#Considered by Penn to be the “best part” of the collection

[limustg]

Desert Bus Live Stream

[jcmarchi]

The Soils Beneath The Solar Fields - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-soils-beneath-the-solar-fields-technology-org/

The Soils Beneath The Solar Fields - Technology Org

Solar fields are designed to channel one of our planet’s resources—sunlight—into energy. But these arrays sit atop yet another valuable resource: soil. Over the last year, Penn master’s student Hannah Winn has been posing the question, what happens to soil health following solar array construction?

Solar panels – illustrative photo. Image credit: Adolfo Cj from Pixabay, free license

 The question is timely, as Penn is on the cusp of a new energy era. Starting this year, solar energy from a solar project in central Pennsylvania will meet roughly 70% of the University’s electrical demand, enabling the University to move a solid step closer to its goal of carbon neutrality by 2042. As part of the project, energy company AES, which developed the project, is supporting renewable energy research at Penn.

“It’s been super eye-opening to go to the solar farms,” Winn says. “In school everything is pretty theoretical, so to actually stand there in the solar facility and learn about the logistics involved, see how many people are involved in a long-term project like this, has been personally very impactful.”

Winn’s project emerged from this partnership. Her advisor, Professor Alain Plante of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, developed a proposal for the research in collaboration with AES’ Sustainability and Impact team. 

“Any land use involves a tradeoff,” says Plante. “Some renewable energy installations may be going into areas where we’re giving up good land for food production. Here, AES was interested in knowing, in addition to the installation itself, whether the soil beneath these panels could be sequestering carbon, offering a potential co-benefit to the solar energy production.”

The work appealed to Winn, who has a background in landscape architecture and an interest in environmental policy. Starting last spring, Winn has made multiple trips to one of the solar fields, known as Great Cove 2, in Pennsylvania’s Franklin County to take soil samples and collect other information about the landscape. AES consultants had previously taken baseline soil samples to record the biological, chemical, and physical properties of the fields prior to construction, and Winn’s samples will provide a look at the soil condition in various phases of the solar field’s construction and operation.  

As she writes her master’s capstone this spring, Winn will be outlining best management practices for solar arrays that could boost the carbon retained in soil, an outcome that could not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with solar facilities, but may also better preserve the land for future agricultural use. 

“Soil is important for everything: for agriculture, for building, for food,” says Winn. “with this research project we’re looking at not only what happens when we put solar projects on soil, but also considering what happens when we leave.”

With society increasingly turning to renewable energy sources like solar to replace fossil fuels, studies like Winn’s will help grant a holistic understanding of impacts to the land and ecosystems, charting a path toward accelerating the benefits of clean energy projects and a more sustainable future. 

Source: University of Pennsylvania

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiracy fantasy

When we talk about conspiratorialism, we tend to focus (naturally) on the content of the conspiracy. Not only are those stories entertainingly outlandish — they’re also the point of contact between conspiracists and the world.

If your mom is shouting about “Hollywood pedos,” it’s natural that you’ll end up discussing the relationship of this belief to observable reality. But while the content of conspiratorial beliefs gets lots of attention, we tend to neglect the significance of those beliefs.

To the extent that we consider why the beliefs exist and proliferate, the discussion rarely gets further than “irrational people have irrational beliefs.” This is a mistake. The stories we tell one another are a kind of Ouija board, with all our fingertips on the planchette.

The messages it spells out don’t describe external reality but they do reveal our internal, unspoken anxieties and aspirations.This is why we should read science fiction: not because it predicts the future, but because it diagnoses the present.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/26/meaningful-zombies/#oracles

Sf is an ever-mutating ecosystem of fears and hopes, and readers apply selective pressure to those organisms, extinguishing the ones that don’t capture the zeitgeist and elevating the ones that do, a co-evolution of our fantasies and our narratives.

http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html

This is why Alternate Reality Games are so central to their players’ lives. They’re a form of narrative co-creation, with the players throwing out theories and the game-masters actually changing the story to incorporate the best of them.

ARGs are an environment where your coolest and most deliciously scary ideas become reality. It’s a powerful way to galvanize collective action.

As anthropologist Biella Coleman writes in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, it’s the organizing principal behind Anonymous.

Anon Ops begin life as victory announcement videos. If the vision of success captures enough Anons, they execute the op.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine

In other words, the degree to which a shared fantasy of victory compels its audience predicts whether the audience realizes its fantasy. Long before the alt-right, Anons were memeing ideas into existence (no coincidence, as both were incubated on 4chan).

On the Conspiracy Games and Counter-Games podcast, three left academics — Max Haiven, AT Kingsmith, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou — analyze “conspiracy fantasies” (as opposed to conspiracies, e.g. the Big Lie behind the Iraq War) for what they reveal about late capitalism’s anxieties.

As leftists, they naturally focus on the relationship between material conditions and people’s behaviors and beliefs. This is an important part of the discourse on conspiratorialism that’s often missing from liberal and right-wing analysis.

Conspiracists aren’t just “irrational” nor are they just “racist.” They may be both of those things, but unless you look at material conditions, then the surges and retreats of conspiracism are mysterious phenomena, strange tides raised by unseen forces.

A decade ago, then-PM David Cameron — the architect of a brutal, authoritarian austerity — dismissed the Hackney Riots as “criminality pure and simple,” and demanded a ban on discussion of the relationship between austerity and unrest.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2011/aug/09/david-cameron-riots-criminality-video

But without that discussion, there’s no explanation. Even if you believe that “criminality” is a thing that is latent within some or all of us, what explains a rise or fall in that criminality? Is it like pollen that alights upon some of us, turning us bad? Or the full moon?

Likewise the “conspiracists are just racists” or “they’re just deranged.” Without looking at the material world, there’s no explanation for why that racism suddenly became more (or less) important to how conspiracists live their lives.

We can’t talk about conspiratorialism without talking about material considerations, and we have to talk about the form and substance of the conspiratorial belief. The ARG-like structure of Qanon is a hugely important part of its popularity:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#adrian-hon

Memeing things into existence in a game-like way is hugely compelling. You can tell when a D&D game is hopping when the players and the DM start co-creating the story, with the DM slyly altering the dungeon and the NPCs to match the players’ super-cool theories.

A recent episode of the CGACG podcast present a mind-blowing analysis of the interplay of the material conditions, mythology and structure of Qanon. It’s a two-part interview with Wu Ming 1:

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-1?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-2?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks

Wu Ming 1 is part of Bologna’s Wu Ming Collective, the successor to the 1990s Luther Bissett net-art collective. Bissett did many wild, weird things,including publishing “Q,” an internationally bestselling conspiratorial novel in 1999 (!!)

https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/what-is-the-wu-ming-foundation/

The plot of “Q” involves a high-level government official, privy to top-secret info about a state conspiracy. It closely mirrors Qanon beliefs, right down to a call for a Jan 6 uprising (!!!!). The major difference is that “Q” is set during the Protestant Reformation.

In the interview, Wu Ming 1 talks about the proliferation of conspiratorial, ARG-like 4chan hoaxes that predated Qanon, and hypothesizes that the original Q posts were plagiarized from the novel.

The strange experience of seeing a novel turn into a cult prompted Ming 1 to write “La Q di Qomplotto” (“The Q in Qonspiracy”), a book that defines and analyzes “conspiracy fantasies.”

https://edizionialegre.it/product/la-q-di-qomplotto/

Ming 1’s interview digs into this in some depth, including setting out criterial for distinguishing conspiracies from fantasies (for example, a conspiracy doesn’t go on forever, while a fantasy can imagine the Knights Templar running the world for centuries).

I was taken by Ming 1’s discussion of the role that “enchantment” plays in conspiratorialism — the feeling of being in a magical and wondrous (if also anxious and terrible) place. He says this is why “debunkers” fail — they’re like people who spoil a magic trick.

Ming 1 and the hosts talk about replacing the enchantment of conspiratorialism with a counter-enchantment, grounded not in the conspiratorialist’s oversimplification and essentialism, but in the wonder of reality.

Ming 1 analogizes his “counter-enchantment” to the “double-wow” method of Penn and Teller: first they blow you away with a trick, and then they blow you away with the cleverness by which it was accomplished.

He describes how the Luther Bissett collective performed a double-wow during Italy’s Satanic Panic, creating a hoax satanic heavy metal cult and a counter-cult, promulgating stories of their pitched battles, then revealing how they’d faked the whole thing.

The action was taken in solidarity with actual Bolognese heavy metal fans who’d been framed for imaginary Satanic “crimes.” Luther Bissett wanted to demonstrate how a panic could be created from nothing, to reveal the method behind the real hoax with a fake hoax.

The double-wow method reminds me of Richard Dawkins’ manuever in “The Magic of Reality,” his excellent children’s book about the virtues of the scientific world, revealing how the numinous wonder of faith is nothing compared to the wonder of science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Reality

The idea that conspiratorialism is a leading indicator of capitalism’s anxieties is a powerful one, and it ties into other compelling accounts of conspiracy, like Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES, which discusses the importance of trauma to conspiratorial belief.

Like Ming 1, Merlan stresses the kernel of truth underpinning conspiracy fantasies — the real aerospace coverups that make UFO conspiracies plausible, the real pharmaceutical conspiracies to cover up harms from drugs that underpin anti-vax.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

In the podcast, Ming 1 and the hosts stress the importance of identifying and addressing the kernel of truth and the trauma it produces in any counter-conspiratorial work — that is, a successful counter-enchantment must address the material conditions behind the fantasy.

I really like this approach because of its empathy — its attempt to connect with the conditions that produce behaviors and beliefs, not to be confused with sympathy, which might excuse their toxic and hateful nature.

It reminds me a lot of Oh No Ross and Carrie, whose hosts have spent years joining cults and religions and digging into fringe practices and beliefs in an effort to understand them; they laugh a lot, but never AT their subjects.

https://ohnopodcast.com/

But Ming 1 brings something new to this discussion: an analysis of the role that novels have played in conspiracy fantasy formation: not just the plagiarizing of “Q” to make Qanon, but things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plagiarizing Dumas.

The interview also brought to mind Edward Snowden’s recent inaugural blog-post, “Conspiracy: Theory and Practice,” which seeks to separate conspiracy practice (e.g. the NSA spying on everyone) from theories (what Ming 1 calls “fantasies”).

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1

Snowden connects the feeling of powerlessness to the urge to explain the world through conspiracies, relating this to his experience of revealing one of the world’s most far-reaching real conspiracies, and then becoming the subject of innumerable conspiracy fantasies.

Snowden’s perspective is one that has heretofore been missing from conspiracy discourse — the perspective of someone who has been part of a real conspiracy and then the central subject of a constellation of bizarre and widespread conspiratorial beliefs.

These different works, focusing as they do on the character of conspiratorial beliefs, the nature of conspiratorial practice, and material conditions of conspiracists, comprise a richer analysis of our screwed-up discourse than, say, theories about “online radicalization.”

As I wrote in my 2020 book “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism,” the “online radicalization” narrative requires that you accept Big Tech’s unsupported marketing claims about its power to bypass our critical thoughts at face value.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

Claims to be able to control our minds — whether made by Rasputin, Mesmer, pick-up artists, MK-ULTRA or NLP enthusiasts — always turn out to be cons (though sometimes the con artists are also conning themselves).

But there’s a much more plausible, less controversial set of powers that Big Tech possesses. By spying on us all the time, it can help scammers target people who are ready to hear conspiratorial explanations.

By monopolizing our discourse, it allows SEO scammers to create default answers to our questions. By locking us in, it can keep us using a platform even if the discourse there makes us angry and anxious.

And by corrupting our political process, it creates “kernels of truth” for conspiratorial beliefs.

As with Scooby Doo, the monster turns out to be a familiar villain in a fright mask: a monopolist whose abuses and impunity create the anxiety that make conspiracy plausible.

[abuskinswarrior]

find our way back... part 7

hey y’all! this has been a long time coming i know. i’ve been dealing with a lot of mental health issues and i’ve recently come back from being in patient at the hospital for it. But i’m feeling a little better and i’ve got part seven out for y’all! i hope you enjoy!

Tag-list: @pprettyboyreid @genuisgub @ataidyl @andiebeaword @dreatine @cncopmwhoore @sixx-sic-sixx @nanocoool @kookiescooky3 @fatefuldestinies

~~If you want to be tagged on this, let me know!~~

Warnings: illusion to sexual assault (nothing explicit, but implied) 

Summary: Dinner at the restaurant doesn’t go as anyone planned. 

Words: ~2764

part 6 | part 7

No one spoke. Heads buried in menus, tension that could be cut with glass filled the rectangular table they all sat at. Persephone sat at the head of the table, the rest of the team on the long sides, leaving the seat opposite of Persephone empty. Penelope eyed the menu, biting her lip. Everything was too expensive. She looked up, glancing at Emily who sat across from her. Emily was nibbling on the soft bread one waiter had brought out for them. Her eyes looked up to David’s who was sitting next to Penelope. David rolled his eyes at the two girls before letting out an appreciative hum.

“So, Persephone,” David started.

“Please, call me Seph. I think the only person that calls me Persephone anymore is Diana.” She let out an airy laugh, trying to diffuse some of the tension. The rest of the team laughed along.

“Seph,” David corrected. “Do you come here often? What would you recommend?”

“I haven’t been here since the owner’s son remodeled the place,” Persephone looked down at the menu. “But, considering they have the same cooks, I’ve always enjoyed their Baccalà alla vicentina. I’d also recommend the Penne all'arrabbiata if you’re a vegetarian.”

The team nodded, their heads returning back to the menu. Looking over at the two items she recommended (the two highest priced items), Persephone could see the apprehension in everyone’s faces.

“If the price is the reason for all the furrowed brows, I would like to iterate myself: this is my treat. I would never pick a place I couldn’t afford.” Persephone rose her hand, getting the attention of a waiter, who held his finger up.

A waiter walked up to her, a small pad of paper in one hand. “How may be of service?” He smiled, his eyes disappearing.

Persephone tilted her head at the man. His round face felt familiar. “Excuse me, do I know you from somewhere?”

The man let out a nervous laugh. “I work many jobs. You might have seen me from one of those.”

