#I lived in brazil my entire life until age 19 when I moved to the US

[ryan-sometimes]

are you really brazillian

Uma gringa teria isso??

[warninggraphiccontent]

29 January 2021

Tragedy and statistics

The UK marked a grim milestone this week, recording more than 100,000 Covid deaths by every measure.

Various versions of the famous quote have it that one death is a tragedy, many merely a statistic. Newspapers tried to avoid that and humanise the sombre statistic in different ways. The front pages of The Times and the i focused on the individual tragedies, photographs highlighting the human beings behind the numbers.

Beyond their front pages, both tried to visualise the impact. The i used its paper form to give a double page spread to 100,000 dots, each representing a death. Online, The Times combined the human stories with a different use of dots and a 'narrative scroll', the act of having to move down the page helping illustrate the extent of the tragedy. It put me in mind of Ampp3d's story from 2014 (no longer online, analysis here and here) visualising migrant worker deaths in Qatar. The New York Times took a different approach to scrolling , using the density of dots to show how the pandemic unfolded in the US.

The FT, meanwhile, kept things simple, using a line chart to show the different measures of deaths all exceeding 100,000, and a simple bar chart to compare the UK's mortality rate to others.

Different approaches, but all important attempts to communicate the human cost of Covid and examples of how data visualisation can help make sense of tragedy on such a large scale, when words might fail us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In other news:

It's Data Bites this Wednesday at 6pm. Come!

Congratulations to my erstwhile IfG colleagues on the latest (terrific) edition of Whitehall Monitor. Read it here (some more links below), sign up for next week's launch event here.

I had a great time at this year's (virtual) UKGovCamp last week - thanks to the campmakers for making it work so well online. I made it to sessions on public trust; the state of (open) data; every move you make, every word you type...; data in regulation; silos beyond government; data service design; and digital exclusion. I ran a session on whether some sort of annual report on the state of government data could work and if so, what it should include - the notes are here, Jamboard here, and rest assured it's a subject I'll be returning to... Full grid of events and notes here.

The Atlantic had a rather good piece on narratives about the pandemic this week, and how a successful vaccination programme could dispel memories of 'a catastrophic failure of governance': 'The pandemic disaster that might not happen'. I wonder if focusing on how politicians can drive their own narrative overshadows the role of society's storytellers - the media - in shaping and questioning narratives, and absolves them of agency to hold the government to account. Not dissimilar to some narratives around data and technology that seem to forget the decisions around them are made by humans.  

Have views on vaccine passports? Tony does. A reminder that the project I'm working with the Ada Lovelace Institute on is taking evidence until 19 February.

And I forgot to post this last week... President Biden's inaugural address grappled with some of the same tensions between unity and dissent in a democracy that some of the founding fathers did in The Federalist. I'm a particular fan of Alexander Hamilton's fourth and fifth paragraphs here, the fourth eloquent on the need to respect our opponents, and the fifth eloquent on the exact opposite ('no, not these opponents').

Have a good weekend

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Macabre milestones

Boris Johnson ‘deeply sorry’ as UK’s Covid death toll passes 100,000* (FT)

How the UK reached 100,000 Covid deaths* (The Times)

100,162 lives (The i, via Matt Butler)

UK official Covid death toll has always undercounted fatalities, analysis shows (The Guardian)

How the world reached 100 million coronavirus cases* (New Statesman)

Covid-19 cases pass 100m* (The Economist)

How 425,000 Coronavirus Deaths Added Up* (New York Times)

Vax populi

Covid-19 vaccine tracker: the global race to vaccinate* (FT)

Vaccine nationalism means that poor countries will be left behind* (The Economist)

Vaccination rates in England are lower for older non-white people, study shows* (FT)

Viral content

UK Covid lockdown starting to work, say scientists* (FT)

Home page for an experimental website displaying COVID-19 statistics

New UK and South Africa Covid variants may spread more easily, so what does this mean for the fight against coronavirus? (The Guardian)

The Amazonian city that hatched the Brazil variant has been crushed by it* (Washington Post)

The march of the coronavirus across America* (The Economist)

See Covid-19 Risk in Your County and a Guide for Daily Life Near You* (New York Times)

We are now sharing previously hidden weekly COVID-19 state profile reports with the public (Cyrus Shahpar, White House COVID-19 Data Director)

Covid-19 Pandemic Could Be Source of Global Crises for Years: WEF* (Bloomberg)

US

Putting Kamala Harris as VP into perspective (Melissa Shusterman)

How popular is Joe Biden? (FiveThirtyEight)

Joe Biden is taking executive action at a record pace* (The Economist)

Full List: Where Every Senator Stands on Convicting Trump* (New York Times)

How The Frost Belt And Sun Belt Illustrate The Complexity Of America’s Urban-Rural Divide (FiveThirtyEight)

Our Radicalized Republic (FiveThirtyEight)

This is one of the most harrowing pictures I have seen about how we lost an entire generation (@marcusjdl)

UK

Whitehall Monitor 2021 (IfG)

Launch event next week (IfG)

Three ways that the coronavirus crisis has changed government (Alice for IfG)

Ministers overrode official advice more than ever in last year’s crisis* (Tim for Times Red Box)

We’ve calculated ward level EU Referendum estimates in England/Wales (James Kanagasooriam)

In data: the benefits squeeze* (Prospect)

Who's furloughed? (Resolution Foundation)

Cities Outlook 2021 (Centre for Cities)

Global

The uncounted: How many women die at the hands of their partners? We simply don’t know – and that needs to change* (Tortoise)

La Niña Roars, Unleashing Fire, Drought and Floods Worldwide* (Bloomberg)

How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world (The Guardian)

Pessimism and Distrust Could Sway Elections Around the World* (Bloomberg)

Poland’s coal-fired home heating creates widespread pollution* (The Economist)

#dataviz

How to work with Facebook population density data (Alasdair Rae)

Check out this interesting cartography decision! (Gretchen Peterson)

Sport

How green are Premier League clubs? Tottenham top sustainability table (not entirely convinced by this graphic, BBC Sport - and not just because Spurs are top)

When GOATs meet: Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, by the numbers* (Washington Post)

Everything else

The frenzied rise of GameStop* (The Economist)

Data Archeogram: mapping the datafication of work (Autonomy)

VIEW THE ARMADA MAPS (National Museum of the Royal Navy)

Spanish Armada maps 'saved for the nation' (BBC News)

Meta data

ICO baby

Our session with Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee)

Tory party illegally collected data on ethnicity of 10m voters, MPs told (The Guardian)

Covid contracts: Extend FoI act to cover private companies making millions says Information Commissioner (Evening Standard)

Adtech investigation resumes (ICO)

Information commissioner’s term extended to allow successor recruitment (Public Technology)

Shaking that pass

Exclusive: Tony Blair calls on Boris Johnson to lead drive for global vaccine passport* (Telegraph)

Vaccine passports and ID Cards (Phil Booth)

Tech companies are racing to build smart vaccine passports. But technology isn't the only problem (ZDNet)

Viral content

What Covid revealed about government’s legacy IT, and what to do next (Civil Service World)

What can wastewater tell us about COVID-19? (COG-UK)

Digital government

Our Syllabus: Here to help you teach Digital Era Government (Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age)

Respecting users’ privacy on GOV.UK accounts (Inside GOV.UK)

Two GDS projects to watch : GOV.UK Accounts and “Forms discovery” (David Durant)

Government Gateway at 20 – looking back at the UK’s most successful digital identity system (Computer Weekly)

No digital postal vote application service before May elections (Public Technology)

"Find your NHS number" (Tom Read and others)

Open government

The Path to the Future (Audrey Tang for CommonWealth)

We are thrilled to announce that #OpenGovWeek will take place May 17-21, 2021! (Open Government Partnership)

RECOMMENDATIONS TO STRENGTHEN CANADA’S RESPONSE TO NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND REDUCE THE HARM CAUSED BY THEIR MISUSE (Public Policy Forum)

FOI* (Peter Geoghegan for the LRB)

AI got 'rithm

Government by Algorithm: The Myths, Challenges and Opportunities (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

What's your go-to document or paper that defines different types of algorithmic bias? (Rumman Chowdhury)

AI review: Transforming our world with AI (UKRI)

New – Amazon SageMaker Clarify Detects Bias and Increases the Transparency of Machine Learning Models (AWS)

Who Is Winning the AI Race: China, the EU, or the United States? — 2021 Update (Center for Data Innovation)

The City of New York has released an inventory of algorithms in use (Rumman Chowdhury)

A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI discourse- Call for Contributors (AI Now Institute)

Independent auditors are struggling to hold AI companies accountable (Fast Company)

Media

Fix information failures or risk lives: the Full Fact Report 2021 (Full Fact)

Facebook News feature launches in UK (BBC News)

How Participatory Media Promote Coverage of Social Movements (Nieman Reports)

‘It’s a reality’: Google threatens to stop search in Australia due to media code (Sydney Morning Herald)

Privacy

Exploring Design and Governance Challenges in the Development of Privacy-Preserving Computation (Nitin Agrawal, Reuben Binns, Max Van Kleek, Kim Laine, Nigel Shadbolt)

How Europe’s privacy laws are failing victims of sexual abuse (Politico)

Inside India’s booming dark data economy (Rest of World)

We're exploring the role of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in enabling secure and trustworthy use of data (CDEI)

#DataProtectionDay

#DataPrivacyDay

Everything else

Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to the members of Congress who tried to subvert the Democratic process (Judd Legum)

Why does Big Tech want us to feel nostalgic?* (New Statesman)

Census 2021 will be taking place March 21 (ONS)

Opportunities

EVENT: Data Bites #16 (IfG)

JOB: Chair of Geospatial Commission (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Head of Open and Innovative Government Division (OECD)

JOB: Head of the Evaluation Task Force (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Product Manager (360Giving)

And finally...

Lady Gaga as diagrams about AI systems (thread). (Miles Brundage)

Infosec sea shanties (Rachel Tobac)

[yeonchi]

2021 Mid-Year Report

A lot of things can change in a year, but even more things can change in six months than you think. This is going to be a special post styled like my end-of-year reviews that focuses on the events of the past six months. I don’t know if I’ll be doing this again next year because I felt like making this post; in fact, I don’t know when I’ll stop posting my end-of-year reviews either.

Looking back at Sea Princesses

This time last year, I was in the midst of the second coronavirus lockdown in Melbourne, unemployed on double benefits without needing to look for work. At the same time, I was working on translating and reviewing the Princesas do Mar books, which I had brought from Amazon the month before. My original intention was to buy the books once I had saved up enough money from putting aside part of my paycheck, but looking back, I knew I made a better decision buying the books when I did.

At the same time, Fabio Yabu had also released the main series books as ebooks on Amazon Kindle and would begin releasing translated versions of the first four literacy series books on there as well. A year on, the last two literacy series books have still not been published as yet, though Ubook would publish them as audiobooks in Brazil (with the exception of Turtles in Danger for some reason). In our communications, Yabu had expressed interest in publishing translated versions of the main series books (based on my translations), but the last time we spoke in May, he stated that he had a lot going on, so that has been put on hold for the time being.

From time to time, I go on the wiki and make edits wherever I feel like. This isn’t something that I really needed to express, but I wanted to do so because I am planning on putting the translated episode names on their respective pages eventually. That information was originally posted on the International Entertainment Project Wiki before they planned to move the episode lists to Miraheze but never ended up doing so. Though the episode lists with the translated episode names have been taken down from the IEP Wiki, I have managed to save them and I will put them up on the Sea Princesses Wiki gradually and eventually. Keep in note that the only languages I have all the translated titles for are Brazilian Portuguese, Castilian Spanish and German; sources for other languages are always appreciated.

