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chlochette-sunde · 1 month ago

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So, the French government just got revoked.

What happened in the previous episodes?

French presidential elections are held in two rounds. Any candidate supported by at least 500 mayors can participate in the first round. The two candidates with the most votes then face off in a second round.

Twice, President Macron has been elected thanks to votes cast against his opponent in the second round: far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Both times, Macron promised centrist policies (neither left nor right) but ultimately implemented very liberal policies benefiting primarily the wealthiest in the country. He also used far-right tactics to “pacify” strikes and social movements, like the Yellow Vests protests and the controversial pension reform.

Last June, European elections were held to elect new Members of the European Parliament, using a single-round voting system. In France, over 70% of voters participated in the 2022 presidential elections, but only around 50% turned out for the 2024 European elections.

And the result? A political earthquake.

For the first time, the far-right party came in first, securing 30% of the votes.

Following this shocking result, President Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly. This is within the French President's powers, but no one understood why he did it—it seemed like political suicide. With the far-right's surge in the European elections, it was reasonable to expect them to gain ground in the legislative elections as well.

Yet Macron went ahead, and legislative elections were scheduled with less than three weeks’ notice.

Surprisingly, the left-wing parties managed to unite under one banner: the New Popular Front (NFP). This was no small feat, as these parties often clash over priorities—ranging from left-wing liberals and ecologists to communists and the “insubordinates”.

Since October 2023, the latter group had been outspoken in their defense of Palestine, which led to accusations of antisemitism and then earned the NFP labels like “far-left extremists” from the far-right, the media, and even the government.

It seemed hopeless. Everything appeared stacked against the left, and many feared the country would fall into the far-right's hands.

The results

More than 70% of the eligible voters participated, a high turnout compared to the 2022 legislative elections (54%) and the 2024 European elections, especially considering the short notice and timing just before the summer holidays.

In the end, the far-right gained 142 seats (an increase of 53). However, the NFP surprised everyone by winning 193 seats (42 more than before) and emerging as the election's victors.

The new National Assembly looked like this:

193 seats for the left-wing (NFP)

166 seats for Macron's party

142 seats for the far-right

47 seats for the traditional right-wing party

This distribution left no single party with an absolute majority.

Under these circumstances, Macron was expected to appoint a Prime Minister capable of building a government that could pass laws in the National Assembly. Traditionally, the Prime Minister is aligned with the majority party in the Assembly.

Instead, Macron refused to name a left-wing Prime Minister, fearing such a government would be unstable due to the lack of an absolute majority. He delayed the decision until after the Olympic Games, and in early September, he appointed a Prime Minister from the traditional right-wing party—which holds a minority in the Assembly.

The first major test for this government was the 2025 budget. While the government initially proposed a strict austerity budget, the NFP successfully amended it to reflect their priorities. The government, having abstained from participating in the discussions, ultimately voted against the amended version, sending the budget back for further debate.

Then, rather than resubmitting a revised budget to the Assembly, the government decided to impose it unilaterally, as allowed by the Constitution. However, this move automatically led the government to engage its responsibility. Two days later (today), the opposition in the National Assembly responded by holding a “no confidence” vote, ultimately revoking the government and canceling the budget. (If no 2025 budget is passed, the 2024 budget will roll over by default.)

How is the far-right doing?

When the new government was formed in September, the far-right party chose not to immediately revoke it. Their strategy was to pressure the government into proposing laws aligned with far-right ideas. While initially successful, this approach backfired: the far-right quickly came to be seen as part of the establishment, losing their “outsider” status, which hurt their image.

Meanwhile, the far-right party is embroiled in a major legal scandal. They are accused of misusing public funds intended for hiring parliamentary assistants, instead diverting the money to party-related expenses (like bodyguards and so on). A verdict is expected in March 2025, and their leader, Marine Le Pen, faces the possibility of a 5-year ineligibility.

What happens next?

President Macron must now appoint a new Prime Minister to form a government. However, given his unpredictability, it’s possible he might try to keep the current government in place until he’s legally allowed to dissolve the Assembly again—one year after the last dissolution.

The left-wing is calling for Macron to resign, which would trigger new presidential elections. Due to their actual troubles with justice, anticipated presidential elections could also be an opportunity for the far-right party. While the National Assembly has the power to vote for the President’s resignation, the conditions to do so are difficult to meet.

And that’s the current state of French politics.

#what a year...#instability everywhere #politics #french politics

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notaplaceofhonour · 4 months ago

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I’m going to lose my mind, I am so fucking done.

Literally everything is going wrong all at once again and again and again and no matter what I do or how much outside help I get it keeps snowballing.

like, I just got out of homelessness a few months ago—homelessness I was only in because my home state suddenly decided I shouldn’t exist—only for the rental company to never notify me renewing wouldn’t an option until the last minute, forcing me to scramble to find a new place, all while packing up a life I just unpacked, and still having to work a full time job.

—a full time job I hadn’t been able to do for months prior because my license was suspended for unpaid tolls

—tolls that only went unpaid because I never received the notices—because I had been homeless for months—but that I resolved as soon as I could.

and I still hadn’t even financially recovered from all of that when I was suddenly in the position of needing to pay an extra month’s worth of rent for a deposit, while also working less because I had to take time off to search for a new room.

I was fortunate enough to have a community of people help me out enough to just barely afford that, but then that fell through because every time I would spend weeks talking to people and checking out room after room, and getting all the way to the finalization process, I’d get ghosted or dropped without explanation or the person would agree to something only to go back on it

so now I’m homeless, and I have to drop a couple hundred out of my budget that was *supposed* to go towards rent on a storage unit & eating out because I don’t have any other option, all while having to move around every night & drive 30 miles out of the city to find somewhere it’s even legal for me to sleep, and just barely making any progress filling back up the financial hole all of this has left

only to now have undefined potential car trouble that the mechanic says isn’t there but keeps popping up

aaaaaand now my primary source of income just got locked because they did a new unnecessary background check on me & found out my license had been suspended earlier in the year—nevermind that it was resolved months ago & they know it’s been cleared because my report literally says my license is valid—meaning I’m homeless AND unemployed

and I’m dealing with all of this while trauma from the fallout of covid and october 7th and losing friends and being a fucking refugee in my own country bc of Florida deciding to criminalize my existence.

I can’t even get my head above water for two seconds before another shitstorm pushes me under again.

#it’s like the universe just wants me dead #trauma dump #vent post #long post

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verynormaleatinghab1ts · 3 months ago

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Master list of everything I do/have done for wɛight lºss:

For context: I've had an ɛd since the beginning of 2022 (though possibly longer?) and have had a lot of trial and error in that time. I am currently at my all-time lowest wɛight and this is my third or fourth rɛlapse. My heavıest ever was ɓmi 25. For this rɛlapse my start was ɓmi 23 at the beginning of August and now I'm down to ɓmi 18.7 as of October. This is gonna be a very thorough master list of all the stuff I keep consistent at to lºse wɛight.

1. Hydration:

Ik you are hearing this for the umpteenth time but DRINK SO MUCH WATER. I probably drink anywhere from 70-100 oz of water a day. You should drink at least HALF YOUR BODY WɛIGHT IN OUNCES of water every day (120 lbs = 60oz water minimum). Whenever my cup is empty I refill it asap or drink sparkling water which I LOVE. The reasons for this are obvious, it takes up stomach space, fends off hunger pangs, hydration, yada yada hopefully you know what water is and does.