Persephone narrowed her eyes, but let it go. “Hmm, maybe… I would like for you to bring the best bottle of wine you have, please.” The waiter bowed, leaving the table. The silence was back. Persephone drummed her fingers against themselves, looking around at the table. Everyone’s eyes were darting around the table, silent arguments going around.

“So, JJ, Will, how long have you two been married?” Persephone asked as the waiter came back pouring the wine in everyone’s glass. JJ looked up clearing her throat.

“Oh, uh, about five years now.” She grabbed her glass, taking a sip. Persephone smiled at her.

“How long have you and Spencer known each other?” She asked back. JJ wanted to ask how long they’ve been married, but she was still in denial about it.

“Oh, man. It feels like forever. I was sixteen when we met.” Persephone took a sip from her drink. “He was eighteen, heading back to college.”

“Wait, you’ve known Spencer for twenty one years?” Penelope asked.

Persephone did the quick math in her head learning how old Spencer was to his friends. “Yeah, I suppose so. It feels so much longer than that.”

“So it’s true, are you two married?” Luke chimed in from the far end of the table.

“Mhmm, fifteen years on Friday.”

The entire table erupted in exclaims and gasps. “Now, wait a minute, Spencer joined the FBI when he was 22. He was working at the Bureau for two years before he married you?” Emily’s hands moved up and down, calming the table down.

“He wanted to make sure he had a steady income and was able to take care of us before he married me. We were engaged for two years.”

“Why?” Tara asked before realizing how insensitive she sounded. “I mean, why get married so young?”

“Sorry I’m late.” Spencer walked up to the table, a small gift in his hand. He looked over at Persephone, silently pleading her to not say anything else. Everyone looked over at the other end of the table, gawking at Spencer.

“I cannot believe you Spencer! Fifteen years?!” Penelope looked over at him, her hands placed on the table.

Spencer looked over at her, guilt written all over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything because our jobs are dangerous and if anybody found out about them… I couldn’t do that.” 

Spencer had been standing outside the restaurant for thirty minutes. He was listening, debating if he wanted to make an entrance or not. He really didn’t want to be here, but the fear of Persephone saying something and him not being able to stop her, made him move his feet.

“So why did you get married?” Spencer pulled the empty seat, the one directly across from Persephone on the small side of the table. They looked at each other, having a silent conversation. The team looked between the two of them, trying to figure out what they were telling each other.

“Why does anyone get married?” Spencer asked, still looking over at Persephone. “I love her.” Liar. Persephone’s eyes twitched.

“I was pregnant.” Persephone spoke, breaking eye contact with Spencer, looking at Tara, who had asked the question. Everyone looked at Spencer, not wanting to believe he had an entire secret family and no one knew about it.

“No one knew about this?” Matt asked, looking at the four people who had been on the team the longest. They all shook their heads, waiting for an answer from Spencer.

“Technically, Gideon knew about it.” Lie. Spencer told the team, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hold on,” Penelope waved her hands in front of her. “I need an explanation.” She looked over at Persephone. “Seph, please explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” Spencer started, but JJ held up her hand at him.

“Nope, people that hide an entire family from their friends, don’t get to speak.” JJ looked at Persephone. “Yes, please Seph, explain the story.

“There really isn’t much to it.” Persephone took a sip of her wine. “I was twenty years old, pregnant, I couldn’t tell my father. He would have disowned me, I went to Spencer for help and he offered to marry me.” Persephone shrugged her shoulders.

Flashback - Greece ~1515

Persephone ran back to her house. Her dress was tattered, her hair had fallen out of its usual tight bun. She avoided her father who was working out on the field and Spencious who was collecting eggs from the chickens. She closed her bedroom doors, running to her closet. She tore off her ruined dress, shoving it as far as she could in her dresser, pulling out clean new items. She wanted to take a bath, but she couldn’t. Her father would ask her why and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what had happened at the market. 

“Perse? You back?” There was a knock at the door as she was pulling the dress on. “I didn’t see you come in.” Her father was standing on the other side of the door.

“Oh, yes I just came back.” She wiped a few stray tears, smacking her face slightly, bringing some color into her cheeks. She opened the door.

“Are you alright?” He was concerned for her daughter. He could tell something was wrong, but he didn’t want to pry in fear she would shut him out all together.

“Oh, yes, I rushed to change, a drunkard spilled his beer all over me at the market and I rushed back to change.” Persephone smiled, hoping he would let it go.

“Alright, Spencious made dinner for tonight. It’s ready now.” 

Dinner was quiet. Persephone played with the food on her tray, moving it around, her long sleeves, getting dirty from touching the food. Her father kept glancing over at her, but didn’t say anything. Spencious just looked between the two, wondering what happened between them.

“Spencious, this meal is quite delicious. Who taught you how to cook?”

“Kore has been giving me lessons.” Persephone looked up from her name being called.

“Yes, it is good.” She mumbled.

“You haven’t even touched it.” Spencious laughed, stopping as Persephone glared at him.

“I’m not hungry. I’m going to clean up.” She left her plate on the table, heading to the kitchen where she started cleaning the pots Spencious used to make dinner.

Spencious looked over at her father. “Cleon, is everything alright with Kore?” He asked quietly, not wanting her to overhear.

“I’m not, sure, I’m going to head over to the market, see if anyone could tell me what happened. You watch over her?” 

Cleon over the past four years warmed up to Spencious. True he begrudgingly accepted him into the household, but Spencious was a hard worker and cared for his daughter in his absence. Cleon thought of Spencious as his own son (although he would never admit that).

Spencious nodded his head, bidding Cleon a goodbye. Spencious walked into the kitchen, watching over her as she washed the same pot twice, then again. He sighed, closing the water spout. She didn’t even notice. He took the pot from her hands, grabbing her wrist. She flinched away from him, pulling her arm back. Spencious looked at her. She kept her distance from him, looking down, her hair covering most of her face. Spencious gently took her hand in his, pulling up the sleeves of her dress. His mouth opened slightly, looking at the hand sized bruises that were beginning to form.

“Oh, Kore,” 

“It’s nothing.” She pulled her hand back, the sleeve dropping. Spencious took a few steps forward, wrapping his arms around her. She gasped at the gesture, but clung to his sides, letting out a sob. Spencious whispered in her ear, that everything will be alright.

“It won’t,” Persephone sobbed. “Father won’t look at me the same. He won’t be able to marry me off and I’ll end up on the streets!” She tightened her grip around his shirt. Spencious stroked her hair.

“That’s not true. I know at least one person that will still want to marry you.”

Persephone looked up at Spencious. The sun had started to set behind him. The reds and oranges of the sunlight had wrapped around his body. His eyes looked down on hers, a soft smile playing at his lips. His hair had grown out from the last time she cut it, falling slightly past his shoulders. When she first met him, she thought he was a shy, scrawny boy, but working on the farm, he started filling out a little, gaining more confidence. She grew to love him at first as a friend, but in this moment, she realized she had fallen in love with him.

“Who?” She asked softly. Spencious looked down at Persephone. Her eyes were shiny from her tears, her face flushed. Her nose was redder than it usually was and her hair was growing out. She hadn’t been cutting it, hoping the weight would pull her curls down, but they hadn’t. They were still prominent as ever and as he ran his fingers through it he couldn’t help but notice how soft it was. Spencious kept his distance from Persephone from the beginning. He wanted to hate her. After she led him back to her small village he knew wouldn’t ever be able to go back to his troop. He wanted to hate her for that, but watching as she danced while making breakfast, singing to the chickens as she grabbed eggs, and her excitement to try anything new, he just couldn’t. He fell in love with her within the first year of living with her, but never said anything. Maybe he was too scared, but in this moment, he spoke up.

“Me,” He looked her in the eyes, daring her to say he was lying. They stared at each other in silence. Persephone didn’t know what to say. She wanted to say that he was lying, just to make her feel better, but looking into his eyes, she knew he wasn’t. He had meant it. Her cheeks reddened at the thought of marrying him, but she didn’t know what to say.

“I guess,” Persephone swallowed the lump in her throat. “I guess, I wouldn’t mind that.”

Present Day

“I didn’t offer to marry you because you were pregnant.” Everyone’s head turned to Spencer, his eyes were narrowed and his fingers were clenched.

“Then you chose a real inopportune time to tell me.” Persephone spoke. 

The team glanced around the table, wondering if they should say something or not. The workers seemed to disappear, feeling the tension across the table. Emily looked over at JJ and Will, hoping they would say something, anything.

“So, you have a daughter?” Will cleared his throat.

Persephone hummed. “Yeah, strong willed, smart, witty.”

“I’d love to meet her.” Emily asked.

“She’s actually in Italy,” Emily and Penelope shared a look. “Visiting her grandmother before starting college.”

“Really?” Penelope sipped her wine. “What’s her name?”

“Annette.” Spencer shot his head up.

“I didn’t realize Annette went to Italy.”

“Mhmm, mother had asked, and if you came around more often, you would have known.” Persephone raised her eyebrow, daring Spencer to contradict her.

“If you had called, I would have come.”

“Oh, sorry I didn’t I had to call my husband for him to come home.” 

“So, why did your mom want your daughter to visit?” Emily asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

The couple stared at each other from across the table, a little longer, before Persephone looked away. “My mom wasn’t always around and even less when I moved here with my dad. I think she’s trying to get that relationship back.”

The waiter came back asking if people were ready to order.

“Do you want me to order for the table?” Persephone asked, noticing the look of hesitation around the table. Everyone nodded, Penelope holding back the urge to ask the million of questions she had. When the waiter walked away, Penelope talked before the tension could become too much. 

“That’s a really pretty dress.” Persephone looked down, smoothing it down. “Where is it from?”

“Oh, this was custom made for me. I’ve had it for years now.”

“Really? That’s amazing. Do you have a lot of custom made clothes?”

“Not as much as I used to. How the times have changed.” Spencer scrunched up his nose at the comment.

“Yeah, they have, haven’t they?” Spencer mumbled under his breath, unnoticeable to anyone but Persephone.

“What was that?” 

“I didn’t say anything?” Spencer eyed her. 

“Maybe not, but you’re thinking something I can see it all over your face, Spencer.” She said his name with venom.

“I was just agreeing with your statement.” He was trying not to start anything with her, but he had so many things he wanted to say and do it was hard. He hated how his first instinct was to be angry with her, but he wanted to try with her, but she was just so stubborn.

“You must have been very well off in Italy. What made you want to move?” Rossi asked, moving past the tension.

“Oh, you know the usual I suppose. Teenage rebellion, affairs, among other things.” She waved her hand.

“I don’t know of any teenage rebellion that results in having to leave your country.” Emily joked.

“It does when your family is very well known.” 

“How well known?”

“Royal blood known.” Spencer had started putting two together. Persephone looked over at him and nodded her head, confirming.

“So you’re like a princess?” Penelope’s eyes widened.

“Not anymore. I haven’t been for a long time now.”

“But you still reap the benefits.” Spencer was upset. He tried not using old money unless it was an emergency and to have Persephone use money from her past lives, rubbed him the wrong way.

“You could too.” Persephone’s voice was softer this time. “We are married.”

“Doesn’t feel like it sometimes.” Spencer mumbled. Persephone’s eyes hardened. 

“Then here.” She pulled her ring off, tossing it across the table. He caught it quickly, looking down at the ring. “Since you’ve felt that this marriage hasn’t felt real, maybe I’ll find someone else that will.”

Persephone got up from the table, starting to walk towards the exit.

“You can’t leave. We’re still married.” Spencer got up to follow.

“That hasn’t stopped you from being an adulterer, why should it stop me?” She turned around, flicking him off and leaving the restaurant, leaving her card at the check out.  

[possiamo-andare]

Evergreen: Incantava

Eleonora x Edoardo

MASTERLIST

word count: 3.8k

summary: Edoardo and Eleonora bond after Chicco breaks one of Eleornora’s potted plants.

a/n: idk how i feel about this since I’m not 100% comfortable writing about incantava. I’m still trying to figure out how to write the dynamics of their relationship. Hopefully I was somewhat close. enjoy!

~

Eleonora Sava came to the realisation that parties were not something she liked. Of course, if it was a celebration that consisted of just her close friends, some nice penne pasta, and music then she would have enjoyed it. But the party that was being hosted in her home right now wasn't that kind of party. Fede had told her that it would be a small gathering, not more than fifteen people. The truth was just the reverse. The truth was that he had welcomed everybody he met, about two hundred people, along with some of the most irritating music she'd ever heard. It wasn't the hardest part of it. Sadly, an invitation had been extended to Edo Incanti. Somehow, the boy who everyone knew she despised was invited to her party. She didn't know who allowed it but by looking at Gio’s mischievous grin, she knew he was the culprit. Gio had thought they would be amazing together and made sure Ele heard him. Edo pinned after her like a lost puppy dog after she had told him off at the yard just weeks before. Though Gio mocked her (which she protested against) about their compatibility, she was still indifferente to this curly guy. If Ele was anything, it was stubborn.

“El -” Eva hiccuped in Ele’s ear, hanging onto her as if the floor underneath the intoxicated girl was trembling. “Ele.”

“Hm?” Ele hummed, too distracted to give her friend a long winded answer. She searched for Edo through the crowd. Although she would never admit she was, she couldn’t help herself. It was as if her eyes were drawn to him.

“I need to go to the bathroom.” Eva slurred her words together, almost unintelligible.

Fortunately for Ele, she was fluent in drunken Eva's language and instinctively understood what her friend wanted from her. With a deep sigh and the beginning of a headache, she guided Eva to her washroom where she prayed that Eva would not ask for any more help. Thankfully, Ele did not have to push through the crowd, most people moving out of the way when they saw a drunk girl and her sober friend dashing towards the bathroom.

“I’m gonna wait here.” Ele stated, finally letting go of her drunk friend and pushing her through the threshold of the door.

Eva says nothing, only giggling as she slowly closes the door behind her. Only when Ele hears the familiar sound of a lock clicking, does she finally relax. Tonight has not been the best. She’s been so worried about everyone else, she had not any time to herself to actually party. This was one of the reasons she didn’t like huge parties; she was always the one running around looking after everyone.