I’ve been thinking about this question time and time again over the years, but I’ve never brought myself to bring it up on Tumblr until now - Would I like to see a reboot, revival or continuation of Sea Princesses? My answer is both yes and no. I say yes because there is so much unexplored potential and unanswered questions in both the books and animated series with things like the Barracuda Kingdom saga, Marcello and Marcela, more interactions with other characters, more focus on other characters and so forth. However, I also say no because usual reboot criticism aside (character designs are shit, story is shit etc), I fear that the character designs of the Sea Princesses may not sit right with certain people and that they may be misconstrued as jailbait or something like that. While it would be nice to see something new in regards to Sea Princesses someday, that all depends on whether Fabio Yabu is interested in revisiting it like he did the Combo Rangers nearly a decade ago. And besides, if Yabu isn’t interested, then who needs him when I’ve made so much Sea Princesses content over the past few years, including my takes on the continuation of the series in Kisekae Insights? Which brings us to our next topic...

Kisekae Insights and my transition into adult life

In case you haven’t heard, I started at a new job at the end of May and it’s been quite full-on. Amidst all the distractions around me and my commitment to finish up my personal project by the end of this year, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make two instalments of Kisekae Insights per month as I promised in #21, but as I made clear from the very start, there is no set schedule for the series, so this isn’t necessarily the end of the second run. I decided to just take the rest of my personal project at my own pace and I will possibly do likewise with Kisekae Insights.

Coronavirus and vaccines

At the start of June, Melbourne went into a week-long circuit breaker lockdown that later became two weeks long. This was our fourth lockdown after a short third lockdown in February that lasted five days. And it just so happened that I had to start working from home because of it. It’s not that bad, I’m currently doing a mix of WFH and onsite working so I don’t have to wake up at 6 AM (play on my phone and wake up at like 6:30) and take two hours of public transport just to get to work five days a week.

Numerous variants of the coronavirus have been discovered in the past year. We have variants originating in the UK (Alpha/B.1.1.7), South Africa (Beta/B.1.351), Brazil (Gamma/P.1) and India (Delta/B.1.617.2) among others. The Indian (Delta) variant in particular has been the reason for the recent lockdowns in Australia.

In regards to the naming of the coronavirus and its variants, it’s absolutely funny how their timing came about. When the original coronavirus started in Wuhan, China and was declared to the WHO on 31 December 2019, the WHO named the resulting disease COVID-19 on 11 February 2020, keeping in mind that Asian crybabies were crying about “China Virus”, “Wuhan Virus” or “Kung Flu” back then and are probably still crying about it now. At the start of June, the WHO announced that they would use Greek letters to refer to the variants when the media have used “UK variant”, “Indian variant” etc for months, which is longer than it took mainstream media and society to adopt the name COVID-19. Though their motivation to do this is to prevent stigmatisation like with the original coronavirus, I have heard nothing about British, South African, Brazilian or even Indian people being discriminated over the variants. It’s almost like people have more problems with “China Virus” than “UK variant”, “Indian variant” etc because they somehow have a need to please China and make people realise that all Asians aren’t the same. On top of that, obscuring the variants will eventually lead to people being confused over their origins when more of them inevitably emerge.

Recently, investigations into the origin of the coronavirus have been ongoing, much to China’s ongoing outrage and condemnation. When the coronavirus started, there was a theory that it somehow leaked from a lab in Wuhan; back then, people were laughed for believing it (because Trump was the one who was talking about it), but now, the mainstream media is going with that story while covering the investigations (because Biden’s the one who is talking about it now). It’s almost like a big “I told you so” from the people who knew better.

I’ve said this in my Red Pill Year post and I’ll say it again; all this fuss over naming the coronavirus and its variants to prevent stigmatisation is just an act of political correctness for China’s sake. While I have started to warm to the term COVID-19 (in a humourous and ironic sense), I still stand by my current positions so far; while I don’t entirely agree with “China virus”, I still refer to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus” because it started in Wuhan until proven otherwise beyond all reasonable doubt, whether it leaked from the lab or whatever. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with this if the virus didn’t start in China. I’m a person who doesn’t really mind or care about political correctness if it’s just a little bit here and there, but given the events of the past decade, I draw the line when it comes to China.

Let’s talk about vaccines now. Vaccines have been a big topic over the past six months - in Hong Kong, Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine has become a meme in the pro-democracy population because to May, there were 24 deaths recorded as a result of side effects compared to the alternate BioNTech vaccine with 6 deaths. Granted, the deaths were in people aged 50 and over (possibly with underlying health conditions), but it has given people a reason to hold off or even refrain from getting the vaccine. On a side note, the “you’re going to Brazil” meme has never felt realer because CoronaVac is one of the vaccines being offered in Brazil along with Argentina, Colombia and Peru. My thoughts and prayers go to them at this point in time.

Now, I am by no means an anti-vaxxer, but I stand by the belief that coronavirus vaccines should be voluntary and not mandatory (I wish I could say the same for other vaccines, but I’d be perpetuating a double standard because adults are in control of our lives before we reach the age of majority). There are some countries and places that are providing incentives to people who get vaccinated, with quite a few of them being offered in the form of prize draws. In all honesty, given the nature of these vaccines, I don’t see the point of prize draws as incentives because there is no other benefit for those who don’t win except for protection against coronavirus, its associated symptoms, or even a release from our agonising and pitiful existences.

My main fear is that vaccine stigmatisation and discrimination might become mainstream with the existence of things like vaccine passports, where people who haven’t taken the vaccine are disallowed from accessing basic services. I can live with wearing masks indoors and on public transport and without leaving the country or even the state, but if the slippery slope gets to a point where people aren’t allowed to shop at supermarkets, eat at restaurants, take public transport or even hold a job without getting vaccinated, that’s the point where I start to become an anti-vaxxer.

There are some industries where getting vaccinated is not only highly recommended, but essential, such as health and aged care. I (luckily) don’t work in those industries so my opinion probably won’t matter, but if you work around vulnerable people regularly, then you as an individual should be responsible for taking the necessary precautions to prevent coronavirus infections and deaths.

So here’s my personal stance on this whole vaccination debacle; I will personally not be getting vaccinated for the foreseeable future, but I am not against people getting vaccinated if they so choose. This is not only because of the potential side effects or even my fear of needles (anyone who points this out to me is missing the point because my reasoning would be the same regardless of it), but because of the potential for the stigmatisation and discrimination of people who choose not to get vaccinated, the erosion of human rights for said people and most of all, the way that China has been involved in all of this; the vaccines were made to combat a virus that originated in China and I am particularly wary of some things coming from China, whether the vaccine is Chinese-made or otherwise.

Hong Kong pessimism

Things in Hong Kong have gotten worse over the past six months and they’re only about to get worser, but in spite of this, I believe that it will be all for the greater good.

Of significance, Apple Daily published their last issue on Thursday 24 June, taking down their website, social media and YouTube accounts on the same day. I used to make shitposts on a separate Facebook page by sharing their posts with satirical captions, sometimes with slurs (particularly the n-word on articles relating to mainland China) until some bitch I was having a feud with kept reporting my posts and got my page unpublished (he would have nearly taken my account with it if I hadn’t called him out and told him to kill himself, at which point we agreed to end the feud). Now that the Apple Daily Facebook page is gone, a lot of the shitposts on my personal page have gone as well; if I hadn’t deleted my separate page following the feud, chances are that I would be making plans to delete it by now because posts from that page made up a majority of my shitposts.

Since its founding in 1995, Apple Daily has been part of the mainstream media in Hong Kong, but due to its pro-democracy (and pro-Hong Kong) stance, it has been pushed to the fringe while other mainstream media outlets (like TVB) expressed pro-government/pro-police/pro-Beijing stances. While other pro-democracy news pages have popped up, there is a chance that the government may crack down on them following the enactment of the National Security Law one year ago; in short, Apple Daily was just in their way and the government will come for them eventually.

RTHK isn’t faring any better; while they are still running as a public radio and television service, they’ve been reined in by the government after their coverage of the 21 July 2019 attacks in Yuen Long. You know, the one where KKK members (in white clothes) lynched black(-clothed) people publicly in a train station and two police were seen walking away as emergency calls were being rejected? Earlier this year, some of RTHK’s programs were removed from their YouTube channel, claiming that their policy was to make content available for one year only, which is obviously not an excuse to fix their apparent pro-democracy bias.

Just last week on 25 June, there was a government reshuffling that led to a former police officer becoming chief secretary, the current police chief being the secretary for security and the deputy police commissioner becoming the chief commissioner. This just reaffirms my belief that all cops are bastards and that from 1 July, my bios on Facebook and Tumblr will be changing to highlight this and the plight of Hongkongers under these turbulent times. I’ve been wary of the Hong Kong police since their actions in the 2014 Occupy Central protests, but I officially became an ACABer sometime in 2020.

Here’s the thing. The government has outright ignored or rejected our requests for change over the years, so pro-democracy supporters are calling for a revolution, which the Chinese government somehow sees as advocating for independence, so the supporters have no hope of achieving their demands unless Hong Kong becomes independent from China, but the Chinese government is obviously not going to allow it, so they naturally turn to the international community for help. While sanctions did have an effect on the officials looming over Hongkongers, we are at an impasse right now because the next eventual step would be war, but no country wants to be responsible for firing the first shot, so the international community resorts to diplomacy while the Chinese government turns to condemning international interference in their internal affairs time and time again.

If, someday, the revolution were somehow successful and Hong Kong were to be liberated the way the protesters wanted, you know the first thing I would like to see? A fucking holocaust. I’d like to see a fucking holocaust of all the government officials who caused us suffering, the police officers who were “just following orders” and all the braindead boomers, Mainland Chinese n-words and other n-word lovers who have nothing but hatred for real Hongkongers. But hey, we all know that’s not going to happen because anyone who advocates for it is no worse than Hitler. Oh wait, that means I’m worse than Hitler because I said all that. Well, I guess that’s what I get for being pissed off at everything that’s happened and venting about it on the internet lol.

After Apple Daily’s shutdown, I have essentially doubled down on all of my beliefs. I have no sympathy for anyone who won’t stand with Hongkongers, and by that I mean anyone who actively stands against Hongkongers or turns traitor by questioning our motives and standing against them (I don’t really have an opinion on anyone who decides to stay silent because I don’t know what their true motivations would be). In short, anyone who doesn’t support Hongkongers is an n-word or n-word lover.

I’m really sorry for sounding toxic or harsh in anything I said about Hong Kong in the past couple of years. I only say these things because I really fucking love Hong Kong and I only hope that I won’t have to fear being confronted by the police or saying anything wrong the next time I visit Hong Kong with my family. Until things get really better, I’ve decided that Hong Kong is off-limits for me, but for now, let the government keep accelerating and laam chauing Hong Kong by themselves. It shows just how scared of us they are when they blame us for its eventual destruction, because in the end, it’s for the greater good.

UPDATE - 3 July 2021: I heard about the guy who stabbed a police officer then killed himself on 1 July. To be honest, I don’t feel sorry for the cop nor do I condemn what the guy did, particularly now that I’m fully into ACAB. People should be thinking about what motivated the guy to martyr himself in a lone wolf attack, namely the actions of the government over the past 24 years and the police over the last 7 years. Yet another reminder that all cops are bastards.