2. Other drinks:

I very scarcely consume liquid cªlories. If I want a drink with more flavor, sparkling water, unsweetened tea, or (very rarely) zero/diɛt of whatever soda I'm craving. I don't like energy drinks/coffee but those work as well.

That being said, I still allow it sometimes (meaning if my cªlorie budget allows for it). For example, my favorite drink is AriZona green tea, which is not very high in cªlories if you find the right portion size. The bottles are 160 cªls each, and they sell regular 12 oz cans for 80 cªls each. It's all about portion sizes, even for drinks!

Otherwise, I don't drink a lot of juice or soda anyway. If I do want juice, I try to get it in pouch/can/bottle form instead of from the jugs so they are pre-portioned and I don't have to wɛigh it out to calculate cªls. I have some compulsory thing that I feel the need to CHUG every drink I have, so this helps keep me from gulping down half a gallon of sugar water and is still within my budget. I don't drink protein shakes really, but if it's within your budget, there's no reason not to (especially as a meal replacement).

For alcºhol… sometimes I let myself splurge on cªls a little bit bc these days I only drink if I'm REALLY going through it (bc cªlories got me trippin' so hard I kind of stopped being an alcºholic), but otherwise, I hardly drink at all anymore. When I do, I'll do shots of whatever liquºr I've got atm. 90-100 cªls a shot is atrocious but on an empty stomach, it'll hit quick. Other options I've utilized include hard seltzers, liquºr in diet soda/watered-down juice, or spiked teas. Lower in cªls than other things (generally) and good for someone with a lower alc tolerance. I love beer and wine but it's just not effective and too high cªl if I'm looking to get smashed.

3. Apple Cider Vinegar:

Pretty much since I developed an ɛd, apple cider vinegar has been involved in some form or another. I should also mention that all of these methods have helped a lot with my acne (which was my main excuse for why I was always consuming these things so often). *I DONT ACTUALLY KNOW IF IT DOES ANYTHING BUT I WILL ALWAYS TAKE A WɛIGHT LºSS PLACEBO IF IT WORKS*

At first, I would take shots (2 TBSP or 1.5 oz) of it in the morning every day, usually just alongside water or tea (though I never personally minded the taste that much). I wouldn't recommend this method since it definitely irritates your teeth/mouth/throat/stomach after prolonged use, and makes your stomach hurt if you don't take it with enough water.

Next, I tried ACV gummies. The downside, is these do have cªls (I think about 20 or 30 for 2 pieces?) and unfortunately I found them delicious so they were always tempting me from my bathroom cabinet. Also, they were pricey and inconvenient since I'd always forget to ɛat them in the morning.

Now I take ACV capsules since I prefer to just swallow pills over chewing up a sticky little gummy every morning. No cªls, no taste, quick and easy, MUCH cheaper. I take 2 in the morning and 2 at night, but DO NOT start with that many because it will hurt your stomach. Start with just one in the morning and increase from there.

4. Intake:

I want to make it very clear that ɛating ANY amount under your BMR (basal mɛtabolic rate) will result in wɛight lºss, and this can be calculated on various websites. You don't have to ɛat under 1000 to lºse. You could ɛat OVER 1000 and still lºse. Please use your best judgment to find the right amount for your needs.

I don't track/count net cªlories (cªlories after subtracting cªlories burned), only the total amount of cªlories I CONSUME. I may bump it up a little *very sparingly* but I've maybe only done that 3 or 4 times in the past three months, and never any more than my maintenance cªlories. For me, 500-800 range is just enough to keep me from going insane while still consistently dropping a good amount of wɛight every week. And I don't track seasonings at all because that's literally dumb lol. If using enough salt and pepper to kill a small child will get you to fill up on broccoli instead of bınging on chips who gaf. It'll be >5 cªls regardless, you'll burn that many cªls just sprinkling it in and chewing.

5. Tracking cªls:

I track everything I eat and I wɛigh out my fºod pretty frequently, but usually only for things like meat, dairy, or high carb/sugar foºds. 5 or 10 extra grams that I would let slide before could add a lot more cªlories than you realize (and mostly from fªt or sugar 😧). I don't bother wɛighing out low cªl foods usually, I just make rough wɛight/volume measurements. I usually overestimate my cªls and still end up ɛating below my budget anyway. As someone who would wɛigh out every single little thing that went into my body (including water) to the hundredth decimal gram, being obsessive about it will drive you insane and you will risk a miserable bınge/rɛstrict cycle. It's stressful and annoying and you will still lºse wɛight if you don't.

I don't track/care about my macrºs at all. I do try to ɛat more protein than bread and sugar when I can, but I don't really prioritize it. I would recommend that you do though, PRIORITIZE PROTEIN AND FIBER because these keep you full for longer and will help you to feel less tired from undɛrɛating.

6. Fªsting/OMªD:

What I feel has been absolutely key to my success has been fªsting and OMªD (one mɛal a day). I fªst a minimum of 20 hours every day and only ɛat dinner (because it's required in my house) + a small snack (usually an apple 🤤). My dinners range anywhere from 200-600 cªls and I never let my snack go over 200 cªls. This keeps me full through the night, and throughout the day I tend to keep myself so busy that I forget to ɛat anyway.

Once (sometimes twice) a week I will do a fªst anywhere between 40-50 hours but I would recommend 24-36 hours for someone who does not fªst for long periods as often since this has had a lot of negative side effects for me (fainting, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, stomachache, headache, low blood pressure, spikes/drops in heart rate, weakness, exhaustion). A lot of my issues come from overproduction of stomach acid, dehydration, and general shitty blood circulation. If you do want to fªst for longer periods, here are my tips:

Constantly be drinking water and stay super hydrated.

Chew gum, this produces saliva and reduces acid production.

Absolutely NO carbonated drinks, this will INCREASE acid production!

Extremely light to NO exercise (I break this rule a lot 😓), conserve your energy while fasting.

Drink hot liquids (tea, coffee, water) in the morning, this keeps me from getting nauseous and lightheaded throughout the day.

My body cannot handle any pills/vitamins on an empty stomach, so take with caution (obv don't do this if you take medication you're required to take with food)

Overall reduce stimuli like lights, sounds, temperatures, and smells. These usually make my side effects much worse and cause me to get sick more often (but I also have autism so that may factor).

Keep yourself occupied, preferably something with your hands. I get a lot done with school and a lot of my hobbies like writing, puzzles, painting, etc. I also deep clean and organize things around the house frequently which keeps me occupied for a couple hours.

7. Exercise:

In the past, I had a pretty bad exercise ªddiction whenever I would be deep in my ɛd, and honestly, it didn't help much at all. It made me extremely tired and sore all the time and it led me to bınge often because I told myself it would "cancel out". Exercise does not contribute to wɛightlºss as much as people think it does, since wɛightlºss is primarily done through your diɛt. Now, I exercise once or twice a week (if at all), and this is the most wɛight I've ever lost and KEPT OFF, so slowing down on the exercise has really helped me a lot. I primarily do cardio like walking, stairmaster, playing sports, home workouts etc., but nothing super intense. I only aim to get over 2000 steps a day and am pretty sedentary because of school.

8. Actual foods I eat:

Disclaimer: Outside of ªna, I also have dealt with ARFıD/super picky ɛating my whole life, so this list won't be super varied and relatively basic.