She kept her head high, however. She wasn't going to let some bad music and a greedy asshole ruin, a happy night with her friends. Granted, Eva was drunk beyond belief and Silvia had disappeared half way through the night but Ele was determined to let nothing ruin her mood. Because of this determination, she decided it is best to avoid Edo all night to keep her joy intact. She told herself it was because he had a talent of upsetting her in ways no one else could. It was definitely not because he looked too handsome for his own good, or because his curly hair fell around his face in a way that made her stomach drop. It was purely because she hated him. And she always would.

This was proven to be nearly impossible because Edo and his friends loved to cause mayhem and Ele seemed to be constantly looking over her shoulder to see if they were behaving themselves. Even now, as she waited outside the door of the washroom for her friend, she couldn't help but scan the room for the curly haired boy and his rambunctious friends. Unfortunately, it was too late. The second her eyes landed on the group of boys, was also the second Chicco opened the sliding glass door that led to her balcony. Ele's balcony housed tons of different types of potted plants, all very delicate. Only a person that understood botany and the intricacy of flora could enter. Chicco did not fit this criteria. Ele knew what was going to happen before it even did. And when she heard the familiar sound of a pot crashing (having dropped many pots before), she only rolled her eyes. Of course Chicco would be the one to break one of her potted plants.

“Hey!” Ele watches as Edo raises his hands in exasperation, not stepping over the threshold of her balcony. He was almost like a vampire; he couldn’t enter the balcony without the owner allowing him to. It was that, or he understood Ele’s boundaries and the first option seemed more viable. “Dio mio Chicco!”

Ele rushes over to her balcony, leaving Eva in the bathroom. Although she wants to see Edo tell Chicco off for being so clumsy, she rather handle him herself. She didn;t need another reason to thank Edo. She had already said thanks to him way too many times. She approaches Edo at the door of her balcony quietly, as to not draw too much attention to the fact they were talking. Edo is too busy scolding Chicco to see her first and she has to speak up before he even looks to his right.

“What’s happened?” Ele asks, her arms already crossed and her brows pushed together.

These are the walls she puts up whenever she’s around Edo because she’s too scared to show him what her eyes might actually show him. So, she forces herself to look annoyed all the time. Truth is, she could care less if the pot was broken. There was a market ten minutes from her home and the pot cost so little but since Edo was behind the culprit who broke it, she knew she’d have to give him a hard time. God forbid she was easy on Edo. She didn’t want him walking around thinking she had a soft spot for him.

“Ele,” Edo sighs, running his hands through his curly (but shitty) hair. Ele watches from behind him as Chicco is carried out from her balcony and placed on her couch by some of Edo’s friends. Chicco is still smiling and acting as if nothing is the matter. “I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.”

Ele finally crans her head and looks through the open door of her balcony, finding the mess Chicco left. It’s not as bad as she thought but she can’t let Edo know that. One of her smaller flowers, an evergreen plant her brother bought her last week, has been knocked over. The pot it’s in is cracked and most of the soil is on the floor. Although she’s made a worse mess, she knows Edo feels just terrible. She indulges in the idea that he feels this way for his friend’s accident, considering all the turmoil he’s put her through the last year. Not to mention, the date he made her go on with him. Of course, he technically never forced her and she could’ve just come clean to Silvia and she did actually have a pretty good time, but that's besides the point.

Ele looks back at Edo who, to Ele’s glee, looks terrified and frowns deeper. “That was my favourite plant!” It was, infact, not but she wanted to screw with Edo and by the look on his face, it was working.

Edo rubs his temples, a horrible feeling churning in his stomach. “I’m so sorry, Ele.”

Ele rolls her eyes, suppressing a smile. “Nothing you can do now. I’m just gonna get another pot tomorrow.” She’s just about to turn around when, to her surprise, Edo places a gentle touch to her elbow. She stops before she can turn and feels her heartbeat pick up speed from just that simple touch.

“Let me help. It’s the least I could do.” Edo watches as Ele’s eyes stare at where his fingers caress her elbow and he realizes he has just touched her. It was an accident and he had forgotten, for a moment, how much she hated him.

Ele shakes her head, watching as Edo quickly takes his hand off her elbow. “Eduardo -”

“Edoardo.” He corrects, a small smirk on his face. She’s back to being her snarky self.

“ - I don’t need your help.” She ignores his correction, like all the times she has before.

Edo shrugs. “It’s the least I can do.” He really wants to help. Not to mention, he hopes this good deed will get on Ele’s good side considering he’s been on her bad side for way too long.

Ele shakes her head, indignant. “No, the least you could’ve done was never come to this party.” With that, she turns on her heels and walks away from Edo. She hopes he gets the hint and tries not to follow her but she hears him behind her, only a few steps away.

She decides to get away from this party and see if the market is open. The night has not gone the way she hoped and, in some ways, Chicco helped her out by breaking that pot. Now she can escape the crowd by busying herself with her plants. Although she knows it’s rude to leave her guests, she decides to forget about manners. At least for tonight.

“It was an open invitation.” Edo quips, biting his lip and stifling a laugh, She looks so stiff as she walks, she wonders how she’s able to keep such a straight posture. “Besides, if you didn’t want me to come -”

Ele grabs her coat from the closet and finally turns around to face Edo. She has no good argument so she stays quiet as she adjusts the sleeves on her coat. Although she is facing Edo, she makes no effort to look him in the eyes as he continues to blabber on about Lord knows what.

“Edo! Sta 'zitto!” She just wants him to be quiet for a moment so she can collect her thoughts. Her mind is so scrambled by the loud music and cheering, she slips up and accidentally calls Edo by the nickname so many people call him.

Edo smiles. “Edo? Well, Eleonora Sava, I never thought we were that close.”

Ele rolls her eyes, her cheeks burning from embarrassment. “We’re not.”

Edo leans forward and reaches over her head to grab his coat from the closet. She wishes he wasn’t so close but at the same time, he smells so damn good. Ele’s mind is going so crazy that, for a moment, she goes dizzy. He quickly gets his coat and puts in on himself before Ele even has a chance to ask him what he is doing. For a moment, she thinks he may be going home but she knows better than to think Edo would actually listen to her.

“Well, we went on a date so I’d say we’re pretty close.” He still wears that handsome smirk on his lips and Ele wishes he would stop looking so good just for a second so she could be actually upset with him.

Ele rolls her eyes, ignoring his last comment. She’s more concerned with why he has his coat on. “Why do you have your coat on?”

Edo adjusts his collar, glancing at the mirror to his right before looking back at Ele. “First, you’re basically telling me to leave and now you want to know where I’m going. You’re one confusing woman, Eleonora Sava.”

Ele can’t help but cross her arms over her chest. “You’re going home?” She already knows the answer but asks anyway.

Edo shakes his head. “Of course not. I’m gonna accompany you to get another pot.”

Ele narrows her eyes, stepping closer towards her front door. “How did you know -”

Ele’s cut off by Edo’s laugh and she feels her heart flutter. She quickly swallows and tries to suppress the feeling in her chest as she listens to Edo laugh. “C’mon, Ele, you were looking for an excuse to leave this party. I was watching you. You look like a fish out of water.”

Ele tries to ignore the part where Edo was watching her all night and instead focuses on his teasing of how much she feels uncomfortable in crowds. “Well, not everyone can be Eduardo Incanti, the king of partying and getting shit faced drunk.”

Edo shrugs, a sly smirk always present on his face. “What can I say; I’m the life of the party.”

Ele rolls her eyes yet again. She knows that there has to be some kind of record she has broken because she is constantly rolling her eyes around Edo. “You’re not coming.”

Edo fishes in his coat pocket for a moment before pulling a wad of cash clipped together. He comically waves it in front of Ele’s face for a moment and she can’t help but smile at how stupid he is acting. She wonders if any other girl has seen this side of Edo and although she wants to say yes, she knows the truth. Edo proceeds to take three 20€ from the clip before putting the rest back in his pocket.

“You can keep the change.” He grabs Ele’s hand before she can pull away and hands her the cash. She ignores the way Edo’s fingers feel against her wrist and instead focuses on how that much money feels in her hands.

“Are you trying to bribe me?” Ele asks, her other hand moving to the doorknob. She twists it and opens before Edo has time to reply.

“Maybe. Is it working?”

~

Ele had been in Edo’s car on one occasion and she had been beyond uncomfortable. He had come to pick her up for their date and although she was furious, she was more uncomfortable. She had not been on a date for years and she hated the feeling of putting on her best face to impress someone you liked. What was even worse was that she didn’t even like Edo so she was getting ready for someone she didn’t even like.

His car was nothing special. Yes, it was expensive but it was Edoardo Incanti and she suspected he would have a luxurious car. Something that threw her off about his car was that it wasn’t flashy. It was a black, small Benz and although luxurious, it was not in the least flashy. The engine was even quiet, which was something she definitely thought he would have upgraded for something louder. This car did not seem like something someone as pompous as Edo would drive.

As she got in his car for the second time, the same thoughts crossed her mind. He had opened the door for her this time, unlike last where he never got out, and she tried to chalk it up to him being his usually egotistical self. The truth was, everything she had originally thought of Edo was proven not to be true. His car was not flashy and neither were his clothes. Yes, his personality showed her an egotistical player but everything else about him was muted. She wondered how wrong she truly was about him.

“Are you there, amore?” Edo’s voice snapped her from her thoughts. She could hear the amusement in his voice as he questioned whether or not she was listening to him.

Ele looked at him, clearly annoyed as he drove down the street. “Do not call me that.”

Edo nodded, pressing his lips together as to laugh at her bewilderment. SHe looked like a deer in headlights when she heard him call her by that pet name. “Sorry.”

Ele rolled her eyes, watching as he pulled into the market’s driveway. “No, you’re not.” Once his car had fully come to a stop, she opened the door herself and closed it with a loud slam. If it was anyone else, she would have been polite but all of her manners are thrown out the window when it comes to Edo.

Edo walks around the front of his car and approaches Ele, loving his car with a button. “You’re right. I’m not.”

Ele pushes past the shitty haired boy and makes her way towards the white tarp where she knows the pots and plants are located. By this time, the market is closed but it is family owned and run so the owners leave the tarp open for passersby to stop and buy a plant. Ele doesn’t bother to look back at Edo and enters the white tarp and starts looking for the right size pot.

As Ele browses through the aisles, looking for the brown pots she has bought on more than one occasion, Edo scrolls through his phone at the entrance of the tarp. When Ele turns around to walk into the next aisle, she sees Edo at the entrance and scoffs. Of course he would be on his phone. She stops looking for a moment and walks back to Edo at the entrance of the tarp.

“If you don’t wanna be here -” Ele starts but never gets a chance to finish her sentence before Edo starts speaking over her.

“It says here that during the winter, Evergreens can enhance comfort and cut heating expenses by protecting homes from brisk winds. Their thick foliage reduces cooling costs when it shields buildings from bright summer sunlight. They also block and absorb traffic noise throughout the year.” Edo smiles as he continues to read interesting facts on his phone about this interesting plant.

Ele nods. “Yes. I did know that.” She always had praised herself for knowing so much about the plants she cares for.

Edo looks up from his phone and at Ele, a smirk playing on his lips. He closes his phone and Ele watches as the only source of light vanishes from his face. She can still see his face from the light shining from the lamppost nearby but the night turns to light blue. “I guess people are kinda like Evergreens.”

Ele raises her brows, not understanding what Edo has just said in the least. “What?”

Edo shrugs, clearly embarrassed by voicing such an out of pocket comment and not explaining. “I don’t know, like, when you’re around good people, they can make you feel comfortable and warm. They can block out all the noise and make it feel as if it’s only the two of you. You know?”

Ele is taken aback by the insight Edo has just shared with her. Before, she thought it nearly impossible for him to ever say something of substance but he has proved her wrong. For the first time since their date, they’re having a sincere conversation. “I know what you mean.”

Edo finally steps inside the tarp and closer to Ele. She’s beyond scared of what is happening between them but she forces herself to stay in one place. As Edo walks closer to her, he reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Ele lets him do this, wanting it more than she wants to admit it. Without realizing it, her hand reaches up to touch Edo’s and she lets his hand rest against her cheek. They’re standing so close to each other, Ele is sure he is going to try to kiss her. The most surprising part is she wants him to. She’s been wondering for way too long how his lips would feel against hers.

Surprisingly, Edo does the exact opposite. After moments of just standing there, he removes his hand from Ele’s face and takes a step back from her. Although she is beyond surprised, she says nothing and instead turns back around, resuming her search for the pots. She rounds another corner and walks into the last aisle to see the pots, stacked on the floor. She picks up the one she thinks is the right size before turning to the entrance to see if Edo is still standing there. She smiles at him for what seems like the first time and then walks to him, a pot in her arms. When she finally approaches him again, his signature smirk is back on his lips.

“Found one.” Ele extends her arms forwards, signalling to Edo that she wants him to take it. Understanding right away, Edo takes the pot from her arms to allow Ele to leave some money behind for the pot.

As he watches her dig through her pocket for the money he had given her, Edo wanders to his relationship with Ele. He knows it’s rocky. That would be an understatement. One minute, she’s pretending to be upset with him to make him feel bad and the next second, she’s allowing him to touch her hair. He knew the second she saw the plant that she was faking but he refused to say anything. He knows Ele doesn’t completely understand how well he can read her. He’s been watching her for over a year now, pining and following after a girl who, until a few weeks ago, he was sure didn’t want anything to do with him. Now, everything has changed.

“That should be enough.” Ele says, looking back to Edo. She left one of the 20€ inside the jar of tips the owners had, hoping they would understand that someone came during the night to buy a pot. When Ele finally makes eye contact with Edo again, she can see his mind is elsewhere as he watches her. “You alright?” She knows this is a dumb question considering what had just happened between them but she can not help herself.

Edo nods, clearing his throat before speaking. “I want us to be friends Ele.”

Ele tries to build a wall between him, knowing where this conversation is going. “That’s not what it’s felt like.”

Edo shrugs, smiling at the scared girl. He figured that’s all Ele was underneath; a girl scared of falling in love. “We should at least try.”

Ele thinks for a moment. She wants this but at the same time, she doesn’t want to give Edo the satisfaction of letting them become friends. She knows the more time she spends with him, the more she will inevitably feel something for him. As much as she knows that can’t happen, she also wants to be happy. “I guess.”

