#2014 contract crew

[fallloverfic]

"Nimona" fandom informational rundown

New to the fandom and a bit confused about things? Hopefully this will help!

Nimona was a webcomic by Nate Diana Stevenson/ND Stevenson that was first shown on tumblr on December 14, 2011, and Nate later launched it as an official webcomic on its own website on June 19, 2012. It was contracted for publication post-completion as a graphic novel sometime before November 1, 2012. The webcomic finished online publication on September 30, 2014. Shortly afterward, most of the webcomic was taken down as part of the contractual agreement for publication as a physical graphic novel, leaving only a short bit of the opening as a preview. The website for the webcomic later went down entirely, and is no longer accessible.

The comic was published in entirety as a single graphic novel on May 12, 2015. The movie adaptation rights were sold to Fox in 2015, as well, and the project was given to Blue Sky Studios. The comic was later adapted into a full cast audiobook on October 4, 2016. The graphic novel is available for purchase in paperback, hardcover, and as an ebook, and the audiobook is also available for purchase. (The link has international seller links). The graphic novel has been translated into 16 languages. It is also available in a special edition English hardcover via Illumicrate. They only ship from the UK, but ship internationally, and you don't need a subscription to buy the book. As the standard graphic novel and audiobook are ~7+ years old now, if you have a local library, you can see if either of them are available that way.

Disney bought 20th Century Fox Animation (later 20th Century Animation, the purchase completed in 2019), but later shut down Blue Sky Studios in 2021, cancelling the still-in-production movie. Crew worked on shopping the movie around for a new home after talks with Disney. The movie was later picked up and completed by Annapurna, DNEG, and Netflix, premiered June 14, 2023 in France, showed in select theaters starting principally on June 23, 2023, and released to general audiences on Netflix for streaming on June 30, 2023. I have more info on this here.

In English, Nimona is voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, Ballister Boldheart is voiced by Riz Ahmed, and Ambrosius Goldenloin is voiced by Eugene Lee Yang.

If you're looking for official merch, the movie soundtrack is up on multiple platforms, including YouTube, iOS, Spotify, and Amazon, and a vinyl version of the soundtrack was sold by iam8bit. There is an official humanoid Nimona plushie, a whale Nimona plushie, and a shark Nimona plushie, available via Gee and Hot Topic, as well as a variety of official shirts available via Hot Topic and Amazon (just search Brand: Nimona). Nate also still sells "Nimona" comic art on his INPRNT store.

Netflix released a free-to-read digital-only multimedia 358-page artbook for the movie (but took it down in March 2024). (It's also been released at least for crew/friends of crew(?) in physical release, so maybe it'll get mass release as a hardcover). Outside of this, a lot of the crew for the movie from both Blue Sky and DNEG have been releasing a ton of concept art and development stuff, and the cast and crew have been doing a lot of promotional interviews and videos going back through like April 2023, so there's a lot of material to look through on YouTube, tiktok, tumblr, twitter, Instagram, Facebook/Meta, and Vimeo, as well as various news and media sites. Nate is active on tumblr, his personal blog, twitter, and Instagram. Annapurna, DNEG, and Netflix also have multiple accounts on many platforms, including their own websites, YouTube, Facebook/Meta, and Twitter, and have been sharing clips and behind the scenes stuff.

Nimona actually has been added to a video game: Nimona was included as an event companion in SharkBite 2, a Roblox game.

If you're looking for fanworks, the fandom is active on most platforms, and has been ever since Nate started posting early art of the characters. Nate's talked at length in multiple places about how big the fandom was during the webcomic's publication. Mostly back then folks were very active in the Disqus comments on pages, which are a bit harder to find these days. There's a lot of the older comic fanart still circulating in different places (particularly tumblr, where the fandom was most active), some of which Nate reblogged. There is crossover between the comic and movie fandoms, as many fans of the comic love the movie and vice versa, and both fandoms are quite active. There is at least one active subreddit and fanwiki (and many others on assorted fantasy, comic, movie, and non-English language sites), as well as TV Tropes pages for both the comic and movie adaptation and a number of Discord servers.

For fanfiction, there are a ton of fics on Archive of Our Own in the comic tag and in the movie adaptation tag. There are also a number of fics on tumblr, some fics on fanfiction.net, and some on Wattpad. There are fanvids on tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube. There is fanart on tumblr, twitter, deviantart, instagram, and pixiv. There are cosplayers, meta analysts, roleplayers, music makers, and many other fanworkers

Some tags to use/browse for posts on tumblr and other sites:

Nimona

Nimona fanart

Nimona comic

Nimona movie

Ballister Blackheart

Ballister Boldheart

Ambrosius Goldenloin

Gloreth

Meredith Blitzmeyer

Ballister x Ambrosius / Goldenheart / Boldloin / Boldenloin / Blackenloin / Blackloin / Goldheart

Will update this post as I come across new things.

[disturbingstar]

Z nation trivia

• Several of the actors/crew lived together while filming the first season in Spokane, Washington, to save on costs. This included Anastasia Baranova (Addy) and Michael Welch (Mack).

• The first season was recorded on a tight schedule, with an episode being fully recorded within six days, with most shoots only allowing three takes.

• Keith Allan (Murphy) was working for The Asylum production company as a stage hand when they were tasked with Z Nation (2014). They suggested he audition for the role of Murphy and he ended up getting the part

• In one of the episodes, survivors are seen eating "Twinkies" - a nod to Zombieland (2009).

• As the character of Murphy continued to evolve, it was decided that the blue skin aspect of the character would be removed. This was largely due to the fact that the makeup itself was extremely irritating to actor Keith Allan, causing some minor skin complications as he had no choice but to wear the make up sometimes over 12 hours a day during filming.

• As of the end of season 5, 10K's kill-count is 8,999.

• Season 3 was still filming while the first episodes of season 3 aired.

• Russell Hodgkinson, who played Steven "Doc" Beck, also appeared in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017) in the same role.

• Kellita Smith currently plays Lt. Roberta Warren on Z-Nation. She then played Sergeant Roberta Warren in the movie Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015). Both are productions of The Asylum.

• On December 23, 2018, Syfy canceled the series after five seasons.

• Tom Everett Scott knew when agreeing to play Garnett that his character would be killed off in episode 6 Resurrection Z (2014). Before recording the episode some producers brought up keeping his character on longer but this idea was shot down.

• According to Karl Schaefer the apocalypse of Z Nation began on November 9th 2016.

• Russell Hodgkinson (Doc) and his wife came up with the idea for 'Z Weed' while gardening in their backyard. Simply grow marijuana using compost containing dead zombie parts.

• As of Season 4, although still listed in the credits as part of the main cast, Anastasia Baranova is no longer a regular member of the cast and has been reduced to "recurring" status. Anastasia's contract is non-restricted, leaving her open to pursue other projects. During filming for Season 4, Anastasia was already tied to 3 other projects, including 2 television series and a movie. The character of Addy has therefore been temporarily written out of the show until Anastasia could commit to working on it again.

• Katy O'Brian confirmed that her character, George, is gay.

• Four different actresses have played Lucy in the series as of the end of season 3

• In the episode "Welcome to Murphytown," The Man escaped hand cuffs by cutting off his own hand. This is a reference to the movie Deadpool (2016) where he does the same thing. It also occurred in The Walking Dead when the character Merle was handcuffed on the roof. He cut his hand off to get free.

• Anastasia Baranova wanted her character, Addy, to be bi-sexual to represent more of the real world.

(All trivia is from IMDb)

[beardedmrbean]

The Atlas V topped by Boeing's Starliner waits ready on the launch pad.

After lengthy delays that saw Starliner lapped repeatedly by NASA's other private crewed transport, SpaceX's Dragon, the spacecraft is slated to make its inaugural crewed flight at 12:25 p.m. Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 41.

Onboard: two astronauts with test pilot backgrounds, Butch Wilmore and Florida Tech graduate, Suni Williams. If all goes well, Starliner will race to catch up with the International Space Station and dock to the station's Harmony module at approximately 1:50 p.m. Sunday.

What's the weather forecast for Starliner launch

As the Atlas V rocket left its Vertical Integration Facility on Thursday, it was illuminated by the bright Florida sun. That same good weather is forecast to continue for the launch.

There's a 90 percent chance of conditions favorable to launch. The only concerns being ground winds and cumulus clouds.

Why the delay from Starliner's initial May 6 launch attempt

The mission has been delayed nearly a month due first to an oxygen leak on the rocket and then a helium leak on part of the spacecraft.

NASA, Boeing, and United Launch Alliance scrubbed on May 6 due to a suspect oxygen relief valve on the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur second stage. To deal with that leak, teams had to roll the rocket back into its facility. Once there, teams removed and replaced the valve.

Then while assessing Starliner, the teams discovered a small helium leak in the spacecraft's service module — the disposable lower part of the spacecraft that contains thrusters.

As part of the helium leak investigation, NASA and Boeing studied what impact that leak would have on the ability to safely return Starliner and its crew to Earth in the worst-case scenario of some extreme failures.

"We have now a solution," Boeing's Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of the company's commercial crew program, said last week. "It's backed by test data. It's backed by flight data, and the guidance and navigation modeling have reinforced that this technique will work. Of course we've had independent verification on it. The crew has tested it, and we feel very comfortable with the situation that we have."

NASA also completed a Delta-Agency Flight Test Readiness Review on Wednesday to evaluate all work performed before giving the "go" to proceed toward launch.