First things first, take multivitamins/supplements. Especially Iron, Calcium, Vitamin B12, and Vitamin D. I prefer capsules, but if gummies, drink mixes, etc are easier DO THAT. These are essential vitamins and minerals that will keep you from feeling like walking dead.

Protein: I have never ɛaten pork, and I very scarcely ɛat beef or lamb. I pretty much only ɛat chicken/turkey for everything which is leaner and higher in protein than other meats. I don't like/ɛat seafood or tofu, but that's also an option. I fucking LOVE eggs they're one of my favorite foºds, plus decently low cªl, protein, filling, and delectable in any form. I really really like nuts as well (esp cashews) but it's very rare I get to ɛat them because they are so high cªl 😓 However if you do they're a good source of healthy fªts and protein! I save it for special occasions.

Veggies/fruits: I ɛat A LOT of fruits and veggies bc I try to incorporate several into any foºd I make. Cooking pasta? Fill it with veggies. Stir fry? 90% veggies. Literally anything else? Half my plate is veggies. Volume ɛating is a lifesaver. It keeps me full, adds fiber and vitamins to my diɛt, and is low cªl because they're mostly water, so I ɛat them as much as I want. The fruits/veg I ɛat the most: spinach, kale, lettuce, cabbage, fresh herbs, tomatoes, peppers, onion, broccoli, green beans, ginger, bok choy, carrots, apples, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, melon, citrus, bananas.

Dairy: Low fªt, skim, or 0% f��t dairy products are always the go-to, you get the same result for whatever you're subbing it for. I haven't drank cows milk since I was a wee child because it's disgusting and I don't really ɛat any dairy other than cheese, so making this swap wasn't very difficult for me. I do try to limit dairy as much as I can though because it is so high in fªt and cªlories. If a recipe has butter or cream I try to leave it out or use as little as possible.

"Breads": I still ɛat things like pasta, tortillas, rice, and regular bread frequently, just in small amounts. And I will almost never double up on 'breads' (like having a bread roll and pasta together). I try to ɛat protein pasta over regular to at least get some benefit from it since it is so high cªl. Lower cªl options you can have a little more freely are anything keto or gluten-free/vegan options. Sometimes if I want toast or a sandwich I will cut one slice of bread in half so I have two very thin slices and it tricks me into thinking I ªte more than I really did. I really love instant noodles but unfortunately they are very high in cªlories so I haven't ɛaten them in a very long time ☹️. Instead I ɛat rice noodles or instant pho since it's pretty low cªl compared to the fried wheat noodles.

9. Junk food swaps/junkorɛxia:

Okay I know you just saw the big list of "healthy" foods but I am a junkorɛxic to my CORE. I love sugar, I love desserts, I love bread, I love cheese, I love chips, I love fast foºd, all of the worst highest cªlorie garbage you can think of. I still ɛat these things from time to time believe it or not, but now we're going back to portion control. Brownies are one of my favorite treats, and I still get to have them if it's *within my budget*. I can still have bread, and chips, and cookies etc, as long as it's *within my budget*. You don't necessarily have to completely cut these things out, because I know when I do, I go crazy and bınge on all of these foºds eventually. Even still, I don't ɛat these fºods very often because I found lower cªl swaps!

I'm not going to try to lie to you and tell you "if you want potato chips ɛat baked broccoli or seaweed instead ❤️" because that shit is WACK and not at all like chips. Here are some swaps I make for most of the garbage I usually would ɛat for the fellow junkorɛxics:

N!CKS/halotop ice cream, zero sugar popsicles/bars: lowest cªl ice cream flavors of N!CKS ice cream are around 1 cªl per gram! I like these because they feel less heavy in my stomach than regular ice cream, and taste more like frozen yogurt anyway 🤤. I haven't actually tried halotop but I assume both brands are similar. Popsicles I can't ever tell a difference, it's just flavored with ice sugar or flavored ice with no sugar, neither are super high cal.

Sugar-free jello and pudding: self-explanatory, taste very very close to the regular to me so I don't even realize a difference! I hate yogurt but zero sugar greek yogurts would work too if you're into that. I use this as a swap for jellos/puddings/ice cream.

Baked chips, savory rice crisps, popcorn: baked chips are lower cªl and lower in fªt by weight, but they taste way different from the regular so don't expect them to be the same. Rice crisps are super low cªl compared to chips and come in a lot of flavors (I like these better than regular chips most of the time bc they're crunchier). Popcorn (even the buttered or other flavors) isn't as high cªl as I assumed it was! Plus it's high volume and filling, bc I know my ass cannot finish a whole bag of microwave popcorn to myself.

Sweet rice cakes, fiber one bars, graham crackers, cinnamon raisin bread, frozen waffles or pancakes (ordered low–high cªl): These are my replacement "baked goods" because that is something I crave a lot. I know most of these aren't at all like cookies, but it works for me personally and I can fit them into my small-ish budget regularly without having to bake everything myself all the time. Even outside of having an ɛd I've always loved rice cakes, so regardless I ɛat them a lot, low cªl, CRUNCHY, cheap. Fiber one bars are like 60-90 cªls + fiber ofc. Graham crackers are 130 cªls for 2 sheets. Cinnamon raisin bread is 90 cªls a slice (personal fav). Frozen waffles/pancakes are usually around 200 cªls a serving.

Sugar-free candy/other: I think it's good to assume any candy that's keto or dairy/sugar-free will be lower cªl than the regular version. I don't really ɛat a lot of candy day-to-day but whenever I crave it I go for granola or fiber one bars, or have a small amount of dark chocolate instead. If I'm craving sour candy, I'll have fruit, jello, fruit gummies, or drink juice. These aren't very good or direct swaps, but I tend to crave flavors and textures more than specific fºod items (if that makes sense). But regardless, if I have enough cªls leftover, I just ɛat the real thing lol.

10. Cook your own food:

Cooking for myself 99% of the time has been crucial for my wɛightlºss. I'm able to wɛigh and portion out all my ingredients accurately to get exact cªlories for anything I make. Plus this way I can throw tons of vegetables into whatever I make to give it more volume/nutrition.

I also cook for my whole family, which means they constantly have high cªl requests for what they want me to make like pastas, fried foºds, burgers, etc. If I know for certain it will fit into my budget, I'll just ɛat it (with much difficulty) so they don't get suspicious. However I'll also swap/remove the super high cªl parts in recipes completely and other times I will add all the high cªl stuff to just their portions and keep a 'clean' portion for myself.

I will pretty much never get take out unless my whole family is getting it, and even then, I try to just have leftovers or cook my own meal instead. If I HAVE to get take out, I try to get the lowest cªl thing I possibly can.

11. Avoiding bınges/munchies:

Out of everything, I would say avoiding bınges is the hardest psychological aspect to get past. I smºke 🍃 every night to sleep, so I be getting the munchies really bad sometimes, and sometimes it feels like there's only so much to do before my brain goes "fuck it" and starts ɛating everything in sight. These are basic, but here are the things that have worked the best for me consistently:

Sparkling water/flavored diɛt drinks. You get the satisfaction of having some sort of flavor on your tongue without the consequences of ɛating, and takes up room in your stomach to trigger fullness hormones.

Gum (especially mint flavor) tricks my brain into thinking I'm ɛating something + mint works as an appɛtite suppressªnt.