Edo sets down the pot for a moment and extends his hand to Ele to shake. Surprised, Ele wearily extends her hand and allows for Edo to shake it. As their hands touch, they both feel a current being exchanged between the both of them. Ele and Edo feel the electricity flow from their fingertips all the way to their chest and explode. They both know what it means and although they rather not say it aloud, they both know they can never truly be friends.

As they both enter Edo’s car, there is only silence between them. And although they are not saying anything, they are thinking the same thing. When they were touching each other, they felt comfortable and warm. They felt at peace. They felt like Evergreens.

~

tagging my friend @teamnick​ who loves incantava as much as I do <3

[travllingbunny]

The 100: 7x10 A Little Sacrifice

After The Flock - the show’s weakest episode in a long time - and an unfortunate hiatus after that episode, A Little Sacrifice helped get season 7 back on track. It’s one of the best episodes of the season: it was exciting, things finally happened - a lot, we got a big revelation about what the endgame is likely to be all about, there were fights, an attempted mass murder/genocide (what would a season of The 100 be without those?), some really good character work, and the first major death of the season. 

Yes, Charmaine Diyoza was not a main character. but after being introduced as a villain in season 5, she has grown into one of the most memorable and interesting characters on the show - in large part due to Ivana Miličević’s charismatic performance - with a complex and morally ambiguous characterization and backstory (which I really hope to maybe learn more about one day in the prequel flashbacks? Please?). She has been one of my favorite characters since season 5, and I loved her development and her relationship with Octavia, her mother/daughter relationship between her and Hope, her past fights to protect “expendable” prisoners and her S7 attempts to find peace and renounce violence, and hope (!) that at least her daughter will get to have a different and better life where she wouldn’t need to resort to it.  She became a (not so little) sacrifice for the better future we saw her dreaming of in season 5 in that conversation with Kane - maybe that dream is something we will see the new generations live in the series finale?

The one thing I wasn’t too happy about (I was OK with the lack of Bellamy cliffhanger since we got him in the promo for 7x11 right afterwards) was that Clarke did not have any more screentime than in the other recent episodes. But, especially on rewatch, she had some great subtle little moments.

You know what is not subtle? Sheidheda. He’s finding new ways to be completely OTT. This time he can finally stop pretending to be Russell, so he gets a makeover, more in tune with the...interesting Grounder fashion styles, chews the scenery even more, and then - thanks to Madi - he loses an eye (just as he did during his original lifetime), getting closer to his season 6 Emperor-like look, though he’s missing a cloak this time. He also doesn’t have enough facial hair to twirl his moustache, but he actually hisses at one point. This part of the episode was, this time, really fun and intense, including a really good fight scene and some really emotional and important moments for Indra, Madi and Murphy, but doesn’t need much analysis and doesn’t require attention on rewatch.

I’m still not sure how/if these two storylines will connect. But I can see a thematic connection of sorts: Sheidheda is the embodiment of the worst parts of the Grounder culture, with the worship of violence and power and killing all those who oppose you; and not just that - he’s all egotism taken to the extreme, the kind of “wild beast” as Anders would despise, but in this case, he would actually have good reasons to. On the other hand, we have the Disciples with their sterile white rooms, order and the propaganda of the abnegation of self in the favor of the collective, and dreaming of “transcendence” instead of trying to get back to the “old ways”. But they really come off as two sides of the same coin: both ideologies are about worship of and subjugation to a leader, both believe violence is the solution, and both are against love and see it as a danger.

Brand new opening titles - these opens start with a shot of Sanctum and end with the Bardo Stone Room with the Anomaly Stone - and guess what makes a cameo near the end of the credits? That’s right, Earth. I was starting to think that any return to Earth won’t happen, but now I’m not so sure.

Sanctum

The episode opens with the immediate aftermath of Shady’s massacre of the Faithful. We see Madi’s friend Rex (that’s his name according to the credits) - the Sanctum boy who offered Madi’s other friend, the null boy, to play soccer - mourning someone, probably his mother. This scene had to be there so we’d feel some sympathy and sadness over the deaths of the Faithful rather than just be relieved they’re (mostly) gone. One of the wounded ones is Jeremiah, the same guy who developed deep gratitude for Murphy for saving his son. Although the Faithful have been very annoying, I do feel a tinge of sympathy for this guy, who’s so clueless that he never understood he had any agency in what happened to his son and seemed really convinced it was all about the will of the “gods”. He now asks Murphy to take care of his son when he dies, but Murphy insists he will not let Jeremiah die. (Trey, the annoying a-hole who was brainwashing Jordan, and used to act as the leader of the Faithful, is credited in the episode but I didn’t see him anywhere - so I have no idea if he’s among the dead, or he survived and was in a deleted scene.)  

Madi has a really nice mini arc in this episode. She already had PTSD from her experience and possession by Sheidheda in season 6, so she is absolutely terrified when she learns he is back, and when he threatens her in a really creepy way. Excellent acting by Lola. Later, after being comforted by Murphy and joining the survivors,she shows strength in comforting Rex for his loss; and in the end, overcomes her fears and risks her life to save Indra.

Not that it matters, but Sheidheda’s real name is Malachi. (I’m still gonna keep calling him Shady.) We learn that when he recites the lineage - the names and clans of all the previous Commanders, which we know from S3 is a Grounder custom for a new Commander to do. Of course, we only get to hear some of the names in the middle (a couple of random Commanders called Maffei kom Boudalankru - the Rock Line and Kemji kom Trishanakru) and the end, when he mentions Lexa and Madi. The show wasn’t going to spoil the prequel by revealing the names of early Commanders,

The fight itself was really intense and maybe the best Grounder-style duel in the show (yes, I prefer it to the 3x04 one, which involved too much showmanship to look as a real death match). Shady is obviously going to be there for a while and things aren’t going to get so easily resolved, so he wins and is about to kill Indra - who refuses to kneel to save her own life - but just as he’s about to kill her, Madi finds the courage to come as the Big Damn Hero at the crucial moment, pluck out Shady’s eye and save Indra’s life. But then as he is about to kill Madi, Indra decides to (metaphorically, since she’s lying and about to pass out) kneel in order to save Madi’s life. Indra’s arc with Shady has come full circle: this may finally make her understand her mother’s choice and realize she was unfair to her. She grew up blaming her mother for agreeing to kneel to Sheidheda and considering her “weak”. The battle had been lost, her father was already dead, and her mother made the best possible decision and wasn’t just saving herself but her daughter, too. Otherwise, as we see in this episode, Shady would have ordered the daughter to be killed, too, after the mother - as he thinks children of the people he killed should also be eliminated so they couldn’t pose a threat and seek revenge.

That last order even shocked Knight, who may be having some second thoughts about the awesomeness of “Sangedakru’s greatest champion” (but this doesn’t mean he won’t keep obeying him). Penn and the other Trikru guy we know, who are loyal to Indra, reluctantly knelt when Indra asked them to.  

Madi, Rex and the other Faithful (including Jeremiah, who has indeed survived) have gone into hiding with Murphy and Emori - and hiding at the abandoned reactor. We didn’t see Jackson, but i’m sure he’s there. (Sachin is a guest star and must skip some episodes he’s not really needed in.) So now we’re finally reached the part of this storyline where Shady is in power and our heroes are the resistance. And Murphy is now, with Emori, a part of a power couple protecting these people and taking care of them (who would’ve expected that back in season 1?) - much like we’ve seen Clarke and Bellamy do over the seasons - even though most of the same people resented them for being fake Primes just a few hours earlier. Maybe they’re finally starting to get a clue and feel respect and gratitude to people who are trying to save them just because it’s a decent humane thing to do, rather than for being self-proclaimed “gods” who participated in their murder, oppression and exploitation.

Bardo

After 4 episodes, Clarke, Raven and Miller finally left the Stone Room! Yay! Jordan and Niylah stayed in it, and as it turns out, Jordan has a much more important and interesting role to play by reading the Anomaly Stone, while Niylah’s role in S7 has been to be exposition machine for Grounder history and have bad one-liners while Miller has the good ones. I’m glad there was no prolonged “OMG are they really brainwashed and on their side?” misunderstanding, as Clarke and the rest of the group, after learning about MCap from Gabriel, quickly realized that Octavia, Echo and Diyoza are only pretending, since they haven’t blown the secret that Clarke doesn’t have the Flame.

Speaking of one-liners, Miller’s “Get the flock out of here” really made me laugh out loud.

Callie is known as the Pramfleimkepa - the First Flamekeeper - which should mean she was never a Commander (I imagine that would supersede the position of the Flamekeeper or at least be as worthy of mention). I was afraid for a moment that Niylah had given the game away when she told Cadogan that - but fortunately, he didn’t understand what it meant, as he never knew that Becca called ALIE 2.0 “the Flame”.

Gabriel and Cadogan have a long conversation over dinner (or breakfast or lunch of whatever) about Earth before the bombs and Cadogan’s beliefs. The two of them are one of the few remaining humans who knew life before the apocalypse. (After Diyoza’s death in this episode, the only other people left from that time are the Eligius prisoners in Sanctum.) But while Cadogan is chronologically ‘older’ than Gabriel, as he was a Millennial, while Gabriel was born a couple of decades later, and because Cadogan has technically been alive for thousands of years on Bardo - Cadogan spent most of that time in cryo (same as Diyoza and the other prisoners). Gabriel is the real Old Man - at least 260 years old, having lived and experienced all those years. We learn a bit more about Gabriel’s background - that his family were from Colombia and his grandmother was poor, making him a “self-made man” - another contrast between him and the love of his life Josephine (which makes their season 6 parallel to Clarke/Bellamy even more perfect). Gabriel is the go-to-guy this season for having conversations about the worship of false gods and trying to challenge the Disciples’ beliefs. Cadogan, again, denies that he’s a cult leader (sure), reveals he doesn’t believe in God, and claims he doesn’t consider himself one (he sure doesn’t mind being treated like one, though). Instead, he claims his purpose is for everyone to “transcend” and become like gods - though he doesn’t really explain what that would consist of, and he also doesn’t offer any explanations as to why there is supposed to be a “Last War” and who the enemy in that was is supposed to be. Seven episodes have gone by with the characters talking to the Disciples, and no one has ever asked that question: who is the enemy? I guess they don’t even know that, they just think that, when they type in the code, they will learn who the enemy is and the war will begin, for... reasons? He also adds some BS about “this life” being unimportant compared to afterlife. (Now, to be clear - I actually do believe in the afterlife in general (though I don’t know in which form), but I really, really hate it when religions make the afterlife the focus and treat the life we actually know and are sure we have as less important, use it as an excuse to teach people to accept any sort of crap in their lives and not ask for more instead of living their lives to the fullest and trying to build something worthwhile in this life.) Gabriel is less than impressed with Cadogan, and challenges him by pointing out that “You can’t fight a war for the soul of the human race with an inhuman army” and that a life without love, individuality or freedom is pretty worthless, but Cadogan has the afterlife as a ready excuse, even though that doesn’t really answer the question.

The most important revelation that we finally get in this episode is that Cadogan has most likely mistranslated and completely misunderstood the ancient Bardoan text that he’s based his entire belief system on. And his mistake was in large part due to confirmation bias - he saw what he wanted to see, even though the idea of ending wars and violence by starting and fighting a war is absurd. (Niylah, for once, has a good line, when she points out that every major war is supposed to be the “last” but it never is.) Jordan’s interpretation - that it is really about a test that the species needs to pass - makes a lot more sense. Not a literal test - I really can’t imagine the show introducing some kind of godlike “higher beings” - but, I think, something that will require the characters to use all their strength and moral sense and all the experience they’ve had and wisdom they may have gained, to find the best solution to save the human race and rebuild the civilization, hopefully into something better (and it’s really not too hard being better than the mess of tribalism and constant wars and conflicts we’ve seen on the show). I don’t know what this will be, but the words “the orb becomes like a star” make me thing of a natural phenomenon. 

It’s also cool that it was knowledge of the Korean language that helped Jordan decipher the text - proving how helpful it is to be familiar with multiple languages and cultures and how much it expands one’s way of thinking. Do Disciples speak any languages other than English? They seem to foster cultural uniformity, so probably not. (it’s also confirmed now that Monty was half-Korean on his father’s side - Chris Larkin is Korean, but the actress who played his mother, Donna Yamamoto, is Japanese, so I assume Monty is half-Japanese.)

If you doubted that 7x09 flashbacks were a waste of screentime, we get a confirmation early on that Echo has just been pretending to be loyal to the Disciples, while plotting revenge all the time, when she kills a Disciple and saves Hope from being sent to Skyring. This plot could have continued straight from 7x07, when Echo’s Azgeda ritual was strongly hinting that she’s out for revenge. (And yes, the writing in 7x09 was just  that clunky as I feared - of course that Chekhov’s WMD that Levitt mentioned for no reason would be used in the very next episode for someone to try to kill all the Disciples in another Mount Weather parallel.)

A tiny bit of info about the Disciples - a Disciple addressed Hope as “Seeker Diyoza”. I don’t know if that’s a title for those trying to reach Level 1 or something else.

Hope, with her usual anger and impulsiveness, reminiscent of how Octavia used to be once, and her naive black and white views, is all for revenge-genocide, too, in spite of Octavia’s and Diyoza’s disagreement. Her mother tries to, again, teach her the lesson she tried to in 7x07, that she should turn to love instead of violence and killing (which carries a lot more weight when it comes from someone like Charmaine Diyoza rather than a hippy): “I know what it's like to kill innocent people for a cause, and I promise you, it's not gonna fill that hole in your heart. Only we can do that.” But Hope retorts that “There are no innocent people here”, echoing Nikki’s words to Nelson that “There are no innocent people at the end of the world”. It’s not that Hope doesn’t have a point that everyone in Bardo is a part of the society that’s been kidnapping and torturing her family and that stole her childhood, but collective responsibility is a concept that only works in terms of moral responsibility, not as an excuse to commit genocide because you’ve decided that everyone in the other group is evil and the “enemy” and deserves death. Some people have compared it to Maya saying “None of us is innocent”, but I don’t think this comparison works, because that line changes the meaning entirely depending on whether you are holding yourself and your society morally accountable for its failings and complicity in crimes against humanity, or if you’re using it against others, in order to justify hate and commit crimes against humanity.

