#Inspired by the Lambert Poll

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Madonna - Like a Prayer 1989

"Like a Prayer" is a song by American singer Madonna and was released as the lead single from her 1989 fourth studio album of the same name. Written and produced by both Madonna and Patrick Leonard, the song heralded an artistic and personal approach to songwriting for Madonna, who believed that she needed to cater more to her adult audience. Along with the parent album, "Like a Prayer" was a turning point in Madonna's career, with critics starting to acknowledge her as an artist rather than a mere pop star.

"Like a Prayer" is a pop rock and gospel song that also incorporates elements of funk. The lyrics contain liturgical words, but they have been interpreted by some people to have dual meanings of sexual innuendo and religion. "Like a Prayer" was acclaimed by music critics upon release and was a global commercial success, becoming Madonna's seventh number 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, topping the Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks and also topping the charts in many other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and the UK. It was Madonna's fifth number 1 hit on the Eurochart Hot 100, and stayed at number one for 12 weeks.

The accompanying music video for "Like a Prayer", directed by Mary Lambert, shows a white woman being sexually assaulted and subsequently killed by a group of white men, but a black man is arrested for the crime. The video depicts a church and Catholic symbols such as stigmata. It also features the Ku Klux Klan's burning crosses and a dream sequence about kissing a black saint. Leon Robinson was hired to play the role of a saint; the part was inspired by Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony. The Vatican condemned the video, while family and religious groups protested against its broadcast. They boycotted products by soft drink manufacturer Pepsi, who had used the song in their commercial. Pepsi canceled their sponsorship contract with Madonna, but allowed her to retain the $5 million fee.

While most TV stations banned the music video, MTV notably continued to air the video on heavy rotation. The controversies leading to her "Like a Prayer" video introduced the concept of free publicity and became a turning point where Madonna was viewed as a shrewd businesswoman who knows how to sell a concept. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for "Like a Prayer" was nominated in the Viewer's Choice and Video of the Year categories, winning the former. It was number one on MTV's countdown of "100 Videos That Broke the Rules" in 2005, and for the channel's 25th anniversary, viewers voted it as the "Most Groundbreaking Music Video of All Time". In addition, the video was ranked at number 20 on Rolling Stone's "The 100 Top Music Videos", and at number two on VH1's 100 Greatest Videos. In a 2011 poll by Billboard, the video for "Like a Prayer" was voted the second-best music video of the 1980s, behind only Michael Jackson's "Thriller". According to Screen Rant, "Like a Prayer" is one of the most used Madonna's songs in movies and television, most recently notably featured in the 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine.

"Like a Prayer" received a total of 87,9% yes votes! Previous Madonna polls: #18 "Who's That Girl", #184 "Live to Tell".

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Gloria Holden (Dracula’s Daughter, The Life of Emile Zola)— She deserves to be alongside Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee as the hottest classic movie vampires. She was the first major examples of the reluctant vampire and the lesbian vampire and should have gone on to become an iconic scream queen. Her voice, her amazing gowns, and her EYES! I would let her eat me any day

Alma Rosa Aguirre (Nosotras las Taquigrafas)—no propaganda submitted

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut]

Gloria Holden:

She made an indelible impression on me in the title role in "Dracula's Daughter" as an elegantly tormented sapphic vampire failing to repress her urges to feed on women. What can I say, I'm gay.

ooooh my god. oooooh my god. She's got the cold high society woman with secret anguish thing nailed down. Also her role as Dracula's Daughter actually inspired Anne Rice. ok.

We owe Gloria Holden for the Interview With the Vampire book and the gay awakenings of baby goths everywhere.

Her performance in Dracula's Daughter inspired Anne Rice and she's name dropped in Queen of the Damned. A queer icon, for sure. And surely this poll needs some horror movie queens?

i'm nominating her particularly for her work as a lesbian vampire in dracula's daughter (1936), which was about as overt about the concept that she was trying to suck this unsuspecting lady's blood in a gay way as it possibly could be under the hayes code

Gifset: https://www.tumblr.com/down-in-dixie/700742136441831424

Gifset 2: https://www.tumblr.com/junkfoodcinemas/687098898667405312/draculas-daughter-1936-dir-lambert-hillyer

[hrny-song-tournament]

Inspired by other song brackets like @crysongz, @best-overplayed-song, @weird-song-bracket, @lovesongbracket, @songcharshowdown, @songshowdown, @movingmusiccomp.

Also tagging @tournamentdirectory, @ultimate-poll-tournament, @thedilftournament, @ultimatemilvesbracket. Pls let me know if you are uncomfortable with being tagged in this bracket.

Btw, it's a safe space for aspecs if you aren't sex repulsed etc.

It's time for horny. 69 songs, but which is the horniest/makes you most horny?

Cardi B - WAP vs Nine Inch Nails - Closer

Hey Violet - Guys My Age

Hudson Mohawke - Cbat vs Lilianna Wide - Grind Me Down (Jawster Remix)

Ok Go - I Want You So Bad I Can't Breathe vs Prince - Soft and Wet

Arctic Monkeys - I Wanna Be Yours vs Gunther - Ding Dong Song

Britney Spears - 3 vs Daft Punk - Something About Us

Ty Dolla $ign - Or Nah vs MCR - F.T.W.W.W.

Rihanna - S&M

Lady Gaga - G.U.Y. vs Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know

Reinaeiry (Sam Smith Cover) - Unholy vs KiNG MALA - she calls me daddy

Jen Foster - I Didn't Just Kiss Her vs Mariah Carey - Touch My Body

Depeche Mode - Master And Servant vs NEFFEX - Rumors

Justin Timberlake - SexyBack

Heathers: The Musical - Dead Girl Walking vs 5 Seconds of Summer - Teeth

Ayla D'Lyla and Miss Madeline - Life Could Be Sweet vs Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On

Simon Curtis - Flesh vs Hozier - Dinner & Diatribes

Nanne Grönvall - Håll om mig vs Arctic Monkeys - Knee Socks

Beyonce - Rocket vs Transviolet - Girls Your Age

George Michael - Careless Whisper vs Lemon Demon - Two Trucks

Shakira - She Wolf vs K/DA - Villain

Hozier - Talk

The Orion Experience - The Cult of Dionysus vs Moulin Rouge Cast - El Tango De Roxanne

Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls vs Miike Snow - Genghis Khan

Lil Nas X - MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) vs Dove Cameron - Boyfriend

Khia - My Neck My Back vs Kim Cesarion - Brains Out

Hatsune Miku and Megurine Luka - Magnet vs Rick James - Super Freak

mazie - girls just wanna have sex vs Queen - Get Down, Make Love

Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) vs Santana - Smooth

Todrick Hall - I LIKE BOYS vs Dead Or Alive - I Wanna Be A Toy

Olivia Newton-John - Physical

Neon Trees - Animal vs Hozier - Angel Of Small Death & The Codeine Scene

Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom vs Ashnikko - Slumber Party

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Cast - Strip Away My Conscience vs Holychild - Bathroom Bitch

Jhameel - Feisty vs Arctic Monkeys - 505

Adam Lambert - For Your Entertainment vs Ofenbach - Be Mine

The Weeknd - Earned It vs Jeangu Macrooy - Shake Up This Place

Hozier - Moment's Silence vs annapantsu - Hellfire

[pherryt]

Wip Poll!

nobody tagged me but i saw @sugaraddictarchangels and i decided it looked way too fun!

Rules: Make a 24-hour poll with the names of your WIPs, let it run, then write one sentence for every vote the winner got.

I have so many wips, and i rotate which ones are current, so it was hard to narrow it down, but here goes!

[queer-awakening-tourney]

Propaganda for Adam Lambert, I have no objectivity, only vibes-

Picture this: it's 2010. You're in middle school, and it's your turn to use the computer. You're scrolling through every music video you can find on YouTube, when you see him: Adam Lambert, leather pants and eyeliner and fingerless gloves donned for the If I Had You music video. The strobe lights immediately transfix your developing brain and you spend the next hour and a half rewatching all three minutes and fifty seven seconds of Adam Lambert dancing in neon-lit woods with a mysterious menagerie of people in late-00s fetish-inspired clubwear. You spend the rest of the evening printing out shitty pictures off of Google Images to tape to your math binder.