Staying busy is the biggest thing, always be doing something that is tedious or involves a lot of focus. I'm very easily distractable regardless, but the second I've really set my attention to one thing, I don't think about anything else. Read/listen to a book, get out of the house and wander for a bit, go for a drive, watch a movie, do a craft, online window shop, play a computer/mobile game, clean/organize. I will very frequently leave my house to wander aimlessly around a store just to get away from any fºod.

When in doubt, sleep it off. At night especially, I'm too lazy to really do all that much so if I feel like I'm going to lose my grip on reality, spark up another bowl and pass tf out. Can't ɛat if I'm sleepin'!

Chɛw/Spıt: I feel like this used to be more popular with ɛd ppl a few years ago but I hardly see anyone talk about doing it now. I do this mostly with mɛals I don't want to ɛat when I'm fªsting or with all the trash I would want to bınge on and it honestly works really well for me! You do probably end up consuming a very small amount of the cªlories, but I always make sure to spıt everything out really well and rinse my mouth/brush my teeth right after.

And that's all I think. Thank you for reading! I spent a lot of time on this so reblogs are appreciated! I hope some of this is at least somewhat helpful to anyone. If y'all have any questions, reach out! Please stay safe, help is always out there whenever you need it. Cheers!

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messrsrarchives · 2 days ago

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there is nothing "natural" about the fires in LA right now. from 200 acres to 2000 in twenty minutes, on land that has never burnt before, in january.

no matter how much the media says it is, this is not a "natural disaster". this is a direct result of western politician's complicity in genocide and climate terrorism.

i have seen more videos in the last half an hour of this "natural disaster" than i have at all of the scenes in gaza over the christmas period. where medical workers were stripped and led out of the last 'functioning' hospital - a hospital that was subsequently bombed and set on fire. of the car with 5 journalists inside that was set on fire, 5 of countless people that have been burnt alive by israel. time and time again we have seen palestinians be led to a new "safe zone" only to then have bombs dropped on their tents and for them too to be burnt alive. over and over and over again.

and that's not to play the oppression olympics or to downplay the effect that this is having on individual lives, of course not, but it is to point of the irony and hypocrisy in this being framed as "natural" and in everybody (politicians, celebrities, online LA influencers) coming forward to share links.

this is not a "natural" disaster:

in the first 120 days after october 7th, the planet-warming emissions in gaza exceeded that of the ANNUAL emissions of the top 26 climate-vulnerable countries (individually).

the first 60 days of israel's genocidal actions was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal.

by december 4th 2023, 133,000 tonnes of C02 was emitted just from the us cargo planes transporting military equipment to israel.

on october 11th, white phosphorus was used for the first time in gaza - this has a long-term environmental impact on the environment, human health, and agricultural land.

every 7 minutes, 1 ton of explosives is dropped on gaza.

by march 2024, nearly half of the tree cover and farmland in gaza had been destroyed.

in june 2024, gaza was declared an environmental wasteland that was insufficient to support human life.

it is estimated that the rebuilding of gaza's infrastructure will emit 30 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases - every 4 minutes, 1 housing unit is bombed by israel.

in the middle east, temperatures are rising on average twice as fast as the rest of the world.

in the first two years of russia's war against ukraine, the emissions produced were greater than the annual emissions generated individually by 175 countries.

by june 2024, russia's attacks had generated a minimum of 175 metic tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (includes C02, nitrous oxide and sulphur hexafluoride) - see here: russia deliberately targetting energy infrastructure, generating about 14 metric tonnes as a result of the methane released.

and this is just a handful of never-ending statistics.

at COP28 there were no outcome documents that mentioned the contribution of military activities on climate change. not one. COP29 did not discuss this either.

the reporting of military emissions to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is optional. most do not do this.

biden has approved another $8b in arms sales to israel.

the LAFD had $17.6m cut from their budget.

there's a saying that goes along the lines of "when you are born into a burning house, you think the rest of the world is on fire so you don't bother calling for help" and i've been thinking about that a lot today. thinking a lot about palestine, the middle east, ukraine, every genocide and war torn country that has been screaming to be saved from their burning homes, and now the same american politicians, celebrities, and online influencers that covered their ears are starting to get flamed too.

there is nothing natural about anything that is going on in the world right now. these are not natural wildfires, this is the result of complicity in genocide. it's literally climate terrorism.

#obviously my heart goes out to everybody affected and i hope theyre as safe as they can be #but i cannot handle seeing this be framed as a natural disaster one more time without going insane #NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS NATURAL !!!!!#NOT ONE LITTLE BIT #watching people on tiktok with millions of followers put up a fucking paypal link #because they were actually always able to use their platform ! just when it directly affects them #'i cant believe we're watching whole lives get des-' WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN !?#oh wait the victims are rich and white this time IM PULLING OUT MY HAIR #okay im done #robyn is ranting sorry

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months ago

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Matt Wuerker, Politico

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 30, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 31, 2024

On Friday, October 25, at a town hall held on his social media platform X, Elon Musk told the audience that if Trump wins, he expects to work in a Cabinet-level position to cut the federal government.

He told people to expect “temporary hardship” but that cuts would “ensure long-term prosperity.” At the Trump rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk said he plans to cut $2 trillion from the government. Economists point out that current discretionary spending in the budget is $1.7 trillion, meaning his promise would eliminate virtually all discretionary spending, which includes transportation, education, housing, and environmental programs.

Economists agree that Trump’s plans to place a high tariff wall around the U.S., replacing income taxes on high earners with tariffs paid for by middle-class Americans, and to deport as many as 20 million immigrants would crash the booming economy. Now Trump’s financial backer Musk is factoring in the loss of entire sectors of the government to the economy under Trump.

Trump has promised to appoint Musk to be the government’s “chief efficiency officer.” “Everyone’s going to have to take a haircut.… We can’t be a wastrel.… We need to live honestly,” Musk said on Friday. Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny of CNBC point out that Musk’s SpaceX aerospace venture has received $19 billion from the U.S. government since 2008.

An X user wrote: “I]f Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit—there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…. Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

Musk commented: “Sounds about right[.]”

This exchange echoes the prescription of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose theories had done much to create the Great Crash of 1929, for restoring a healthy economy. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living

will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Mellon, at least, was reacting to an economic crisis thrust upon an administration. Musk is seeking to create one.

Today the Commerce Department reported that from July through September, the nation’s economy grew at a solid 2.8%. Consumer spending is up, as is investment in business. The country added 254,000 jobs in September, and inflation has fallen back almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to be able to reduce inflation without creating a recession, but the Biden administration has managed to do so, producing what economists call a “soft landing,” rather like catching an egg on a plate. As Bryan Mena of CNN wrote today: “The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.”

Both President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have called for reducing the deficit not by slashing the government, as Musk proposes, but by restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

As part of the Republicans’ plan to take the country back to the era before the 1930s ushered in a government that regulated business and provided a basic social safety net, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expects to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.

At a closed-door campaign event on Monday in Pennsylvania for a Republican House candidate, Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” “Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

Ending a campaign with a promise to crash a booming economy and end the Affordable Care Act, which ended insurance companies’ ability to reject people with preexisting conditions, is an unusual strategy.