Even though neither Clarke nor Octavia had huge screentime in this episode and may not have done anything big (like Diyoza sacrificing herself and saving everyone, or Jordan figuring everything out), they had some wonderful, subtle little moments that spoke volumes:

I loved the hug between Clarke and Octavia - where Clarke said her condolences to Octavia and then Octavia said them back, letting Clarke know she knew what Bellamy meant to her and that she is grieving just as much. (”I’m sorry, Octavia” - “So am I”)

Raven and Miller exchanged a wordless look - probably because of how awkward it was for Miller to see Octavia again. Although these 4 people all go back to season 1 (and it was the first time in a while they were in the same room), for Miller it’s been just a few weeks since she was Blodreina and he was her follower, and the last time they saw each other (in season 6), he yelled at her that he’s not following her orders anymore - which was about him struggling with his guilt and seeing her as an embodiment of it. But for Octavia, it’s been over 10 years and a huge character development, which Miller doesn’t know about. But they had no time to go over it - instead, she just hugged him and asked him to hug her back, and he did.

When the group went to find Levitt - still tied up and bloody after Echo had tortured him and killed two Disciples in front of him to force him to tell her about Gem9, the WMD that can destroy everyone on Bardo (he must be really traumatized one - Clarke obviously immediately realized what was going on when she saw Octavia come to check on Levitt, going by the look on her face, and her look when she turned to go and the others went after her, while Octavia was still there -as if saying "I realize you need a moment with this guy, but don't wait too long". Although Levitt looked disappointed and shocked that Octavia didn’t untie him, she was really doing what was the most reasonable way to try to protect everyone - the priority was to stop Echo from killing all the Disciples, which would include Levitt, but also to stop Levitt from alerting Anders, which he would’ve done, because Octavia also wanted to save Echo and her people. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t  care for Levitt, but she’s not the 17 year old girl who’d go: “I just met you but you’re immediately the most important person to me and I’m going to prioritize you over everyone I know”.

 And then we get to the final and most dramatic scene of the episode...  Echo’s attempt to commit genocide out of revenge, while Octavia, Clarke and Raven tried to talk her down.

Octavia tried to reach Echo by, again, talking about their shared grief over Bellamy, as she did in 7x07, but again, it did not work - because Octavia and Echo, and Clarke and Echo, are different people, who grieve in different ways and think and act in different ways. It doesn’t mean that any of them are grieving more or less than another one - but their responses are very different. Octavia - this mature Octavia who is more able to empathize with others and doesn’t react with impulsive violence as she used to -  responded by trying to reach out to others who were also grieving for Bellamy, Echo and Clarke, and validating their grief, too. Clarke reacted - after the initial shock and grief - by sucking it up, as she does, in order to take care of the others, and focusing on saving the people Bellamy loved, telling Raven “We do this for him” and focusing on saving Octavia and Echo. Echo, on the other hand, reacted destructively and violently and by killing people for revenge and then plotting genocide as revenge for 3 months. This is the only way she knows how to process grief - she’s never known a different way, as I’m sure Azgeda weren’t known for compassion and sharing feelings. When Bellamy was grieving Clarke in season 6, she asked him “When do we attack?”, because that’s what she expected him to do, too. She’s also lost because she hasn’t lost just a boyfriend, but a leader and anchor in her new post-Praimfaya life, and because she had made saving Bellamy her mission she was waiting to fulfill during the 5 years on Skyring. If she had carried out her plan, I’m not sure she’d know what to do with herself. (I don’t know what it says about the mindset of us, humans of 2020, that so many fans have decided that Echo’s way of grieving is the superior one and the one that shows that she loves Bellamy the best. It certainly doesn’t show anything good.)

Octavia’s next argument - that there are many good people on Bardo she’d be killing - was even less successful, as Echo threw her relationship with Levitt back in her face, pointing out that he stole her memories, talking of him as one of their enemies, and then even saying: "Way to honor your brother's memory!" Echo came off as very judgmental here, and more than bit hypocritical - after all , she personally almost killed Octavia twice, and Bellamy started trusting her and dating her on the Ring, after she had given them both far less reason to trust her than Levitt did. Levitt actually took a risk and was helping her against Anders just out of his feelings for Octavia, while Echo only helped Bellamy and others after she was exiled and had to in order to survive. She seems to value forgiveness only when it’s others forgiving her (”Who knows more about forgiveness than us?”), even though she never expected them to and was a bit shocked that they did.

Clarke then tried to use her standard “This is not who you are” plea, but it didn’t work with Echo, since Clarke doesn’t really know Echo, and the words felt empty. There really is very little reason for Clarke to think this is not who Echo is, except for her tendency to assume Echo must have changed for the better because she’s Bellamy’s girlfriend and Bellamy loves her (see their conversation in 5x12). Clarke also tried to use her own experience - as she did with Raven earlier in the season - telling Echo that “a choice like this” would haunt her forever (of course Clarke would bring up MW, it always goes back to MW for her), but Echo rejected that comparison and, for a moment, channeled me by pointing out that Clarke’s motivations were to save her people, while Echo’s are purely revenge. Which was, however, a strange argument in context - pointing out that Clarke’s reasons were much better and she had no choice but to kill all of the Mountain Men or let them kill all of her friends and family, while Echo wasn’t achieving anything good and could just save all her people and not take revenge on the Disciples. But Echo seemed to be telling Clarke that they different, and she cannot assume that Echo will feel the same way about mass murder Clarke does.

Then Clarke finally brought up Bellamy, pointing out that he would not want a genocide to be committed in his memory. I don’t know how anyone who’s watched the show for 6 seasons could disagree with Clarke. But Echo did. What’s more, she yelled  "You have no idea what Bellamy wanted!" in a really angry, resentful way. It felt personal. I don’t know if Echo has felt romantic jealousy of Clarke over Bellamy - she has sure kept it close to her chest - but it certainly felt like some kind of possessiveness, like resenting the idea that Clarke was as close or closer to Bellamy and knew him better. In any case, this was a moment of extreme dramatic irony - because we know (and really, Echo should know as well)  that Echo is the one who doesn’t seem to know, or is simply ignoring, what Bellamy would have wanted and who he was. And she should know. She was there when he talked down Riley from killing Roan, telling him “War made me a murderer, don’t let it do it to you too”, she was there when Bellamy refused to kill 283 prisoners in cryo sleep and said “Clarke didn’t die for us to go back and make the same mistakes”. And she was there when Bellamy was grieving Clarke but decided not to take revenge for her death - not even by killing the man who murdered her, Russell - but to try to honor her memory by doing what she would want and surviving and keeping their people alive. Which directly contradicts Echo’s statement that Bellamy would be doing the same she is if one of them (Clarke, Octavia or her) were killed. Does she really not know him? Most of the time they spent together were in a time of peace and boredom with just 7 people on the Ring. She seems to be projecting her own ideas and views and character into him. 

Then Raven went on to agree with Clarke (but Echo did not resent her for saying it), pointing out how Bellamy has grown and changed and that the post-season 3 Bellamy certainly would never do that. I was slightly annoyed when she said that Bellamy of season 3 may do that - but to be fair, she did say, “maybe”. Now, season 1 or season 3 Bellamy was certainly angrier and more prone to black and white thinking when it came to enemies, and he may very well have agreed to kill all of the adult Disciples if he thought they were likely to be a threat to his people (which is what he did when he agreed to help Pike kill Lexa’s army), but he sure wouldn’t agree to kill any of them just for revenge, or to kill children and non-combatants (the one time he did it was MW, when he and Clarke knew there was no other way to protect their people from being horrifically killed, and he hated it and was haunted by it then). Nevertheless, that’s a minor thing as the point of Raven’s speech was the way Bellamy has grown and developed. Echo hasn’t really changed, certainly not as much as Bellamy wanted to think in S5. Is there still time for her to change?

In the end, love did save the day - but it wasn’t Echo’s love for Bellamy, it was her non-romantic love for Raven and Raven’s for her. Raven calling her a sister only helped pave the way - but she had to actually threaten to stay there and force Echo to choose between killing Raven and giving up her revenge, for Echo to finally stand down. The fact she did shows that maybe there’s still hope for her to change and give up revenge and violence for things like friendship.

 But then Anders had to appear and ruin everything, He could have just tried to arrest the group, rather than threatening them and giving them speeches about how he despises them for being “beasts raised in the wild”. (I’ve wondered many times since 7x05 is Anders is supposed to be smart or a complete dumbass. He was definitely a dumbass.)

Diyoza took charge, as the most experienced and tactical one, and almost.  And then Hope was again being her impulsive, angry, out of control self - Anders is always the person most likely to set her off - killing Anders (which I wouldn’t mind) but then also making her own attempt to commit genocide. (It’s funny that the four Disciples just froze and did nothing while all of that was happening.)

What happened then was both a heroic sacrifice and one of the best and most heroic death scenes on the show, a fitting ending for Charmaine Diyoza (even a visually beautiful death in a creepy way, as Diyoza turned into a crystal statue), with her final message to her daughter to be “better” than her in the future - and a heartbreaking loss for Hope, who has just been punished by the narrative/fate for her devotion to violence and hate and attempt at genocide, by causing her own mother’s death. She was obsessed with revenge for her lost childhood and the fact her mother was taken from her - instead of focusing on the future and what she still had. I’m sure that Hope will survive to the end of the series, and will have to question herself and change. She still has Aunty O to help her and be her family.

As we’re approaching the endgame, the show here made an obvious point about violence, hatred and revenge and having to give up those things - not for Anders’ unemotional duty to the collective, but for love and compassion/

Rating: 8.5/10

[lifelastingcouples]

Iman and David Bowie

Zara Mohamed Abdulmajid (Iman) was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, on the 25ᵗʰ of July 1955. Her father was a diplomat and a former Somali ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and her mother was a gynecologist. While she was studying at the University of Nairobi, Iman was discovered by American photographer Peter Beard, and she subsequently moved to the United States to begin a modeling career. Her first modeling assignment was for Vogue in 1976. She became a muse for many prominent designers: Halston, Versace, Calvin Klein, Issey Miyake, Donna Karan, Yves Saint-Laurent. She also worked with plenty of notable photographers: Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Annie Leibovitz. Iman married her first husband Hassan in 1973 and divorced in 1975, and then married American pro basketballer Spencer Haywood in 1977. The union produced a daughter, Zulekha Haywood born in 1978. Iman and Haywood divorced a decade later. After almost two decades of modeling, Iman started her own cosmetics firm in 1994. Iman was approached in 2007 by the CEO of the Home Shopping Network (HSN) to create the clothing design line Global Chic. Today, her Global Chic collection is one of four best-selling items among more than 200 fashion and jewelry brands on HSN, having evolved into a line of affordable accessories.

David Robert Jones was born on the 8ᵗʰ of January 1947 in London. His mother was worked as a waitress at a cinema in Royal Tunbridge Wells and his father worked as a promotions officer for the children's charity Barnardo's. In 1953, Bowie moved with his family to Bromley. Two years later, he started attending Burnt Ash Junior School. His voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and he demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the recorder. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly-introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. Bowie formed his first band, the Konrads, in 1962 at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, but frustrated by his bandmates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. But again Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys. Bowie met dancer Lindsay Kemp in 1967 and enrolled in his dance class at the London Dance Centre. In January 1968, Kemp choreographed a dance scene for a BBC play, The Pistol Shot, in the Theatre 625 series, and used Bowie with a dancer, Hermione Farthingale; the pair began dating, and moved into a London flat together. Bowie and Farthingale broke up in early 1969 when she went to Norway to take part in a film, Song of Norway. On the 11 ᵗʰ of  July 1969, Bowie's first album "Space Oddity" was released five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, and reached the top five in the UK. Bowie's second album followed in November. In April 1969 Bowie met Angela Barnett, they married within a year. They had an open marriage. Angela described their union as a marriage of convenience so that she could get a permit to work. Their son Duncan, was born on the 30 of May 1971. Bowie moved to the US in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. Bowie and Angela divorced on 8 February 1980 in Switzerland.

Iman and Bowie met in 1990 at a dinner party. Iman had recently retired from modeling and her hairdresser introduced her to the British singer-songwriter. For Bowie, it was love at first meeting. “My attraction to her was immediate and all-encompassing”. Her effect on the usually unflappable and smooth Bowie was intense. “I found her intolerably sexy”. It took a further two weeks before Iman was as on board with the relationship as Bowie. “His actions spoke louder [than words]” she said to The Cut in 2011. owie proposed in Paris and they married on the 24ᵗʰ of April 1992.

Iman and Bowie approached their marriage as a relationship to be shared with each other, not a public eager to hear intimate details about the “Space Oddity” singer and Vogue cover star. Aside from rare occasions, the couple kept the press separate from their home life.

They were rarely photographed together, appearing as a couple only in one Vogue magazine shoot and for a Hello! interview in their New York apartment following the birth of their daughter Alexandria in 2000, which Iman described as one of “the happiest times in my life,” and an event that drew the couple closer than ever before.

Quizzed over the whereabouts of her husband while attending a New York Valentine’s Day event solo in 2011, Iman told The Cut that they never celebrated the annual lovefest in public. “We never do Valentine’s dinner, because everybody, they look,” she said. “On Valentine’s, imagine me and David going to a restaurant! Like everybody’s going to say, ‘Did they talk? Did they hold hands?’ Twenty years. We’ve been married 20 years!”

Home life in New York was routine. Iman revealed to Harper’s Bazaar in 2010 that like many couples with a young child, daily life involved early morning school runs and soccer and music classes. “I vowed to myself when I got married that I would cook every night,” she said. “I find it very therapeutic.” Bowie, who retired from touring in 2004, told ET that “first for me is our marriage and second is career. If there was a choice between one or the other, there’s no question.”

So intense was their desire for privacy, the world was left shocked when Bowie died on the 10 ᵗʰ of January 2016, at age 69 from liver cancer. Even his close musical collaborators had no idea the prolific singer had been sick.

Two years later, Iman opened up about her feelings during an interview with Porter magazine. “Sometimes, I don’t want people to know how sad I am. People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so strong.’ I’m not strong — I am just trying to keep it together”.

When questioned about whether she would consider entering into a new romantic relationship, the model-turned-entrepreneur was firm in her response: “I will never remarry. I mentioned my husband the other day with someone, and they said to me, ‘You mean your late husband?’ I said, no, he is always going to be my husband.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

Meet our two new curators!