The US and Palestine

I have to say, Joe Biden has subverted my expectations when it came to Hong Kong and China. A lot of us feared that his administration would undo the hard work Trump’s administration did, but at the very least, they are still wary of the current situation and things have stayed pretty much the same.

As for Palestine, I would like to state that I stand with the oppressed peoples of the world and that goes for the Palestinians (and on a side note, Myanmar) as well. Jewish people have become a meme with their stereotypes and while I am not antisemitic, I apply the ACAB logic to them because it’s the system (or Jewish beliefs and Israeli governance) that is the problem here (haha AJAB lol). Ironically, it’s like Eric Cartman’s Mel Gibson fan club in real life.

Anyway, I think I’ve said enough. Despite all the harsh things I’ve said, I only hope that the world will become a better place one day, but until then, I wish you peace in these turbulent times.

沿途在　修理著熄了的曙光 祝你在亂流下平安

[secretradiobrooklyn]

The Singing Senator Edition | 5.22.21

Secret Radio | 5.22.21 | Hear it here.

1. Dara Puspita - “Bertamasja”

Dara Puspita was an Indonesian band, active right from the start of rock n roll — like, they jumped into it in 1964. I love how it sounds like gnarly garage rock until the lead guitar tone pulls out and reveals a super VU sound. With a surf structure! It’s just about a perfect nugget of song. 

2. Yol Aularong - “Sou Slarp Kroam Kombut Srey (Rather Die Under a Woman’s Sword)”

Yol Aularong has the wildest voice, and total commitment to rock’s magic transformative power, even in a context where he was risking his life. He does things that would make Screamin’ Jay lean back and appreciate. The arrangements and his delivery just o’erbrim with life and character. 

3. The Psychedelic Aliens - “We’re Laughing”

This band is like Atomic Forest in that they’re just the answer to any collector’s wildest dreams of rarity: they’re a Ghanaian band who released exactly 8 songs and were big in the Accra scene. The groove of this song, especially in headphones, is just mesmerizing, and his delivery gets gradually more and more abstract. It sounds like Marijata and what I wish WITCH sounded more like. Undeniable.

- Glenn Miller Orchestra - “Sunrise Serenade”

4. Prewar Yardsale - “Turn On (Live Peel Session)”

We got into Prewar Yardsale through Jeffrey. Because we got into this band that he introduced us to, he said he had some rarities and other tracks. That he sent our way, and this is from that.  

5. Chai - “In Pink (feat. MNDSGN)”

I think first it was the New York Times, then the Guardian, then the New Yorker all writing about this band essentially in the same week — and we definitely had no idea what they sound like. This song had just debuted on YouTube 18 hours earlier. I think, especially now through repeated listens, it’s a rad track. I love the way MNDSGN winds his vocals into the song, then has his passage, then smoothly winds his way out again. It’s like meeting a really interesting person at an already cool party.

6. Waipod Phetsuphan - “Ding Ding Dong”

Siamese music — Thai music. The guitar part is so primal and the drums so bright in the fills and meanwhile it sounds like he’s casting a spell. And what a refrain.

7. Jacques Dutronc - “J’ai me un tigre dans ma guitare”

One of the greats — I have loved every song of his I’ve ever heard. This song really makes me appreciate his band, especially his drummer. 

8. Orchestra Baobab - “Kelen Ati Leen”

When we started WBFFing, it was partly because we were being blown away by the indisputable proof of James Brown’s influence on, and interaction with, the entire world. I don’t think I realized JB was a lot bigger than the Beatles in huge swaths of the world. This track is fundamentally expressing a JB groove and doing their own entire thing at the same time. The lead vocals’ flavor is just off the charts and the band is SO tight. 

9. Pierre Vassilou - “Qui c’est celui-là?”

What IS this song? It’s in French but it sounds like Brazil — I guess really it sounds like Os Mutantes. 

10. Betti-Betti w T.P. Orchestre Poly Rythmo - “Mahana”

The abundance of T.P. Orchestre keeps on giving. This beautiful, beautiful song is from an album they did with Cameroonian star Betti-Betti, who basically expressed the pain of her country so precisely that the whole nation mourned her passing when she died young. This melody is just stunning, and the harmony 

- Stunt Double - “Be My Baby”

Ace track from some of our favorite people in all of LA.

11. Bug Chaser - “Crowley’s Kids”

I don’t know if Bug Chaser is active at the moment, but some of our favorite STL shows have been watching and/or playing with Bug Chaser. We did the City Museum rooftop twice — and we split favorite VU songs at the Lou Reed Farewell show. Two drumsets, way too much information per track, and an epic live show with a lead character who knows how to lose himself in a song.

12. Eko Roosevelt - “Attends Moi”

We learned about Eko Roosevelt by glimpsing him in a movie about Betti-Betti. He’s a handsome bearded gentleman behind a piano. The first songs by him that got us were super heavy disco, but this one has its own special power. Lately Paige has been singing and playing it on guitar — I’m kind of hoping that we hear her version of “Attends Moi” in another broadcast.

13. Manzanita y Su Conjunto - “Shambar”

One of the sweetest musical gifts in our life has been the discovery of Analog Africa’s ever-growing musical jackpot. They sent their list a note recently about an upcoming record focused on Manzanita y Su Conjunto and their path through cumbia music, and there are two  tracks available now counting this one. We’ll be getting this record, this shit is amazing.

Paige: “I gotta get in touch with Mrs. Link.”

14. Lizzy Mercier Descloux - “Fire”

This song is from her 1979 debut, “Press Color,” and man, what an undeniable new character on the scene! She was based in Paris, hooked up with Michel Esteban, and together they not only established a store of crucial Parisian punkness but also published a fucking MAGAZINE called “Rock News”!! While making music like this! Eventually they moved to New York in 1977 (natch) and as far as I know just continued to be the coolest humans on Earth. I can’t wait to share some of her other tracks with you — besides the brilliant first album, there’s a whole record called “Zulu Rock”! 

15. Os Mutantes - “A Minha Menina”

And as always I think: What did the Beatles think of this music?! They must have known about it, they must have. To me it really brings a whole additional level that the Beatles wanted to get to but literally didn’t know how — and Os Mutantes did. 

16. Suburban Lawns - “Janitor”

Sometimes I wonder why something that sounds so objectionable can be the most vital music in the world. Like, nothing about the lyrics or the way this song is sung should be appealing — and instead, this song is brilliantly undeniable. It’s even better when you see them performing it. If you don’t know what they look like, I guarantee you she will be a surprising character.

My favorite words on it ever are something someone wrote as a comment under the video of their TV performance of this song: “Spent 15 years as a janitor. Can confirm every word.”  

17. Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea - “Mou Pei Na”

These two are just amazing characters in the pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodian music world. Ros Serey Sothea’s voice is totally unique, and Sisamouth has a sincere urgency that gives the whole song a surprising narrative shape.

18. Ranil - “Ángel Terrenal”

Analog Africa again — the cure for what ails you. They are truly combing the world for music that amazes. They played the length of the Amazon river and did their best to stay out of big cities after a bad experience with a record label. So they released these psychedelic jungle masterpieces on little slabs of vinyl that they sold up and down the river. Can you freaking believe that? 

- Salah Ragab - I believe you are responsible for telling us about Salah Ragab, Josh Weinstein. So good.

Also, as promised, further information about glue traps and why they’re so harsh (and how to pull off a successful rescue!) can be found here.

19. Dagi D - “Beka”

I feel like I knew my musical life had changed when I started thinking of every visit to an Ethiopian restaurant as a valuable moment to learn as much about the music as possible — especially Meskerem in St. Louis, it must be said. It turns out modern Ethiopian pop music is super addictive and can easily get stuck in your head for days. 

20. Raxstar - “Jaaneman”

We’re still pretty new to Kensington, our neighborhood in Brooklyn. We knew that a Muslim holiday called Eid al-Fitr was happening, and when it was happening, but we were still surprised by what a joyous holiday it was in our neighborhood. Everyone of all ages was out in their fines, which involved a whole lot of sequins and shining metallic threads. The men wore a lot of caftans and those excellent long shirts and/or jackets, most with beautiful patterns. We went for a long walk and just enjoyed seeing a holiday at full pitch — excited kids and tutting grandmas, people carrying big flower arrangements (in the shape of a crescent and star!), heavy-looking tins of food headed toward a feast, even fireworks overhead. We crossed paths with a group of dudes all dressed up in various states of celebration, from a sharp Western-style two-piece suit to an even sharper South Asian suit with a Nehru collar and snug caftan. It looked like they had just finished the parental part of the night and were deciding where and who to meet up with — exactly like, say, Thanksgiving night in your hometown. It felt like, from Coney Island to McDonald, Church to Cortelyou, it was New Year’s Eve for everyone but us. 

After our walk we returned to our apartment and set up a little folding table out back to enjoy a glass of wine in the warm air. Our neighbors across the fence were still in the midst of family time, with tons of kids running around, including a teensy little girl on a tiny little pink scooter and a gaggle of beautifully awkward teens in the posture and attitude that says “stand by your cousins and let me take your picture.” As the evening wore on and the parents drifted back inside, the young adult contingent got a speaker going, and soon we were catching tracks we’d never heard before. The one that made us first pay attention was “Jaaneman,” with the vocalist’s super-charismatic delivery and priceless accent. We found ourselves Shazaming song after song, and thus started learning about Desi hip hop, a whole world of East Asian immigrant tracks that offer a lens into life in the US and UK that I haven’t really seen since watching “My Beautiful Laundrette” many years ago. Fascinating!

“Jaaneman” literally means “soul of me,” but translates to “my love” or “my darling.” Check out Raxstar — I’d love to see him play SNL and get an impression of what he’s like live. Just last month he released “Forever Jaaneman,” which updates his original smash hit and is also a very strong track.

21. Nate Smith - “Spress Theyself”

One of the last shows we got to see in St. Louis was Nate Smith at Jazz at the Bistro, and holy smokes, what a pleasure to see him do his thing up close. I love this solo album because it sounds like a practice sesh that died and went to heaven. It doesn’t have a song’s logic, but it does follow the feel of a great intuitive exploration of a beat, wandering through subdivisions and feel variations with complete ease. 

22. Jefferson Airplane - “White Rabbit”

This is Paige’s call. I think it’s cool because I can hear the direct connection between this and Erkin Koray’s Anatolian psych rock style, which I previously had no idea about. This listen through, we’ve both been appreciating how overwhelming massive Grace Slick’s voice is.

23. Marie France - “Dereglée”

Another cut off the fantastic Born Bad Records comp “Paink,” and more proof that punk was happening in other languages at the same time. (Though I think they called themselves “méchant”… or denied being méchant, depending) The album art reveals that Marie France happened to look uncannily like a punk Marilyn Monroe, which only makes both MM and MF cooler. 

24. Operation Ivy - “One of These Days”

I was never for one second a punk in high school, but I knew that the Op Ivy t-shirt was the essence of functional punk.

- Shin Joong Hyun - “Moon Watching”

25. Shin Joong Hyun - “Spring Rain”

This guy has an otherworldly sense of melody and performance that indie rock only starting catching up with decades later. This is the guy sometimes referred to as the “Korean godfather of rock.” He was active from the early ‘60s til 1975, when he was arrested, tortured and banned in South Korea. Eventually, the leader who had hammered down on him died, and he was able to begin piecing his life back together. These iconic, evocative, cinematic recordings would sound great in any decade. 

Spoiler: it wasn’t! We walked across the bridge and it was a thoroughly magical New York evening. 