Adam deserves to move on in this poll. Screenshot from the potato-quality 2010 music video set on the highest resolution YouTube can give me.

Vote for Adam Lambert in the preliminaries!

[2dsnarkygentlemencollector]

Hallo! Once again I am posting my little Witcher Series of drawings. This time with some revelations and hopefully interesting insight into their creation!

Today’s precious boy is Jaskier! (Specifically, the Netflix Version of Jaskier as portrayed by the lovely Joey Batey)

I originally started this drawing in April 2020; the very day I finished drawing Geralt by the way. I was ready to start drawing the next piece straight away because what is Geralt without his Bard?

It was more of a flash of inspiration for Jaskier, I knew right away that it was going to have a boarder of buttercups, and that he was going to look lazy and serene with a lute; technically it is the lute from The Witcher 3 but whatever. I don’t think I captured the look quite right but it certainly isn’t my worst attempt.

For this one I did a poll for his outfit, as well as the color palette which I based on his different outfits from Netflix’s The Witcher. This is more of a robe than a dress but I think that is fine, and of course it had to have some sheerness to it just to make my life harder right?😓

The original final version of this drawing had a field of buttercups at the top and bottom but I decided it was better without it. At this point I was pretty firm that all the drawings would fit within a set of rules. They would be directly inspired by one of the illustrations from The Moon and Stars, all the drawings will have the same frame (the gold backing, the same dimensions and the same drawing area), and each one had to have a different pose. Very important, that last one.

Wanna hear something I think is interesting? Jaskier is a common name for this flower, or so Wikipedia tells me. I know it isn’t the flower I used here but I tend to spiral into research for my drawings.

I started documenting my WIP’s at this point, and they are all available with a little digging on my Twitter, or if you want to see all the WIP’s in one place and the Hi-Res version of this drawing you can support me on Patreon. (It has the original version of the finished work with the field of buttercups)

Thank you again @lokibus for showing an interest! I hope you’re still invested in hearing about Eskel’s, and Lambert’s drawings.

(Also I want to plug Joey Batey’s band The Amazing Devil on Bandcamp because it is fantastic. Does he need me to plug his band? No; but here it is.)

[chiseler]

Imagine Electing Pete

On September 12, 2019, during the Democratic Primary debate in Houston, Texas, something strange, even epiphanous occurred. At least for me. The current Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, one Pete Buttigieg, evidently (for this was by no means visible to the eye) fell into a trance-like state and began to channel a voice that was, oddly, not of the spirit world.

The voice was that of Disc Jockey Glenn Beck, and the words were from a 2009 Mission Statement that he had composed for some extraordinary thing he'd started called the 9/12 Movement; a kind of protest/support group for those citizens longing for the rare fragrance of unity and togetherness which intoxicated all of America, we were told, on September 12, 2001; just one day after that thing happened in Lower Manhattan. "We were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties, the color of your skin, or what religion you practiced. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created. We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again." Beck continued. "On September 12th, and for a short time after that, we really promised ourselves that we would focus on the things that were important -- our family, our friends, the eternal principles that allowed America to become the world's beacon of freedom." Amen. I suppose. Of course, how formidable the words, and how entirely sincere (or not) the sentiment may have been -- one cannot, I suspect, locate much nostalgia for that moment beating in the hearts of this country's Muslim communities, ever since marked for harassment (and frequently far, far worse) at the hands of those basking 'neath freedom's beacon -- it seems to have been a uniquely durable one. Personally, I had completely forgotten that . . . anyone . . . had told ev'ry little star just how sweet they thought everything was on that day. What I remember most Is the kind of unusually animated daze people were walking around in. The American Imagination was in high style that day. All anybody could talk about was What Happens Next, with many of these people consumed with their own, homemade fantasies of national vengeance toward those responsible. Their hearts were full, and grim. The Mayor of South Bend, as I say, appears to remember things rather differently, and one cannot question it. Six years later -- the clear sky of American unity having, for the rest of us, clouded over once more -- Buttigieg would remain so enthralled by this singular hour in Our American Story that he would leave his two jobs (it was, yes, that kind of economy) as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., and as a Fellow at the Truman National Security Project. He would enlist, voluntarily, in the United States Navy, jumping into our ongoing war of military aggression against the country of Afghanistan with both feet for a period of fourteen months. He ran numbers and drove officers around. Not exactly Audie Murphy in 'To Hell and Back' . . . or Abbott & Costello in 'Buck Privates' for that matter (if he triple-tapped an elementary school or watched our drones wipe out a house party or two, he has not admitted to it) . . . but it provided this future Presidential candidate a chance to build character (and, naturally, his resume). So, unlike a professional grifter such as Glenn Beck, when Buttigieg waxes nostalgic for those days of unity, one doubts his sincerity at one's peril. Buttigieg, during the debate in Houston, stated "All day today, I’ve been thinking about Sept. 12, the way it felt when for a moment we came together as a country. Imagine if we had been able to sustain that unity. Imagine what would be possible right now with ideas that are bold enough to meet the challenges of our time, but big enough, as well, that they could unify the American people. That’s what presidential leadership can do. That’s what the presidency is for." He concluded, of course, with, "And that is why I’m asking for your vote." To someone like Buttigieg, September 12, 2001 is a day that, I'm certain, he wishes could have gone on forever. But whatever he wants people to think, it was a day when the entire country was crouching as one, it seemed, gazing at everyone around them in fear and outright bafflement; a day that our rulers could have done (and in some senses did do) anything they wanted with us, and we probably would have gone along with all of it because we didn't know what else there was to do; a day, in other words, when our empire was never more firmly in the grasp of those who own it. Despite the loftiness of his rhetoric on the debate stage -- a mode of high school valedictorian speech he is often given to -- Pete Buttigieg is, underneath it all, a born technocrat; a classic, Eisenhower-era Republican; a creature of our institutions. He is not Franklin Roosevelt (that Bolshevik). He does not aspire to lift a frightened nation out of its slough of despond and keep its people safe from Capitalism's consequences and depredations; or anything, by all evidence, more inspiring  the citizenry than the 'Shut Up and Shop' society finally urged upon us in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He is only here to apply for a job to manage this empire of ours, nothing more. But I can't help feeling there's something quietly monstrous about his true, evident nostalgia for that time when unity was accessible to some Americans and not to others. I had my first inkling of this a couple months back when he had to get off the campaign trail for a day or two because the cops in South Bend had been for too long conducting themselves like Cossacks under Nicholas II, rampaging with too much impunity through that city's Black neighborhoods (safely separated from the more upper class College Town South Bend is known for being), finally dropping too many bodies with too little pretext. After pleading to the national press that he had essentially no control, no control at all, over the police in his city, and every poll showing that Black voters utterly despise him, he headed over to the part of town in question to inform the residents to please stay on the line, as it were; their questions and concerns were important to him. In full Damage Control mode, Pete Buttigieg read his statement through a bullhorn to a group of women, members of a grossly victimized community, all of whom had had enough and were giving their Mayor the earful his White ass deserved. And he stood before them, this diminutive block of American cheese in shirtsleeves, collar and tie; the guy who blankly tells you he's sorry, but you're being let go and there's nothing he can do about it; standing with a bullhorn in his hand and not a hint of emotion in his voice as he droned into the instrument to his city's Black community: "I'm not asking for your vote." Some people in this country, you see, are asked for their vote; others are not. Matters of race aside -- and not much good can be said on Buttigieg and that subject; which is not to suggest, I hasten to add, that the man is racist. With his background he's probably never had to think very much about race -- one thing was clear to me: He's a real calm customer, this guy; doesn't break a sweat. Everyone says so. Smart as a whip, too. You hear that one constantly from his supporters: swooning over his credentials, his evident intellect, his grasp of languages ("Norwegian! Can you believe it?!"). It all feeds into the overarching perception of his ability to handle crises with the right character of detachment. Our media adores him, largely for this reason; and why shouldn't they? He's perhaps the closest thing to a polar opposite in this race to the dread Donald Trump without his skin being at all darker. With Pete Buttigieg as President, I have been told, we won't have to think and worry so much about what's going on in the world, the way we do now. We won't be on pins and needles, waiting to see what the President of the United States does next. We can, at long last, relax again; get some sleep. He's got this. I can understand the enthusiasm for Buttigieg on the part of those who wish to see him elected President (there aren't too many of them, if polling has anything to say about it, but they do make themselves known). I even can find it in me to share it. To some extent, anyway. There is, after all, true intrinsic value in the election, should it happen, of the first (openly) gay President of the United States; just as Barack Obama's election possessed similar intrinsic value; just as the election of our first Woman President will when it happens. It's the only, unambiguously good thing about a prospective Pete Buttigieg Presidency. But beyond that, and the fact that most of what is claimed for him is probably true, I actually dread his ever being President (that he is not the only candidate currently in the race who I can say this about does little to ease my anxiety). Last night's single file march down 9/12 Memory Lane tore it for me. I know what he is now, and no mistake. He is a living, breathing, competent, talented, educated, cultured (no Alfred E. Neuman for this guy), credentialed throwback to the brain trusts and planners of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Rostow, McNamara, Bundy; every Ivy League war criminal Halberstam wrote about in 'The Best and the Brightest', who cooly, carefully ran the numbers, made their calculations, and executed a wholesale genocide in Southeast Asia. Buttigieg has the potential to be precisely the kind of cool, detached, analytical monster that will tell us, sorry, but entitlements have to be cut (numbers don't lie) or, worse, successfully oversee the ongoing, unending US war on Islam while our once again fat, dumb, happy country sleeps an untroubled sleep. In that sense (if no other), Pete Buttigieg is the most dangerous of all the candidates currently in the race. He's what Noam Chomsky warned us about fifty years ago.