Dr. Travis Olds

Hello! My name is Travis Olds. I’m Assistant Curator of Minerals in the Section of Minerals and Earth Sciences at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I’m from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the northern part of the state that is sometimes confused as being a part of Canada, but also considered by many as one of the most beautiful places on Earth. People born in the U.P., as we call it, are known colloquially as “Yoopers,” and like Canadians we are some of the kindest people you will meet. Many Yoopers have an accent that is best described as a mix between Canadian and Minnesotan; we tend to elongate and over-emphasize vowels in spoken words, with favorites being “ya, eh, you betcha, and don’tchya know.” Our favorite dish is the pasty (“pastee”), a baked meat and vegetable-filled pastry that was introduced early in our state’s history by Cornish miners who traveled to the area to make a living and share their knowledge of mining techniques developed overseas.  

Hundreds of mines have operated in the U.P. over the last ~200 years, yielding billions of tons of iron and manganese used for the steel produced here in Pittsburgh, and millions of tons of copper used across the world for plumbing, electrical lines, and electronics. Although many mines in the U.P. have long been abandoned, a few iron and copper mines are still in operation today. For several generations my family has made a living working in the mines, including my father and uncle, who were large influencers to my interest in minerals.

As I started collecting and learning more about minerals I became fascinated by radioactive minerals, the ones containing uranium and thorium. Uranium minerals come in many beautiful shapes and colors. They sometimes fluoresce neon green and yellow colors under UV light, and emit invisible high-energy particles during their decay. Although we owe our basic understanding of X-rays and many modern medical technologies and treatments to early studies of radioactive minerals, uranium remains one of the most controversial elements on the periodic table. It has been used to create exceptionally valuable technology but has also created unimaginable evil and pain. In the future, I believe nuclear power will likely become one of the dominant methods for producing “base-load” power to replace the antiquated and highly pollutive coal and natural-gas burning energy plants. I study the atomic arrangement and properties of uranium minerals because they are good analogs for advancing several aspects of nuclear power generation, from mining to processing and storage of used fuel and waste. My mineral collecting trips have taken me to unique places underground in Colorado, Utah, and the Czech Republic, and thanks to the group of friends and researchers that I work with, I have been lucky to find and describe 20 new minerals. At the museum, I research minerals to improve technology and better understand how humans are changing the minerals found on the Earth’s surface.

Photos of our new minerals can be found on my Mindat.org page.

Dr. Carla Rosenfeld

Hello! I’m Carla Rosenfeld, the new Assistant Curator of Earth Sciences in the Section of Minerals and Earth Sciences at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I received my Ph.D. in Soil Science and Biogeochemistry from Penn State and a B.S in Chemistry from McGill University. Following my Ph.D., I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and University of Minnesota. After several years away, I am so excited to be returning to Pennsylvania to continue my research!

As a researcher, I am an interdisciplinary environmental biogeochemist. I use tools from mineralogy, geochemistry, and microbiology to study how pollutants and nutrients behave in the environment. I am fascinated by how biology, geology, and chemistry interact - for example when plant roots scavenge nutrients from soils by dissolving minerals, or when organisms form biominerals (think teeth, shells, and corals). Understanding how living and non-living things interact in different environments helps us to understand and predict how nature will respond to changing climate and other human impacts. Because I’m interested in how microbes make and alter minerals in soils, I’ve visited all sorts of places to collect soils, plants, water, and microbes (mostly bacteria and fungi). I’ve been down to the bottom of the deepest and oldest underground iron mine in Minnesota (Sudan Mine, ~ 1 mile below the ground surface!), to hot springs and the world’s only captive geyser in Idaho, and, right here in Southwest PA, to acid mine drainage remediation systems! Outside of science, I love to spend time outdoors biking (I even biked across the US from CT to CA one summer), mushroom hunting (my favorite mushrooms to find are golden chanterelles, Cantharellus cibarius or Cantharellus lateritius), and generally spending time outdoors. I also love to bake (including science cakes!), and I’ve kept a spreadsheet detailing everything I’ve baked for the last 5 years!

[minervacasterly]

Henry VII in mourning from the presentation page of the "Vaux Passional". In this, you see Henry VII at the center, next to his children, namely his only surviving male heir, Prince Henry, now Prince of Wales. Henry VII was in seclusion for over a month following his wife's death. He never remarried, although negotiations had taken place to find a suitable bride but nothing came out of it. Elizabeth of York's death was the result of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever, something that Henry VIII's third consort, Jane Seymour and his last, Catherine Parr, would also die when they gave birth to their first and only offspring. Sadly for Elizabeth and Henry, their baby daughter, Princess Katherine, also died. Elizabeth of York was buried in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. Henry VII was laid beside her when he joined her six years later. Henry VII died on the 21st of April 1509. Their effigies are a beautiful marker of their tomb that many visitors can appreciate today. “He was comely personage, a little above just stature, well and straight-limbed, but slender. His countenance was revered, and a little like a churchman, and as it was not strange or dark so neither was it winning or pleasing, but as the face of one well disposed. But it was to the disadvantage of the painter, for it was best when he spoke.” [1] Despite Henry VII's attempts at normalcy, things couldn't go back to the way they were. This man took the death of his firstborn, wife and baby daughter to heart. According to Bernard Andre, when he informed his majesties of their son's death, Henry was the first to break down and become nearly inconsolable. Elizabeth of York, having been a King's daughter, raised since birth to be a Queen, steeled herself and reminded her husband that they were still young and the two could still have children. While this did the trick with Henry, it did little for her as she also broke down when she went into her chambers. Like she had done for him, Henry returned the favor by consoling her. Henry became paranoid. He forced his son to repudiate Catherine of Aragon some time after the papal bull from Julius II had arrived in 1504 (which authorized their union in spite of the possibility of a consummation between her and Arthur), and kept him from every day past times, fearing that jousting could take his life. By the time Henry VII died, England's coffers were full. People had complained about having been taxed to death, but nobody could deny that Henry VIII had inherited a prosperous nation. It didn't take long before Henry VIII had to find ways to replenish them after they became half-empty. “A considered person, not given to great public displays of emotion, somewhat ascetic in appearance, not exactly handsome, but with an interesting and by no means unattractive face, the whole man only at his most appealing when he was animated … an air of authority which must have been invaluable for a man who had never been part of any establishment, never so much as managed an estate or led men, in wary or peace, and who had existed on the periphery of the English ruling class. He was of it but not part of it. It is customary to think of the last years of Henry VII’s reign, certainly from 1503 onwards, when personal tragedy brought him to his knees, as a period of almost unrelieved gloom for the king and his subjects. A recent work has underline this view of Henry as a “dark prince”, an embittered, unloved, avaricious monarch, marked by the scars of years of insecurity, a mistrustful man who found comfort only in the collection of punitive exactions from a terrified aristocracy and a resentful commercial class. Everyone, from dukes to City of London merchants, dreaded the assaults on their purses, and sometimes their liberty, carried out with increasing callousness by a new group of men around the king. In this reading, in which Henry is portrayed as ill and withdrawn from the world, it seems as if the first Tudor is struggling to come to terms with what he has achieved, as if survival, peace, international recognition and the establishment, however shakily, of his own dynasty were not enough … England was a police state, rife with spies and informers … There is, of course, much truth in the detail of this terrifying vision of early sixteenth-century England, but it is not the whole story and to focus on it, without taking a more measured view of what Henry achieved, is to do him an injustice. None of us today would have liked to live in Tudor times … He had built his public image on processions, triumphal entries, receptions, tournaments and a lively, cultured court. Despite the absence of a queen, all that did not suddenly disappear. He could put on a splendid show when he felt the occasion warranted it, as he did when a violent tempest delivered an extremely reluctant Philip of Burgundy and his hapless wife, Queen Juana of Castile, to English shores in February 1506 … He died, emaciated, unable to breathe and in great pain, on the evening of 21 April. Twenty-four years after his improbable victory at Bosworth, he left his son a full treasury and a peaceful country.” [2] Henry is rarely well portrayed in fiction but there are exceptions and these can be found in the following books and series, the latter which in my opinion, is the most factual out of these four: The Plantagenet Princess by Samantha Wilcoxon, To Hold the Crown by Jean Plaidy (real name, Eleanor Hibbert), The Dragon and the Rose by Roberta Gellis and the BBC's Shadow of the Tower from 1972 where James Maxwell and Norma West played Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Sources: 1. Henry VII by SB Chrimes 2. Tudor vs Stewarts by Linda Porter 3. Tudor by Leanda de Lisle 4. The Winter King by Thomas Penn Sources quoted: 1. The History of the Reign of King Henry VII (1622) by Francis Bacon. (If you have a Google or Nook account, you can find it for free. I got this off the latter. 2. Tudors vs Stewarts: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary, Queen of Scots by Linda Porter. It is called Crown of Thistles in the UK. The book she cites at the end that in her view, gives an unfavorable description of Henry is The Winter King by Thomas Penn. I used that book as a source for this as well. He did appear a little harsh but it wasn’t intentional as his book focused on the last years of Henry VII’s reign and whatever way you want to look at him, his last years were the most trying for him and personal losses did have a strong effect on him.

[claudia1829things]

"BAND OF ANGELS" (1957) Review

"BAND OF ANGELS" (1957) Review I have been a fan of period dramas for a long time. A very long time. This is only natural, considering that I am also a history buff. One of the topics that I love to explore is the U.S. Civil War. When you combined that topic in a period drama, naturally I am bound to get excited over that particular movie or television production.