[supernatural0224]

J2 fics

1. Mildred: A College AU It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jared in possession of his heterosexuality will immediately switch teams upon enrollment in college and first contact with Jensen Ackles. [cute, adorable. Long, but really simple.] 2. Disclaimer  Jared and Jensen are willing to do almost anything to help their friends. Almost. But what Chris is asking of them this time? It's the one thing they both swore they'd never do: Grow up.  [I don't know about the individuals in here, but the relationship they have was ah-mazing.]

3.No Codename  Jared's got a brand new show, tons of things to keep him busy, and pretty much the most awesome costar he's ever met. Okay, so maybe he has some less than entirely pure thoughts about said costar sometimes, but he's, like, eighty-three percent sure Jensen thinks impure thoughts about him, too. Sometimes. Possibly. Now he just has to stop being so chicken-shit and actually make a move.   [oh my God! I can't remember when was the last time I had this much fun while reading something! And the best part is that I can imagine our Jared and Jensen being like this, in real life 😍] 4. Operation: Mistletoe  FBI Agent Jensen Ackles is a damn good agent, but his devil-may-care attitude, gut instinct, and sheer dumb luck have finally run out. With his job and reputation on the line, Jensen is assigned to a new partner: the overzealous and overachieving Agent Jared Padalecki.Their mission: Infiltrate a ring of drug dealers hiding out in Suburbia in the midst of the Holiday season.The only catch? They have to pretend to be head-over-heels in love with each other. [cuuute 😍] 5. Project Get Jared Banged Jared's had the best stepbrother in the world in Jensen since the age of five — growing up together and more attached than usual brothers would —, only realizing that he’s in love with Jensen by the time he hits thirteen.After five more years of Jared's impossible crush, he knows his life turns and spins around his brother. Luckily for Jared, he and Jensen have always been closer than other siblings, making his feelings seem a little less hopeless. Or that is until Jensen announces he’s moving to Austin to live with his girlfriend next year, leaving Jared's perfectly built Jensen-centric world crashing to the ground.That’s when Chad and Sandy decide to convince Jared that moving on and letting go of his feelings are the only way to get through his lost love for Jensen. Yet their plan to get Jared out of his shell and over his stepbrother doesn't sit well with one person: Jensen himself, who realizes that the more Jared tries to pull away, the more he wants to get him back closer. [The first time I read the summary, I squirmed away. But then, it turned out to be one of the sweetest, with angst served on side dish I have had in a while ;) ] 6.The Winchester Identity  A tall and handsome doctor is kidnapped by a mysterious green-eyed man who has no memory—but who definitely has a past. The J2 AU version of "The Bourne Identity".   [W-O-W!! This was so freaking amazing and absolutely amazingly written. It had been such a long time since I've read a good thriller - and since I hadn't read or watched the original, so I was totally unspoiled. I loved everything about it. Though it is freakishly long, but it is SO worth it.] 7. A Hole Straight up to the Sky   Captured by scientists determined to save the human race from impending extinction, two weres - seemingly strangers - are caged together in the hopes that they'll mate. What happens between them is unprecedented and changes the course of both their races forever. [I liked it. It was good. Worth a read.] 8. The Gloaming  gloam·ing ˈɡlō miNG/ - the part of the day after the sun has gone down and before the sky is completely dark: dusk Other popular connotations: gloam, glow, glowing, glomming, glommedJared always knew he would one day experience a gloaming and find his soulmate. No one told him, and in fact, no one else in his family that he knew of had ever glommed; but he just knew, and he was willing to wait, despite all the offers thrown his way and all the well-meaning advice by friends and family; Jared waited.After all the tragedy Jensen had endured recently, he was now content to live a simple life taking care of his family and working a job that he loved. He sure never thought he'd ever find love again, let alone a true love; if one were to believe in Gloamings, which Jensen never really did until it happened to him.Jared and Jensen - strangers from seemingly different worlds decide to give love a chance. But will outside forces and unforeseen enemies drive them apart or bring them together forever?They only have 60 days to consummate or the Gloaming will Fade... and they will both lose out on what could possibly be a love for the ages. [pure fluff. Like seriously, even the angst feels fluffy but um, yeah. Go ahead. It is fun. [Sequel awaiting]]

9. The Lost Big screen star Jensen Ackles was on his way to Brazil to continue filming his latest project. He was glad to lose himself in the role and bury the pain of his broken heart by slipping on a stranger’s skin. Because of his manager’s twisted attempt to help, he found himself on a private jet with a high-class rent boy. Before he could figure out what to do with that, a bolt of lightning sent them tumbling into the rain forest. With them believing there were no other survivors, Jensen has to figure how to get them back to civilization. It was a good thing he was as strong and capable as the leading men he portrayed on screen, because how much help could an expensive hooker really be in the middle of the Amazon? [okay? This? This is pretty amazing. (Apart from certain someone being over possessive and protective, but that’s probably just me) And I enjoyed this story more for, well, the story than the fact that I love to read about pairing. So, big kudos to the author. ] 10. Hope You Don't Mind   Jared has no problems being an introvert in a family of extroverted women. He enjoys his alone time as a freshman in high school... that is until signs for prom start showing up. With both his sisters going, he begins to wonder if maybe his time alone is a little lonely. [it is fluffy and funny and fantastical and a pretty decent one.] 11. When You Find Me [You'll Search No More] When Jared unexpectedly finds himself in possession of a stolen jewel that belongs to the mysterious and powerful sorceress who lives in the woods behind his castle, he feels compelled to return the stone right away. The witch surprises him by offering to grant him one wish, and the last thing he expects is to fall in love.  [i probably read an extra zero when I first read the word count so I was so surprised when it was coming to end :P But it is good, very cute :] ] 12. reinventing love 'verse   Coming out to your best friend isn’t easy. But then again, neither is falling in love with him. [okay. This is AMAZING and CUTE and I am a pile of mush which doesn't know what to do with her life anymore. *whispers very, very slowly* I want a love like that... ] 13. Bring Me to Life   Jared’s a shy young man, whose life has never been easy. His father hates him, his mother drinks her sorrows away and his husband Paul treats him like he is nothing more than a beautiful toy. When his husband has to go away on a business trip to Europe for two months, he sends Jared away to a ranch in the middle of nowhere to keep him under control. There, Jared meets people who show him what love, friendship and loyalty mean for the first time in his life. Can he escape his life and finally find some love and happiness for himself? [Oh, Jared! Come, babe. Let me wrap you up in blanket burrito.] 14. Refracted 1. To deflect (light, for example) from a straight path by refraction. 2. To alter by viewing through a medium. 3. BentJared knows exactly what he needs to do: earn a 4.0 grade point average, lead the basketball team to the state championship, nab a spot on the Homecoming Court, and be the best son two Catholic parents could ask for. He should know, this sort of stuff has been his life for the last 17 years, but this is when everything changes.Befriending Jensen Ackles, who everyone knows of but doesn’t really know, opens Jared’s eyes to an array of possibilities he’d never considered. With Jensen in his life, Jared finds the courage to to be his own person, recognize his real feelings, and make his own decisions when it comes to school, friends, and love. [this was nice. Sweet and simple. I liked it.] 15. There's a Hole in Me, Just About the Size of You  [I have already read and listed it, but seriously, it is just so angsty and inevitable and mushy - it is worth reading again] 16.The Doors of Time  About love and Fate and destiny. And Jensen being weird. And piano music. And finding the one person that's made for you in a world that isn't. Something like that. [AMAZING - seriously. There is no other word for this. Just, WOW!] 17. For All Your Days and Nights (I'm Gonna Be There)  Jared returns from a days-long hunting trip to learn that the chieftain of their tribe has passed away and Jensen, his best friend, is to succeed his father. As their new leader, he faces many challenges, including having to find a spouse. But before he settles down, Jensen asks for one night with Jared first. It turns into much more. [OMG this is super sweet! Loved it.] 18. Brand New Start  Jared Padalecki is one messed up kid, after his parent die he his tossed from Foster home to Foster home slowly losing everyone he loves. He's given one last chance with the Ackles. Can he come to peace with his past? Will he admit that he's attracted to Jensen? AU story of a hurt boy who's trying to find some peace and maybe, if he's lucky, love. [A little heartbreaking, a little painful but worth a read.] 19. [Won't Someone Come] Rescue Me   Big things are coming soon to The Wayward Heart Band; then lead singer and guitarist Jensen discovers a box of abandoned kittens, and his personal future starts to look just as bright as his professional one. [aw, so cute 😆] 20. You Came Smiling Softly, Shyly Moving, Into My World   Jensen wants more — wants to know what Jared tastes like in the morning, and after he's had his first cup of coffee of the day, and between takes, sheltered away in their trailers. He wants to explore Jared's body with his hands and mouth, get him to make every sweet noise there is; he wants to be inside him and all around him, until he's everywhere. [I ABSOLUTELY loved it. The author is probably my fav one.]  

[newstfionline]

Headlines

States mandate masks, begin to shut down again as coronavirus cases soar and hospitalizations rise (Washington Post) The pandemic map of the United States burned bright red Monday, with the number of new coronavirus infections during the first six days of July nearing 300,000 as more states and cities moved to reimpose shutdown orders. After an Independence Day weekend that attracted large crowds to fireworks displays and produced scenes of Americans drinking and partying without masks, health officials warned of hospitals running out of space and infection spreading rampantly. The United States is “still knee deep in the first wave” of the pandemic, Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday.

Colleges Plan to Reopen Campuses, but for Just Some Students at a Time (NYT) With the coronavirus still raging and the fall semester approaching, colleges and universities are telling large segments of their student populations to stay home. Those who are allowed on campus, they say, will be living in a world where parties are banned, where everyone is frequently tested for the coronavirus and—perhaps most draconian of all—where students attend many if not all their courses remotely, from their dorm rooms. In order to achieve social distancing, many colleges are saying they will allow only 40 to 60 percent of their students to return to campus and live in the college residence halls at any one time, often divided by class year. Stanford has said freshmen and sophomores will be on campus when classes start in the fall, while juniors and seniors study remotely from home. Harvard announced on Monday that it will mainly be first-year students and some students in special circumstances who will be there in the fall; in the spring, freshmen will leave and it will be seniors’ turn. At the same time, very few colleges are offering tuition discounts, even for those students being forced to take classes from home. Professors, students and parents all seem to be conflicted over how these plans will work out.

ICE threatens deportation of foreign students (Foreign Policy) The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency announced that foreign students studying at U.S. colleges and universities will face deportation if their institution moves to online classes and they remain in the country. The decision gives students less than two months to either transfer to a university offering in-person tuition or leave the country entirely. Peter McPherson, the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) whose members include the University of California system along with roughly 200 other universities, called the policy “incredibly unfair, harmful, and unworkable.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose state of Massachusetts is home to some of the country’s top universities, has called on ICE and its parent agency the Department of Homeland Security to drop the policy, calling it “senseless, cruel, and xenophobic.”

Singles are having kids with strangers as part of the co-parenting trend (NY Post) They’re skipping love and marriage and going straight to the part about a baby in a carriage. The latest child-rearing fad—co-parenting—is on the rise as singles desperate to have kids link up to raise children together—romance be damned. The concept is simple: Two strangers who want kids, but don’t have partners, team up to have and raise a child together. There’s even a TV show, Fox’s “Labor of Love,” in which suitors compete to be co-parent to a former “The Bachelor” contestant. The unusual arrangement is drawing so much interest, there’s now a slew of co-parenting websites. Much like dating sites, users set up profiles with photos that detail their interests, beliefs and parenting styles in order to find their perfect co-parenting match. The owner of one site said his service has attracted more than 30,000 users. And the trend is picking up momentum. Lockdown has only intensified singles’ baby-raising dreams. “Modamily web traffic and app downloads have doubled since the pandemic,” said Ivan Fatovic. “People have been home and thinking about life decisions like having children and starting a family, and coming to us to explore all [the] ways to make that possible.”