by R.J. Lambert

[science-criticaltheory]

How to Build a Progressive Movement in a Polarized Country by George Lakey

Jerry Lambert, left, a Donald Trump supporter, and Asa Khalif, a Black Lives Matter supporter, scuffle after Khalif took Lambert's sign during a 2016 protest in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke / AP)

Whether it’s assault rifles, racial justice, immigration or fossil fuels, the country is rocked by conflicting narratives and rising passions. In a recent national poll, 70 percent of Americans say the political divide is at least as big as during the Vietnam War.

In December, I completed a year-and-a-half book tour in over 80 towns and cities in United States. From Arizona to Alaska to North Dakota to Georgia, I heard a worry in common from people active in struggles for justice. They talk about the political polarization they see around them.

Many assume that polarization is a barrier to making change. They observe more shouting and less listening, more drama and less reflection, and an escalation at the extremes. They note that mass media journalists have less time to cover the range of activist initiatives, which are therefore drowned out by the shouting. From coast to coast activists asked me: Does this condition leave us stuck?

My answer included both good news and bad news. Most people wanted the latter first.

The bad news about divisiveness

We are not dealing with a passing fad or temporary trend. The research of a trio of political scientists found that political polarization follows the curve of economic inequality. For decades after World War II, white male inequality in the United States was relatively low and governance was largely bi-partisan in spirit. But, as income inequality began to polarize, so too did our politics. Not surprisingly, perhaps, by 2015, income inequality was greater than at any other point in U.S. history, according to economists Jeffrey Gale Williamson and Peter Lindert.

The tax bill passed in January will add even more fuel to the fire.

Progressives need to breathe deeply and make our peace with the reality. Division expresses an economic arrangement, and it’s not something we can fix through urging more civil discourse. Even though we’ll want to use our conflict resolution skills in order to cope, we can also expect more drama at the extreme ends of our polarizations, and more ugliness and violence.

Even some of the people who carry progressive values like anti-oppression can be expected to become harsher and more dogmatic, as if inspired by the witch-hunting Massachusetts Puritans of yore. The dynamic of polarization is contagious—it doesn’t confine itself to tweeting public officials, radio talk shows and political junkies. I believe there’s little point in blaming our progressive movement comrades who pick up the infection around us. Instead, it helps to remember that this trend is much, much bigger than we are. We might as well forgive ourselves and each other, and focus on the positive openings that are given to us in this period.

The good news about polarization

In the 1920s and ’30s, the United States and European countries polarized dramatically. In Italy and Germany, fascists were marching and communists were organizing for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even on Europe’s northwest periphery, Sweden and Norway faced the most extreme polarization they’d ever had, complete with Nazis marching in the streets.

To continue reading click here

[camilopetrucci]

Inspiraciones baterísticas: Aaron Spears. Capítulo 1.

Domingo de inspiraciones baterísticas: El primero de una serie de bateristas que compartiré y el más importante para mí es Aaron Spears. Inició ya desde los 3 años con ese talento musical y lo fue puliendo en una iglesia Pentecostal en USA mientras que su madre siempre le cultivó ese talento. El ambiente familiar siempre se vio envuelto en el género Gospel y por eso Aaron creció escuchando bandas como: The Winans, Commission, The Hawkings y Hezekiah Walker. Tomó clases de batería en la niñez y fue hasta la secundaria que se sumergió de lleno a este instrumento. Empezó a inspirarse con bateros como Dave Weckl, Stewart Copeland, Vinnie Colaiuta y Dennis Chambers y durante ese periodo de vida su experiencia floreció dentro de la banda de la iglesia donde se congregaba. Fueron gracias a las presentaciones en vivo que lograron que formara parte de una agrupación llamada Gideon Band. Finalizados sus estudios en el Harper College de Los Angeles, volvió a su ciudad de origen, Washington, para volver a tocar con la banda de la iglesia y casualmente un personaje llamado Cornelius Berkeley lo escuchó tocar en una de las presentaciones en vivo, lo buscó y le ofreció unirse de tiempo completo a su agrupación. A la Gideon Band. Fue durante mediados de 2003 que mientras trabajaba como empleado de oficina para una firma de tecnología, tuvo su primera gran oportunidad musical. Resulta que un amigo de él estaba escuchando la música de la banda de Spears (Gideon) y lo hizo mientras Brantley Valdez, director musical de Usher, estaba a su lado. Le interesó tanto a Valdez el talento de lo que escuchaba que decidió darle una oportunidad para audicionar y ser parte de una gira junto a Usher. Aaron envió un demo en video tocando algunas canciones de Usher, y de los cientos de bateristas que también audicionaron él fue el elegido. Spears pidió una licencia de trabajo para salir con la banda de Usher y después de culminada la gira, Spears regreso a su puesto de trabajo original. Poco después de este suceso lo volvieron a llamar para invitarlo a realizar una segunda gira y fue cuando decidió escuchar esa voz artística que brotaba por sus venas y así dedicarse de lleno a la música. Renunció a su trabajo y se comprometió definitivamente con la banda de Usher. Ha participado en programas televisivos como el Saturday Night Live (SNL) y ha sido músico de casa en el programa American Idol. Llegó incluso a ser nominado en los Grammy como productor musical, gracias al trabajo realizado en las canciones “Superstar” y “Confessions” del disco que sacó Usher en 2004: “Confessions”. En 2006 participó dentro de uno de los eventos más importantes, baterísticamente hablando, el Modern Drummer. Allí ganó el premio Modern Drummer Reader’s Poll. Después de eso logró tocar para músicos como: David Cook, Lil Wayne, Carrie Underwood, Adam Lambert, Israel Houton e incluso con Alicia Keys. Sus sponsors principales se basan en cuatro: los platillos Zildjian, de los cuales se ha mantenido fiel respecto a su sonido además de crear una línea de platos llamada “Inspiration Pack” dedicadas a los sonidos Gospel; Usa baterías DW, que representan una de las gamas más altas; utiliza los parches Remo; y finalmente las baquetas Vic Firth que de hecho tiene su propia insignia, es decir, tiene sus baquetas personalizadas y listas para ser compradas en cualquier tienda musical que comercialice las Vic Firth. Si usted desea aprender un poco más del feeling y de los movimientos de Spears, puede ver la clínica musical que publicó en 2009 llamada: “Aaron Spears - Beyond The Chops: Groove, Musicality and Technique”.

[t-baba]

Issue 404 - Issue Not Found?

#404 — August 14, 2019

Read on the Web

Frontend Focus

Time to First Byte: What It Is and Why It Matters — Just how much does TTFB matter when it comes to frontend performance? Ultimately, "If you’re slow out of the gate, you’ll spend the rest of the race playing catchup."