What will the Starliner crew do in space?

Wilmore and Williams will remain at the space station for about a week to test the Starliner spacecraft. That work is necessary for NASA to complete its final certification of the spacecraft, which will allow it to join SpaceX's Dragon in rotating missions to ferry crews to the station.

When is the next Florida rocket launch? Is there a launch today? Upcoming SpaceX, NASA, ULA rocket launch schedule in Florida

How much has NASA paid Boeing to develop Starliner?

NASA originally awarded Boeing the contract to fly astronauts in 2014, alongside SpaceX. Boeing received $4.8 billion for Starliner while SpaceX received $3.1 billion for Dragon. Both companies were part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which replaced the space shuttle after its retirement in 2011.

Both were late to deliver, hoping to launch as soon as 2017 and restore NASA astronauts access to space from American soil (NASA astronauts were hitching rides aboard the Russian Soyuz).

Following a successful crewed demo flight in 2020, SpaceX has since flown eight NASA crews and multiple private crews to the ISS.

Going beyond this test flight, according to Boeing, NASA has already contracted for six crewed missions on Starliner.

NASA astronaut and former NASA Associate Administrator and former KSC Director Bob Cabana told FLORIDA TODAY that the success of Boeing Starliner is essential to ensure NASA always has a way to access the station.

“We want that dissimilar redundancy,” said Cabana, adding that NASA cannot rely on solely one company.

What is the Starliner spacecraft?

Boeing calls it the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner, or simply “Starliner”. Like SpaceX's Crew Dragon, it can carry a mix of crew and cargo or up to seven crew memebers.

With a total height of 16.5 ft (capsule + service module combined) and a diameter of 15 ft, it is a what Boeing refers to as "a next-generation space capsule."

This capsule is named Calypso.

Williams, a lover of the ocean, has stated in the past that she named the spacecraft Calypso after the ship of Jacque Cousteau, which was an ocean explorer in the mid-20th century.

That ship was remembered for its underwater observation chamber and being equipped with a helicopter and submersibles, assisting in scientific expeditions. Williams mentioned being excited by Cousteau's television show as a young girl and looked forward to watching his expeditions.

How to watch Boeing Starliner launch

FLORIDA TODAY's Space Team will continue to bring you the latest information on the mission.

Follow the FLORIDA TODAY Live Blog. To received launch alerts and updates, download the free FLORIDA TODAY app and enable push alerts from the app settings.

What if there is a delay?

If Saturday's launch attempt scrubs, there are backup opportunities on Sunday, June 2. Should Starliner not be able to launch this weekend, additional opportunities exist on Wednesday, June 5 and Thursday, June 6.

[talkingtea]

Why CP wanted to leave since Season 2:

“And I guess that would be my advice to people, especially girls that look like us, is that, you know— ‘bend, but don’t ever break.’ You know, I almost— I had conversations, 'I’m leaving the show, I’m done, I’m out’— and for me, what always kept me coming back was there are people who love this character, who are dying to see themselves on screen, and if I stop now, everybody that’s supposed to be coming after me on the show, it re-solidifies the idea to the higher ups, like, ‘oh, it doesn’t work, those characters don’t work, you’re not successful,’— so I had to stay in, like, dig my feet in and make Iris successful. Because I needed there to be other Iris Wests. You know? And so, as hard as it was, I mean that is my prize, ‘bend, do not break.’”— CP, Azie’s IG Live; 40:11 - 41:00

"It was hard in that aspect, the on-set aspect. I wanted to leave the show as early as Season 2. I remember being like, 'I can't do this, I'm not going to make it through, I don't want to be here, I'm severely unhappy.' […] But for me in 2014, there were no support systems. No one was looking out for that. It was just free range to get abused every single day. There were no social media protocols in place to protect me, so they just let all that stuff sit there. [...] My fans loved this character. It was such an iconic casting, such an iconic role, and I knew how much this meant to so many people that I felt a responsibility to stay in a space and a place that was probably very toxic for my mental health”— CP, The Open Up Podcast 

Why GG wanted to leave back in S2:

“I’m glad, too, that I was, like, locked into the contract that I was locked into, ‘cause, like, we’re talking about those earlier, stressful seasons, like if I could’ve. Like, there were plenty of crew members that like walked after Season 2, like, I probably would’ve also, ‘cause I was just like, ‘this is too stressful, like, this is too hard— the hours are ridiculous,’ like, I would’ve just walked after Season 2 if I wasn’t, like, locked down. But I’m so glad that I’ve been on the journey I’ve been on, and I’ll ride it as long as I can, probably.” — GG, Michael Rosenbaum podcast; 1:07:40 - 1:08:09

...

The contrast in statements makes me sick. How did this man think racism didn't exist in 2020 when his second to the show was suffering from it everyday? He didn't even have to be lead to have the privilege he did/does on set. I wish Candice's biggest problems on set that'd make her consider leaving behind a character she loves were the long hours, the waiting to shoot, and the guest directors (which G also had problems with in the beginning). But it was worse than that. She suffered so much. It just adds to the context of G's comment in 2020; “Candice and I have had private conversations where I’ve apologized to her, acknowledged where I could’ve done better and I’ve promised her I will.” And Candice had said one person actually stood by her. He admittedly failed her. And seeing/hearing the differences of tone in those statements side by side just adds to that sting. You can feel CP's pain, yet GG outgrowing his younger, more unprofessional, functionally anxious self.

If it had to be between those two, I'd pick CP over GG to leave for better things, Iris over Barry to stay.

Season 2 would've alternatively been their escape route of that shit show for very different reasons ...

☕️☕️☕️

[mariacallous]

Nine others died in the August 23 plane crash that reportedly killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader who staged a brief mutiny against Russia’s Defense Ministry in late June. Prigozhin’s death isn’t verified yet, but Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency has confirmed that he was on the passenger list. The other high-profile passenger aboard the doomed flight was Dmitry Utkin, the Wagner Group commander whose callsign is the basis for the company’s very name. Journalists at BBC Russian and the Dossier Center collected information about the other passengers and crew members who perished in the crash. Meduza summarizes these reports.

Passengers

Valery Chekalov

Chekalov managed multiple companies in St. Petersburg that were linked to Prigozhin. BBC Russia learned that his acquaintances logged his number in their phones as “Valery Evgenievich Syria,” “Valery Chekalov Concord Army,” and “Valery Evgenievich Chekalov from Prigozhin.” From 2011 to 2018, he headed the company “Kollektiv-Servis,” which won a contract with the Defense Ministry’s Commissary in 2012 to supply food to the army. Around the same time, the company registered an entity with a mess hall in Sevastopol, the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Chekalov also managed a company created in 2014 called “Neva,” which operated the subsidiary “Evro Polis” — the same Evro Polis that signed a memorandum with the Syrian government in 2016 to recapture and guard oil facilities in exchange for the value of 25 percent of the oil and gas produced there, according to reporting by the news outlet Fontanka. 

Evgeny Makaryan

Born in Magnitogorsk, Makaryan was a former police officer. According to the Dossier Center, he joined Wagner Group in March 2016, serving in its fourth assault detachment in Syria, where he was wounded. BBC Russian calls him one of Prigozhin’s bodyguards.

Sergey Propustin

Propustin is listed at Myrotvorets, the Ukrainian website that names and sometimes doxxes people its authors consider to be “enemies of Ukraine.” Myrotvorets identifies him as a grenadier reconnaissance officer and Wagner Group fighter. According to the Dossier Center, Propustin fought in the Second Chechen War. He reportedly joined Wagner in March 2015 and fought in its second reconnaissance assault detachment, from which Prigozhin would later recruit several of his personal bodyguards. Accordingly, BBC Russian reports that Propustin was another Prigozhin bodyguard.

Alexander Totmin

Myrotvorets lists Totmin too. It’s unknown when he started working for Prigozhin, but journalists learned that he was living in St. Petersburg as recently as 2022. His phone number shows up in shared databases identified as “Sanya Work PMC,” “Totmin Sanya Kontora Piter,” and “Alexander W.” In August 2012, a court in the Altai Krai sentenced him to 300 hours of community service for stealing a chainsaw from a bathhouse located on someone else’s property. In September 2014, he was sentenced to two years of probation for car theft.

Nikolai Matuseev

Researchers at the Dossier Center believe that the Nikolai Matuseev listed among the plane-crash passengers is the same one who joined Wagner Group in January 2017. He was a gunner in the organization’s fourth assault detachment in Syria.

Crew

Rustam Karimov

The aircraft’s 29-year-old second pilot, Karimov lived with his wife in Perm. He graduated from the Sasovo Flight School in Russia’s Ryazan region in 2014. Karimov’s father told reporters that his son was unemployed at the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He says Rustam found work three months ago with MNT-Aero, the company that owns the crashed plane, and then moved to St. Petersburg.

Alexey Levshin

Levshin was the plane’s captain. His daughter Anastasia told the news outlet RBC that her father had worked with Prigozhin for many years, though she provided no further details. BBC Russian discovered that Levshin was featured in a 2018 broadcast by the television network Vesti Novosibirsk about an airshow that included military pilots. In the story, he was identified as the navigator of a Sukhoi Su-34 crew.

Kristina Raspopova

Raspopova was the plane’s flight attendant. Thirty-nine years old, she was born in what is now Kazakhstan. According to the news outlet 74.ru, her younger brother is the deputy prosecutor in Yemanzhelinsk, a city in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. She attended the Moscow Finance and Law University and lived for some time in Yekaterinburg before moving to Moscow. The Telegram channel Baza reports that she relocated to St. Petersburg after finding a job at MNT-Aero.

