. As mentioned above, the quote is from His Last Bow, the final adventure of Holmes and Watson, set in August 1914. This is the whole paragraph … and also the end of the story, the end of all the stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in canon:

The two friends chatted in intimate converse for a few minutes, recalling once again the days of the past whilst their prisoner vainly wriggled to undo the bonds that held him. As they turned to the car, Holmes pointed back to the moonlit sea, and shook a thoughtful head.

'There's an east wind coming, Watson.'

'I think not, Holmes. It is very warm.'

'Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared. Start her up, Watson, for it's time that we were on our way. I have a cheque for five hundred pounds which should be cashed early, for the drawer is quite capable of stopping it, if he can.'   (ACD  His Last Bow)

And in Sherlock BBC the ‘canon-end’ becomes the ‘beginning’ of a new adaptation. Indeed, an interesting choice. 

John is ‘the one fixed point in a changing age’ while Jim ‘I’m soooo changable’ Moriarty uses the name Rich Brook as his alias … Reichenbach …. Turner’s (the changer’s) masterpiece. ‘Informtion is the power to change’, it says in His Last Vow. And a big thank you @gosherlocked for reminding me of Mrs. Hudson and her ‘next door friend’ - Mrs. Turner - who got ‘married ones’. :)))

Choices and consequences throughout the whole story. But the main theme seems to be …. 

.... changing/turning ….

And this brings me back to little Rosie and the full name chosen for her: Rosamund. Molly Hooper, John’s mirror for LOVE-Eros, gives the explanation for that name

MOLLY: Means ‘rose of the world.’ 

Rosa mundi is also a very well known historical rose, bred in England, named after Rosamund Clifford, the beautiful mistress of Henry II of England, a rose with great history. And this special rose is also known as Rosa Versicolor - the rose of turning/changing colour.

I leave you to your own deductions. Thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.

October, 2018

@gosherlocked @possiblyimbiassed @raggedyblue @sherlockshadow @sarahthecoat @loveismyrevolution @sagestreet

[blackgoddessofsassiness]

Valentines Day Wallpaper

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