Harry Roberts

The Differing Perspectives on 'CSS-in-JS' — Some people outright hate the idea of CSS-in-JS, thinking it muddies the water of what each is meant to be, whereas others outright love the convenience it offers. Here, Chris Coyier runs through some of the varying stances, linking through to more detailed thoughts on the practice.

CSS Tricks

New Introduction to Gatsby Course with Jason Lengstorf — Build blazing 🔥 fast websites by default with Gatsby. In this course, you'll build up a blog from scratch and deploy your brand new blog to Netlify for the world to see.

Frontend Masters sponsor

The History and Legacy of jQuery — jQuery may have fallen somewhat out of favor in web development, but it still powers an estimated 74 percent of sites and paved the way for modern web frameworks. (In recent polls we've done, many people are still actively chosing to use it too. Long live jQuery!)

Danny Guo

Truths About Digital Accessibility — Things to keep in mind when creating, maintaining, or evaluating accessible technology.

Eric Bailey

Minify Your SVGs — How one software engineer optimizes SVGs for his blog and “why you probably should, too”.

Victor Zhou

   🖥  A Focus on 404s

As it's issue 404 we thought it appropriate to highlight some of the web's most inventive, useful or just amusing error pages:

The error page for Google's Android operating system offers up a helpful list of popular suggestions on where to go next, but also has a cute little game you can play.

Design tool Figma takes a fun approach that's related to the their product — you can tweak the anchor points of some on-screen 404 text.

Whilst also encouraging you to make a new search, Amazon's 404 page shows off the dogs of company employees. Refresh for a new doggo.

Lost on NPR's site? The 404 page highlights lost people, places and things.

GitHub's error page pays homage to Star Wars with an Obi-wan Kenobi Octocat and a neat hover effect.

You'll find an awkward, long video on the 404 page of artist Steve Lambert.

It's surprising to me that Google (of all places) doesn't feature a Search bar on their very simple 404 page. YouTube does.

British design consultancy Laser Red features John Travolta daring you to say 404 again, complete with an interesting bit of blur..

When it comes to building your own 404 error page, it's worth giving the user any help that you can. So including things like a search bar, a list of useful/popular links and a way to report the error are just a few best practices worth considering.

💻 Jobs

Frontend Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Join the most energizing community for developers. Work from anywhere with the world's leading brands.

X-Team

Frontend Developers Are in Demand on Vettery — Ready for a bold career move? Make a free profile, name your salary, and connect with hiring managers from top employers today.

Vettery

📙 Articles, Tutorials & Opinion

Design Principles for Developers: Processes and CSS Tips for Better Web Design — Knowing the ingredients of Web design is one thing, but putting them together into excellent Web sites is another. Andrew looks at three areas.

Andrew Spencer

Native Lazy Loading Has Arrived — A software engineer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) talks through Chrome’s new native lazy loading feature and his experience of using it at the corporation.

Andy Potts

Using scrollIntoView() to Show Added Elements to a Container with Overflow — A great example of one of those times when you see something in the docs you didn’t realize existed and it makes an existing task much easier.

Christian Heilmann

▶  Make It Move: Create A Web Animation From Scratch — How to create and structure graphics for web animation (using SVG and JS) plus how to make and balance creative and technical decisions.

Chris Gannon

Handling Unused CSS In Sass To Improve Performance — Explores a Sass-oriented solution for dealing with unused CSS, avoiding the need for complicated dependencies involving headless browsers, and DOM emulation.

Luke Harrison

Introduction to Tailwind CSS — A brief introductory look into Tailwind CSS, the popular utility-based CSS library.

Joshua Hall

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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/7/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 8/7/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

“U.S. agricultural exports to China plummeted more than 50% last year to $9.1 billion as tariffs raised the cost of American soybeans, pork and other farm products. The exports dropped another 20% in the first six months of this year. The pain is rippling through agricultural supply chains. One forecast says tariffs could cost the sector as many as 71,000 jobs over the next two years” [Wall Street Journal]. (Apparently, China’s swine fever epidemic has not cut demand for soy.)

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of August 5: Biden fluctuates to 32.3% (32.2), Sanders continues climb to 16.7% (16.5%), Warren flat at 14.0% (14.0%), Buttigieg flat at 5.5% (5.5%), Harris down at 10.2% (10.3%), Beto separating himself from the bottom feeders, interestingly. Others Brownian motion. So, I think we can conclude that Sanders won both debates.

* * *

2020

Sanders (D)(1): Sanders calls his shot not only the effect of trade deals on workers, but on the two-party system. In 2000. The whole video is worth a listen, since the Tweet doesn’t quote all of it.

In the year 2000, Congress voted to grant China upgraded trade status, helping it become world's most powerful dictatorship.

Bernie Sanders voted against. He stood next to Pelosi at Dem presser and blasted Bill Clinton. "Let me tell you where he got his money," Sanders intoned. pic.twitter.com/JzBZ3UiXka

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 7, 2019

No wonder they hate him….

* * *

“Few candidates have loyal small-dollar donor bases” [WaPo]. • Few, but not none:

Turns out small donor money isn’t all that fungible.

“Shadow of Dark Money Grows as 2020 Groups Shun Donor Disclosure” [Bloomberg]. “Democratic and Republican groups raising tens of millions of dollars for the 2020 elections increasingly are keeping their funding sources secret, a trend that watchdog groups warn allows high-dollar donors to gain influence with candidates without risking exposure. Priorities USA, which collected almost $200 million to help Hillary Clinton in 2016, says it wants to spend that much or more to help the next Democratic nominee defeat President Donald Trump. This time, however, Priorities is being funded mostly by undisclosed donations.” • What could go wrong?

“Are the Democrats divided? No — they’re poised to win big if they don’t screw it up” [Bill Curry, Salon]. “Everyone wants to see Warren and Sanders face off against Biden because the real dividing line is between the middle class and the donor class. Warren and Sanders never attack Obama, Biden or each other and they won’t do it in September. What they will do is compare their ideas and campaigns to his. The facts will be fierce, but the delivery will be civil. It’ll be Biden’s toughest test. Progressives want to take a new path, but I’ve yet to meet a “Never Bidener.” The stakes are too high. To defeat Trump, Democrats need to answer his racism with a message of both racial justice and social conciliation, and answer his corruption with a message of economic justice and political reform. So long as their candidates don’t make a fetish of their small differences, they’ll get there.” • White House counsellor to Clinton. Not seeing a whole lot about “economic justice and political reform” from establishment Democrats. Of course, if they hadn’t spent three years yammering about Russia, they might have had time to come up with something.

El Paso and Dayton Shootings

“Dayton shooter may be antifa’s first mass killer” [NY Post]. • I dunno. It’s the shooters pr0n rock band that gets me. I see the El Paso shooter, who — assuming the provenance proves out — wrote a manifesto as being ideologically serious in a way that the Dayton shooter, who was just a mess by all accounts, was not. (We should also think back to the Orlando shootings, where literally everything about the initial stories was wrong). And speaking of pr0n–

“Photos from Dayton and El Paso illustrate the grim routine of mass shootings” [WaPo]. • If I see one more photo of beautiful young people holding candles… Honestly, it’s like some weird kind of pr0n. I don’t equate viewing digital images of people mourning as actually mourning.

Where “we” are:

Panic in Times Square After Motorcycle Is Mistaken for Gunshots https://t.co/F5qsndMPfD

— Dan Froomkin (@froomkin) August 7, 2019

Somehow, I can’t help thinking that a panicked populace is not conducive to sound democratic decision-making…

“What Experts Know About People Who Commit Mass Shootings” [New York Times]. “Can one mass shooting inspire another? Yes… Are video games to blame for mass shootings? The results of studies attempting to clarify the relationship between violent video games and aggression have been mixed, with experts deeply divided on the findings. How strong is the link between mental illness and mass shootings? Tenuous, at best. Would drugging or confining people showing “red flags” prevent massacres? No one knows for certain.” • This is pretty thin stuff.

2018 Post Mortem

No:

.@ChelseaClinton and I are thrilled to announce "The Book of Gutsy Women," out October 1st. It's a conversation about over 100 women who have inspired us—and narrowing it down was a process! https://t.co/DOhSrVq9SC pic.twitter.com/bOVES73FAQ

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 6, 2019

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Is ‘Bernie or Bust’ the Future of the Left?” [New York Times]. • Report on the DSA convention. I dunno, it seems to me that an organization dedicated to seizing the means of production shouldn’t be getting press this good. Perhaps it’s their stand on open borders.