Posts on social media indicate that Raspopova often traveled abroad, sharing photos from Jamaica, Singapore, Austria, and other countries. Multiple times, she flew aboard a business jet similar to the plane that crashed: an Embraer Legacy with the tail number RA-02857 based at Vnukovo International Airport, which she frequented. According to Baza, Raspopova spoke to her family a few hours before her final flight departed and said that the plane had been delayed for some reason.

[donotexterminateupgradepudding]

Black Sails meta. I love Captain Flint and want to blather on about him in 2022

I have been adrift in terms of media and recently stumbled upon the underappreciated Starz series Black Sails that ran from 2014-2017.  The main summary on the internets is that season 1 is lame but improves afterwards (and yes, it certainly does!).  I’m not usually into violent media, but I can look beyond that when it has a larger premise - generally something that touches on questions like; what is civilization?  What does a civil society look like?  Who benefits?  Who is excluded?  Who matters and who does not?  How colonialism hurts all but those at the very top making all the calls from their distant and comfortable place in Whitehall.

And of course - the MC, the one driving the plot - Captain James Flint.

A man who tightly controls how he presents himself and how much he reveals to others - and spoiler - that amount he reveals is very little.

I’m just going to focus on seasons 1 and 2 at the moment as those pull together the entire story of why Captain Flint exists and what his motivations are.

I would like to give a round of applause for the creative team behind Black Sails, Flint is one of the few INTJ characters that I have seen who is so well written and behaves consistently throughout.  Everyone likes to talk about how the MBTI can be used to create and define characters in media and the darling personality for many villains are supposed to be INTJ but almost always poorly executed.  But Flint, god, chef’s kiss right there, he hits in all the right places.  The mental calculations he’s constantly performing, adjusting to see how to play things out, his crazy ideas (which aren’t all that crazy if you are paying attention) the rich inner world, few close friends and a need for lots of quiet and alone time with his books. Yes, a pirate captain who likes books - so let’s start with that.  The entire plot is kicked off by his quest to find the schedule for that of the L’Urca de Lima, a Spanish treasure Galleon.  He wants the gold to secure so that Nassau can protect itself and self govern as a sort of independent state founded by questionable commerce and pirate crews. John Silver of course has the page and doesn’t know what it is - and thus begins his own search to determine its value.  Thus, he asks Dufrense about it and the accountant makes it clear that if Flint finds a book he likes on a prize, he takes it.

The first episode, although sloppy in other aspects, works hard to make Flint a walking contradiction/mystery.  He’s a feared pirate captain but highly educated and distance and a bibliophile.

We get more insight into him indirectly when Silver sneaks back onto the Walrus and searches Flint’s cabin for the missing logbook.  There in the dim light we can clearly see the first book Silver examines is the epic page turner

De Jure Belli Ac Pacis by Hugo Grotius.  Just some light reading in Latin about the basis for Western international law.  So, we know that Flint is well versed in deep legal thought and framework and he can read Latin.  Which isn’t too surprising for an educated man in the 18th century and was educated in the end of the 17th.  As the sequence continues we can catch a glimpse of a book on Flint’s desk as well.  The top book is Leviathan by philosopher Thomas Hobbes.  I have tried to make out the bottom one, but the scene is too fast and the lighting too inconsistent to see what is underneath.

Hobbes of course laid out the concept of the ‘social contract’ as well as an idea that some sort of absolute power or sovereign is needed to maintain society and prevent men from falling to their more ‘baser/animal’ nature.  Of course the show starts out with the idea that the pirates of New Providence Island are not men in the eyes of the law; where the law = England.  There are more books in his cabin and unfortunately, less effort is put into showing how nerdy they are as well.

These alone tell us, the viewer that Flint is a huge nerd and continue to contrast with how absolutely calculating and efficient he is towards doing what he needs to do to best serve his own goals.

When he finds out that someone searched his cabin (with the nice little feather in the bottom of the drawer trick) it confirms that the schedule is on his ship and in his crew.  However, the person who stole it is still unknown.  But that doesn’t matter, within mere minutes, he figures out that he can accuse Singleton who wants his job, is the thief, just setting off a fight to the death from which he pulls a blank page.  When he found that feather, I knew he was going to use that as his method to remove Singleton and find the page.  Adding to this is the sheer brutality of his fight with the other man.  He is a highly skilled fighter and takes a beating making his victory even more emotionally significant.  A white shirt bloodied and sliced open, his face a total mess, the shaky hand by which he hands the page to Billy Bones, who has no choice but to endorse his lie.

Please confirm the schedule my dear Billy, you have no choice after what you just witnessed.  He owned the entire situation and uses it to his full advantage before riling the men up with his “Princes of the New World” speech.

Keep in mind anyone who says this speech indicates he isn’t INTJ isn’t examining it in the context of the rest of the series.  He knows this is the time to give a speech.  Introverted types of people can give rousing speeches - if anything those of us who hope to advance our personal goals realize it is a necessity.  Public speaking is a tool.  Saying things to advance yourself is a tool.  The entire series reminds us time and time again, James is a person with few close friends he cares about and does not open up to anyone but them.  Furthermore, Captain Flint is a man created by the formerly proper Lt. James McGraw.  With Flint himself, being a tool for him to achieve James McGraw’s personal goals.

But back to the books.  It takes a few episodes for Miranda Barlow to be introduced who on the surface appears to be a woman who is involved with Flint likely in a romantic way.  At the beginning of episode 3 he wakes up in what later is revealed to be Miranda’s bed and casually walks into the kitchen in his undergarments before she patches him up more.

Knowing that he’ll be leaving soon for the gold, he remembers to grab a book he found in Captain Parrish’s cabin, a book of plays by Middleton which he clearly took for her.

Though Miranda’s body language and fiddling hands tell us she’s not quite sure what to do with what is likely another stolen book he’s brought her.  However, this also will tie into season 2 when it is revealed that Miranda lent James one of her favorite books, Don Quixote by Cervantes.  She in part lent it to him to help him determine how to deal with her husband, Thomas and his quirky personality.

Miranda states James may need to learn Spanish.

Now, I have to admit, I’ve tried multiple times to read Don Quixote, however, I’m always met with defeat (and that edition was indeed in English).  Yet, we should have enough of an awareness to realize that the book has a man who is both absurd and true to himself and no one will argue that Thomas Hamilton is a charming idealistic aristocrat who wants to ‘make a difference’. We see after this flashback that Flint is looking at all of the books from the nameless Spanish Man-O-War that was captured by Flint’s visionary plan.  He stops at one book, La Galatea, also by Cervantes.

After taking it off the shelf and all alone in the cabin, he takes the time to read the book.  This confirms that he has learned to read Spanish in addition to being able to speak it.  And we can look at this two ways - he learned Spanish because Miranda thought it would be useful to him in his career (true) or because he wanted to understand Thomas more and thus saw the book as research on his personality.

Once securely in the captaincy; again, he picks up the book and prepares to head ashore to visit Miranda.

They take great care to linger on shots with the book, when he talks to the two look outs; the fact he cares a cutlass in one hand while a book in the other.

Silver even comments on the book, which he simply replies that it isn’t for him.  We can certainly see that this is for Miranda based on the Middleton in season 1 and the flashback with her copy of Don Quixote.

However, under the cover of darkness, he is unable to approach as she is entertaining a local mother and her children and in classic awkward INTJ fashion, places the book on her porch where he knows she’ll eventually find it.

Pssshhh, not like I’m actually going to reveal my emotions to you Miranda.  You know those pesky emotions are difficult for me to handle.

The following morning before he opens fire on Charles Vane, we see Miranda opening the book to see a single line of “I’m sorry”.

Can we just stop and appreciate how on point this is for Flint and for anyone with a similar personality.  It is hard to apologize in person with words when one is more intimately involved with someone.  And that you have a long term relationship with.  Apologizing though an action is completely in character for him.  He is likely apologizing for their argument about her letter for the pardon in Boston; for the fact he brought her here; for what he is about to do in the name of an independent Nassau; for future things that Miranda will disagree with.  All of it.

In addition to all of this, the entire main plot of La Galatea is around two men and their love interest with one man being more elite and properly educated while the other is poor an rural.  It is a story that has a love triangle and Black Sails likes its examples of how love triangles work outside of civilization with the ending that sees Max, Bonny and Rackman successful and not selling out to keep their relationship.  In contrast, the ‘peak of civilization’ in London destroyed the love triangle that was James, Thomas and Miranda due to how wrong it was in the eyes of a few.  I can only guess that Flint selected this book because it had something in common with Miranda and their shared relationship with Thomas.

Which leads to the next key book that is involved in the ‘riveting’ reveal in season 2 episode 5.  Which isn’t that riveting if you’d been paying attention since the beginning.  I did not know the full background of Black Sails in our age of easy information and summaries.  I had assumed the queer rep was in the Anne Bonny, Jack Rackham and Max relationship based on the few things I’d seen.  But it was painfully obvious to me by episode 3 that Flint was not a straight character and his relationship with Miranda at the present was not one based on any sort of romantic love.  He let’s her belittle him as she cleans his wounds after bleeding on her floor as they interact like two people who know each other well - out of habit.  Richard Guthrie finds the stashed away portrait of the handsome Hamiltons and watches as Miranda flirts with the pastor. 