A post from Trump last night and another this morning suggest his internal polls are worrying him. Last night he claimed there was cheating in Pennsylvania’s York and Lancaster counties. Today he posted: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”

Trump appears to be setting up the argument he used in 2020, that he can lose only if he has been cheated. But it is increasingly apparent that the get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts of the Trump campaign have been weak. When Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and loyalist Michael Whatley became the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee in March 2024, they stopped the GOTV efforts underway and used the money instead for litigation. They outsourced GOTV efforts to super PACs, including Musk’s America PAC.

In Wired today, Jake Lahut reported that door-knockers for Musk’s PAC were driven around in the back of a U-Haul without seats and threatened with having to pay their own hotel bills if they didn’t meet high canvassing quotas. One of the canvassers told Lahut that they thought they were being hired to ask people who they would be voting for when they flew into Michigan, and was surprised to learn their actual role. The workers spoke to Lahut anonymously because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement (a practice the Biden administration has tried to stop).

Trump’s boast that he is responsible for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion is one of the reasons his support is soft. In addition to popular dislike of the idea that the state, rather than a woman and her doctor, should make decisions about her healthcare, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is now over two years old, and state examinations of maternal deaths are showing that women are dying from lack of reproductive healthcare.

Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica reported today that at least two pregnant women have died in Texas when doctors delayed emergency care after a miscarriage until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The woman they highlighted today, Josseli Barnica, left behind a husband and a toddler.

At a rally this evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump said his team had advised him to stop talking about how he was going to protect women by ending crime and making sure they don’t have to be “thinking about abortion.” But Trump, who has boasted of sexual assault and been found liable for it, did not stop there. He went on to say that he had told his advisors, “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”

The Trump campaign remains concerned about the damage caused by the extraordinarily racist, sexist, and violent Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden. Today the campaign seized on a misstatement President Biden made when condemning the statement from the Madison Square Garden event that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” They tried to turn the tables to suggest that Biden was calling Trump supporters garbage, although the president has always been very careful to focus his condemnation on Trump alone.

In Wisconsin today, when he disembarked from his plane, Trump put on an orange reflective vest and had someone drive him around the tarmac in a garbage truck with TRUMP painted on the side. He complained about Biden to reporters from the cab of the truck but still refused to apologize for Sunday’s slur of Puerto Rico, saying he knew nothing about the comedian who appeared at his rally.

This, too, was an unusual strategy. Like his visit to McDonalds, where he wore an apron, the image of Trump in a sanitation truck was likely intended to show him as a man of the people. But his power has always rested not in his promise to be one of the people, but rather to lead them. The pictures of him in a bright orange vest and unusually dark makeup are quite different from his usual portrayal of himself.

Indeed, media captured a video of Trump’s stunt, and it did not convey strength. MSNBC’s Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.”

The Las Vegas Sun today ran an editorial that detailed Trump’s increasingly obvious mental lapses and concluded that Trump is “crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness.” It noted that Trump now depends “on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.” It noted that if Trump cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would fall to his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has suggested “he would subordinate constitutional principles for personal profit and power.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political cartoon #Matt Wuerker #Politico #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From an American #Las Vegas Sun #MAGA extremism #garbage truck stunt #women's health #reproductive rights #Musk #Affordable Care Act #Obamacare #project 2025 #MAGA's plans for you

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 4 months ago

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Hello RTA 👋🏻 What do you think about the US Federal Government's allocation of 6.5 million dollars for African Parks? These people talk about the BRF behaving so meekly with H&M and but the US government is awarding them millions in grant and yet there's no uproar about this?

I ask this with all due respect, anon: Did you actually look into this or are you reacting to the number?

Because all the data is there and publicly available. And when you look at the data (or you ask a fed - hello, there), the data tells you it's actually not a big deal.

The total US government budget in FY24 (October 1, 2023 - September 30, 2024) is $1.7 trillion. To be more specific, that's $1,754,300,000,000.00. $6.5 million is 0.00037%. It's the federal equivalent of a toothbrush from the dollar store. Or a pair of sunglasses for Charlotte in the Duke of Cornwall budget.

So according to the African Parks website, they have three US federal partners.

US Fish and Wildlife Service (aka federal wildlife conservation). FWS grants help the conservation of plants and wildlife in protected areas across central and western Africa and elephant conservation. The Multinational Species Conservation Acts is a group of federal laws mandating for the US government to support conservation programs for certain species. One of the acts is the African Elephant Conservation Act which requires the federal government to assist African conservation programs that protect the African Elephant, of which African Parks is one. (The African Elephant Conservation Act, by the way, is what regulates ivory trade in the US.)

FWS's work with African Parks is likely part of the International Affairs program, and African Parks is just one of FWS's many partners in this area so FWS's portion of $6.5 million is pretty small. In the FY24 budget, FWS asked for $26.7 million for their International Affairs program, which has two tracks - international conservation and international wildlife trade. I suspect that the African Parks money is coming from the 'international conservation' part of the budget, which is about $13 million (so half of their total FY24 request).

If you'd like to learn about what FWS funds in their International Affairs program, here's their FY24 budget justification. International Affairs is pages 165-182. The section specific to the Africa Regional Program (through which African Parks' money comes) is page 171 or IA-7.

US Agency for International Development (aka federal humanitarian aid to developing nations). USAID also supports African Parks's conservation efforts. More specifically, their grants support a protected area between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic in three ways; management of the protected area, wildlife conservation, and helping the communities who live within the protected area develop sustainable livelihoods.

(Quick disclaimer here first - USAID's budget is tied in with the Department of State's so it's not as easy to read as FWS's is.)

USAID's work with African Parks probably comes via their partner accounts. In FY24, they requested about $32 billion for those partner accounts. Partner accounts can be fully funded by USAID or or partially-funded. The bottom line here is that whatever portion African Parks is getting from USAID, it's not even a drop in the bucket

You can read about USAID's work and their FY24 budget justification here. You'll notice that the budget justification doesn't discuss anything concerning Africa. That doesn't mean they aren't funding work in Africa, just that the work they're doing/supporting in Africa is bundled into one of the other programs or that their programs in Africa aren't as high a priority as the ones specifically mentioned in the justification.

US Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affars (aka a FBI and DEA for international cooperation). INL's grants to African Parks goes towards conservation law enforcement, everything from training and education to technology and communications and it includes quality of life and welfare programs for the rangers.

In their FY24 budget justification, INL asked for $1.4 billion, of which they report about $51.9 million is planned to be allocated to Africa. And like the other agencies, whatever portion of $6.5 million is INL's, it's really small. Inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things.

Here is State's FY24 budget justification. INL's section is pages 156 - 160 (in adobe, or document pages 146-150). The section on Africa's allocation is page 157 (document page 147).

So to answer anon's question, no one's in an uproar about US federal grants to African Parks because, frankly, it doesn't matter. It barely registers. Plus the money is going towards conservation and protecting endangered species...is that really something worth being upset over?

Anyway. Some other federal spending in the neighborhood of $6.5 million to show what I mean by how not-a-big-deal it is:

The Department of Defense spends $6.5 million on the planning of facilities for the Naval Reserves. The planning, you guys.

The Department of Agriculture's Office of the Chief Financial Officer needs $6.6 million annually in operating expenses.

The USDA's National Veterinary Stockpile gets $6 million to prepare for and respond to animal disease outbreaks.

The Department of Energy spends $6.3 million on energy loan guarantees to Native American tribes.