“Twitter says it won’t verify new candidates until they win their primaries” [The Hill]. • Swell. More incumbent protection. That should certainly help Twitter with regulatory issues!

“Inslee Is Doing Very Well in the Power Primary” [Mike the Mad Biologist]. The conclusion: “Democrats in 2021 will need to make people’s lives better in meaningful ways. If not, we will have a repeat of 2010 in 2022, since next time we won’t get Trump, we’ll get someone smarter and more disciplined. As bad as Trump is, President Tom Cotton would be far worse.” • Yep. 2020 is their last shot. Biden/Harris all the way!

They call it historical materialism:

The political continuum hypothesis states that there exist historical precedents besides Nixon and Hitler. It is widely believed outside the United States, in countries Americans have never heard of

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) August 7, 2019

Stats Watch

JOLTS, June 2019 (yesterday): “Moderation in labor demand is this year’s theme of the JOLTS report” [Econoday]. “Quits, which are tracked by Federal Reserve officials for indications of worker mobility and related wage pressure, remain flat… This report hints at easing capacity pressure in the labor market and will likely be welcome by Fed officials who, with last month’s rate cut, are adding new stimulus to the economy.”

MBA Mortgage Applications, week of August 2, 2019: “A big drop in mortgage rates — the result of last week’s rate cut by the Federal Reserve — triggered a surge of refinancing applications” [Econoday].

Shipping: “Slots in heavy-duty truck production lines are opening up but few fleet operators are getting in line. Orders for Class 8 trucks fell last month to their lowest level since 2010” [Wall Street Journal]. “A factory backlog for Class 8 trucks that exceeded 300,000 orders late last year is down by more than a third, and research group FTR expects production to decline 22% next year. The good news for manufacturers is that cancellations have remained relatively light. That could change if weakness in the broader industrial sector gets worse and trucking companies decide to park their current fleet plans.”

The Bezzle: “A pioneer in the meal-kit market is losing its sizzle. Blue Apron Holdings Inc. narrowed its quarterly loss but is still losing customers… and a turnaround could involve a lot more logistics for a business already laden with complicated fulfillment” [Wall Street Journal]. “New Chief Executive Linda Kozlowski says Blue Apron’s plan to boost revenue and customer growth this year will include serving more households and offering greater menu choices, including flexibility to tailor the options…. Perhaps more challenging, analysts say the overall market is already saturated and likely smaller than companies had hoped.”

Tech: “Trump Wants to Make It Basically Impossible to Sue for Algorithmic Discrimination” [Vice]. “The new rule takes aim at a 2015 Supreme Court ruling, which decided that consumers could combat housing discriminatory business practices by making “disparate-impact claims” under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In a disparate-impact claim, if you find out that a business practice had a disproportionate effect on certain groups of people, then you can hold that business liable—even if it was an unintended consequence….. HUD’s new rule would throw all that out the window by introducing huge loopholes to shield businesses from liability when their algorithms are accused of bias. As Reveal News reported, ‘A hypothetical bank that rejected every loan application filed by African Americans and approved every one filed by white people, for example, would need to prove only that race or a proxy for it was not used directly in constructing its computer model.’ But there is substantial evidence to show that racial bias is fundamentally baked into the way that these algorithms and their data sets are constructed, even if they don’t specifically take race into account.” • Code is law…

Tech: “Amazon Is Coaching Cops on How to Obtain Surveillance Footage Without a Warrant” [Vice]. “When police partner with Ring, Amazon’s home surveillance camera company, they get access to the ‘Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal,’ an interactive map that allows officers to request footage directly from camera owners. Police don’t need a warrant to request this footage, but they do need permission from camera owners. Emails and documents obtained by Motherboard reveal that people aren’t always willing to provide police with their Ring camera footage. However, Ring works with law enforcement and gives them advice on how to persuade people to give them footage. Emails obtained from police department in Maywood, NJ—and emails from the police department of Bloomfield, NJ, which were also posted by Wired—show that Ring coaches police on how to obtain footage. The company provides cops with templates for requesting footage… Ring suggests cops post often on Neighbors, Ring’s free ‘neighborhood watch’ app, where Ring camera owners have the option of sharing their camera footage.” • It’s a little tough to rank Big. Tech companies for evil right now, but surely Amazon gets a boost for this.

Tech: “Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One’s AWS S3 buckets got hacked?” [The Register]. “After last week’s revelations that a hacker stole the personal details of 106 million Capital One credit card applicants from its Amazon-hosted cloud storage, a US Senator has demanded Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explain what exactly what went wrong. The sensitive information was siphoned from Capital One’s Amazon Web Services S3 buckets by a former AWS engineer, who was arrested and charged at the end of July…. Wyden is particularly concerned that other companies that store their data in the AWS cloud may have been hit in the same way by the suspected Capital One thief, Seattle-based software engineer Paige Thompson. He cited reports that Ford, the University of Michigan, the Ohio Department of Transportation, and others may have suffered similar losses of information at the hands of Thompson, and that this may point to a systemic weakness in Amazon’s security.” • Uh oh. Keeping my data on my hard disk, thank you very much.

Tech: “FCC Plans to Redo Flawed Broadband Maps” [Inside Sources]. “Accurate broadband maps would help under [-served] areas get internet access, and they could also be used to hold telecom companies T-Mobile and Sprint accountable for their pledge to build out 5G to cover 85 percent of rural Americans in three years and 99 percent of all Americans in six years once they complete their merger. (The combined company will face financial penalties if they don’t meet these conditions.) According to the FCC’s Report and Order for the Digital Opportunity Data Collection, the FCC will require all internet service providers (ISPs) ‘to submit granular data maps of the areas where they have broadband-capable networks and make service available.’ Previously, ISPs submitted census block data, which means even if they only served one person within a census tract or county, they counted that entire tract or county has having internet access.” • Wow.

Tech: “More on Backdooring (or Not) WhatsApp” [Schneier on Security]. “Yesterday, I blogged about a Facebook plan to backdoor WhatsApp by adding client-side scanning and filtering. It seems that I was wrong, and there are no such plans.” • A retraction, which speaks well of Schneier.

Tech: “Hacked Equifax Customer Receives 10,000 Stolen Social Security Numbers As Share Of Class Action Settlement” [The Onion]. • News In Photos, so the headline is the joke.

Manufacturing: “Boeing Holds Workshops With China Carriers to Bring 737 Max Back” [Industry Week]. “Boeing invited pilots and engineers from China Southern Airlines Co. to a gathering in Guangzhou on Monday, according to an emailed statement from Boeing. More such workshops will be held with Air China Ltd., China Eastern Airlines Corp., Xiamen Airlines Co. and Hainan Airlines Holding Co. in their respective hubs this week. The gatherings are among the latest steps Boeing is taking to bring the plane back, though the exact timing remains unclear. Boeing is redesigning the plane’s flight-control system and is still aiming to present a final software package to regulators by September, though the timeline could slip, a person familiar with the plans has said. China Southern and Air China are among Chinese carriers seeking compensation from the U.S. manufacturer for order delays and losses caused by the grounding of the 737 Max in the wake of two deadly crashes.”

Transportation: “Self-Driving Trucks Are Ready to Do Business in Texas” [WIRED]. “The truck developers come for the weather: It can get chilly in Texas, but the state doesn’t get the months of snow, which can bedevil automated vehicle sensor technology.” • So, when the headline says “in Texas,” it really does mean “in Texas.”

Transportation: “How Much Traffic Do Uber and Lyft Cause?” [CityLab]. “Today the ride-hailing giants released a joint analysis showing that their vehicles are responsible for significant portions of [vehicle-miles traveled (VMT)] in six major urban centers… Now, the Fehr and Peers memo indicates that [transportation network companies (TNCs)] accounted for nearly twice the VMT in San Francisco than the SFCTA had estimated, said Gregory Erhardt, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Kentucky who has researched Uber and Lyft’s effects on public transit ridership. That means the services are likely delaying commuters more, too… On average, between the six cities, just 54 to 62 percent of the vehicle miles traveled by Lyfts and Ubers were with a rider in tow. A third of these miles involve drivers slogging around in between passengers (“deadheading,” in taxi-driver argot); 9 to 10 percent are drivers on their way to a pickup.”