This is my long-winded way at getting to the key book, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius a very famous Roman stoic and emperor.  Miranda gives the book to Guthrie to find something to reflect on his circumstances and she wants to share this with him.

James will have none of this.  He has a look that could kill as he shuts the door while looking at Guthrie as Miranda slips away between them.  After the most awkward sex scene in the show where Flint passively lies below a sexually frustrated Miranda, he stares blankly beyond her unable to even touch her with his hands, unsure where to even place them relative to her body.  This is all one needed to realize that whoever the person is/was that captured James’s heart if it were even possible, it was not Miranda. 

As they dress, Miranda knows James is upset and when asked, it becomes an explosive argument about Meditations.  James has hidden the book away while Miranda feels her connection to her old life and Thomas and that book are slipping too far away from her - which drives her to write the previously mentioned pardon letter.

Flint can’t share that book with anyone else - though in season one we are left with him only reminding Miranda how important that book is too him with little else.  This is the start of the fight that James Flint isn’t sure how to resolve and other than Guthrie realizing that Miranda Barlow is the famous Miranda Hamilton who according to rumor had a torrid affair with her husband’s closest friend (a naval officer) we all know it is referring to Flint.  Though Guthrie only hears one side of the sex and thinks Flint was more involved than staring off into space as Miranda used him, but we know he likely felt that he should let her use him based on their complicated relationship and past. As the flashbacks slowly unfold, we first get the Cervantes books linking James, Thomas and Miranda.  What the big reveal is that Meditations was a gift, dedicated to James from Thomas.  To stop Flint from destroying the weak inherant nature of Nassau, Miranda rides into town with the book.  To present it to him, as she feels that he never got over the ostracization he faced and how he ignores that fact he could have been hung for his actions under civilized English law.

It is hard to tell who is right or wrong - honestly both of them are likely correct.  They have been dealing with so much pain and trauma that they’ve had a long time to learn how to really make their words sting as they argue.

She leaves him alone with the book which he gently touches.

And opens to show the full note that Thomas wrote directly to him. 

When we see the last dual flashback of James and Miranda leaving London, he reflects back on his relationship with the one person we can confirm he truly loved - reading to him in his bed from the very book.

So yeah, this book holds a lot of emotional meaning for him and even if Miranda shared a love of the text with her husband, she never denied that their relationship was something much deeper.  We could also look at the fact that Marcus Aurelius in his younger years was involved with his older teacher and they wrote lots of sappy love letters to each other.  That if they’d existed in another time and context their relationship would have been less of an issue.  It is funny how the progressive English intellectuals like to refer back to the classics while only taking part of it while ignoring other aspects that did not fit into their early 18th century narrative.

And with that, I’d like to wrap up my quick meta about the role of key books reveal much about Captain Flint’s complicated relationships, past events and how he may think about the present and future.  I’d like to dive into another quick analysis on how they visually broke down the growing closeness and relationship between James and Thomas in season 2 flashbacks but that will be for another day.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Some Further Thoughts: TOY STORY 5, FROZEN III, ZOOTOPIA 2

The dust has settled for a bit…

These are some theories on who I think will be in charge of the three animated movie sequels announced by The Walt Disney Company the other day, because that’s always a concern of sorts for me when it comes to these movies… And also when they could possibly be released…

Why don’t we get the big one out of the way? That’s right… TOY STORY 5…

The announcement of TOY STORY 5 was unusual in that it didn’t give us any idea who is spearheading it. Now, TOY STORY 4 was similarly announced during an earnings call in October of 2014. It was the first official announcement of the movie’s existence following years of rumors coming from dubious sources… And on that day, we learned right away that it had a director (John Lasseter, who stepped down as director in mid-2017 prior to his prolonged ouster from the Disney company), two writers (Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, who left around that time as well), and was going to be a love story… But during that February earnings call, Bob Iger only stated that it was in the works, along with the two Disney Animation sequel films FROZEN III and ZOOTOPIA 2. No info on those, either… Just, they exist… It wasn’t too dissimilar to the March 2014 shareholder earnings call that officially confirmed that CARS 3 and INCREDIBLES 2 were in the works. Info was sparse on both…

In my previous post on the TOY STORY 5 announcement, I thought of who was part of the main crew of all four of the movies. Lasseter’s been out of Disney altogether since mid-2018, Pete Docter never directed a TOY STORY movie and is currently the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar, Andrew Stanton has been off directing live-action stuff and trying to get live-action features off the ground elsewhere, Lee Unkrich retired from the business entirely, and Josh Cooley is presumably still directing an animated TRANSFORMERS movie for Paramount… I’d imagine Docter and Stanton will at least write or contribute story material to the fifth TOY STORY, but I don’t see them being involved in other levels of the production. Does Unkrich un-retire (he’s not particularly old) and write, possibly even direct? Not sure. Perhaps another promising upstart director gets this one, much like how Josh Cooley got the TOY STORY 4 gig after years of story artist/supervisor work dating back to CARS. But who… Is the question. All the directors confirmed to make new Pixar features - Brian Fee, Kristen Lester, Rosana Sullivan, Aphton Corbin, Enrico Casarosa, and Domee Shi - are working on original stories… Maybe a short film director who has yet to get a gig - such as Brian Larsen or Bobby Rubio - will be director. Maybe someone I’ve never heard of before or even considered… After all, no one outside the walls of the studio knew that Enrico Casarosa had an original film in the works (LUCA), or that Adrian Molina was tackling a movie of his own after COCO (ELIO), or that Kelsey Mann was set to direct something, let alone an INSIDE OUT sequel. There’s a lot they don’t say, as much as they do say…

Release… Pixar currently has these dates locked for releases, post-INSIDE OUT 2:

06/13/2025 03/06/2026 06/19/2026

I’m thinking… Should production go smoothly, and not go through multiple writer changes like TOY STORY 4 did, it gets the June 2026 slot. That puts it… Seven years after TOY STORY 4. When TOY STORY 4 was announced, it was slated for summer 2017… That would’ve been seven years after TOY STORY 3, but again, those delays pushed it to summer 2019. TOY STORY 3, by contrast, took four years to come together. Development began following Disney’s acquisition of Pixar in early 2006 (erasing the old anti-sequel terms of the original contract between the two companies), was at first slated for summer 2009, but was released in summer 2010. TOY STORY 2 debuted four years after the first TOY STORY… Seven years is long, both TOY STORY 3 and TOY STORY 4 took what seemed like eons to come out.

As for those other release dates? I think those go to originals, of course. They’re the only other Pixar films we know about, and more originals is a good thing.

Now while we know what Pixar are releasing in 2024, original ELIO and sequel INSIDE OUT 2… We know next to nothing about what Walt Disney Animation Studios has on the horizon for after WISH’s holiday 2023 bow… And WISH wasn’t known to the public until this past autumn… Barely a year away from release. Outside of the two recently-announced sequels? Nothing. No hints on anything that’s cooking. We’ve known for a while - read: since November 2019 - that filmmakers Josie Trinidad, Suzi Yoonessi, and Marc Smith had original movies in production. If those are still a priority, then I’d imagine we’d be hearing about them soon. Walt Disney Animation Studios runs differently from Pixar now, what with Jennifer Lee as Chief Creative Officer, not how John Lasseter used to oversee both WDAS and Pixar… Don Hall, for example, was curiously whisked off of his STRANGE WORLD to take over RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON from its previous directors, ditto Carlos Lopez Estrada. Estrada had an original of his own in the works at the time, until he was assigned to RAYA. He left Disney altogether after that, meaning that his original is either dead (reportedly titled FOSTER, which shared the name with a cancelled Blue Sky musical) or it was given to another director. Hall later resumed STRANGE WORLD and the movie debuted nearly two years after RAYA. (Worth noting, RAYA was originally supposed to be a fall 2020 release, with ENCANTO following fall 2021, and then STRANGE WORLD fall 2022.)

So, which movie bows first? And when?

FROZEN III was inevitable given the billion dollar success of both movies, individually. FROZEN II came out six years after the first one, in fact it wasn’t announced that it existed until a year and a half after the first FROZEN came out. FROZEN II is now 3 1/2 years old, so they took a while to even confirm that this movie exists. Do Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee return to direct? Definitely no on the latter, as Lee is busy running the studio. Chris Buck is director of WISH, so if Buck’s directing, it won’t be out for a little while then. If neither are directing, and they gave it to someone else (maybe one of the directors of the half-hour OLAF’S FROZEN ADVENTURE), then it could come sooner than later… Again, with such little information, it is hard to gauge.

Ditto ZOOTOPIA 2. Byron Howard directed the first film alongside Rich Moore, the latter left Disney a while ago. Howard, and ZOOTOPIA co-director Jared Bush, took on ENCANTO afterwards. Is Howard returning? Or is he pursuing another original project? Jared Bush is involved in ZOOTOPIA 2, and it’s possibly he could direct, or he has an original lined up for himself as well. I’d imagine they’d both at least write it or contribute story material. Josie Trinidad has an original movie lined up, but given her story work on the first ZOOTOPIA and that she directed most of ZOOTOPIA+. Trent Correy, who also directed on ZOOTOPIA+ and directed the Short Circuit short DROP, could be the director, too. Or he has an original lined up…

Release dates? Well, here is Walt Disney Animation Studio’s post-WISH slate so far…

11/20/2024 11/26/2025 11/25/2026

While Pixar has smoothly moved into doing two features every other year, WDAS still does one movie a year… And two sequels being on the boards makes thing a little complicated for the originals. Do we semi-repeat 2018-2019, where we went a whole four years without a new not-sequel Disney animated movie? Or does WDAS wrangle another movie into a doable slot?