$6.1 million is reserved for competitive wildlife conservation grants exclusive to Native American tribes.

The EPA spends $6.5 million on grants for safe drinking water across the US.

The Office of Public Affairs and Engagement in the Department of Transportation needs $6.2 million in operating expenses.

Since this is already a pretty long post, I'll leave it here. But if anyone's interested in a quick explainer of how federal spending/budgets work, let me know. 'tis the season and all (plus a presidential election means the federal budget gets a little more attention than it usually does).

#african parks

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quaranmine · 1 year ago

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/22/us-braces-calamitous-costly-government-shutdown-eight-days/

Hey, just a heads up--

A (US) government shutdown is pretty imminent right now. They have until September 30 to pass any sort of budget to keep funding the government, but congress has been unable to come to any decisions or compromises. Typically what happens each year on Sept 30 is Congress will pass a continuing resolution (a temporary budget) to buy a month or two to keep arguing about it. This year, they haven't been able to pass even that. McCarthy has sent the House members home for the weekend already, which means they will have even less time next week to figure something out.

So, what happens during a government shutdown? Some parts of the government--deemed essential--will keep operating. Please be nice to these employees, because they will be working without pay. Fortunately a bill passed in 2019 means they are guaranteed to be paid at the end of the shutdown, but still. Thousands of other federal employees will be furloughed and not allowed to work. For hundreds of thousands of employees, they will struggle to pay bills.

What about everybody else, the public being served? Broadly speaking, tons of grants and projects and research and environmental reviews and loans and services will be halted and delayed. Most significantly though:

SSA will continue to issue retirement and disability checks, as well as Medicaid/Medicare benefits. There might be delays, especially in new signups.

FEMA will continue to offer disaster relief and aid, but may run out of funds if the shutdown continues.

Thousands of low income parents will lose access to Head Start programs and childcare programs.

FDA food safety inspections, as well as other safety inspections (including worker safety), may be delayed

Mail delivery continues, as the US Postal Service is independently funded.

Food stamps, housing vouchers, and college financial aid may lapse if the shutdown lasts beyond October. The longest shutdown in US history was in 2018, for 35 days. This one is probably unlikely to be that long, but if it is, people may lose access to these programs.

WIC will only be able to operate for a few days after the shutdown, leaving millions of pregnant people, infants, and children at risk of going hungry.

Weather forcasting, air traffic control, TSA, etc will continue (though the employees won't be paid)

Hopefully a shutdown will be averted, but it's far more likely this year than other years. If you are in a position to be affected by a lapse in government services, I would recommend keeping up with the news so that it doesn't hit you as a surprise. Ultimately I can make no real predictions for how it will turn out or which things will be affected, but I hope this helps.

#american politics #us politics #government shutdown #most of this info is from the articles above

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celestialcrownsvn · 3 months ago

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October Update

Hi guys! Thanks again for all the support regarding my last update. Stopping the marketing has been great for my mental health and I've finally been able to make progress on the game.

Backgrounds

All the backgrounds are... done 😰I feel like that can't be right. But, I've got them all, and barring any issues where I need to commission a couple more, we should be all set.

Programming

I have programmed 1750/7255 lines of Aalam's route so far (Scene 5 of 30)! This includes voice, music, animations, etc. Once I get through this round of programming, it'll be ready for testing. Last time I asked for volunteers for beta testers, but due to mixed results as far as people keeping deadlines, I don't think I'll be doing that again. I might ask a select group of people and see if there's anything left in the budget I can offer as payment.

Writing

Most of the new writing for Aalam's route is in later chapters, so I didn't do much this month aside from some editing of typos, etc., as I started from the beginning to program/polish all at once.

CGs

Good news and bad news on this front. The good news is that my CG artist is okay and isn't in any danger as far as we know. The bad news is that she has decided to leave the project. I am going to reach out to another artist once I finish taking in all the sketches/finished pieces she's done and seeing how much work is actually left.

Voice Acting

I hit a snag when someone asked me about the VA strike. I wasn't aware of it, as I haven't been keeping up with current events due to life stuff. But we came to an arrangement, and I'll be sending the VA scripts out soon, hopefully today. Essentially, I'm making a commitment not to use any of the voice lines received for AI training, now or in the future. Which I think is a very simple thing to promise and I can't believe people are having to strike for what seems like common sense. Anyway.

Conclusion and Timeline

That's it for me folks! Your support has been so uplifting, so thank you again.

I've been very busy with IRL work lately so I haven't had as much time to work on CC as I wanted, but I'm hoping to finish Aalam's route and send it to testing by the end of November. Slow and steady wins the race. 💪🏾

As a side note... my birthday is Friday, a great present would be to wishlist the game!

#visual novel #celestial crowns #vndev #english otome #celestialcrownsvn #game development #english visual novel #character customization

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astrangetorpedo · 6 months ago

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Julien Baker: Accomplish the Most with the Least

by Zachary Gresham | Photos by Nolan Knight

Julien Baker is more visible than ever. After her low-budget debut, Sprained Ankle, made nearly every best-of 2015 list, the 21-year-old Baker signed with Matador Records and went home to Memphis to record her next record at the legendary Ardent Studios. Turn Out the Lights was released in October of 2017 to massive acclaim from critics, and was met with extreme devotion from audiences. It is the rare record that one can wholeheartedly describe as both monastically spare and cinematically epic, putting her in the heady company of Tori Amos, Nina Simone, and Jeff Buckley. We caught up with Julien shortly after her return to Tennessee from a quick tour of Japan to talk about guitars, Ardent, Craig Silvey, reverb, and doing more with less.

Turn Out the Lights is really beautiful.

Oh, thank you!

I find it difficult to disconnect from it emotionally for a while after I've turned it off, which is the sign of a quality record.

That means a lot to hear. Thank you.

You made it at Ardent in Memphis, but you did your previous album, Sprained Ankle, at a studio in Virginia, right?

Yeah. Spacebomb Studios. Most of the songs on Sprained Ankle were recorded at Spacebomb, but there are two on there (two with percussion, "Vessels" and "Brittle Boned") that were recorded at Cody Landers' house. He's an incredible engineer.

Were you recording yourself before that?

When I was in high school, the band I was in [The Star Killers, later known as Forrister] put out a full-length [American Blues] album that we recorded entirely in Cody Landers' attic. We were all kids, and he took on this project because we were his friends. It was a labor of love, as well as a learning experience. We had no idea what to ask for and what sounded good. It's funny, looking back now on what we were trying to emulate.

What were you trying to emulate?

Well, Matthew [Gilliam] – the drummer and one of my closest friends – our biggest influences are probably Manchester Orchestra and Circa Survive. We wanted to sound big, bombastic, and theatrical, but with sinewy, reverb-y guitars. The other guitarist listened to Wilco, Guster, and folk-adult-rock. It ended up sounding half like Whiskeytown and half like Sunny Day Real Estate. Those are mixed very, very differently. Also, and this is true with youth, is that everything is more exaggerated. You want things as more drastic, colorful caricatures of themselves. I always wanted a 30-second reverb tail on my vocals. The guitars had to be super loud. Matthew had the biggest snare that was sold at the local music store, because everything had to be so powerful. A better way to put it is that it lacks taste or restraint. I learned so much every day, after school sitting in front of Cubase and crafting a record. Before I ever went to MTSU [Middle Tennessee State University], that's how I learned how automation works, why you track drums first, or why you don't want to put a whole bunch of reverb on the drum kit, even though it sounds cool as an idea.