As the Virus Surged, Florida Partied (NYT) Miami’s flashy nightclubs closed in March, but the parties have raged on in the waterfront manse tucked in the lush residential neighborhood of Belle Meade Island. Revelers arrive in sports cars and ride-shares several nights a week, say neighbors who have spied professional bouncers at the door and bought earplugs to try to sleep through the thumping dance beats. They are the sort of parties—drawing throngs of maskless strangers to rave until sunrise—that local health officials say have been a notable contributing factor to the soaring number of coronavirus cases in Florida, one of the most troubling infection spots in the country. The quest to end parties and other social gatherings has gained new urgency because of the exploding coronavirus in Florida, which reported more than 10,000 new cases on Sunday. The state’s contact tracers, already overwhelmed by the surging number of new cases, have found it especially difficult to track how the virus jumped from one party guest to the next because some infected people refused to divulge whom they went out with or had over to their house.

Protective gear for medical workers begins to run low again (AP) The personal protective gear that was in dangerously short supply during the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. is running low again as the virus resumes its rapid spread and the number of hospitalized patients climbs. A national nursing union is concerned that gear has to be reused. A doctors association warns that physicians’ offices are closed because they cannot get masks and other supplies. “We’re five months into this and there are still shortages of gowns, hair covers, shoe covers, masks, N95 masks,” said Deborah Burger, president of National Nurses United, who cited results from a survey of the union’s members. “They’re being doled out, and we’re still being told to reuse them.” In general, supplies of protective gear are more robust now, and many states and major hospital chains say they are in better shape. But medical professionals and some lawmakers have cast doubt on those improvements as shortages begin to reappear.

Brazil’s President Bolsonaro tests positive for COVID-19 (AP) Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said Tuesday he has tested positive for COVID-19. Bolsonaro confirmed the test results while wearing a mask and speaking to reporters in capital Brasilia. “I’m well, normal. I even want to take a walk around here, but I can’t due to medical recommendations,” Bolsonaro said. “I thought I had it before, given my very dynamic activity. I’m president and on the combat lines. I like to be in the middle of the people.” The 65-year-old populist has often appeared in public to shake hands with supporters and mingle with crowds, at times without a mask. He has said that his history as an athlete would protect him from the virus, and that it would be nothing more than a “little flu” were he to contract it.

Virus Revives Italy’s Age-Old Shadow Safety Net: The Pawnshop (NYT) The economic repercussions of Italy’s lockdown to contain the coronavirus nearly wiped Anita Paris out. Her son, a car mechanic whom she depended on for financial support, couldn’t work. Her small pension didn’t suffice. The welfare checks she had hoped would pour in from the government didn’t materialize. And so Ms. Paris, a 75-year-old widow, turned to a shadow safety net that Italians have relied on for centuries, through plagues and sieges, wars and downturns. She rummaged through her home for “rings, necklaces, bracelets, everything I had around” and turned to the pawnshops that constitute an official, if anachronistic, part of the Italian banking system. Anxiety is palpable among Italians on pawnshop lines around the country. They worry that their short-term job contracts will run out, that customers will not fill their stores, that American tourists will not rent their rooms. But the managers of the collateral loan sector—the institutional name for pawnshops—aren’t complaining. Activity increased from 20 to 30 percent immediately after the lockdown, as clients wanted to make sure they met their interest payments but also sought new loans. And with emergency benefits about to wind down, they expect business to surge. In the United States, pawnshops are associated with bulletproof glass partitions, “Guns, Gold and Cash” lawn signs and reality show spinoffs (“Hardcore Pawn”). In Italy, they have been part of the banking system for centuries.

Teachers face threats, books are banned as China pushes party line in Hong Kong schools (Washington Post) High school teacher Dom Chan had an odd request from two superiors while developing next year’s Chinese history syllabus: remove passages from the philosopher Su Xun, known for 11th-century essays on wars and military reforms. “They told me, ‘You need to scan the textbook carefully,’” as Su’s writings could “incite violence in students or make them think revolution is good,” said Chan. As China’s Communist Party dismantles Hong Kong’s freedoms, teachers are facing pressure to toe Beijing’s line. Schools are emerging as ideological battlegrounds as officials seek to transform freethinking students into patriots loyal to the motherland through punishment, coercion, surveillance and propaganda-style education. A culture of self-censorship and government control that was already growing in schools intensified recently as Beijing introduced a security law aimed at eliminating dissent, according to nearly a dozen teachers and students who spoke to The Washington Post. The law, published June 30, compels Hong Kong’s government to “promote national security education” and pinpoints campuses for “supervision and regulation.” This week, education authorities told schools to review their library collections and remove books that could violate the law.

Japan warns of more rain to come (Foreign Policy) Japanese authorities warned of continuing heavy rains and flooding risks on the southwestern island of Kyushu—which includes the prefectures of Nagasaki, Saga, and Fukuoka—as the death toll from floods in the area has risen to at least 50. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the rains are expected to last in the region until July 9.

Jerusalem offers a grim model for a post-annexation future (AP) It’s hard to say what exactly will change in the West Bank if Israel follows through on its plans to annex parts of the occupied territory, but east Jerusalem, which was annexed more than a half-century ago, may provide some answers. Israeli leaders paint Jerusalem as a model of coexistence, the “unified, eternal” capital of the Jewish people, where minorities have equal rights. But Palestinian residents face widespread discrimination, most lack citizenship and many live in fear of being forced out. Rights groups say that in some aspects, Palestinians in east Jerusalem have even fewer legal protections than those in the West Bank, where it’s possible to appeal to international laws governing the treatment of civilians in occupied territory. They point to Israel’s Absentee Property Law of 1950, which allows the state to take control of any property whose owner lives in an “enemy state” and was used to confiscate the lands and homes of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced out during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. Rights groups say that in recent decades, authorities have abused the law to seize homes in sensitive parts of Jerusalem, evicting Palestinian residents and paving the way for settlers to move in.

Laid Off and Locked Up: Virus Traps Domestic Workers in Arab States (NYT) Families in many Arab countries rely on millions of low-paid workers from Asia and Africa to drive their cars, clean their homes and care for their children and elderly relatives under conditions that rights groups have long said allow exploitation and abuse. Now, the pandemic and associated economic downturns have exacerbated these dangers. Many families will not let their housekeepers leave the house, fearing they will bring back the virus, while requiring them to work more since entire families are staying home, workers’ advocates say. Other workers have been laid off, deprived of wages and left stranded far from home with nowhere to turn for help. In Lebanon, employers have deposited scores of Ethiopian women in front of their country’s consulate in Beirut because they could no longer pay them as the economy imploded. Persian Gulf countries alone had nearly four million domestic laborers in 2016, more than half of them women, according to a study for the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, which focuses on migrant labor in the region. Experts say the real number has risen since and is probably much higher.

[bigmacdaddio]

Gitta Sereny

Gitta Sereny, the author who has died aged 91, was celebrated for her detailed studies of iniquity, of which she had had unusual experience as a child living in Central Europe between the wars.

Gitta Sereny chose for her subjects the sort of perpetrators of “evil” that other writers feared to touch — the child murderers Mary Bell and the killers of James Bulger, the Nazi architect Albert Speer, and the commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl.

Her attempts to explain why such people committed monstrous acts led some to accuse her of being more sympathetic to the villains than to their victims. Certainly there was something uncomfortable about the pleasure she seemed to take in feeling personally close to the people she chose to write about. Others took issue with her rejection of the concept of evil, her unreconstructed belief in the moral perfectibility of the individual and controversial claim that the root causes of terrible acts can usually be found in childhood trauma.

Her book on Albert Speer, though widely acclaimed, caused some to say she must be a Nazi sympathiser. But it was with the events surrounding the publication of Cries Unheard (1998) about the child murderer Mary Bell, that the climate of public opinion became most frenzied.

In 1972 Gitta Sereny had published The Case Of Mary Bell, which chronicled the trial of the 11-year-old Tyneside girl convicted in 1968 for the murder of two boys, aged three and four. Over the years, she remained in touch with Mary Bell’s relatives, monitoring her life throughout her 12 years in secret homes and prisons, and then the years of freedom that followed. In her later book she attempted to go beyond the facts of the case, to understand the psychological factors that drove her to murder.

But Gitta Sereny’s admission that Mary Bell was paid about £50,000 for her collaboration caused an outcry, as did what many considered to be the author’s sympathy for the woman and her too willing acceptance of Mary Bell’s uncorroborated claims that she had been sexually abused as a child by her prostitute mother and her mother’s clients, and her contention that this abuse was irrefutably the causal basis of Bell’s homicidal behaviour.

In the ensuing media frenzy, the whereabouts of Mary Bell and her young daughter (who had been unaware until then of her mother’s true identity) became known, and a letter from Gitta Sereny justifying the book to one of the victims’ mothers was also published in the press.

The controversy focused the spotlight on the author, who found herself accused of threatening to destroy what rehabilitation Bell had achieved, wreck her daughter’s life, and reopen the wounds inflicted on the families of the murdered boys. What had hitherto been seen as the heroic pertinacity of a writer who had spent much of her life uncovering the facts about individuals associated with the Holocaust, began to be presented as mere ghoulishness and opportunism.

This was, in a sense, the paradox that lay at the heart of Gitta Sereny’s life and her self-proclaimed mission to uncover the “why” of seemingly senseless atrocities. For her ability to empathise with her subjects and her insistence on the need for understanding grew from the ambivalence of her own youthful response to events in Europe before, during and after the Second World War.

For a woman so devoted to the pursuit of truth, Gitta Sereny was notoriously cagey about her age and the circumstances of her childhood, leaving some to surmise that there may have been an element of make-believe in her account. Within the last decade she had wound her birth date back by two years, but Will Self, who interviewed her in the 1990s, thought it conceivable that she might be at least six years older than she admitted, noting that her pre-war experiences seemed far too various for someone who would only have been in their mid-teens when war broke out.

Gitta Sereny was in fact born on March 13 1921 in Vienna into a family of Anglophile, Protestant Hungarian landowners. Her father died when she was two and it appears that young Gitta had a difficult relationship with her actress mother. When seated in Anthony Clare’s Psychiatrist’s Chair on BBC Radio she alluded to a relationship which was possibly even abusive.

Owing to her father’s love of the English, she attended during her early youth Stonar House, a boarding-school in Kent. It was there, extraordinarily, that she read Mein Kampf. In 1934, when travelling home to Vienna, her train broke down in Nuremberg and at the age of only 13, courtesy of the German Red Cross, she found herself taken to see the Nazi Party Congress.

She was swept away by its pageantry: “One moment I was enraptured, glued to my seat; the next, I was standing up, shouting with joy along with thousands of others.” When she returned to school, she described the scene in an essay entitled “The happiest day of my holiday”.

Four years later, she was studying at the Max Reinhardt Drama School in Vienna when the Nazis arrived. She heard Hitler speak and joined “the mindless chorus” that welcomed him. The euphoria apparently died the following day when she noticed “a band of men in brown uniforms, wearing swastika armbands” surrounded by a laughing crowd.