Pixar, as said before, releases two movies in both 2024 and 2026… 2025, just one… Who’s to say Disney can’t take one of their placeholder dates for a “live-action” movie and gave it to a WDAS movie? Like, I can imagine one of those two sequels - likely ZOOTOPIA 2, since FROZEN is always more of a wintery sort of thing for obvious reasons - taking such a date… Say, March 2025? That’s the earliest feasible date, though…

FROZEN III, if it were truly coming out next year, than they’ve kept a hell of a tight lip on it… I don’t think it’ll be next year’s WDAS movie, nor ZOOTOPIA 2…

Earliest I can see either is sometime in 2025. It’s harder to gauge because originals exist, and WDAS only does one a year as of now. Again, that could change. They could surprise and say that they’re doing two in 2025 or so, and one of those two is a sequel.

As I said in the previous post on this matter… Why don’t they double up their efforts so they can get more originals out without having sequels pushing them back? In a way that doesn't put pressure on the crews, and doesn't crunch anyone... I think it can be done: That Vancouver studio they recently opened... Can that be upped the same way the defunct Orlando studio was? The Orlando unit helped on features like THE LION KING, and then whole features were made in-house there starting with MULAN. By the early 2000s, Disney Feature was able to get two features out every few years because of this. Both units seemed to work well in delivering movies without much strain. It only went kablooey because of outside circumstances, but look at Pixar. They’re doing two a year just fine despite outside hardships (COVID-19, LIGHTYEAR flopping at the box office), DreamWorks is doing that just fine, too. WDAS, from my outside perspective, could possibly get two movies out in 2025. An original and a sequel - be it ZOOTOPIA 2 or FROZEN III - and make it through unscathed.

As for what makes it first out of the two WDAS sequels? I'm definitely leaning on ZOO2PIA here. The first film will be *ten years old* in 2026, and ZOOTOPIA+ recently debuted on Disney+, so I'd imagine that one arriving sooner than latter.

Who knows, but I could see this happening…

11/20/2024 - ORIGINAL WDAS (possibly Josie Trinidad's film?)

03/07/2025 - ZOOTOPIA 2

06/13/2025 - ORIGINAL PIXAR (possibly Brian Fee’s film? He said he was writing/directing an original way back in July 2017)

11/26/2025 - ORIGINAL WDAS (possibly Suzi Yoonessi's film?)

03/06/2026 - ORIGINAL PIXAR (possibly Kristin Lester’s film? Her original movie was confirmed to exist in 2018)

06/19/2026 - TOY STORY 5

11/25/2026 - FROZEN III

2027 - ORIGINAL PIXAR (possibly Rosana Sullivan's film?)

2027 - ORIGINAL WDAS (possibly Marc Smith's film?)

This might all look silly by 2026 anyways, so… Why the heck not?

[goldenpinof]

First of all I agree with you about how every time they've given up a little control its gone a bit sideways. The other example I can think of is the rize liveshows during II which were literally awful, but they had to do because rize sponsored the tour.

With the britcrew thing. So im not the biggest expert on this, this is just sort of knowledge ive gained over the years so if anyone knows more, feel free to correct me, but my understanding is that around about 2014 when the british youtube scene started popping off, the big channels including zoella, alfie deyes, louise, joe sugg, casper lee, and all the others that I cant remember the names of rn, were all offered contracts under this one company (whose name I cant find), an MCN (multichannel network) that basically said you give us some control over your content + a percentage of your revenue and we can guarantee you a lot of veiws for a long time.

At this time YouTube was very much still a new concept so the idea of big companies being interested in channels and treating them more like mainstream media was a big thing. The members of the britcrew, as far as Im aware, were all contracted under the same MCN. In terms of content this meant that they were all constantly collabing, going to the same events etc, and basically building up that image of a big group of best friends even more. And obviously it worked for a time, because thats exactly how they were seen.

Dan and phil did not get contracted under the MCN and they have both said that they never wanted to give over that kind of comtrol to anyone, but as they have also both admitted, that it did mean they were much more isolated from the britcrew scene. Now i do think that this worked out well for them anyway, because I dont think they would have enjoyed, or looked like they are enjoying constantly being content for other people.

By 2017ish (i might have the timeline a little off) everything started going sideways because the MCNs were trying to turn youtube in to too much of a mainstream media copy, making bad business decisions, plus they were screwing over creators left right and center, so people were ending their contracts, veiwers stopped watching etc. In the end the MCNs tanked and went bankrupt, which meant that a lot of the channels that had been relying on them went with it. That coupled with all of the controversy that happened with various people meant that the brit crew sort of ended by 2018, where as dnp, who never joined any sort of management company in the first place, were still going strong, even years later.

Basically dnp have a) never let anyone else hold control over their image and b) never gotten themselves involved in big controversies, which has meant that even though their channels are naturally declining (which considering phils been doing yt for nearly 2 decades is really impressive), they still have tons of options for their careers in future and at no point did they become at risk of losing the phouse.

okay, with Rize that i also forgot about there are quite a few things they let go the control of. also the super amazing project like @foreverjustanemokidatheart mentioned.

when you said about contracts for the britcrew i 1st thought you were talking about Gleam Futures (and our infamous gleam team). but they still exist somehow and it's not an MCN, so i also don't know. very interesting things with %. i find it quite naive since collaborations could be done without a third party involved. i would love to know what kind of work that MCN was providing :) for me, it felt like the britcrew started falling out after Hello World. i couldn't find who was organizing it and how much Gleam Futures got involved. but the majority of creators were Gleam's clients so, it's not a surprise that people started leaving (Tanya is still with them, what a plot twist).

Dan and Phil had their controversies followed by Dan deleting some of his videos in 2018. interesting how it never blew up like a lot of this stuff does. also their friendship with f*lix. i remember people leaving the phandom after that Emma Blackberry's bday. rightfully so. and despite Dan distancing himself from that person, looks like we're going backwards.

with us investing in forever home for years, they just can't lose it.

[usafphantom2]

NATO Air Police will gain reinforcement of F-35 fighters in Poland and Iceland

F-35 fighters will make NATO's improved air policing in Poland.

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 07/01/2023 - 12:14 in Military

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The Royal Air Force of the Netherlands is preparing an deployment of its F-35 fighters in support of NATO's improved air policing mission in northeastern Europe. Norway is preparing to highlight its fighters in Iceland.

Eight Dutch F-35 fighters will be deployed in Malbork, Poland, to join the NATO mission to strengthen the defensive posture along the east flank in February and March 2023. While four of the fifth-generation fighters will be employed in support of policing the skies in the region, the other four aircraft will perform training exercises and exercises with the Allies, ready to increase the defensive mission when necessary.

"With these eight modern fighters, the Netherlands contributes to NATO's air policing and air shielding missions in deterrence and, if necessary, in the defense of allied territory in the Baltic region. We are also securing our Allies and demonstrating our commitment to the NATO Alliance," said Lieutenant Colonel Guido Schols, Commander of the F-35 Detachment of the Netherlands.

The Netherlands regularly contributes to Allied Air Policing missions. At home, they shared the task of protecting the skies above the BENELUX area along with the F-16 of the Belgian Air Force since 2017. Abroad, they sent their F-16 to Siauliai in support of the Baltic Air Police in 2005 and 2017 and to Malbork in 2014, shortly after the invasion of Crimea by Russia. On the southeast flank, the Netherlands completed a two-month F-35 deployment in Bulgaria in May.

While deployed to Marlbork, the Netherlands is part of the current rotation of three other Allies that operate fighters outside the Baltic region: Poland and France fly F-16 and Rafale fighters from Siauliai, Lithuania, and Germany launches its Eurofighters from Ämari, Estonia.

At the same time, Norway's F-35 fighters will be sent to Iceland, where they will protect the High North region of the Alliance, as well as the Baltic.

NATO Air Police is a peacetime mission that aims to preserve the security of the Alliance's airspace. It is a collective task and involves the continuous presence - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - of fighters and crews, ready to react quickly to possible violations of airspace.

Tags: Military AviationF-35 Lightning IINATO - Air Policing MissionRNAF - Royal Norwegian Air Force / Royal Norwegian Air ForceRNLAF - Royal Netherlands Air Force / Royal Dutch Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday!

50% of Canada is A.

The faster you eat, the more weight you gain.

Sex burns 360 calories per hour.

Hitler and Napolean both had only one testicle.

French fries are from Belgium not France.

The richest 1% of the world, owns 99% of the world.

French queens gave birth in public to prove the baby was theirs.

In their first year of trading, Coca-Cola only sold 25 bottles.

There is a morning-after pill for STIs.

“No lemon, no melon” backwards is "No lemon, no melon".

Bolivia has a 5000 man strong navy. What Bolivia does not have is a coastline.

On March 10th, 2015, Ireland accidentally legalised 125 drugs for one day, including ketamine, ecstasy and crystal meth.

Oysters, avocado, chocolate, and bananas are all known to increase sex drive.

‘Hakuna Matata’ is a Swahili phrase that literally translates to ‘There are no worries.’

Why are you assuming that your guests’ shoes are dirtier than your floor?