You went to MTSU to study recording?

I did. I went to MTSU because they had a really notable and reputable recording industry program, but my thing was always live sound. There's an audio engineering major, and within that you can specialize in recording arts or live sound. I don't have the meticulous drive to pick apart a waveform in a DAW. I make my own demos, but they're simply for mapping out songs. I can't sit there and master forever. When I was a kid I learned how to use a PA, and then they would let me run the console at shows. I thought, "Well, I could do that. I know how to do simple circuits, so maybe I could work at a repair shop repairing guitars." I went to school to learn that, systems optimization, and building stages at festivals. But because we were all in the same program – all of my friends who were wearing their headphones around their neck and mixing at the campus Starbucks – those were the people who would say, "Hey, I have some extra studio time. Do you want to come in and record?" I think that it is important to keep yourself open to opportunities to gain experience.

You've got to get in there.

Hands-on experience taught me so much. I took so many classes on systems optimization, signal flow, and live sound mixing. But what taught me how to find my way in a live sound setting was doing sound for bands at venues. What taught me how to act, how to vocalize what I wanted, or the protocol inside a recording studio, was being able to spend that time. I think that's a good thing that MTSU gives you. There are resources on hand to take the theoretical knowledge from the classroom and apply it in a real setting. Otherwise, I couldn't have gotten to meet [engineer Michael] Hegner and do the first demos of what would eventually become Sprained Ankle. He was sitting in the library and asked, "Does anybody have a song they want to do? I've got a session in 30 minutes and no one to fill it." I was like, "Yeah."

Of course, you had to put the time into having a song.

I didn't think about that. Writing is always a compulsory thing, so I always have literally hundreds of voice memos.

Is that how you make your demos, just voice memos on the phone?

That's how I make the very first part; the writing process. If there's an idea while I'm playing guitar that I think is worthy of being explored, then I'll make a short little 1-minute voice demo and save it as "cool riff 85," or whatever. Then later it will be fleshed out as a song with placeholder lyrics. I finally took the plunge and got a real DAW. I use Logic now and I do those little MIDI things for keyboards. I can plug straight into a little one-input interface and have my actual guitar sounds from my pedalboard. Before that, I was using a straight-up 2005 Audacity program that I found. It was free. It looked awful. No hate on Audacity. But my version was so old.

It's a great program for cutting up samples.

Yeah. It's really limited. I guess that's how you learn. I was also using a Toshiba computer from 2006, because I held off for so long, saying, "I'm not going to buy a computer. This one works fine." It's so hard for me to give in and upgrade my gear, because I get used to working within the parameters I've become familiar with.

From that perspective, let's talk about going to Ardent Studios. Listening to the record for the first time, I kept waiting for the gigantic production to kick in. Almost all the songs have a moment where I thought, "Here it comes." But it never does.

It's really interesting to me that you say that. I felt self-conscious in the opposite way. I thought, "There're eight vocal tracks and strings, and my buddy's playing clarinet. This is so much." By comparison, it's much more expansive than Sprained Ankle. I was worried. I had this oxymoronic fear that it would be too similar to my past material and also too different, but not in the right ways. I wanted to have it be very dramatic – and have the parts that seem like soaring ballad climaxes – because I'm a sucker for that kind of dynamic. I think it's very emotive. But I also wanted to be careful that I didn't take so much of a maximalist approach that I weighed the song down, or it got to this critical mass where there's too much going on.

That's an incredibly mature perspective. I don't mean this because you're a younger person, but just in general. There are people who never get there.

Thank you. I'm going to acknowledge your compliment; I didn't take it as a thing about my age. But I agree. I think that restraint is such an important skill in music. For a long time when I was playing guitar in a band – and I think this had a lot to do with my insecurities about being a female in a male-dominated scene – but every time we played a show, I had to rip a crazy solo so that everybody knew I was "good." Still, one of my primary lurking fears about performing the material that I have today is that if I have a song that's three chords of quarter notes, everybody's going to be bored and put to sleep. But that's the challenge. Restraint is such an important thing. Just because you have every single color in your palette doesn't mean that every single color serves the painting. I think there are artists where the maximalist approach serves them well. When you think about a Bruce Springsteen record, like Born to Run. Or have you listened to Kimbra?

Yeah. A lot going on there.

Or St. Vincent. There are so many sounds; it's insane. But I think the challenge with my music is figuring out how to make it interesting while still leaving it pretty sparse. It's an interesting interplay. How many points of dynamic can you introduce into the song, as subtly as possible?

Do you go into recording feeling like you're going to do what you do live, but with a little extra?

There was this reciprocal relationship between the live and the recorded for this record. Another thing I wanted was not to say, "I don't know how I'm going to pull this off live, so I'm not going to explore this possibility." Now I do the weird play-guitar-and-piano-at-the-same-time. I decided if I wanted to have clarinet in there, then it'd be worth it to add clarinet. I think I was a lot more particular about the instrumentation on this record because I knew that it would be received in a different way. With Sprained Ankle, I was recording the songs as they had formed in my free time, using my looping pedal or whatever. With these songs, I sat down with a spiral [notebook] and mapped them out. I thought, "This song is tedious. What small embellishment can I add that will change the song enough to re-focus the listener's interest, without detracting or obscuring the totality of the song?" One of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten was from Josh Scogin [of bands The Chariot and '68]. We were at a show, and we were talking about how The Chariot's records are so interesting. They'll have this incredibly heavy breakdown, but it'll be free with no time signature at all. Or the song will completely stop and then something from Atlanta AM radio will play, and then the song will pick back up. "How do you know to do that? Is it just a novelty, or what?" Josh said, "I think you have to think of what will make people back up the track because they missed a thing." You don't want to make a song that goes on in a predictable fashion without introducing new elements.

You got an incredible guitar sound on the record. You tour with a [Fender] Twin and Deluxe, right?

Yes. We recorded a lot of Turn Out the Lights on my little 1x12 Deluxe, but I also have a 2x12 Blues Deluxe that I took the speakers out of and replaced with Warehouse guitar speakers called Veteran 30s. I got the higher-wattage option because there's way more gain room before it breaks up. My one gripe about Fender amps is that they break up too soon.

By design. A lot of people want blues.

Exactly. I get it. With the Twin, it's fine. It's a really sparkly break up. The Deluxe amps, I like the warmness of them. But when you start to break up such a warm, midrange-y amp, it gets fuzzy really quickly. I really like those speakers in that amp. I use so many of my instruments partly because they sound the way I want them to, but also partly because it took so much work for me to get them to sound the way they do that maybe my goal and my ability met in the middle. Especially with the wiring. I have a [Fender] Telecaster that I modded, and it took so long for me to figure that out when I was 18, trying to read a circuit diagram on how to get your pickups to go in series or parallel, and add that little option with the 4-switcher. Once I finally did it, I was like, "This is what I want, for sure." Whether or not it was what I was going for, I was so committed to doing it.

Do you go back and forth between series and parallel?