Transportation: “Swiss Post Suspends Drone Delivery Service After Second Crash” [IEEE Spectrum]. “For about a year, Swiss Post and Matternet have been collaborating on a drone delivery service in three different cities in Switzerland, with drones ferrying lab samples between hospitals far faster and more efficiently than is possible with conventional ground transportation. The service had made about 3,000 successful flights as of last January, but a January 25th crash into Lake Zurich put things on hold until April. A second crash in May caused Swiss Post to suspend the service indefinitely, and a recently released interim report published by the Swiss Safety Investigation Board provides some detail on what happened—and a reminder that for all the delivery drone hype, there are some basic problems that are still not totally solved.” • In this case, parachutes that deploy “if something goes wrong.” More: “We have no idea exactly how safe Amazon’s drones are, or Google’s drones are. Even Zipline, which has been flying drones dozens of times per day for years, is still working to make their drones safer. What we do know is that crashes can (and do) happen, and the Swiss Post incidents are further evidence that we’ll need a much better understanding of where all of the risk is if we want drones flying regularly over populated areas.”

Concentration: “Australia Strips Google/Facebook to Their Underwear” [Matt Stoller, Big]. “The [Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC)]’s most important contribution to the debate is to say, unvarnished, that Google and Facebook have exceptional amounts of market power and the incentive to use it to manipulate and exploit publishers, businesses, and users. Over the past fifteen years, Google and Facebook have become, as Sims put it in his press conference, “essential gateways for consumers and businesses.” The consequences of this shift are the killing of the free press and the mass manipulation of users….” • Most NC readers already know that, but Stoller’s post is well worth a read for the wealth of detail and clarity of exposition.

Mr. Market: “Carry On Like Nothing Really Matters. Until It Does” [John Authers, Bloomberg]. “It’s no secret that yields on sovereign bonds around the world remain stunningly and historically low. And that, in turn, means a revival in the ‘carry trade.’… Carry trading is best known from its incarnation in the foreign-exchange market. It involves borrowing in a currency where interest rates are low and parking that money in a currency with higher rates, pocketing the difference, or ‘carry.’ Ideally, you get paid for doing nothing… In practice, any increase in volatility or perceived risk — which can be nicely proxied by the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX — spells doom for the carry trade.” • Uh oh.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 20 Extreme Fear (previous close: 27, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 48 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 7 at 12:19pm. • Restored at reader request. Note that the index is not always updated daily, sadly.

The Biosphere

“Who Will Save the Amazon (and How)?” [Foreign Policy]. “Aug. 5, 2025: In a televised address to the nation, U.S. President Gavin Newsom announced that he had given Brazil a one-week ultimatum to cease destructive deforestation activities in the Amazon rainforest. If Brazil did not comply, the president warned, he would order a naval blockade of Brazilian ports and airstrikes against critical Brazilian infrastructure. The president’s decision came in the aftermath of a new United Nations report cataloging the catastrophic global effects of continued rainforest destruction, which warned of a critical “tipping point” that, if reached, would trigger a rapid acceleration of global warming. Although China has stated that it would veto any U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Brazil, the president said that a large “coalition of concerned states” was prepared to support U.S. action. At the same time, Newsom said the United States and other countries were willing to negotiate a compensation package to mitigate the costs to Brazil for protecting the rainforest, but only if it first ceased its current efforts to accelerate development.” • Ulp.

“Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene” [Nature]. “Crawford Lake is one of ten sites around the globe that researchers are studying as potential markers for the start of the Anthropocene, an as-yet-unofficial designation that is being considered for inclusion in the geological time scale. The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a committee of 34 researchers formed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) in 2009, is leading the work, with the aim of crafting a proposal to formally recognize the Anthropocene. This new epoch would mark a clear departure from the Holocene, which started with the close of the last ice age. To define a new epoch, the researchers need to find a representative marker in the rock record that identifies the point at which human activity exploded to such a massive scale that it left an indelible signature on the globe. Given how much people have done to the planet, there are many potential markers. “Scientifically, in terms of evidence, we’re spoiled for choice, but we have to pin it down,” says Jan Zalasiewicz, a palaeobiologist at the University of Leicester, UK, and chair of the AWG…. In the end, it will be the rocks that have the final say.” • In more ways than one.

“A mission to Mars could cause learning impairment and anxiety, study says” [CNN]. “On a long-term spaceflight mission to Mars, astronauts will be continuously exposed to low-dose radiation in deep space. A new study found that this exposure can cause impairments in the brains of mice, resulting in learning and memory issues as well as anxiety… Based on their findings, the researchers believe that one out of five astronauts on a deep space mission would likely experienced anxiety. One in three would be more likely to deal with memory issues. And all of them may struggle when it comes to making decisions, which would be crucial on a mission to Mars where communications with the Earth are delayed by up to 20 minutes.” • Surely there is a science fiction story with this premise, though I can’t remember one. Certainly lots of potential for dark comedy…

“This tiny insect could be delivering toxic pesticides to honey bees and other beneficial bugs” [Science]. “According to a new study, neonicotinoids can kill beneficial insects such as honey bees, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps by contaminating honeydew, a sugar-rich liquid excreted by certain insects…. The study suggests honeydew could be another way beneficial insects are exposed to deadly insecticides. This can devastate more insects across the food web than nectar contaminated with insecticides could, the team says, because honeydew is more abundant, especially in agricultural fields… neonicotinoids still account for more than 20% of the world’s insecticide market.”

Our Famously Free Press

“The GateHouse takeover of Gannett has been finalized” [Poynter]. • Ugh. I expect the imminent gutting of USA Today, which has been a surprisingly good paper.

“How to do something about local news” [Substack]. • Basically a hymn of praise to substack by a founder, but it still sounds like an interesting, er, platform (akin to WordPress, not Facebook).

Games

“Investigative journalism startup uses mobile gaming to finance its future” [Journalism]. “In the game, the player uses tools and skills that McGregor and his editorial team need in their day-to-day investigations and reports. With image verification being an example of one of the most difficult challenges, the game will ask players to assess whether a viral image is accurate or not by using software to spot areas of the image that have been edited. ‘It’s the basics and 101 of journalism – teaching people to be sceptical and what tools to use to crack the conspiracy, like searching court records or sting operations on a more extreme level,’ he explained.” • It sounds like the stories and games are fictional. I don’t see why they couldn’t be real.

The Last of the Feral Hogs, I Swear

For our readers in the United Kingdom:

“30-50 of them, you say?” pic.twitter.com/M07mLraoSE

— Josephine Long come to my show please it’s urgent (@JosieLong) August 5, 2019

A kind soul summarizes:

in the final analysis, the great moral victory of feral hog twitter was that it was much more of a carnival atmosphere with people aiming to make each other laugh than a dunkfest on the feral hog guy

— elizabeth bruenig (@ebruenig) August 6, 2019

News of the Wired

Bake like an Egyptian. Wonderful thread:

Two weeks ago, with the help of Egyptologist @drserenalove and Microbiologist @rbowman1234, I went to Boston’s MFA and @Harvard‘s @peabodymuseum to attempt collecting 4,500 year old yeast from Ancient Egyptian pottery. Today, I baked with some of it… pic.twitter.com/143aKe6M3b

— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) August 5, 2019

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (EM):

EM writes: “You have been saying you need plant photos. I was just in the garden weeding when I remembered to capture this and send it to you. The pink hydrangea on the left is my favorite this year but I am also partial to the coreopsis beneath it.” I like the path, which looks like it would be nice to walk on in bare feet.

Bonus (PS):

PS writes: “Does this fill the bill?” Re Silc sent in his mobile, and Mark52 sent in his steel silhouette, and now PS. I didn’t expect a response like this. Reader, how about you?

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser.Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

2:00PM Water Cooler 8/7/2019

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[tsgcolumbus]

March Event Calendar

Spring is right around the corner, and to get us in the spirit, here is a round-up of some fun events going on with our Scouted businesses this month: 

ICE CREAM SOCIAL WITH SAM’S FANS

Sunday, March 3 | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm | Amelita Mirolo Barn - Upper Arlington | Tickets Here 

Come join Sam’s Fans for an ice cream party to celebrate Sam’s birthday month! Ticket price includes free ice cream provided by Velvet Ice Cream, a performance from local kids band The Shazzbots!, and kids activities and crafts. Ice cream will be served during the entire event until we run out! The goal for this year’s Ice Cream with Sam’s Fans is to purchase music and art supplies for Cleveland Clinic Children’s! 