Cannabis can double a woman's chance of having a mind-blowing orgasm.

In 1894, The Times estimated that by 1950 London would be nine feet deep in horse manure.

Semen contains zinc and calcium, both of which are proven to prevent tooth decay.

Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for our kids. Let’s try to leave better kids for our planet.

When. You. Read. Stuff. Like. This. The. Voice. In. Your. Head. Takes. Pauses.

Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol before writing can actually enhance your creativity.

In 2014, a man from Arizona stole a diamond that was worth $160,000 and traded it for $20 worth of weed.

Not having enough sex can put you at risk of anxiety, paranoia and depression.

Psychologists examined internet trolls and found that the majority of them are narcissistic, psychopathic and/or sadistic.

Women are more attracted to someone with the ability to make them laugh. Laughter strengthens relationships.

Woody Harrelson’s father was a door-to-door Encyclopaedia Britannica salesman before becoming a contract killer.

Generally, women care more in a relationship but are more likely to walk away and stay away once they reach breaking point.

If Benny and Bjorn from ABBA had been Steve and Dave, they would have been known as ASDA.

If you can’t send an Excel file because it’s too big, save it as .xlsb. This will shrink the size.

Only 16% of French people surveyed in 2015 said they could live without cheese ‘sans aucun problème’ (without any problem).

The average Brit spends more time per week on the toilet than they do exercising.

Each time you resist acting on your anger, you're actually rewiring your brain to be calmer and more compassionate.

The Stinking Rose restaurant in San Francisco uses 1.5 tons of garlic a month and features a 2,400-bulb garlic braid as decoration. According to one reviewer "They season the garlic with food.”

In 2021 an arrest warrant was issued for a woman in Oklahoma after it was discovered she hadn’t returned a copy of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on VHS to a video rental store in 1999 when it was due.

Broccoli, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts all contain a little bit of cyanide. Eating them primes your liver to deal better with other poisons.

In 1976, the typical US CEO earned 36 times the salary of his average worker. Today, the average CEO makes 369 times what an average worker makes.

Tchaikovsky was able to quit his day job with the support of a wealthy patron. Her only condition for her support was that they never meet in person.

Brian Cranston signed up to a screen writers’ guild so that he was paid royalties for the whistling he did as Hal in ‘Malcolm in the Middle’. He used the money to pay for parties for the crew.

It's hard to change a person's mind using facts due to "motivated reasoning". People often believe what they want, then use unsubstantial evidence to support it, even when there's an abundance of information disproving their point.

In 2018, a 13-year-old opened a hot dog stand in front of his home in Minnesota, prompting a neighbor to file a complaint with the health department. Instead of shutting him down, inspectors helped bring his stand up to code and paid the $87 fee for his permit.

In 1996, a store manager in California robbed the store, reported the robbery, and then gave a detailed description of the ‘suspect’ to the sketch artist. When the police pointed out to him that the ‘suspect’ looked exactly like him, the man confessed.

The last line of the film ‘Gone with the Wind’ — ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’ — was originally censored. Before it was finally approved, the producers considered such replacements as ‘I don’t give a whoop’, ‘I don’t give a straw’, and ‘I don’t give a Continental’.

The inventor of the transistor, John Bardeen, won a Nobel prize in 1956 but only brought one of his three kids to the ceremony. When questioned on it, he said he’d bring the others the next time he won, which he then did in 1972.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

[novumtimes]

How Boeings Starliner Mission To Send Sunita Williams Barry Butch Wilmore On Space Faced Setbacks

Boeing’s Starliner lifted off with Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams on June 5 The decision to transfer the crew of Boeing’s Starliner to a SpaceX mission after the spacecraft malfunctioned is just the latest twist in a long saga that has undermined the credibility of the US aerospace giant.  Here is a recap of the setbacks and delays on Starliner’s journey to fly a crew to the International Space Station — and how it was unable to bring them back again. 2014: Nasa awards contract A decade ago NASA chose two companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to each develop a new spacecraft capable of transporting its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).  The US space agency asked both to be ready for 2017, as it sought to end its dependence on the Russian spacecraft it had used to ferry astronauts to the ISS since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. Boeing was awarded a $4.2 billion contract, against SpaceX’s $2.6 billion. At the time, billionaire Elon Musk’s young company was widely seen as the underdog against Boeing’s aerospace might.  2019: Failed unmanned flight During the first unmanned flight in December 2019, the capsule failed to set itself on the right trajectory and returned to Earth prematurely after two days, without reaching the ISS.  The problem was due to a clock that was eleven hours late, preventing the capsule from firing its thrusters at the scheduled time.  NASA then realized that another software problem could have led to a catastrophic collision.  The manufacturer was given a long list of recommendations and modifications to make. 2021: False hope In August 2021, when the rocket was already on the launch pad for another attempt at flight, unexpected moisture caused a chemical reaction that blocked the opening of some of the capsule’s valves.  The capsule returned to the factory for inspection over a period of several months. The delay was in stark contrast to the progress being made by SpaceX, which had been successfully transporting astronauts to the ISS since 2020.  2022: First (unmanned) success In May 2022, Starliner finally completed its first unmanned test flight. Despite a few glitches — including a propulsion system problem detected in flight, but with no adverse consequences — the capsule lifted off, reached the ISS where it remained docked for several days, and returned safely to Earth.  2023: New worries, new delays Starliner’s nascent momentum was arrested in 2023 when new problems emerged, delaying preparations for its first manned flight. One concerned the design of the parachutes that would slow the capsule as it re-entered the atmosphere. It was modified and new tests carried out.  The other was even more surprising: adhesive tape, used over several meters to wrap electrical cables inside the capsule, proved to be flammable and had to be removed.  2024: First manned flight goes awry The big day finally arrived on June 5, 2024: the capsule lifted off with two astronauts — Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams — for the first time, a final test mission to prove it was safe before beginning regular operations to the ISS. But leaks of helium, the gas used to create pressure in the propulsion system, were discovered in flight. Several thrusters then failed before the capsule docked with the ISS, although all but one were eventually reignited.  NASA feared the capsule would not be able to achieve the thrust necessary to return to Earth.  As a result, the space agency took a radical decision: to transfer the two astronauts to a SpaceX mission and return Starliner empty. Analysis of the flight will determine the path forward — and how long any new delays will last.  Boeing has already gone $1.6 billion over budget on the program. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) Source link via The Novum Times

[sa7abnews]

Boeing rockets built by inexperienced workers – NASA

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/12/boeing-rockets-built-by-inexperienced-workers-nasa/

Boeing rockets built by inexperienced workers – NASA

One case of shoddy welding set production back seven months, the agency’s inspector general found

NASA’s inspector general has issued a damning report on Boeing’s rocket division, stating that the aerospace giant’s next-generation spacecraft is years behind schedule, significantly over budget, and built by “inexperienced technicians” led by ineffective managers. In development since 2014, the Block 1B variant of NASA’s Space Launch System was originally scheduled to lift off as part of the agency’s Artemis II lunar flyby mission next year. The rocket’s debut has since been pushed back to the 2028 Artemis IV moon landing mission, which NASA’s Office of Inspector General warned on Thursday could be delayed even further. Boeing, which was contracted in 2014 to build the rocket’s powerful upper section, is partly to blame for this delay, the inspector general declared in a report. NASA inspectors visiting Boeing’s Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana found glaring “deficiencies in quality,” the report stated. Inspectors issued 71 Corrective Action Requests to remedy these deficiencies, which they noted was “a high number…for a space flight system at this stage in development.” 

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Boeing to plead guilty to fraud

These deficiencies “are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing,” the report continued, citing one example of how the company’s “inexperienced technicians” were unable to weld a fuel tank in accordance with NASA standards. This shoddy welding directly led to a seven-month delay in the development of the rocket’s upper stage. “Boeing’s process to address deficiencies to date has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur,” the report declared. Boeing initially promised to deliver the upper stage by February 2021, and now insists that it will be ready by April 2027. Costs have soared in the meantime, with NASA estimating that the stage will set it back $2.8 billion by 2028, more than double Boeing’s 2017 estimate of $962 million. The inspector general’s office recommended that Boeing be fined for its “noncompliance with quality control standards.” However, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, Catherine Koerner, announced on Thursday that the company would not be penalized.

READ MORE: US astronauts stuck in space

With its aviation division already reeling after a door panel blew off one of its 737 MAX 9 planes in mid-air in January, Boeing was thrust into the headlines again in June when its Starliner spacecraft malfunctioned, leaving two astronauts marooned on the International Space Station (ISS). The astronauts were originally meant to stay on the ISS for a week, but NASA announced on Wednesday that they could be stranded in space until 2025, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is scheduled to drop off a fresh crew of astronauts.

[gqresearch24]

‘Buzzing’ Rocket Valve Pushes 1st Astronaut Launch Of Boeing’s Starliner Capsule To May 10

( Source – Business Today)

Boeing’s highly anticipated inaugural crewed flight of the Starliner capsule faces a delay until the latter part of the week due to a technical setback, marking a temporary setback in the aerospace company’s ambitious mission.