As she drew near she saw, in the middle of the crowd, a dozen middle-aged men and women on their knees, scrubbing the pavement with toothbrushes. One of them she recognised as the Jewish paediatrician who had saved her life when she was four and had diphtheria.

Although apparently only 17, Gitta Sereny remonstrated with the brownshirts accusing them of humiliating a great physician. It seems that her protest succeeded, for within minutes the crowd had dispersed. In the longer term it did little good. The paediatrician was gassed at Sobibor in 1943.

Gitta Sereny left Austria for Switzerland in May 1938 and was sent to a finishing school near Lausanne. She did not like it and ran away to London, where she sought a place at the Old Vic Theatre School and auditioned for Alexander Korda in an effort to get into films. Neither attempt worked.

When war broke out, she was in France where, after the German invasion, she worked for a year and a half as a volunteer nurse, looking after refugee children, hiding “a couple of shot-down British airmen” and treating the Germans with contempt.

One night a German officer warned her that she was about to be arrested. She fled across the Pyrenees, outwitting the guards who intercepted her by convincing them that she was only popping across the border for a week to visit her boyfriend.

At the end of the war, she went at once to Germany as a child welfare officer working for the United Nations: her first assignment was the care of child prisoners from Dachau. Back in Paris, she met and fell in love with Donald Honeyman, an American photographer with Vogue magazine. They married in 1948 and, after stints in New York and Paris, she moved with him in 1958 to London.

By then she was already working as a writer. A novel, The Medallion, was published in 1957 and she freelanced for papers and magazines, acquiring a reputation for persistence in pursuit of a good story; Magnus Linklater, who worked with her on The Sunday Times, described her as “one of the most remarkable journalists I know”.

Her great strength was her ability to get people to tell her things that they would tell no one else — something she achieved by a combination of sheer doggedness and a knack of making people feel she was genuinely interested in what made them tick.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, working for The Daily Telegraph magazine, she spent several months attending trials of Nazi concentration camp personnel held in Hamburg and Düsseldorf, and found herself instinctively looking for someone from among the accused who might be able to help her towards an understanding of how individuals could be brought to commit such terrible acts. Her choice fell on Franz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka, whose story became her book Into That Darkness (1974).

The book won acclaim for the light it threw on the bureaucratic, careerist character of a minor player in the Nazi machine, but Stangl himself was the one subject who quickly exhausted Gitta Sereny’s considerable reserves of sympathy. Not only did she find him physically repellent, despite herself she seemed to sense a malignity about him which she could not entirely rationalise. She became ill and began hearing the voices of crying children when travelling by train.

Given what he told her during punishing weeks of interview, this is hardly surprising. Of the 900,000 people for whose deaths he had been held personally responsible, Stangl remarked: “It is all a matter of accommodating oneself to one’s situation.” While he regarded his human victims as “cargo”, he had been shocked into giving up tinned meat after seeing cattle herded into slaughterhouse pens in Brazil.

Yet Gitta Sereny insisted that Stangl was “not an obviously evil man” and when he died 19 hours after her last interview with him, she ascribed his death to her success in making him face up to the truth.

She adopted a different approach to Albert Speer, the subject of Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995). In 1945 she had briefly attended the Nuremberg war crime trials where she caught her first glimpse of Hitler’s architect and all-powerful armaments minister in the dock, though it was Speer who first contacted Sereny in 1977, to praise an article in which she had disproved claims made by the historian David Irving that Hitler did not order genocide.

Encouraged by this overture, she befriended Speer and his wife and, although it had been Speer who, more than anyone, assisted Hitler, she confessed to liking the former Nazi notwithstanding his delusions of innocence.

Despite suggestions that the handsome Speer had charmed her out of her customary objectivity, her book was only superficially sympathetic. Importantly it proved for the first time that Speer had known about the plan to exterminate the Jews as early as 1943 but went along with it because of his love for Hitler, an admission she only secured after weeks of dogged questioning.

As well as her books about Mary Bell, Gitta Sereny wrote Invisible Children (1984), a study of child prostitution in America, Britain and Germany and, as a journalist, wrote extensively about the murder by two boys of the Liverpool toddler James Bulger, her articles forming an appendix to a reissued edition of her 1972 book about Mary Bell. Her last book, The German Trauma (2001), was a collection of essays, some autobiographical, about Hitler’s Germany and its long, difficult legacy.

She was appointed an honorary CBE in 2003.

By her marriage to Don Honeyman Gitta Sereny had a son and a daughter.

[bronovatwelve]

Nina

Nikolina Bronova Mori, professionally known as Nina, is a brazilian and naturalized american, bulgarian, japanese and south korean singer-songwriter, rapper, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, dancer, choreographer, television host and actress under Million Market and Columbia Records, also serving as the vocalist of the brazilian supergroup Tribalistas. She is amongst a small group of entertainers who have been honored with an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award. Nina holds the record for the artist with the most singles to top both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Gaon Music Chart. She is also the only artist to have all south korean albums debut at the top of the Gaon Album Chart and all american albums debut at the top of the Billboard 200.

Profile

Full name: Nikolina Bronova Mori (Николина бронова 森). Stage name: Nina (니나). Birth date: December 7th 1998 (19). Birth place: São Paulo, Brazil. Nationality: Brazilian. Zodiac sign: Sagittarius. Chinese zodiac sign: Earth tiger. Height: 1.68cm. Weight: 51kg. Blood type: O. Voica type: Soprano. Vocal analysis: Well Rounded Vocalist and Star.

Curiosities

Animals: Miku (pomeranian) and Misha (rottweiler). Body type: Romantic (medium height, hourglass and voluptuous figure, medium to big bustline, small waist, fleshy arms and legs, small and delicate bone structure with a soft sharpness). Cup size: B. Ethnicity: Brazilian, bulgarian, italian and japanese. Face type: Classic (balanced and symmetrical). Family: Shigeru Mori (father), Ekaterina Konstantinova Bronova (mother) and Karolina Bronova Mori (youngest sister). Hobbies: Reading, drawing, listening to music, singing, dancing, watching movies and television series, exercising, traveling, collecting pens and notebooks, taking pictures, riding her bycicle and writing music. Instruments: Acoustic guitar, banjo, banjo ukulele, baritone guitar, bass guitar, clarinet, classical guitar, drums, electric bass guitar, electric guitar, flamento guitar, flute, harmonica, harp, keyboard, piano, synthesizer and violin. Languages: Bulgarian, english, french, japanese, korean, mandarin, portuguese, russian and spanish. Religion: Catholic. Sexual orientation: Heterosexual. Shoe size: 7.5 (US).

Early life

Nikolina was born in Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, the daughter of a bulgarian lawyer and a japanese farmer. She lived in Brazil until the age of seven, when she moved with her mother and sisters to Bulgaria, following her parent’s divorce. From the age of five, she wanted to become a singer, and took various musical classes throughout her early years. She moved to South Korea as an exchange student in 2013 and was discovered by a representative of Million Market after posting music covers on YouTube and signed to the label. In 2018, she made her american debut after signing with the label Columbia Records.

Personality

Positive traits: Adventurous, brave, broad-minded, charming, compassionate, creative, determined, diplomatic, faithful, freedom-loving, friendly, good-humored, honest, humanitarian, independent, intellectual, intuitive, jovial, loyal, magnetic, modest, optimistic, philosophical, realistic, self-confident, sensitive, sympathetic, warmhearted and well-liked. Negative traits: Competitive, compulsive, greedy, escapist, idealistic, irritable, obsessive, resentful, restless, selfish and a worrier.

She is known for being very nice to her fans. Many of them report being well treated by her whenever they meet.

Physical appearance

Black and straight hair. Green eyes. Fair skin. Curvy. Dimples. Two piercings on her left ear and three on her right ear. One tattoo on her left ribcage (written “to the stars to the moon”), one tattoo on her right shoulder (japanese writing of “Mori”), one tattoo on her right wrist (written “honey”).

Vocals

Critic Of Music

Vocal type: Spinto-soprano. Positives: Legendary interpretive wit, thanks to incredible knowledge of musical phrasing and vocal pedagogy. A defining, trademarked voice. Incredible breath support, showing no signs of fatigue and carrying extensive legato passages with ease. Incredible utilization of dynamics, using all volumes from fortissimo to pianissimo and everything in between to craft incredible phrases. Great control of her passagio and incredibly balanced instrument. Powerful, resonant belts that are mixed with head voice, that are well-supported and healthy, projecting massive resonance with ease. A master of breath support. Able to rapid fire mid and upper belts. Her low notes are also well supported, dark and full. The head voice is resonant and piercing, full and fluid. Her vibrato is well developed and rolling, and can be executed with ease. Her timbre is velvety and luscious and makes for a perfect midrange. She is also able to sing complex melisma in all registers, with every register well connected. Her falsetto is light and sweet. She also has unparalleled register transitions, switching from chest to head, head to whistle, and even chest to whistle without as much of a pause. Pitch perfect in 99% of performances. Technically, a brilliant singer. Negatives: Occasionally raises her larynx in upper-belts.

K-Pop Vocal Analysis

Voice type: Soprano. Strengths: The strongest female singer in South Korea and arguably the entire current music scene. Consistent support, very well connected head voice, transitions are flawless, extreme control of dynamics and mixing, runs are precise and well articulated, nasality is almost never present in her singing. Points for improvement: Head voice can show issues with upper-belts, complicated vowels can create tension in her voice. Agility: The top vocalist in terms of agility and precision amongst korean singers, able to keep control of and flexibility in her runs and melismas. Her runs are precise in pitch and generally very well separated, every note is clear and the overall flow is good and natural. Musicianship: Arguably her second strongest virtue, Nina is not one to be labelled as a “karaoke” singer. Taking note from the general idea of self expression and vocal freedom, she always shows creativity and never delivers vocal performances that are exactly the same as another, being generally filled with new vocal melodies, playing with rhythm and vocal runs added by Nina herself, notably being able to always deliver accurate and precise changes to covers and her own original song performances.

Albums and singles

Chat-Shire (2014) 11:11 Every End Of The Day I (ft. Verbal Jint) Instagram Pilot (ft. Woo Jiyoon) Why?