BOTOX AND FACIAL FILLER EVENT WITH DR. ROBERT HECK

Monday, March 4- Upper Arlington | Tuesday, March 5- Upper Arlington (Star Jewelers on High will be doing complimentary jewelry cleaning from 12-4pm) | Thursday, March 7- Easton Town Center | Thursday, March 14- Easton Town Center

Special pricing on Botox and Facial fillers. Call 614.246.6900 to book your appointment.

SPRING PREVIEW PARTY 

Wednesday, March 6 | 4-7pm | THREAD Short North | Info Here 

Grab your girlfriends and let's talk Spring style and trends! Enjoy free dry styles from The Blowout Bar, 15% of shopping at THREAD, lite bites and a beverage bar (must be 21 to join us!) Host, Sarah Lambert, founder of The Mom In Style, along with THREAD and Blowout Bar stylists, will talk Spring fashion and hair trends.

BERTA TRUNK SHOW AT LA JEUNE MARIEE

Friday, March 8- Sunday, March 10 | La Jeune Mariee | Request Appointment Here

View the stunning F/W collection- a beautiful blend of rich fabrics, refreshing twists on traditional silhouettes, and a whole lot of that BERTA glam.

SPRING FLING AT BLISS LIFE + STYLE

Saturday, March 9th | 10am-6pm 

Celebrate SPRING at Bliss Life + Style with: raffles for free prizes, sweet treats, and refreshments. PLUS 20% off all bar ware & drink tumblers. A portion of proceeds will be donated to Freedom a la Cart. 

MIX & SHAKE AT NORTH MARKET

Saturday, March 9 | 7:30-10:30pm | Tickets Here

North Market and the Ohio Distiller’s Guild have once again partnered to bring you an evening of cocktails, food, activities, music and more! Attendees can expect 6 oz cocktail tastings (4 tastings are included with admission), a $10 voucher to spend at any North Market merchant, entertainment, a speakeasy, and more! Please bring your printed ticket to the event. Tickets $50 (online) and $60 at door. 

ST. PATRICK’S DAY COOKIES & CANDLES WITH JANA LEE’S BAKE SHOP

Thursday, March 14 | 6-8pm | Candle Lab | Tickets Here 

Decorate six St. Patrick's Day cookies lead by Jana Lee and pour your own custom-scented 8oz candle . Cocktails available for purchase.

RARE MAGIC SHOW AT HOTEL LEVEQUE

Thursday, March 14 and Saturday, March 16 | 2 showings per night | Tickets Here 

Ohio’s Top magician, Drew Murray brings his brand new show “Rare Magic” to Columbus. In this immersive 75-minute performance, you’ll experience some of the most mind-bending magic and illusion just inches away.

GILDED SOCIAL’S DRESS BRACKET CHALLENGE

Now thru April 9th | Sign Up Here

Inspired by the popularity of Gilded Social's Instagram story dress polls, they’ve created a fun game called the Dress Bracket Challenge where YOU can win a FREE made-to-order dress or $250 in discounts for your #GildedTribe.

[treehog]

Baba O'RileyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Teenage Wasteland" redirects here. For the films, see

Teenage Wasteland (film)

or

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland

."Baba O'Riley"

Single

by

The Who

from the album

Who's Next

B-side

"

My Wife

"

Released23 October 1971

[1]

Format

7-inch single

Recorded

May 1971,

Olympic Studios, London, England[2]

Genre

Hard rock

[3]

Length5:08

Label

Polydor

Songwriter(s)

Pete Townshend

Producer(s)

The Who

Associate producer:

Glyn Johns

Executive producers:

Kit Lambert

Chris Stamp

Pete Kameron

The Who

singles chronology

"

Let's See Action

"

(1971)"

Baba O'Riley

"

(1971)"

Behind Blue Eyes

"

(1971)

Who's Next

track listing

9 tracks

[show]

"Baba O'Riley" is a song by the English rock band The Who. It is the opening track to the band's studio album Who's Next, and was issued in Europe as a single on 23 October 1971, coupled with "My Wife".

Roger Daltrey sings most of the song, with Pete Townshend singing the middle eight: "Don't cry/don't raise your eye/it's only teenage wasteland". The song's title is a combination of the names of two of Townshend's philosophical and musical influences, Meher Baba and Terry Riley.

"Baba O'Riley" was included in Time magazine's list of the All-Time 100 Songs, Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Contents

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1Background and composition

2Recording and release

3Reception and legacy

4Personnel

5Charts

6References

7External links

Background and composition[edit]

Townshend originally wrote "Baba O'Riley" for his Lifehouse project, a rock opera that was to be the follow-up to the Who's 1969 opera, Tommy. In Lifehouse, the song would be sung at the beginning by a Scottish farmer named Ray, as he gathers his wife Sally and his two children to begin their exodus to London. When Lifehouse was scrapped, eight of the songs were salvaged and recorded for The Who's 1971 album Who's Next, with "Baba O'Riley" as the lead-off track.

Townshend stated in an interview that "'Baba O'Riley' is about the absolute desolation of teenagers at Woodstock, where audience members were strung out on acid and 20 people had brain damage. The irony was that some listeners took the song to be a teenage celebration: 'Teenage Wasteland, yes! We're all wasted!'"[4]

The "Baba O'Riley" title combines the names of Meher Baba and Terry Riley, two of Townshend's philosophical and musical mentors.[5] The song is often mistakenly called "Teenage Wasteland", after the phrase repeated in the song. "Teenage Wasteland" was in fact a working title for the song in its early incarnations as part of the Lifehouse project, but eventually became the title for a different but related song by Townshend, which is slower and features different lyrics.[6] A demo of "Teenage Wasteland" is featured on Lifehouse Chronicles, a six disc set of music related to the Lifehouse project, and on several Townshend compilations and videos.

The song uses a I-V-IV chord progression and is composed in the key of F major. However, it was recorded using the European "A" which is 446 HZ rather than the standard 440 HZ.[7]

Recording and release[edit]

"Baba O'Riley"'s backing track was derived from the Lifehouse concept, where Townshend wanted to input the vital signs and personality of Meher Baba into a synthesiser, which would then generate music based on that data. When this idea fell through, Townshend instead recorded a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ using its marimba repeat feature as the backing track.[8] This modal approach was inspired by the work of minimalist composer Terry Riley.

The song was derived from a nine-minute demo, which the band reconstructed.[9] "Baba O'Riley" was initially 30 minutes in length, but was edited down to the "high points" of the track for Who's Next.[10] The other parts of the song appeared on the third disc of Townshend's Lifehouse Chronicles as "Baba M1 (O'Riley 1st Movement 1971)" and "Baba M2 (2nd Movement Part 1 1971)".

"Baba O'Riley" was released in November 1971 as a single in several European countries. However, in the United Kingdom and the United States, it was only released as part of the album Who's Next.

Reception and legacy[edit]

The Who

performing Baba O'Riley live at Manchester Arena in 2014.

"Baba O'Riley" appears at No. 349 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[11] The song is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.[12] The band Pearl Jam regularly plays a cover of the song during concerts, and a readers' poll in Rolling Stone awarded this cover as #8 in their Greatest Live Cover Songs.[13]

The Tubes performed the song on 9 September 1978 at the Knebworth Festival in tribute to Keith Moon, who had died two days earlier.[14]

"Baba O'Riley" was used as the theme song for the popular television series CSI: NY (2004–13); each CSI series used a Who song as its theme.[15] The song plays in the opening segment of the Miami Vice episode "Out Where the Buses Don't Run" (season two, 1985).[16] One of the working titles of That '70s Show (1998–2006) was "Teenage Wasteland," a reference to the repeated lyric in the song.[17] The song was also used in trailers for A Bug's Life (1998), American Beauty (1999), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), and The Peanuts Movie (2015).[18] The song has also been used in episode 14 of season one in the TV series House and in episode 10 of season one in the TV series The Newsroom. A remixed version of this song, re-done by Alan Wilkis, appears in the 2012 remake of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, as well as the Family Guy season 13 episode "Quagmire's Mom" and episode 11 of season one of Superstore.