Originally slated for a late Monday night launch, the Crew Flight Test (CFT) was intended to embark on a roughly 10-day journey to transport two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and return them safely to Earth. However, mission controllers opted to postpone the launch approximately two hours before the scheduled liftoff upon detecting an anomaly with the “oxygen relief valve” situated on the upper stage of Starliner’s rocket, an Atlas V from United Launch Alliance (ULA). The valve exhibited irregular behavior, characterized by rapid opening and closing during the countdown sequence, prompting the delay, according to ULA officials.

delay would facilitate comprehensive data analysisInitial hopes for a swift resolution were voiced by NASA, ULA, and Boeing, with speculation of a potential launch attempt as early as Tuesday night. Yet, these aspirations were dashed as the teams announced early Tuesday morning that the CFT mission would be postponed until at least Friday night. NASA officials explained in a Tuesday update that the delay would facilitate comprehensive data analysis on the pressure regulation valve located on the liquid oxygen tank of the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur upper stage, assessing the necessity of valve replacement.

The rescheduled launch window for CFT is set for Friday at 9 p.m. EDT, with an additional backup opportunity available on Saturday, according to NASA officials. However, the intricate process of valve replacement, as outlined by ULA CEO Tory Bruno during a post-scrub press briefing on Monday night, entails several days of meticulous preparation. Consequently, if valve replacement becomes imperative, the likelihood of another launch attempt before Sunday appears remote.

The anticipation is heightened

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, designated as the crewmembers for CFT, returned to the crew quarters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center following the announcement of the launch delay. The anticipation surrounding this mission is heightened given Boeing’s historical delays in Starliner’s development, in stark contrast to SpaceX’s successful operational flights using the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket since 2020.

In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX lucrative contracts to facilitate crewed transportation to and from the ISS. While SpaceX has accomplished seven operational crewed flights for NASA and is currently engaged in its eighth mission, Boeing continues to grapple with technical hurdles, yet to realize its goal of launching a crewed mission with the Starliner capsule.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 9may24

The modern Rules for Radicals

Students participating in the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at universities across the country are being taught to become militants, according to nine manuals obtained by The Free Press. Many of the manuals, which are being shared via phone group chats with students across the country, encourage “militancy” and instruct protesters to break laws, seize buildings, vandalize them, and then use tactics to evade police detection and arrest. One guide, called “De-arrest Primer,” teaches protesters to physically resist arrest or, in some cases, assault police officers or throw projectiles at them to protect fellow “comrades” from arrest. “Each de-arrest,” the guide states, “is a micro-intifada which can spread and inspire others until we may finally shake off this noxious ruling order all together.”*** https://www.thefp.com/p/student-protest-guides-violence-micro-intafada

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There's no legal way.... for a wussy

Protip: Grow a pair, DPD.

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Politically motivated?

An indictment was unsealed today in the Southern District of Texas charging U.S. Congressman Enrique Roberto “Henry” Cuellar, 68, and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, 67, both of Laredo, Texas, with participating in two schemes involving bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering. Congressman Cuellar and Imelda Cuellar made their initial court appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dena Palermo in Houston.

According to court documents, beginning in at least December 2014 and continuing through at least November 2021, Congressman Cuellar and Imelda Cuellar allegedly accepted approximately $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities: an oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the Government of Azerbaijan, and a bank headquartered in Mexico City. The bribe payments were allegedly laundered, pursuant to sham consulting contracts, through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, who performed little to no legitimate work under the contracts. In exchange for the bribes paid by the Azerbaijani oil and gas company, Congressman Cuellar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence U.S. foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan. In exchange for the bribes paid by the Mexican bank, Congressman Cuellar allegedly agreed to influence legislative activity and to advise and pressure high-ranking U.S. Executive Branch officials regarding measures beneficial to the bank. *** https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-congressman-henry-cuellar-and-his-wife-charged-bribery-unlawful-foreign-influence-and

He's one of the more conservative dems in Congress.

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Stupidity is often a crime

ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. — Crews rescued a teenage boy who was seriously injured after falling 30 feet down an abandoned missile silo near Deer Trail in Arapahoe County Sunday morning. Crews said he is expected to survive. It happened around 3:30 a.m. near 82000 E. County Line Road 22, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office said a group of eight teenagers gained access to the entrance of the silo when one of them fell through a two-story shaft and down the underground complex, landing onto twisted metal, broken concrete and stagnant water at the bottom. The sheriff’s office said rescue teams entered the silo hours after arriving on scene. They had to navigate an extremely hazardous underground maze before they were able to locate the 18-year-old victim. The teen was freed from the silo just before 9 a.m. and airlifted to the hospital with serious injuries.*** The property owner told Denver7 that he intends to press charges, which he said he has done in the past. His father bought the property sometime after the silo was decommissioned in the 60s. He said it's been "a headache" to own ever since.*** https://www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/crews-rescue-teenage-boy-from-abandoned-missile-silo-near-deer-trail-teen-is-expected-to-survive

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Oliver Wiseman notes

→ The janitor versus the multimillionaire: Last week, Suzy Weiss wrote about the tale of two Columbias, captured in a single photograph: a now-viral image of a janitor fighting off an anti-Israel rioter during the occupation of Hamilton Hall.  Per the New York Post, the activist is James Carlson. He also goes by Cody Carlson and Cody Tarlow. A high-ranking police source told the paper he is “a longtime anarchist.” Carlson is not a Columbia undergrad but the 40-year-old son and heir of a prominent ad executive. Carlson owns a $3.4 million Park Slope townhouse that has “four wood-burning fireplaces” according to the Post. Carlson has been charged with “burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, conspiracy, and criminal trespassing.” The whole thing is delicious. Almost as delightful as our favorite trust-fund communist: Fergie Chambers. https://www.thefp.com/p/front-page-there-are-two-sets

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Excellent Tablet essay on free speech

Free speech is not a divisible concept. Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas—or else speech isn’t free.***

There is no exception for hate speech in the Constitution. It is not, according to the Constitution of the United States of America, illegal to misgender someone, or call them a dirty kike or a pig, or tell them you want them to be shipped back to Africa, or say that the State of Israel has “no right to exist,” or that all women are nasty hookers who play men for money. Those statements might rightfully earn you the disgust of those around you, as well as exclusion from any number of personal and professional opportunities, or access to private institutions and spaces. But they are not unlawful, and no governmental authority has the standing to penalize you for making or believing them—in the privacy of your home, in the public square, or on the open internet. That includes Congress, which is made up of elected officials. Americans have radically lowered our standards for what we expect of this class of people, but we think we can all draw a line at a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights. The fact that a word or idea is annoying or upsetting to you—or us!—does not make it illegal. [antisemitic speech is not illegal]***

What this looks like in practice is something that every American should be alarmed and repelled by: A small group of powerful people are now using public-private partnerships to silence the Constitution, censor ideas they don’t like, deny their opponents access to banking, credit, the internet, and other public accommodations. (Here, for the skeptics, is a link to 10 examples of times when Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon passed censorship policies because the government told them to do so.) When a platform like Facebook, which currently accounts for a staggering third of all traffic to news sources, colludes with the federal government to suppress reporting on COVID-19, say, or when Twitter, a major digital reincarnation of the public square, kicks out an American political candidate for being too extreme while allowing users like the genocidal leader of Iran to remain, the rules have changed. “Bad speech,” an old adage goes, “is best corrected by good speech.” That was true until these public-private fingers hit the scales, making sure that fight couldn’t ever be fair.***

Over the past half-century, with increasing intentionality and force, American universities have come to see themselves not as repositories of civilization-sustaining knowledge but as social actors that act independently to shape social values—which they do not by teaching young people how to think, but by telling them what to think. Abandoning the principles of free inquiry, these institutions turned themselves into factories for conformity and increasingly bizarre, divisive, and hateful doctrines held by the loudest (and often smallest) factions of their faculty.***

Enter a graduate seminar these days, and you’ll notice right away a strange obsession with language. Academics understand words not as most of us have traditionally understood them—as sharp and useful tools with which to explore reality in all of its complexity—but rather as pagans do, as fetishized, magical spells and incantations that have the power to cause actual harm or bring about real rapture. This is why academic papers overwhelmingly feature such groan-inducing titles like “(Re)membering the Body: A Herstory of Sexual Desire”: If you believe words can actually hurt, you ought to make sure they’re used safely and only by those trained magi who can say the right things in the right order and not upset the angry gods. Indeed, we might go so far as to argue that everything you’re seeing on college campuses these days—all the madness—in one way or another relates to speech, and these new, mangled ideas of it. The arc of censorship is long, but it bends toward Hamilton Hall.***

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Fair questions from Nellie & Bari

So: Why crime? And why San Francisco?  For the past decade, the city has been at the forefront of the effort to radically transform the criminal justice system. If you ask advocates of the policy—people like Chesa Boudin, George Gascón, and George Soros—the idea was as straightforward as it was overdue: overhaul a punitive, racist system that was doling out cruel and unusual punishments for minor offenses.  San Francisco has slashed the budget for police, retroactively reduced sentences for nonviolent offenders, and prohibited officers from pursuing individuals committing nonviolent crimes. The city has new mandatory training for police aimed to tackle racial bias and to limit the overall interaction between police and civilians.  But did it work?  Since 2020, the city has suffered rising crime, from rampant burglaries to open-air drug use to public defecation. Half of the city’s retailers have departed the once bustling downtown, and drug stores all over the city are packing it in. In 2022, drug overdose deaths in San Francisco hit a record high. And police response times have become slower, even though cops are now fielding fewer calls. If you’ve visited San Francisco in the past year, you’ve likely seen the problem with your own eyes. If you haven’t, you can find countless videos online, like this one. Or this one. Or this one.  The crime surge is not limited to the City by the Bay. In the years since the pandemic, places like New York and Los Angeles also saw increased homicides, aggravated assaults, shoplifting, and so on.  All of this is why crime is one of voters’ top concerns in the 2024 election cycle. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats say reducing crime should be a top policy priority.  Have American cities become too soft on crime? Are progressive prosecutors to blame? Or are deeper causes like poverty and income inequality the real culprits? Is criminal justice reform a necessary step toward justice? Has it made American towns and cities safer? Or is the whole project, despite its high ideals, a mistake? ***

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BB -

This is all bad theater. The judge knows 10k isn't enough to deter Trump, and he knows he can't get away w/ $1M. At the same time, Trump knows that the fines show he's being persecuted.