Relax Your Mind (2015) Automatic Galaxy Half Moon (ft. Gaeko) One Of These Nights Serendipity What To Do (ft. Crush)

Modern Times (2016) Don’t Say No Free Somebody Good Day I Feel You (ft. Yubin) Nineteen Peek-A-Boo

A New Empire (2017) Bad Boy Gashina Home (ft. Yoon Mi Rae) Playing With Fire Really Really (ft. Mino) Whistle

Yours Truly (2018) Into You Love Me Harder One Last Time Problem (ft. Big Sean) The Way Too Little Too Late

Vivid (2019) All I Want For Christmas Emotions I Wanna Dance With Somebody Love On Top No One Physical

Revival (2020) Bills, Bills, Bills Bootylicious If I Were A Boy Independent Women Say My Name Single Ladies

Here, My Dear (2021) Attention Can’t Feel My Face Diamonds Let’s Groove September Sexual Healing

My Voice (2022) Baby Baby (ft. Young K) Eyes, Nose, Lips Loser (ft. Leo Yang) Missing You Palette (ft. G-Dragon) Why So Lonely (ft. Yezi)

Lemonade (2023) Hold Up How Can I Ease The Pain Million Reasons My Immortal Perfect Illusion Sorry

Fever (2024) Bad Liar Dangerous Woman Do I Wanna Know? Psycho Killer Take Me To Church Wild Thoughts

Portrait (2025) Back To Black Chandelier Drunk In Love Love On The Brain Stone Cold Un-Break My Heart

Who I Am (2028) Because Of You Bleeding Love Fallin’ Halo If I Ain’t Got You I’m Not The Only One

Spirit (2030) Hello Rolling In The Deep Send My Love Set Fire To The Rain Someone Like You

Time (2032) Can’t Make You Love Me I Have Nothing I Look To You I Will Always Love You When We Were Young

How Does That Grab You? (2035) Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) Dust In The Wind Every Breath You Take Killing Me Softly The Sound Of Silence

Katerina (2038) Bohemian Rhapsody Come Together I Want To Break Free Sign Of The Times Somebody To Love We Are The Champions

Waiting To Exhale (2040) Always On My Mind Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood Hurt The Blower’s Daughter Wonderwall

A Flower Bookmark (2042) Autumn Morning Last Night Story Let’s Meet On Friday (ft. Jang Yi Jeong) Secret Garden Sleepless Summer Night Through The Night

The Diary Of Nina (2045) Can’t Help Falling In Love From This Moment On Here Comes The Sun Loving You Yesterday You’re Still The One

Glassheart (2048) A Change Is Gonna Come All The Man I Need Cruisin’ Greatest Love Of All Let’s Stay Together Say A Little Prayer

Bird Of Happiness (2050) Dreamlover Hero Love Takes Time Someday Vision Of Love We Belong Together

Last Fantasy (2052) Ending Scene Fine Hold Me Please Don’t Rain You Were Beautiful

These Are My Blues (2055) At Last Feeling Good I Put A Spell On You Respect Something’s Got A Hold On Me This Is A Man’s World

Albums and non-title tracks

Chat-Shire (2014) Across The Universe Chocolate Don’t Like Her Everyday With You Glasses Heart I Would Peach Someday Stay Sweet And Easy (ft. Kisum)

Relax Your Mind (2015) Answer Cactus Flower If You I Need Somebody I Wait Lately, I (ft. Ant) Love Alone Moonlight Melody Night Reminisce (ft. Yang Da II) Star (ft. Heize) Take Me Where Are You?

Modern Times (2016) Faded Love Gemini Gone (ft. Jessi) John Doe (ft. Jiyoon) Knees Look Magic Rebirth Rewind (ft. Moonbyul) Sailing Talk To Me

A New Empire (2017) Back To You (ft. Leo Yang) Bae Black Out (ft. Ravi) Dance Dance Fool How Why (ft. L.E) I Just Let Me Know (ft. DPR Live) To Him Velvet Walkin’ (ft. Hash Swan) You&Me

Yours Truly (2018) Baby, I Bad Decisions Be My Baby Closer Fools For Him Gone And Found Greedy Higher How I Want Ya (ft. Jordan Fisher) How To Be A Heartbreaker I Don’t Care Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart Let Me Love You Never Wanna Know Only One Paper Heart Right There Sometimes Tattooed Heart Tears (ft. Clean Bandit) Touch Me Wild You’ll Never Know

Vivid (2019) All That Baby, I’m Yours (ft. Miles Kane) Body Language Boy Problems Can’t Sleep Love Come Alive (ft. Toro Y Moi) Cry Dorothy Dandrige Eyes (ft. Esperanza Spalding) Dust Is Gone Finesse First Time Gimme Love Hard To Say No I Didn’t Just Come Here To Dance Maiden Making The Most Of The Night Primetime (ft. Miguel) Run Away With Me Say You’ll Be There Schoolin’ Life Sir Greendown Store The One Too Good To Say Goodbye We Were Rock & Roll Your Type

Revival (2020) 10-20-40 Be Alright Bound Countdown Cyber Stockholm Syndrome Ego Fantasy (ft. Amber Liu) Gave It Away Glow If I Ever Fall In Love (ft. Janelle Monáe) I Got The Juice (ft. Pharrell Williams) Kiss Me Better Knew Better Listen No Mythologies To Follow No Tears Left To Cry Oh No! Primadonna Girl Red In The Grey Ridin’ (ft. A$AP Rocky) Rose Gold Simple Things Slow Love Tears (ft. Clean Bandit) Ugly West Coast What An Experience

Here, My Dear (2021) 6 Inch (ft. The Weeknd) Adorn After The Love Has Gone A Lonely Night Broken Clocks Coffee Done For Me Emotion Every Kind Of Way Falling For You Fetish (ft. Schoolboy Q) Fire Rides Heart Less High By The Beach In Your Bed Love On The Weekend Lovely (ft. Khalid) Ocean Eyes Passionfruit Perfect Sad Girl Somebody Else Something About Us (ft. Daft Punk) Sure Thing Thinking About You Too Good (ft. Alan Love) Touch Me

My Voice (2022) Boy (ft. Miryo) Can’t Love You Anymore (ft. Dean) How Can I Say? I’ll Try I Wish Jam Jam Perfect 10 Secret Too Good To Me (ft. Jeon Soyeon) Weekend (ft. L.E) Wine (ft. Changmo) Woo Yoo

Lemonade (2023) All The Way Down And I Drove You Crazy Daddy Lessons (ft. Dixie Chicks) Don’t Hurt Yourself (ft. Jack White) Drowning Forward (ft. James Blake) He Don’t Love Me How Long I’m Your Doll In Time Landfill Lies Love Drought Me, Myself And I Mother Earth My Boy My Mind Numbers Phase Me Out Pray You Catch Me Sandcastles Secrets This Is Not About Us Video Girl Waiting Game Watch What Kind Of Man

Fever (2024) After The Storm (ft. Bootsy Collins and Tyler, The Creator) Are You Satisfied? Baby Boy Birth In Reverse Black Sheep Cupid’s Chokehold Empty Nesters Faster Forrest Gump I Wanna Be Yours Locked Inside Miracle Alligner Night By Night No Control One For The Road Puppet Love Redbone Run Baby Run Self Control Someone New Stockholm Syndrome Strange Mercy To Be Alone Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? Yeah Right Your Teeth In My Neck Zombie

Portrait (2025) Belly Ache Betsy On The Roof Bored Cake Copycat Django Sambo Eyes On Fire Hostage I Don’t Wanna Be You Anymore If These Walls Could Talk Liability Love Is A Losing Game Nicest Thing Pilgrim Reality Russian Roulette Serial Killer Something In The Way Talk Me Down Tears Dry On Their Own Teen Idle Tunnel Vision (ft. Shamir) Victory Until We Bleed Use Me You Don’t Do It For Me Anymore You Know I’m No Good

Who I Am (2028) Almost Is Never Enough As Long As You Love Me Bad Religion Cannonball Crave You Draw Your Swords Every Little Thing He Does Is Magic Fireproof Freak Home Just A Boy Let’s Get Lost Listen Malibu Midnight Bottle Moonlight Older Chests Only You Start Of Time Talking To The Moon Tell Me That You Love Me Training Wheels Valentine Volcano Whatever You Like When Your Mind’s Made Up

Spirit (2030) 57821 (ft. Deep Cotton) All I Ask Dark Paradise Hometown Glory I Can’t Get Started I Don’t Know You It Takes A Lot To Know A Man Love In The Dark Lucky Million Years Ago Never Been In Love Before Oh, Maker! River Lea Rumour Has It Salvation Speechless Sweetest Devotion Tightrope (ft. Big Boi) Turning Tables Venus Video Games Vultures Water Under The Bridge You Young And Beautiful

Time (2032) 9 Crimes All Of You Can’t Pretend Caught Don’t Look Back Emotion Illuminated I Miss You Jealous Little Boy Blue Love Nick Of Time Nirvana Nitesky (ft. Robot Koch) Nostalgia One (ft. U2) Palace Pink (ft. Grimes) Religion Remedy The Chain Wolves Wondaland

How Does That Grab You? (2035) All I Have To Do Is Dream Build Me Up Buttercup But Not For Me Can’t Live Without Your Love Heal The World I Fall In Love Too Easily If I Had You I’ll Be There I’m A Ruin I’m Gonna Find Another You Immortal It’s My Party Look For The Silver Lining Look Into My Eyes Make You Feel My Love My Funny Valentine Only Hope Pink Matter Quickie Solo (ft. Andre 3000) The Touch Of Yours Lips Want You Back Wonder You Don’t Own Me

Katerina (2038) Bloodsport Boogieman Come To Mama Holding On Ivy Japanese Denim Killer Queen Land Locked Blues Leave Me Lonely (ft. Macy Gray) Like Real People Do My Favorite Faded Fantasy Neon Valley Street Please Don’t Leave Me Regret Sally Ride Sinner’s Prayer Sober Slow It Down Somebody Told Me Stop The World Touch When You Were Young Who Knew Yellow Brick Road

Waiting To Exhale (2040) A Heartbreak Blood Dazed In Daydreams Delicate Elephant Everywhere I Go Freedom (ft. Kentorey Johnson) Guiding Light Heart Beats Slow I Don’t Want To Change You I’m Afraid In Chains Love Me Like I’m Not Made Of Stone Medicine No Such Thing One Flight Down Pink + White Put Your Number In My Phone Rootless Tree Run Say It To Me Now Ship To Wreck The Animals Were Gone You Don’t Have To Go

A Flower Bookmark (2042) All Alone By The Stream Dear Name Draw Me (ft. Yoon Mi Rae) Full Stop How Can Someone Be Like This? Lonely Nights Love In Color Now Try Your

The Diary Of Nina (2045) Big Jet Plane Blackbird Burning Love Clementine Color Me In Creature Fear Dogs Don’t Know Why Falling Slowly Flightless Bird, American Mouth Gravity Happily He Was Too Good To Me Love Has No Pride Lua My Ideal Paper Aeroplane Slow Dancing In A Burning Room Stand Tall Strong The Long Day Is Over The Moon Song Time After Time Waiting On The World To Change

Glassheart (2048) All This And Heaven Too A Woman’s Worth Believe In You And Me Crazy, Classic, Life Follow Rivers Hardest Of Hearts Honeymoon Avenue I Am Every Woman It’s Always You Like You’ll Never See Me Again Never Let Me Go One Night Only Picture Me Gone Radioactive Run To You Screwed (ft. Zoë Kravitz) The Light Is On Tired Of Being Alone Tomorrow (ft. Tame Impala) Valley Of The Dolls Want You Back You’re Still My Man

Bird Of Happiness (2050) Alterlife Always Be My Baby Anytime You Need A Friend Can’t Let Go Cosmic Love Dirty Computer (ft. Brian Wilson) Drumming Song Falling I Don’t Wanna Cry I’m Not Calling You A Liar Lay All Your Love On Me Like Someone In Love Living Dead Make Me Feel My All One Summer Night Shoot The Moon Suspicious Mind Take Me To The River The State Of Dreaming Wildest Dreams Without You

Last Fantasy (2052) Dreamer Falling Out Foolish Goodbye Lean On Me Letting Go Make Me Love You Meaning Of You (ft. Kim Changwan) My Medicine Only I Didn’t Know Voice Mail Zeze

These Are My Blues (2055) Ain’t No Way Buy The Stars Code Cold Cold Heart Don’t Judge Me Do You? Embraceable You How Deep Is The Ocean? Hypocrates I’d Rather Go Blind I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes) I Want You I Was Here Lipstick Long Long Way Love T.K.O My Future Just Passed Take A Bite Too Much Heaven Valerie Voila What’s New? You Light Up My Life

Collaborations

2014 Bom Bom Bom (ft. Roy Kim)

2015 Dream (ft. Junho)

2016 Sseudam Sseudam (ft. 10CM)

2017 Whisper (ft. Ravi)

2018 Hymn For The Weekend (ft. Coldplay)

2019 You Know You Like It (ft. DJ Snake)

2020 Anti (ft. Leo Yang)

2021 Digital Love (ft. Daft Punk) I Feel It Coming (ft. Daft Punk)

2022 Loyalty (ft. Kentorey Johnson)

2023 Sensual Seduction (ft. Cardi B)

2025 Slide (ft. Calvin Harris, Childish Gambino and Offset)

2026 Yesterday (ft. Crush, Dean and Leo Yang)

2029 Lost On The Way Home (ft. Chromeo)

2034 Stay (ft. Mikky Ekko)

2036 Beautiful (ft. Miguel)

2043 Empire State Of Mind (ft. Kentorey Johnson)

2047 You, Clouds, Rain (ft. Shin Yong Jae)

2058 How Deep Is Your Love (ft. The Bird And The Bee)

Soundtracks

Cheese Trap (2015) If It Is You I’m Serious (ft. Day6)

Goblin: The Great And Lonely God (2017) Lost Love You Are

La La Land (2022) City Of Stars I Won’t Say I’m In Love The Audition

Call me By Your Name (2024) On My Own

Breakfast At Tifanny’s (2031) La Vi En Rose Moon River Once Upon A Dream

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (2033) The Bells Of Notre Dame

Pocahontas (2037) Colors Of The Wind If I Never Knew You Just Around The Riverbend Savages (Part One) Savages (Part Two)

Funny Girl (2041) A Piece Of Sky Don’t Rain On My Parade My Man The Man That Got Away Why Don’t You Do Right?