Since 2003, "Baba O'Riley" is played during player introductions for the Los Angeles Lakers during home games at the Staples Center.[19] The song is played prior to live UFC events during a highlight package showing some of the most famous fights in the mixed martial arts company's history.[20] It is also the official theme song of competitive eater Joey Chestnut.[21]

At both the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics, the track "The Road Goes On Forever" by High Contrast is used during a countdown to the start of the proceedings, this song samples Baba O'Riley with a higher tempo as a 120bpm dance track.[22] Baba O'Riley was then performed by the Who as their first number during the last musical segment at the closing ceremony, with Daltrey singing a changed lyric of "Don't cry/Just raise your eye/There's more than teenage wasteland".[23] The song was also sampled in the song "Best Song Ever" by One Direction. Baba O' Riley is also used as the pregame music at Sanford Stadium and is played approximately 7 minutes before every Georgia home football game.

Personnel[edit]

Roger Daltrey – lead vocals, harmonica (live versions only)

Pete Townshend – lead vocals (middle eight), Lowrey TBO-1 organ,[24] piano, guitar

John Entwistle – bass guitar

Keith Moon – drums

Dave Arbus – violin[25] (studio recording)

[2dsnarkygentlemencollector]

Hallo! Once again I am posting my little Witcher Series of drawings. This time with some revelations and hopefully interesting insight into their creation!

And we have finally come to the end, with baby boy Lambert. He is soft baby, fight me if you don’t agree. (Please don’t, I am soft and weak.)

If you have been following these posts (Geralt, Jaskier, Eskel) then you may have noticed that I polled my audience over multiple social networks to work out details in my drawings. Lambert wasn’t like that at all. I had come to realize that the vision I had in my head for Lambert was not something I was willing to share. A bit selfish of myself but I really, really wanted to capture his personality as best I could with everything in the drawing.

Except the flowers, that was a bad joke I told myself while thinking about Lambert as the drawing went on.

Something I noticed with the whole series is that I work with saturated colors when I really should be making them far more mute, and this drawing in particular you can see that. The background was inspired by a painting I came across... But I don’t have it saved; I wish I could show it to you all! It was a moon at night over a sea if that helps? I was sold pretty much on the idea of mixing purples/blues with oranges/yellows because of that painting.

That led me to seek out purple flowers that wouldn’t be too much if placed on the boarder, it took a little time but ultimately I ended up making a joke that is isn’t at all funny, and ended up with black pansies as the boarder flower. I have reflected and am trying my best to make those kinds of jokes anymore, even to myself. I do love the look of these small, cool colored flowers, so it is kind of a wash... I repent and intend to be better.

When it came to Lambert himself I thought back to the Witcher 3 and the kind of character the Lambert is written as. He is kind of a sassy little brat isn’t he? Very strong youngest child energy, and I can relate. So I thought back to my teenage years and ultimately decided that he had to be looking down and posing, with a bomb. (I learned way too much about ancient bomb making to justify including the bomb he has in this drawing. It is a Moon Dust bomb because of course, moon in the sky, moon in the hand.)

His expression was a real challenge because I an resistant to drawing exaggerated expressions but really wanted it to stand out despite the dark shading from the the back lighting. I think I did alright but it is hard to say. That being said, Lambert is just really hard to draw! His facial features were quite the challenge and he gets so little screen time in The Witcher 3, it took me months to just to find a good ref because the first time around was a disaster.

I didn’t mention it in the other drawings but I do have a favorite thing about each drawing, and this one is the flame, and the blue glass of the bomb.

Thank you again @lokibus for showing an interest! I know it might have been a struggle to read about all these drawings but I hope you enjoyed it all the same!

[thissunpoweredkids]

Editing as Punctuation in Film from Max Tohline on Vimeo.

In January 2014 Kathryn Schulz published an article in Vulture called "The Five Best Punctuation Marks in Literature." Link: vulture.com/2014/01/best-punctuation-marks-literature-nabokov-eliot-dickens-levi.html

It got me thinking about what the five best "punctuation marks" in film might look like. I wanted to assemble a video essay with a rapidfire list of nominees of great moments of editing-as-punctuation in film. But as I started putting it together, the project grew into a twofold piece: an analysis of and response to Schulz's article as well as an attempt to spur new insights about editing by examining it through the metaphor of punctuation.

So, here it is: 20 minutes long, clips from 100 films (101 if you count that Woody Allen quotes Duck Soup in Hannah and her Sisters), and, I hope, an inspiration to anyone else who loves film on a formal level and believes, as Bazin did, that the language of cinema isn't done being invented yet.

Thanks to Kathryn Schulz for sending me down this wonderful rabbit hole of thought, and to the editors (in order of their cuts): Sally Menke, Buster Keaton, Abel Gance, Yelizaveta Svilova & Dziga Vertov, Michael Snow, Jonathan Amos & Paul Machliss, Harry Gerstad, William Reynolds & Peter Zinner, David E. Blewitt & Robert K. Lambert & David Newhouse, Sergei Eisenstein, Daniel Rezende, Valeriya Belova, Richard Pearson & Christopher Rouse, Lou Lombardo, Marguerite Beaugé & Carl Theodor Dreyer, George Tomasini, D.W. Griffith & James Smith & Rose Smith, Lev Kuleshov, Charles Chaplin & Willard Nico, Ron Fricke & Alton Walpole, Sam O'Steen, Edgar Adams & Edward L. Cahn, Ray Lovejoy, Siro Asteni, Anne V. Coates, Robert Wise, Susan E. Morse, LeRoy Stone, Ken Eluto, Spike Lee, Jerome Thoms, Lyudmila Feyginova, Peter Przygodda, Ferris Webster, Andrew Weisblum, Léonide Azar feat. Anton Walbrook, Alan Heim, Claudia Castello & Michael P. Shawver, Michal Leszczylowski & Andrei Tarkovsky, Ralph Rosenblum, William Hornbeck, Barbara McLean, William Chang & Kit-Wai Kai & Chi-Leung Kwong, Véronique Parnet, Kim Hyeon, Andreas Prochaska, Mary Sweeney, John Smith, Jolanda Benvenuti, Harold F. Kress & Argyle Nelson Jr. & J. Frank O'Neill, Florence Eymon, Nicholas T. Proferes, Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Yoshiyasu Hamamura, Cécile Decugis, Joe Bini, Robert Leighton, Milton Carruth, Jay Rabinowitz, Owen Marks, Ted Cheesman, George Tomasini (again), Blanche Sewell, Georges Méliès, Reginald Mills, Siv Lundgren, Thelma Schoonmaker (finally!), Kôichi Iwashita, Alex O'Flinn, Kirk Baxter, Peter Kubelka, Paul Sharits, Chris Marker, Jean Ravel, Roderick Jaynes (Ethan and Joel Coen), Sharon Rutter, Miroslav Hájek, Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, Melvin Van Peebles, Martin Arnold, Bruce Conner, Walter Murch & Richard Chew, and Yelizaveta Svilova & Dziga Vertov again. Plus unseen contributions from Jacqueline Sadoul, Jim Miller & Paul Rubell, Monique Bonnot, Ralph Foster & Stephen Perkins & Andrew Weisblum, Verna Fields, Jack Murray, Daniel Mandell, Françoise Collin, Solange Leprince, Patricia Canino, Nelly Quettier, Matt Chesse, George McGuire, John Seabourne Sr., Takis Davlopoulos & Giorgos Triandafyllou, and a few VFX teams, too.

For the full list of films featured, click here: 10oclockdot.tumblr.com/post/129417606958

NEW: Pablo Ferreira (vimeo.com/pabloferreira) has just graciously created Portuguese subtitles for this video!

Plus: Héctor Aguilar Rivas's (vimeo.com/user24306664) Spanish subtitles are still here and still great.

Also: Turkish speakers, please enjoy this TURKISH DUB of Editing as Punctuation in Film, lovingly prepared by Münif Çankaya: vimeo.com/146388456

And I'm still grateful that Editing as Punctuation in Film was named THRICE as one of the best video essays of 2015 by leading critic/curators in Fandor's poll. Thank you! fandor.com/keyframe/poll-the-best-video-essays-of-2015