I have seen a good number of television and movie productions about the United States' Antebellum period and the Civil War. One of those productions is "BAND OF ANGEL", an adaptation of Robert Warren Penn's 1955 novel set during the last year of the Antebellum period and the first two years of the Civil War. The story begins around 1850. Amantha Starr, the privileged daughter of a Kentucky plantation owner, overhears one house slave make insinuations about her background to another slave. Before Amantha (or "Manthy") could learn more details, she discovers that Mr. Starr had the offending slave sold from the family plantation, Starwood. He also enrolls Amantha in a school for privileged girls in Cinncinati. A decade later in 1860, Amantha's father dies. When she returns to Starwood, Amantha discovers that Mr. Starr had been in debt. Worse, she discovers that her mother had been one of his slaves, making herself a slave of mixed blood. Amantha and many other Starwood slaves are collected by a slave trader and conveyed by steamboat to New Orleans for the city's slave mart. Upon her arrival in New Orleans, Amantha comes dangerously close to be purchased by a coarse and lecherous buyer. However, she is rescued by a Northern-born planter and slave owner named Hamish Bond, and becomes part of his household as his personal mistress. She also becomes acquainted with Bond's other house slaves - his right-hand-man named Rau-Ru, his housekeeper and former mistress Michele and Dollie, who serves as her personal maid. Although Amantha initially resents her role as a slave and Bond's role as her owner, she eventually falls in love with him and he with her. But the outbreak of the Civil War and a long buried secret of Bond's threaten their future together. Many critics and film fans have compared "BAND OF ANGELS" to the 1939 Oscar winner, "GONE WITH THE WIND". Frankly, I never understood the comparison. Aside from the setting - late Antebellum period and the Civil War - and Clark Gable as the leading man, the two films really have nothing in common. "GONE WITH THE WIND" is a near four-hour epic that romanticized a period in time. Although "BAND OF ANGELS" have its moments of romanticism, its portrayal of the Old South and the Civil War is a bit more complicated . . . ambiguous. Also, I would never compare Scarlett O'Hara with Amantha Starr. Both are daughters of Southern plantation owners. But one is obviously a member of the Southern privileged class, while the other is the illegitimate and mixed race daughter of a planter and his slave mistress. Also, Gable's character in "BAND OF ANGELS" is a Northern-born sea captain, who became a planter; not a semi-disgraced scion of an old Southern family. Considering the political ambiguity of "BAND OF ANGELS", I suppose I should be more impressed with it. Thanks to Warren's novel, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts' screenplay and Raoul Walsh's direction; the movie attempted to provide audiences with a darker view of American slavery and racism. For instance, Amantha's personal journey as a slave proved to be a harrowing one, as she deals with a slave trader with plans to rape her, a traumatic experience at the New Orleans slave mart, Bond's lustful neighbor Charles de Marigny and her attempts to keep her African-American ancestry a secret from a Northern beau later in the film. The film also touches on Rau-ru's point of view in regard to slavery and racism. Despite being educated and treated well by Hamish Bond; Rau-ru, quite rightly, is resentful of being stuck in the role of what he views as a cosseted pet. Rau-ru also experiences the ugly racism of planters like de Marigny and slave catchers; and Northerners like some of the Union officers and troops that occupied New Orleans and Southern Louisiana in the movie's last half hour. I also noticed that the movie did not hesitate to expose the ugliness of the slave trade and the system itself, including the reveal the fate of a great number of slaves who found themselves being forced by Union forces to continue toiling on the cotton and sugar plantations on behalf of the North. There are other aspects of the movie that I found admirable. Not all of "BAND OF ANGELS" was shot at the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. A good of the movie was shot on location in Louisiana. I have to give credit to cinematographer Lucien Ballard for doing an exceptional job for the film's sharp and vibrant color, even if the movie lacked any real memorable or iconic shot. If I must be honest, I can say the same about Max Steiner's score. However, I can admit that Steiner's score blended well with the movie's narrative, I just did not find it memorable. Marjorie Best, who had received Oscar nominations for her work in movies like "ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN" and "GIANT", served as the movie's costume designer. I was somewhat impressed by her designs, especially for the male characters, ironically. However, I had a problem with her costumes for Yvonne De Carlo. Nearly dress that the Amantha Starr character wore, possessed a low cut neckline that emphasized her cleavage. Even her day dresses. Really? After reading a few reviews about "BAND OF ANGELS", I noticed that some movie fans and critics were not that impressed by the film's performances. I have mixed feelings about them. Clark Gable seemed to be phoning it through most of the film. But there were a few scenes that made it easy to see why he not only became a star, but won an Oscar well. This was apparent in two scenes. One of them featured the Hamish Bond character recalling the enthusiasm and excitement of his past as a sea captain. And in another scene that impressed me, Bond recalled the "more shameful" aspects of his past. At age 34 or 35, I believe Yvonne De Carlo was too old for the role of Amantha Starr, who was barely into her twenties in the story. Some would say that the role could have benefited from being portrayed by a biracial actress and not a white one. Perhaps. But despite the age disparity, I still thought De Carlo gave a very strong performance as the passionate and naive Amantha, who suddenly found her life turned upside down. Ironically, I thought her scenes with Sidney Poitier seemed to generate more chemistry than her ones with Gable. Speaking of Poitier . . . I might as well say it. He gave the best performance in the movie. His Rau-ru bridled with a varying degree of emotions when the scene called for it. And the same time, one could easily see that he was well on his way in becoming the Hollywood icon that Gable already was at the time. There were other performances in "BAND OF ANGELS", but very few of them struck me as memorable. The movie featured solid performances from Rex Reason, who portrayed Amantha's Northern-born object of her earlier infatuation - Seth Parson; Efrem Zimbalist Jr., who not only portrayed Amantha's later suitor Union officer Lieutenant Ethan Sears, but was already on the road as a television star; Carroll Drake, who portrayed Hamish Bond's introverted and observant housekeeper Michele; Andrea King, who portrayed Amantha's hypocritical former schoolmistress Miss Idell; William Schallert, who had a brief, but memorable role as a bigoted Union Army officer; and Torin Thatcher, who portrayed Bond's fellow sea captain and friend Captain Canavan. Many critics had accused Patric Knowles of bad acting. Frankly, I found his performance as Bond's neighbor and fellow planter Charles de Marigny effectively slimy . . . in a subtle way. Ray Teal was equally effective as the slimy and voracious slave trader Mr. Calloway, who had conveyed Amantha to the slave marts of New Orleans. The only performance that hit a sour note from me came from Tommie Moore, who portrayed one of Bond's house maids, the loud and verbose Dollie. Every time she opened her mouth I could not help but wince at her over-the-top and if I may say so, cliched performance as Dollie. I think I could have endured two hours in the company of characters like Prissy and Aunt Pittypat Hamilton from "GONE WITH THE WIND" than five minutes in Dollie's company. I guess I could have blamed the actress herself. But a part of me suspect that the real perpetrators were screenwriters John Twist, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts; along with director Raoul Walsh. I wish that was all I had to say about "BAND OF ANGELS". I really do. But . . . despite the movie's portrayal of the ugliness of slavery and racism, it ended up undermining its attempt. Quite frankly, I found "BAND OF ANGELS" to be a very patronizing movie - especially in regard to race. And the most patronizing character is this movie turned out to be Hamish Bond. Someone had once complained that although the movie initially seemed to revolve around Amantha Starr, in the end it was all about Bond. I do not know if I could fully agree with this, but I found it disturbing that the character "growths" of both Amantha and Rau-ru revolved around Bond and their opinion of him. One aspect of "BAND OF ANGELS" that I found particularly bizarre was Amantha's opinion of Hamish Bond's connection to slavery. At first, she simply resented him for being her owner. But she eventually fell in love with him and opened herself to being his mistress. Amantha certainly had no problems during that ridiculous scene that featured Bond's field slaves lined up near the river side to welcome him back to his plantation with choral singing. Really? This was probably the most patronizing scene in the entire movie. Yet, when Amantha discovered that his past as a sea captain involved his participation in the Atlantic slave trade, she reacted with horror and left him. Let me see if I understand this correctly. Once she was in love with Bond, she had no problems with being his slave mistress or his role as a slave owner. Yet, she found his participation in the slave trade to be so awful that she . . . left him? Slave owner or slave trader, Hamish Bond exploited the bodies of black men and women. Why was being a slave trader worse than being a slave owner? Not only do I find this attitude hypocritical, I also noticed that it had permeated in a good deal of other old Hollywood films set in the Antebellum era. Even more disturbing is that after becoming romantic with an Union officer named Ethan Sears, Amantha has a brief reunion with her former object of desire, Seth Parsons. He reveals knowing about her mother's ancestry and her role as Bond's mistress, and tries to blackmail her into becoming his. In other words, Seth's knowledge of her racial background and her history with Bond leads Amantha to run back into the arms of Bond. And quite frankly, this makes no sense to me. Why would Seth's attempt to blackmail Amantha lead her to forgive Bond for his past as a slave trader? The movie never really made this clear. I found the interactions between Rau-ru and Hamish Bond even more ridiculous and patronizing. Rau-ru is introduced as Bond's major-domo/private secretary, who also happens to be a slave. Despite receiving education from Bond and a high position within the latter's household, Rau-ru not only resents Bond, but despises him. And you know what? I can understand why. I noticed that despite all of these advantages given to Rau-ru, Bond refuses to give him his freedom. Worse, Bond treats Rau-ru as a pet. Think I am joking? I still cannot refrain from wincing whenever I think of the scene in which Bond's friend, Captain Canavan, visited and demanded that Rau-ru entertain him with a song without any protest from Bond. This scene struck me as very vomit inducing. What made the situation between Rau-ru and Bond even worse is that the former made an abrupt about face about his former master during the war . . . all because the latter had revealed how he saved Rau-ru's life during a slave raid in Africa and - get this - some bigoted Union Army officer tried to cheat Rau-ru from a reward for capturing Bond. The former sea captain/planter ended up leaving his estate to Rau-ru in a will. How nice . . . but I suspect he did so after Amantha had left him. If not, my mistake. And why did Bond failed to give Rau-ru his freedom before the outbreak of war? Instead, Rau-ru was forced to flee to freedom after saving Amantha from being raped by Charles de Marigny. In Robert Warren's novel, Rau-ru eventually killed Bond. Pity this did not happen in the movie. Overall, I see that my feelings for "BAND OF ANGELS" is mixed. There are some aspects of the movie that I found admirable. I might as well admit it. The movie especially benefited from Lucien Ballard's colorful photography, an interesting first act and an excellent performance by Sidney Poitier. Otherwise, I can honestly say that "BAND OF ANGELS" focused too much on the Hamish Bond character and was a bit too patronizing on the subject of race and slavery for me to truly enjoy it.

[bestrodreel73-blog]

Best Rod and Reel for Inshore Fishing

To an angler, rods and reels are an extension of their body. These are carefully chosen pieces of equipment that provide hours of entertainment. They’re put through all different types of scenarios and have to endure rough conditions. For many anglers, it takes quite a bit of time to find the ideal setup. Throughout the years, different rods and reels are purchased based on necessity and desire. Each of these has features that anglers appreciate and ones they wish didn’t exist. Some anglers choose a rod and reel and make it work. While it comes down to a matter of choice, there are inshore rods and reels that stand out far above the others.

A Few Things to Consider

When it comes to purchasing a new inshore rod, anglers have quite a bit of things to consider. Many people don’t want to spend $300 or $400 on an inshore rod. These rods have a high possibility of breaking due to the constant movement and outside factors that could easily snap the rod. Plus, the higher end rods are going to be more sensitive and have quite a bit of graphite in its makeup. Graphite is a bit more brittle and has a higher chance of breaking. The lower priced rods are going to be made up of fiberglass and likely last longer than the higher priced rods. While you’ll sacrifice some weight, the lower end rods will provide you more of a peace of mind that they’re going to last. If you have the funds, the graphite rods are great to use, but a higher chance of durability may be worth the less money.

Daiwa Back Bay

The Daiwa Back Bay is a 7.5 foot medium heavy rod. It has an extra fast action so it’s going to be able to handle a wide variety of fish. These rods are great to use if you’re wanting to fish with a bit larger bait. Whether it’s live bait or lures, the Daiwa Back Bay is a great choice. It can hold 10-20 pound test line so be sure that the reel you purchase can fit these necessary guidelines. The best part of this rod is that it is only going to cost your around $130. It’s going to last you a long while as long as you take proper care of it!

Okuma Epixor Inshore

Okuma offers anglers quality at an extremely low price. This rod is only going to cost you $70. It’s a 7.5 foot heavy rod with moderate action. It’s going to be able to handle a bit heavier line up to 30 pound test. If you’re new to inshore fishing and looking for a rod that isn’t going to break the bank, but still provide you with a quality experience the Okuma Epixor Inshore is a nice choice for you.

Ugly Stik Inshore Select

If you know anything about durability and fishing, you know that Ugly Stik is known for its ability to withstand just about anything you throw its way. You can search YouTube all day long and find a variety of strength tests! If it’s durability you’re after, then Ugly Stik is for you. It’s a one piece rod that helps the rig last quite a bit longer. The best aspect of the Ugly Stik Inshore Select is that it is only going to cost anglers around $60. This rod can handle 10-25 pound test and is fairly light considering its makeup. It only ways around 8 ounces!

Penn Squadron II Inshore Spinning Rod

The Penn Squadron is made for a new saltwater angler. It costs less than $100 and is great in a variety of situations. It’s only 7 feet long so you don’t have to worry about learning how to cast with a longer rod. It is made up of composite graphite. Composite graphite is a nice mixture of graphite and fiberglass so anglers can purchase the Penn Squadron II with peace of mind that it is going to last them for many years. If you do happen to break it, you’ll likely purchase the exact same rod. For the casual inshore angler, you’ll have a hard time finding a better rod than the Penn Squadron II.

Reels

Reels are always going to be the more costly portion of your saltwater fishing setup and rightfully so. Your reel is responsible for the control of the fish. If it’s a quality inshore reel, you can fight anything you hook into. Be willing to invest a bit more into your reels. It’s well worth it.

Abu Garcia Revo

If you aren’t targeting massive fish, the Abu Garcia Revo is a wonderful option. It has up to a 17 pound drag and has a 6:2:1 ratio. This has quite a bit of power for being a smaller reel, but its ability to cast longer distances isn’t as strong. If you know you aren’t going to hook into anything massive, the Revo is perfect. It will cost you around $150, but all things considered, Abu Garcia is a quality brand that is guaranteed to last.

Quantum Cabo PT

The Quantum Cabo is a fan favorite in the world of inshore fishing. It’s a bit heavier and weighs just under one pound. The size 50 is able to handle 400 yards of braid and will be able to handle smaller Tarpon and Snook. These reels are exceptionally strong for their size. If you’re worried about longer fights and wearing fish down, the Quantum Cabo will help you land these fish much faster than other reels in its class. The Cabo will cost you around $175 a piece, but this reel is well worth it. It’s smooth, looks great and is going to give you peace of mind that it can help you wrestle any sort of inshore fish.

Shimano Stradic Ci4+

Anything with this fancy of name should be quality, right? Thankfully, Shimano was able to back up the interesting name with impressive performance. This reel is almost 25 percent lighter than the previous models due to a new rotor. The reel can produce 24 pounds of drag and is going to be a nice addition to your inshore reel collection. It’s not a complicated build so cleaning it is quite easy. While saltwater reels are anodized, you need to be sure to properly care for them. Shimano makes it quite simple on this model. This is the priciest reel on this list so far, but the $200 is worth the money. Each model of this reel has proven its worth and the Ci4+ is no different.

Diawa Saltist

The Daiwa Saltist is arguably the best reel on this list. Daiwa has been a prominent figure in the fishing industry for many years and has produced a wonderful reel in the Saltist. It’s light weight makes it easy to match up with a variety of rods. You can find it in models ranging from 2500 to 8000. The drag is waterproof so maintenance is not needed nearly as much on this model as it is on others from this list. Plus, this reel is only going to cost you around $160.

Conclusion

When it comes to choosing a rod and reel, you need to try a variety before you make your choice. Visit a bait shop or other type of fishing store and feel the Rod and Reel in your hand. It’s going to make a large difference in your choice. You may walk in with an ideal setup in your mind and leave with something completely different!

[gopat78-blog]

Nerds and Baseball

With the baseball season going bold, it's an ideal opportunity to chart how nerds and progress have changed the sport of baseball. Over the level of driving decades, the web, consistent advances, and the globalization media have on an astoundingly critical level traded how fans gobble up baseball and how ballplayers play America's bit of room. Coming up next is a graph of a scramble of the penchants where improvement has impacted baseball, and a couple of contemplations on how some new advances will keep influencing baseball baseball seth levinson .

Baseball, Technology, and Fans

1. PC games

From the most solid starting stage sort out, PC games have attempted to go over baseball. In 1971, Don Daglow at Pomona College made ''Baseball.'' During the mid 1980s, Atari and Mattel what's undeniably discharged baseball PC games. In 1983, Mattel discharged Intellivision ''World Series Baseball.'' For the standard comprehension, players of ''World Series Baseball'' could utilize fluctuating camera centers to show the progression. A gamer could see the player from a changed "focus field" camera, see baserunners in corner insets, and view mindful plays from a camera behind home plate. ''World Series Baseball'' additionally joined fly balls into their interface.

In 1988, baseball PC games made another ricochet, when Electronic Arts (EA) discharged ''Earl Weaver Baseball'', which solidified a bona fide baseball chief gave run by man-made scholarly breaking point. The stigmatizing of ''Earl Weaver Baseball'' was seen by Computer Gaming World in 1996 when it named ''Earl Weaver Baseball'' 25th on its system of the Best 150 Games of All Time. This was the second most fundamental orchestrating any games game in that 1981-1996 period behind FPS Sports Football.

Nintendo correspondingly hit a superb sledge, in 1988 when it discharged ''RBI Baseball.'' RBI was the standard PC game to be kept up through the Major League Baseball Players Association. The game contained genuine colossal class players and records, and unquestionably was a goliath hit with players.

Twenty years after the central baseball PC game, ''Tony La Russa Baseball'' showed up on racks the nation over. The game made immense updates in ball game play. In any case, ''La Russa'' joined a degenerate Fly Ball Cursor that showed up where the ball was going to land, and made or diminished in size subject to the stature of the ball. In the event that the breeze was blowing the cursor would move its area to mirror the changing course of the ball. The Fly Ball Cursor displayed genuine fly balls and pop-ups to PC ball games, disposing of the last bit of the game that had never been imitated completely. Second, ''La Russa'' permitted clients to filter through drafts and set up their own classes, all with access to the game's wide player estimations. Third, ''La Russa'' was the basic ball game to offer exact nuances for every individual pitcher against every individual hitter, information that veritable manager utilize extensively more dazzling than broke. Rather than different games brute names who on a fundamental level attributed their names to games, Tony La Russa ate up wide sessions over a time of years endeavoring to look good as careful as would be sensible.