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California dreaming?

Many 2d Amendment proponents say that when life or death is a matter of seconds, the police will be there in a minute or two. In California today, you may be on hold for a long time.

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The Trump CLAS docs case:

Special prosecutor Jack Smith apparently told the court that he had misled the judge about the docs. He had represented to the court that the docs were in exactly the same condition and order as when seized. He now admits that the docs are in the same boxes, but not in the same order. Why does it matter?

Former Trump defense lawyer Tim Parlatore told Just the News that Smith’s “admission is stunning on multiple levels.” First, he said it “reinforces the incompetence” of prosecutors “in conducting basic criminal investigations and prosecutions that I observed when I was on the team.”  “But at a deeper level, the loss of specific document locations is a destruction of exculpatory evidence,” he said. “I went through all of the boxes at NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] and the document order was important because it was clear to us that the boxes had been untouched since leaving the White House.” “For prosecutors who are trying to prove that the defendants knowingly possessed these documents to then destroy the evidence that would undermine that claim is a very serious violation,” Parliatore added.***

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Tell me, Sherlock, what was your first clue that he was a violent criminal?

Adre “Psycho” Baroz sentenced to life in prison for 5 San Luis Valley murders

Adre Baroz, nicknamed “Pyscho,” received five life sentences on Friday.

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Protesters, always on the side of the poor outsiders....

It’s the viral image that captured the clash between the anti-Israel protesters who stormed Columbia and the campus workers who tried to stop them. As the mob invaded Hamilton Hall in the early hours of April 30, a facilities worker was photographed pushing a demonstrator against a wall.  Later, it emerged that the protester was a 40-year-old trust fund kid named James Carlson, who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $2.3 million. The man who tried to hold him back was Mario Torres, 45, who has worked at Columbia—where the average janitor makes less than $19 an hour—for five years. Now, in an exclusive interview with The Free Press, Mario Torres describes the experience of being on duty as protesters stormed the building in the early hours of the morning, breaking glass and barricading the entrances. “We don’t expect to go to work and get swarmed by an angry mob with rope and duct tape and masks and gloves,” he said.***

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Gun laws don't work when you refuse to enforce them

Last week the DC Sentencing Commission released their Annual Report, which is one of our only data sources for what happens to cases after police make an arrest. Without this data we would never know that 79% of adults arrested with illegal guns in DC get away without any felony conviction. More than 2,000 gun cases over the last two years were either never prosecuted, dropped or pled down to lesser charges without any public scrutiny of DC’s prosecutor. This report (and similar excellent analyses by the Commission’s staff) are crucial for understanding how prosecutors and judges apply the laws on the books and getting beyond the vibes-based spin that dominates DC crime discourse. The report especially highlights the gap between how the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) acts in court vs. their poll-tested “tough on crime” public rhetoric. With kids as young as 3 years old being killed in shootings, we desperately need some accountability for our unelected prosecutor who has undermined all of DC’s local efforts to reduce gun violence.***

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Because everyone wants to see them....

WAUKESHA — A 67-year-old woman and her 28-year-old boyfriend are accused of having sexual contact in the Waukesha County Jail lobby. Karen Hill and Desmound Cleveland were charged in Waukesha County Circuit Court with disorderly conduct Friday. If convicted, they both face 90 days in jail. A $1,000 signature bond was set for both of them and they entered not guilty pleas. They have a court date of June 3. A Waukesha County Sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the jail lobby, 515 W. Moreland Blvd., on Thursday for a possible disorderly conduct/lewd and lascivious call that happened in the jail overnight. A jail supervisor called to report two people had sex in the jail lobby and the woman, later identified as Hill, was still on the scene, the criminal complaint said.***

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J. Disaster would sentence him to six years.

BINGHAMTON (WBNG) -- Former Johnson City Middle School Principal Daniel Erickson pleaded guilty to luring a child in Broome County Court Monday, the district attorney’s office announced. The crime, which is a felony, stems from an investigation into which Erickson engaged in sexually charged conversations with a 16-year-old girl on Snapchat, a communication app popular among teens and young adults. The incident occurred between June 28 and July 7, 2023. Erickson, of Greene, NY, was arrested when he agreed to meet the student at a remote location to have sex with her. The Broome County Sheriff’s Office detailed that Erickson brought a Grimace Shake and chicken nuggets from McDonald’s as well as condoms with him. Deputies then arrested him. Yet, before he was arrested, the sheriff’s office noted that Erickson had made multiple attempts to meet the girl. He even tried to meet her at her home but the girl would not come out and meet him. He posed as a young adult on Snapchat and used his position as the middle school principal and used databank information from the district to convince her who he was, the sheriff’s office noted. Erickson resigned as the Johnson City Middle School Principal in August 2023. He was 55-years-old at the time.*** Erickson will be sentenced on July 30 to six months of incarceration followed by five years of probation supervision. That will include sex offender conditions, restitution payable to the victim and will have to register as a sex offender. ***

Six months is a lame sentence.

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[lboogie1906]

Wilfried Nancy (April 9, 1977) is a French football manager and former player, who is managing Major League Soccer club Columbus Crew.

He was born in Le Havre to a Guadeloupean father and a Senegalese-Cape Verdean mother. His father was in the French Navy and spent his early childhood in different regions, including Guadeloupe, Martinique, Djibouti, and Réunion. At the age of 11, his family moved to Toulon and there he started playing organized soccer before moving to the academy of Toulon at the age of 14.

He played professionally in France as a defender. He had stints at various amateur and semi-professional clubs, including Beaucairois, Raon-l’Étape, Ivry, Noisy-le-Sec, Châtellerault, and Orléans before moving to Canada to play with the UQAM team.

In 2005, he became a coach for Collège Stanislas, while at the same time playing for his university team, UQAM Citadins. He was voted MVP in Quebec and named to the first all-star team in Quebec and Canada. He helped the Citadins finish second in the Quebec conference. He became a full-time coach in 2006 and started coaching AAA soccer. He coached Québec’s provincial teams and was assistant technical director of the Association régionale de soccer de la Rive-Sud.

He was part of the Montreal Impact Academy since its inception starting with the U18s, and the U21s in 2014, followed by the U16s (2014-15). He was promoted to assistant coach for the first team (2016).

He was promoted to head coach for CF Montréal becoming the club’s first coach following their re-branding from the Impact name. It was announced that CF Montréal had exercised its option on his contract for the 2022 season. He lead CF Montréal to the final of the 2021 Canadian Championship, beating Toronto FC 1–0, qualifying them for the 2022 CONCACAF Champions League.

He was announced as the Columbus Crew head coach. In his first season as coach, the Crew finished third in the regular season. Columbus would overcome their archrivals FC Cincinnati in the conference finals and outlast defending champions Los Angeles FC in the final. He became the first Black coach to win the MLS Cup. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[tbinternshipfolio]

5. Achievements and milestones

Throughout my internship I accomplished many achievements and milestones that I have been incredibly grateful and lucky enough to achieve. Some of my achievements and milestones may have been minor but to me they all played such a big part in my internship experience.

Some of my smaller achievements was what was seen in the classroom and how mental health and wellbeing in young kids is important to address and how something like a program and a few outdoor basketball sessions can make a great change in a kid’s life. An achievement in my internship was seeing all the kids experience the program and see the results during and at the end of the program. Another minor achievement was being able to organise my life around my internship and have a positive work life balance. A big achievement was being able to manage my contracted working hours at the hospital as well as complete my large amount of internship hours within a timely matter. Achievements in an organisation can create a large amount of motivation in the worker and can improve their strengths greatly (Van Yperen, & Orehek, 2014).

Some milestones also included working along alongside lots of different people each day and going to different schools throughout the week and presenting to them to cater to their needs. In multiple schools that I attended, there were a few kids with special needs in the classroom, which meant that we needed to adapt the program and how we taught the program to that child. It was great to be able to work one on one with some of these kids and work with them in identifying their emotions.

My main achievement throughout my internship was being offered a casual game day operations role with the phoenix. This was a massive achievement for me and something that I was extremely excited about. The operations role made me realise how much I loved being a part of the behind the scenes during a game and made me find one of the areas I would love to work in. Working my first shift in operation was terrifying seeing all the players around me and having to act calm and collected. I recently finished my last shift with the game day operations crew and the season ends for the phoenix. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that I was given to be a aprt of something so amazing.

Overall, I have been extremely proud of my achievements and milestones throughout my internship with the South East Melbourne Phoenix. I believe that although not all my achievements were big, they all made the experience one to remember.

Mike Kelly removed from game (ESPN, 2024)

Van Yperen, & Orehek, E. (2014). Achievement goals in the workplace: Conceptualization, prevalence, profiles, and outcomes. Journal of Economic Psychology, 38, 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2012.08.013