Anastasia (2046) Journey To The Past Learn To Do It Once Upon A December

The Nightmare Before Christmas (2049) Finale Kidnap The Sandy Claws Sally’s Song

My Love From Another Star (2053) I Will Come To You We Loved (ft. 20 Years Of Age)

The Prince Of Egypt (2057) Deliver Us When You Believe

Filmography (MC)

After School Club (2015-2017) Alongside Eric Nam and U-KISS’ Kevin (from 2015 to 2016) and Day6′s Jae and U-KISS’ Kevin (in 2017).

SBS Inkigayo (2017) Alongside GOT7′s Jinyoung and NCT’s Doyoung.

Filmography (movies)

Architecture 101 (2016) La La Land (2022) Call Me By Your Name (2024) A Bittersweet Life (2029) Breakfast At Tiffany’s (2031) The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (2033) Funny Girl (2041) Two Days, One Night (2044) Anastasia (2046) The Nightmare Before Christmas (2049) I Am Love (2053) A Moment To Remember (2054) The Prince Of Egypt (2057) Amour (2084)

Filmography (television series)

Pocahontas (2037)

Theatre

Lés Miserables (2027)

Competition

King Of Masked Singer (2015) “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” against Son Heon-soo. “Hurt” against Kyungri. “Con Te Partiro” against Lee Hae-ri.

Covers (on YouTube)

2011 Everytime by Britney Spears. Like I’m Gonna Lose You by John Legend.

2012 E.T by Katy Perry. Paparazzi by Lady Gaga.

Cover performances

Gayo Daejun (2015) Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel.

Golden Disc Awards (2017) Will The Circle Be Unbroken (with Lee Hi).

Super Bowl (2020) Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.

BBC Radio 1 (2022) Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.

American Music Awards (2024) Got To Be Real by Cheryl Lynn (with Cheryl Lynn).

Grammy Awards (2027) Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen (with Pentatonix).

BBC Radio 1 (2031) Hands To Myself by Selena Gomez.

NBA All-Star (2034) Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.

BBC Radio 1 (2042) Hold It Against Me by Britney Spears.

MTV Music Video Awards (2049) My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

Super Bowl (2052) Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.

Partners

Tidiou M’Baye (2012) Sho Wara (2018-2023) *married in 2022, divorced in 2023 Bill Skarsgård (2025-) *married in 2028

Children

Dario Skarsgård (2031) Isabela Skarsgård (2033) Luna Skarsgård (2035) Anton Skarsgård (2035)

[learnspanishfans]

New Mission: Introducing Holly’s Portuguese in 3 Months Mission

Fluent in 3 Months team member Holly is taking on the challenge of learning Portuguese in 3 months. This is the first update in her Portuguese mission. How does she feel about taking on this challenge? Will she make it? Here's Holly: I’m a language enthusiast. I’m fluent in French and speak Thai at an upper intermediate level. But I started studying French in school at the age of eight, and Thai when I was 19 on an exchange program. Since then, I’ve studied five other languages, but never made it very far, and have since forgotten everything. Recently, I realised that it had been FIFTEEN YEARS since I’d last learned a language to a useful level. What kind of “language enthusiast” was I? I decided to do something about it. Right around the time that I was toying with the idea of learning Spanish or Portuguese, Benny contacted the Fluent in 3 Months (Fi3M) team about doing reviews of various language products. Woohoo! I thought. A chance to start a new language, and really stick with it this time.

How I Chose to Learn Portuguese

I couldn’t decide which language to choose, however. I recently moved to California, so Spanish would be a practical choice. On the other hand, I very much want to visit Portugal and Brazil in the near future (in fact, I already have a 5-year tourist visa for Brazil!). So I decided to let Benny choose for me. I told him I would be happy to review a product for either beginner Spanish or beginner Portuguese. He sent me the Michel Thomas Total Portuguese CD course, which teaches European Portuguese. I did the course, recorded a (very slow and painful) conversation with a native speaker, and wrote my review. Honestly, if I hadn’t done that live conversation with a native speaker, I probably would have called it quits after finishing the review. But using the language with a real person - even though I understood very little, and could express even less - gave me the enthusiasm to continue. In a few weeks, I had gone from knowing absolutely no Portuguese (not even “Hello” or “Thank you”), to having a basic conversation. In all the other languages I had studied and forgotten over the years, I had never gotten that far, because I was learning in a traditional classroom setting. This involved lots of reading and writing, a bit of listening, and very little speaking. I didn’t want to forget Portuguese like I had so many other languages. With the Michel Thomas CD course and one conversation with a native speaker under my belt, I decided to do my very own three-month Portuguese mission. I set the very reasonable goal of reaching B1 level.

How I Started My First Ever Three-Month Language Mission

I had never done a three-month mission of my own before. Before starting, I took a good, long look at my past successes and failures in language learning. I wanted this mission to succeed where my other attempts had failed. I asked myself what my biggest weaknesses were in language learning. Without a doubt, for every language I had ever studied, the answer was always the same: listening comprehension and speaking ability. (This appears to be the case for most Fi3M readers too.) Reading and writing for me are easy, even for languages with non-Latin alphabets. I’ve read 300-page Thai novels before, and yet still struggle to understand all the dialogue on a Thai children’s TV show! I wanted things to be different this time. I wanted to be able to understand spoken Portuguese, and speak it myself, without struggling all the time. So I decided that the big rule I would follow throughout the entire mission would be:

Go All-in: No Reading or Writing - Only Speaking and Listening

I didn’t want to opt for a “mostly” speaking and listening approach; I went all-in. I decided to do virtually NO reading or writing in Portuguese for the entire three months. No Harry Potter books, newspapers or children’s picture books. No writing down vocabulary lists or useful phrases. No flashcards, even! Instead, any time I set aside time to study Portuguese, it would be either through listening or speaking the language The reason I went “all-in” is simple: I know myself. I know that if I allowed myself to incorporate reading and writing exercises into my study routine, they would quickly take over. I would get lazy and stop scheduling Skype conversations or struggling through Portuguese TV shows. I’d always choose the easy way out whenever I sat down to study. By not allowing myself to read and write, any time I decided to study Portuguese, it would have to be through audio exercises, Portuguese TV shows or podcasts, or a conversation with a native speaker. That said, I did plan to allow myself three small exceptions to this rule:

I changed my phone’s OS to Portuguese (because I have to use my phone anyway, so using it for everyday tasks wouldn’t replace an actual Portuguese study session)

Duolingo (for vocabulary building, and because I don’t love the app enough to study it for long stretches - so it wouldn’t cut into my listening/speaking exercises very much)

Reading song lyrics (because I wanted to use music to help me learn, but understanding song lyrics is difficult without seeing them written down - even in English!)

The other, more minor reason I decided to take this approach was to experiment with different learning methods. I wasn’t sure how well I would learn the language without reading and writing. Would it be possible to have intermediate-level conversations after only three months if I didn’t build up my grammar skills through reading and writing? I wanted to try it this way so I could report to you, the reader, about whether it was a viable approach.

My Plans for Getting Listening and Speaking Practice

Now that I’ve laid out what I planned NOT to do during my mission, here’s what I DID plan to do for getting tons of listening and speaking practice throughout the three months:

italki - for meeting conversation partners and Portuguese teachers to get both speaking and listening practice.

Meetup.com - for finding Portuguese meetups and language exchanges in my area.

PortuguesePod101.com - for learning grammar, and getting experience with spoken Portuguese in a variety of settings. I purchased a three-month basic subscription, which gave me everything I needed for my three month mission.

TV shows - anyone who knows me knows I love a good TV show. I planned to find as many Portuguese language TV shows online as I could, and actively listen to them.

Music - when the TV’s off in my house, the music gets turned on. I LOVE music. So I planned to research some good Portuguese-speaking bands so I could learn their songs by heart.

Podcasts - for (actively!) listening to spoken Portuguese when I couldn’t watch videos.

Audio flashcards - for learning vocabulary, grammar and important phrases by listening to them, not reading them (I will explain how I did this in a later post).

My goal was to do at least one - preferably three or four - of these activities every single day.

What Was My Level on Day 1?

As I mentioned, I completed Michel Thomas Total Portuguese before starting this mission. Michel Thomas Total Portuguese is a seven-hour audio course - though it takes slightly longer than seven hours to complete since you’re supposed to pause playback a lot while you’re learning new phrases. Instead of teaching you canned phrases to memorize, it introduces you to the rules of the language little by little. After learning a new rule, the teacher asks you to use that rule, and the rules you’ve already learned, to deduce how to say new words and phrases. By the end of the course, you can use what you’ve learned as a foundation to figure out how to say all kinds of phrases without having to memorize them or repeat after the instructor. For example: “I would like to…”, followed by a verb, or “Could you please”, followed by a request. You learn verbs as you go, so you can complete these phrases in a variety of different ways. While it couldn’t teach a huge variety of material in a mere seven hours, I came away able to use what I’d learned with confidence. When I completed the course and recorded my Portuguese conversation for the product review, I wasn’t planning on doing a three-month Portuguese mission. I didn’t start my mission until a few weeks after this. So technically, I didn’t start my Portuguese mission at zero. However, I wouldn’t call myself a “false beginner”. Unlike most false beginners, I haven’t been studying the language on and off for years, or picked up the basics from my surroundings. In fact, before starting the Portuguese CD course, I had never studied the language a day in my life, and my level was literally zero. I didn’t even know how to say Olá or Tchau (hello and goodbye). In my next post, I’ll talk about the first few days of my mission. You can also watch my “Day 0” video - the conversation I recorded after doing the Michel Thomas Total Portuguese CD course, and a few weeks before officially starting my three-month mission. I hope you enjoy following along with my Portuguese in 3 months mission. Stay tuned for more updates!

The post New Mission: Introducing Holly’s Portuguese in 3 Months Mission appeared first on Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips.

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