Ball games has kept making since ''La Russa.'' The advancement of EA's ''MVP Baseball'', Sony's ''MLB The Show'', Out of the Park Developments' substance based distraction ''Out of the Park Baseball'', and the and improvement of gaming frameworks (from Genesis to XBox360) has changed the centrality and truth of ball games. Inspiration driving reality, even players themselves confess to utilizing them plan for games. As showed up by a FHM article made by 2004 AL Cy Young Winner Johan Santana (April 2006 pg. 113), "I can see the hitting zones of every player and quantifiably where he was unable to think about the ball. I can in like way find when he will swing at fastballs and when he may not expect a switch up. I wouldn't express that I would add to an individual a genuine game an inside and out that really matters dubious way, yet it gives you assessments of how to progress toward unequivocal hitters."

2. Web Fantasy Baseball

Really disdain it (lady mates, life associates) or love it (on a very basic level each baseball fan), dream baseball has become as standard as the game itself. Decisively when requested to detail addicts who distressingly picked and empowered everything in division, the progress of the web has permitted boundless fans to investigate association with sidekicks and different fans all through the nation. This couldn't in any way whatsoever effect the ensured game itself right? Wrong. Dream Baseball hugy impacts fan intrigue. Did your social event quit mid-season, or at present in an unwatchable fixing year? That is OK. You can at present follow your dream collecting and can keep watching games including your players by techniques for the MLB Baseball Cable Package. Key League Baseball is a thing, and anything that permits your clients to interminably dismember, make, and talk (in that capacity advancing) about your thing in a stimulated way gets colossal.

Dream baseball would not have gets imperative without progress. PCs and the web demonstrated this games upset. The closeness of dazzling PCs and the Internet changed dream baseball, permitting scoring to be done absolutely by PC, and permitting classes to build up their own scoring structure, usually dependent on less recognizable bits of information. Considering, dream baseball has gotten a kind of in-time redirection of baseball, and permitted different fans to build up a dependably pushed awareness of how this present reality game limits.

As showed up by an inciting Fortune article, the "American male's fixation on sports is old news, yet give this a shot: More than half of inventive character sports darlings experience over an hour dependably essentially thinking about their get-togethers." Fantasy baseball is a ''billion dollar industry.'' However, Much like the RIAA and MPAA, Major League Baseball is putting cuts on the dream progress that filled fit baseball's recuperation after the 1996 strike. MLB has chosen to in a general sense re-attempt how it licenses affiliations that run dream games on the Web. Official licensees will now likely be obliged to a Big Three of ESPN, CBS Sportsline, and Yahoo! (a couple of reports interlace AOL and The Sporting News other than). "Mother and pop" shops that helped usher the dream baseball wonder into reality will be truly obliged by the permitting bargain. They might be permitted data to help 5,000 clients each. Every single other individual utilizing baseball estimations to run little dream classes should pick between lessening their endeavors, setting up camp, or getting a visit from MLB's authentic supporters.

3. Client Created Media

Going before the web, media creation was obliged to authorities. Papers, radio, TV, and quality games magazines like Sports Illustrated had a virtual stranglehold over the dispersal of sports news and data.

The key client made games media happened with the approach of Sports Talk radio. An improvement of talk radio, which has existed since the 1940s, sports talk radio took off in the mid 1980s. Today, more than 30 essential games talk radio broadcasts exist all through the nation. Sports talk radio gave fans a soapbox to voice their grumblings, examinations, and assessment of sports. In any case, instead of raging just to their loved ones, sports talk radio pulled in fans to transmit their ways to deal with deal with a conceivably epic get-together.

Requiring a voice, sports fans utilized progression to disseminate their evaluations over the web. The first of these advances was sports messageboard structures. While sports messageboards have never arrived at standard certain quality, they have a strong closeness on the net. A central purpose fundamental "baseball messageboards" in Google will return over 8.5 million hits.

Web messageboards other than paid uncommon personality to the first Petri dish for client made media. This supposition that is best exemplified by a nonappearance of regard that happened around the start of the 2000 season. Bobby Valentine, by then the New York Mets chief, gave an exchange at the Wharton School of Business - an "unassumingly" talk. In any case, "unnoticeably" is just a term epic to writers. While the ''Daily Pennsylvanian'' (Penn's school paper), gave a shallow caution to the talk, one understudy part went in a general sense further. Brad Rosenberg, utilizing the username brad34, meandered onto a Mets message board and articulated that Bobby V affected a couple of players and the virtuosos. The basic press put in most extreme exertion; by then head official Steve Phillips skiped on a plane to Pittsburgh to pow-wow with Valentine; and minor disfavor was in progress.

[nearphiladelphiapa1-blog]

Near Philadelphia PA

Climate

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania gets an average of 47 inches of rain per year as compared to the US average of 38 inches of rain per year. On the other hand, Philadelphia gets 13 inches of snow per year while the US average is 28 inches of snow per year. There are 207 sunny days per year in Philadelphia while the US average is 205 sunny days. Summer High is recorded on July at around 87 degrees Fahrenheit while Winter Low is on January with 26 degrees Fahrenheit. Philadelphia gets some kind of precipitation like rain, snow, sleet or hail with an average of 119 days per year.

Data Analyzers Data Recovery Services - Philadelphia

Gone are the days when we regret not being able to capture moments instantly just because we forgot to bring our cameras. Nowadays, almost all of us bring our mobile phone wherever we go so memories are immediately taken and preserved. But unfortunately, we sometimes forget to back them up. If an accident happens and you think you have lost all your files, a company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania can save the day. Data Analyzers possess some of the most advanced tools and experienced engineers to ensure the recovery of the most valuable souvenir from your phone. They can recover data from damaged phones caused by water, fire, or run over. Locked phones due to a forgotten password or nonfunctional touch screens are also services they provide.

Philly Launches Survey On Govt Services, Resident Priorities

The city is releasing its 2019 Philadelphia Residents Survey, conducted in partnership with the Temple University Institute for Survey Research (ISR) and BeHeardPhilly.Read more here

All Philadelphia citizens, ages 18 and older, are invited to participate in a survey that measures their attitudes towards a wide range of city services. The 2019 Philadelphia Residents Survey is conducted in partnership with the Temple University Institute for Survey Research (ISR) and BeHeardPhilly. The reason for the said appraisal is to measure public opinion on the delivery of services such as garbage collection, the condition of facilities such as parks and recreation center, and to identify priorities among residents. There will be randomly-chosen participants who will receive their survey form via mail and others can also take part online.

Philadelphia Zoo in Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia Zoo is known as the first zoo chartered in the United States in 1859. It is considered to be one of the best laid-out and most animal-packed zoos in the country. The facility is located in a 42-acre Victorian garden with tree-lined walks and animal sculptures. Besides its nearly 1,300 faunas, the wildlife park houses the home of William Penn's grandson, together with his botanical collections of over 500 plant species, his groundbreaking research, and his fine veterinary center. Visit its fascinating Zoo360 initiative which offers a pioneering animal travel exploration trail system, and many other innovations.

Link to map

Driving Direction

17 min (7.2 miles)

via Aramingo Ave

Fastest route now, avoids road closures on Kelly Dr

Philadelphia Zoo

Zoological Dr, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

Head northeast on Zoological Dr toward W Girard Ave

1 min (0.1 mi)

Follow N 34th St to Spring Garden St/SR 3014/State Rte 3014

3 min (0.9 mi)

Continue to I-676

5 min (1.1 mi)

Continue on I-676. Take I-95 N to Richmond St. Take exit 23 from I-95 N

5 min (3.4 mi)

Take Aramingo Ave to E Clearfield St

7 min (1.7 mi)

Data Analyzers Data Recovery Services - Philadelphia

Data Analyzers Data Recovery Services

2268 E Clearfield St #371

Philadelphia, PA 19134

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Ideal Format and Process of writing a Dissertation

Dissertation is a mandate required to complete your bachelor’s program. This is one of the most difficult parts of the course and requires a lot preparation and hard work. Despite of preparations and commitments, dissertation tasks still remains the most daunting tasks. Best Research Paper Writing Service has come up with some important tips to help the students.

Choosing a Topic

Go for a topic that appeal to you the most

You must choose topic which is practical in nature and not too theoretically complicated. Selecting complicated topics will overload your dissertation work

It would be comparatively simpler to choose a simple topics

Go for the topic which can facilitate with a valid research question

Create a good plan of action and a practical schedule

Penn down all the important points before starting the project

You can also consider help of a professional Paper Writing Services Online

Try to create an outline of the project in your mind before proceeding

Ideal Format of a Dissertation

Introduction – This part is one of the most crucial parts of the project. You need to give the hypothesis in this part along with a summary of the final conclusion. Make sure you keep the writing clean and simple.

Literature Review – This part consist of the various theories and ideas presented by the experts. To make your dissertation work more appealing make sure you effectively compare and evaluate minimum 10 other sources. You can refer some models and theories for this purpose. You can take guidance from Power point Presentation Help services offered by professional writing firms.

Methodology – You need to present some relevant points to defend your research ideas. You can include empirical data in this section to validate your points. You can structure your methodology section with the help of questionnaire and interview methods, major challenges, etc.

Findings – As per the Best Research Paper Writing Service this is an important part of dissertation. This is also the largest section of the project. This portion forms almost 30% of the total dissertation project. This is the section which offers you the opportunity to showcase your findings and in depth analysis.

Discussion – In this you can explain the connection between your evidences collected from research methodologies with the other aspects of your project. You can also discuss your major findings here.

Conclusion – The last but the most powerful part of your dissertation project. What is your say on the validity of your research design and also explain any of your recommendations.

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Joycelyn Elders

Minnie Joycelyn Elders (born Minnie Lee Jones; August 13, 1933) is an American pediatrician and public health administrator. She was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the first African American appointed as Surgeon General of the United States. Elders is best known for her frank discussion of her views on controversial issues such as drug legalization and distributing contraception in schools. She resigned in December 1994 amidst controversy. She is currently a professor emerita of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Early life and education

Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones in Schaal, Arkansas, to a poor farm sharecropping family, and was the eldest of eight children, and valedictorian of her school class. The family also spent two years near a defense plant in Richmond, California. In college, she changed her name to Minnie Joycelyn Lee. In 1952, she received her B.S. degree in Biology from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she also pledged Delta Sigma Theta. After working as a nurse's aide in a Veterans Administration hospital in Milwaukee for a period, she joined the United States Army in May 1953. During her 3 years in the Army, she was trained as a physical therapist. She then attended the University of Arkansas Medical School, where she obtained her M.D. degree in 1960. After completing an internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and a residency in pediatrics at the University of Arkansas Medical Center, Elders earned an M.S. degree in Biochemistry in 1967.

Surgeon General of the United States

Elders has received a National Institutes of Health career development award, also serving as assistant professor in pediatrics at the University of Arkansas Medical Center from 1967. She was promoted to associate professor in 1971 and professor in 1976. Her research interests focused on endocrinology, and she received board certification as a pediatric endocrinologist in 1978, becoming the first person in the state of Arkansas to do so. Elders received a D.Sc. degree from Bates College in 2002.

In 1987, then-Governor Bill Clinton appointed Elders as Director of the Arkansas Department of Health. Her accomplishments in this position included a tenfold increase in the number of early childhood screenings annually and almost a doubling of the immunization rate for two-year-olds in Arkansas. In 1992, she was elected President of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers.

In January 1993, Bill Clinton appointed her the United States Surgeon General, making her the first African American and the second woman (following Antonia Novello) to hold the position. She was a controversial choice and a strong backer of the Clinton health care plan, so she was not confirmed until September 7, 1993. As surgeon general, Elders quickly established a reputation for controversy. Like many of the surgeons general before her, she was an outspoken advocate of a variety of health-related causes. She argued for an exploration of the possibility of drug legalization and backed the distribution of contraceptives in schools. President Clinton stood by Elders, saying that she was misunderstood.

Views on drug legalization

Elders drew fire - and censure from the Clinton administration - when she suggested that legalizing drugs might help reduce crime and that the idea should be studied. On December 15, 1993, around one week after making these comments, charges were filed against her son Kevin, for selling cocaine in an incident involving undercover officers, four months prior. Elders believes the incident was a frame-up and the timing of the charges was designed to embarrass her and the president. Kevin Elders was convicted, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He appealed his conviction to the Arkansas Supreme Court, and that court reaffirmed the conviction. The court held that Mr. Elders failed to show that he was entrapped into making the narcotics sale. There was no further appeal.

Comments on human sexuality and termination

In 1994, she was invited to speak at a United Nations conference on AIDS. She was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a means of preventing young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity, and she replied, "I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught." This remark caused great controversy and resulted in Elders losing the support of the White House. White House chief of staff Leon Panetta remarked, "There have been too many areas where the President does not agree with her views. This is just one too many." Elders was fired by President Clinton in December 1994. Elders had previously made a number of other statements that put her in the public spotlight, like her quote in January 1994 "We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children."

A collection of her professional papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

Post-governmental activities

Since leaving her post as surgeon general, she has returned to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences as professor of pediatrics, and is currently professor emerita at UAMS. She is a regular on the lecture circuit, speaking against teen pregnancy. She has appeared on TV in Penn and Teller: Bullshit! during the episode on abstinence, where she says that she considers abstinence-only programs to be child abuse and discusses her opinions on teenage sex education, masturbation and contraceptives. She is interviewed in the 2013 documentary How to Lose Your Virginity on her opinions regarding comprehensive sex education versus abstinence-only sex education.

Elders wrote a book in an attempt to present her side of the controversies that surrounded her during her 16-month tenure as surgeon general.

In an October 15, 2010 article she clearly voiced support for legalization of marijuana:

I think we consume far more dangerous drugs that are legal: cigarette smoking, nicotine and alcohol... I feel they cause much more devastating effects physically. We need to lift the prohibition on marijuana.

http://wikipedia.thetimetube.com/?q=Joycelyn+Elders&lang=en

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Edgar allan poe colloquy of una

For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven," to instant success. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. Later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point and declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, Poe parted ways with John Allan. It was at this time his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian." With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe JanuOctober 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. The Colloquy of Monos and Una is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.