No. I have the blue guitar, it's a Mexican-made Tele, and then I have an American Tele, which is the butterscotch one. I leave it on series all the time. You have to put aftermarket pickups in Fender guitars. The Telecaster has the plucky clarity that I like; but I think everybody plays them so hot and bright, because that's the Nashville sound. I thought of Telecasters as country music guitars until I saw Now, Now and Circa Survive on tour. Both the guitarists were playing Telecasters. I was like, "What is happening? How are you guys getting this sound out of a Telecaster?" Then I used my next paycheck to buy a Mexican Tele. I love it.

Were you using Fender amps already?

Yeah. The first amp that I used was this Vox digital combo that was bad news. Well, it wasn't bad news, because I think those amps that have the effects built-in are good for learning. I wasn't playing big shows, so why would I need a $700 amp? The first real amp I bought was the Fender I replaced the speakers in. I had it for a really long time. Then I bought the 1x12 on tour when the tubes of my other amp broke, and now I play through stereo amps. It's interesting that the idea to do that never occurred to me, even though I had two amps on hand. Even on Sprained Ankle, I played through one amp.

You use so much reverb and delay, it's perfect for what you're doing.

Sometimes we'll be at a festival and I'll play through one amp. The way that my looping system is totally jury-rigged, I can use it into the first and second channels on a Fender amp.

It's a wonderful, underused feature, having the two channels on those amps.

It is. So much of my musical knowledge is very de facto and functional, and it doesn't result in a logical understanding of the mechanisms I'm using. On my Deluxe, there're two input jacks. I'd say, "Oh, I always plug into input 2 because it sounds different, and I like that sound." I didn't know until October of 2017 that one of them is high gain and one of them is lower gain. I had no idea. It sounded different. Now I have two A-B-C-Y splitters on my board; I send out from those two channels a dry channel and a reverb channel on one amp, and then yet a third reverb channel into a different amp.

Is the reverb channel 100 percent saturated?

It's all the way on, all the time. The dry channel is there in case the two stereo outs of my looper go off, because I'm paranoid about my loop breaking and there being no safety net for me to play through. I was not always that wise. I have been brought low by humiliation, the great teacher. Now I have one fail-safe channel. The rest of my loops come out on different outputs.

Do you use the amp reverb?

I used to have it pulled up to quarter to two almost all the time, but now I like the flat character of the amp enough, and I have three or four different reverbs. The Strymon blueSky is always on. I forget that I have it on my board, because it stays on. It's the staple of my tone.

I read that you used a [Neumann] U 67 for recording your voice. Is that right?

Yeah.

Did you do a shootout, or did you know going in you wanted a 67?

We tried out that mic because Calvin Lauber, engineer for Turn Out the Lights] suggested it. On Sprained Ankle, I recorded part of it on a [Shure] SM7B. We used a couple of different microphones on that one. I don't remember what the other one was. With the Neumann, I'm very reluctant to use mics with so much crispness, because I think my voice has a tendency to get really nitty and bland.

I respectfully disagree, but go on.

Well, okay. Maybe I'm hyper-critical of my voice. But that vocal mic sounded really nice, especially in the room. Once we started tracking with that, I was like, "Yeah, I'm really, really happy with this vocal sound." It's an incredible microphone. It sounds like it's capturing what's happening to your ears with intense clarity. Whenever I make my little Logic demos, I go in there and notch out 2.5 to 3 kHz, because it sounds really annoying. When I started singing in a band, I wanted the vocals to be pushed all the way to the back and ‘verbed out. I was self-conscious about my voice. I never really wanted to be a singer. I wanted to play guitar. Then our first show came up, and we didn't have a lead singer, so I said, "I'll sing until we find a singer." Then I became the singer. Every single time we performed live, someone would say, "That was really good. You should sing louder!"

Did you try to change the way you sing?

By the time The Star Killers had been a band for a while, I would do the shouty scream thing. But then that became a gimmick of my voice. It was atonal. It was less about the pitch and more about the intensity and having the gang vocals part where everybody sings along. It took touring for a while as a solo musician for me to become completely comfortable with my voice as an instrument. That was also probably because I still smoked at the time we recorded Sprained Ankle. Singing was really taxing on my voice. When I had not smoked for a little over a week, the way that my vocal control and the timbre of my voice changed was amazing. I thought, "This cannot be real." That made me much more confident, and it made me take singing seriously. My voice was no longer just a vehicle for poetry that I was using to "Leonard Cohen" out my lyrics. I think that's also what made recording this record a lot different. I was more ambitious with what I could do.

How long did you have at Ardent Studios?

I booked out six days, intentionally. We ended up staying there 12 hours a day. Time flies when you're in the studio, because it's fun, and exciting, and interesting. I think I limited it that way because of that fear of overproducing the record. If I gave myself too much time, I would fall into a paralysis of option anxiety. In hindsight it might have been good to have a deadline, but also take a rest. Record for a week, take a month off, let the tracks sit, and then come back with fresh ears. Maybe I was over-restrained, like I was overcompensating for my fear of overproducing.

It sounds like discipline is a huge part of your whole process.

Oh, definitely. I talk about this with so many of my friends in music. This land of words like discipline, motivation, and obsession are all fluidly bound. For any of the players on the record, like Cam [Boucher] from Sorority Noise, or Camille [Faulkner], who tours with me, the way that those people interact with music is almost obsessive, but in a way that drives them to be the most optimal players they can be. Not in a competitive way. I really don't think that trying to be the best you can be means that you have to be obsessed with being the best musician out there, or being superior.

It's its own reward.

Exactly. I think the fact you say that discipline is a huge part of the record is because maybe it wasn't that I had to apply an effort to sit down and map out the songs in a spiral notebook, or think about them and listen to them over, and over again. It's what preoccupies my mind all the time, so the only way to abate the anxiety of creating is to be engaged with it. But, at the same time, that's why I only wanted to book out six days. It's really important to get a great raw sound. We did a lot of setting levels for what would basically be how the record sounded.

It's a huge advantage not to "fix it in post."

Exactly! Get it right the first time. This thing that Calvin and I would say to each other all the time is, "It's worth it." When I would record a vocal track and it was almost what I wanted, and I felt I could live with it, we could nudge a note, or we could comp it. But I had the time. I'm not flying out to L.A. to do a two-hour recording session and we have to comp it. We had the time to get it right, and it's worth it. We ended up tracking a whole bunch of weird piano, guitar, and keyboard tracks that didn't make it on the record. But what if it had been awesome? It's worth it. When you start with good ingredients and you do less work on the back-end to try to wrangle it into sounding good, it's so much easier. And it sounds very pure and more organic, because I think you can tell when a song has had to be manipulated.

You can. It's almost never going to be as good as it would have been.

Exactly. There are so many great records that are tracked live. That's how recording used to be. Now I'm going to sound like one of those people who thinks that antiquated methods of recording are the only way and swears by tape only. No, there are amazing things we can use Pro Tools for. But I think the ethos of old-school recording is getting a great live sound. I watched a documentary about Tom Dowd [Tom Dowd & The Language of Music]. He plays the faders like a keyboard. It's so cool. Whenever I watch those documentaries, I'm amazed at that process, because it's happening to those people in real time; it's just their job. They have this very colloquial relationship with the music. Chilling out with Aretha Franklin and not knowing that it would change history. What I think you glean from those is not that it was better in the past, and we should only record to tape, and only use old vintage equipment. I think the process is that you should be able to accomplish the most with the least. You should know how to utilize a room, or you should know when it's enough. I think sometimes the necessity of having only four tracks, or having only eight channels, or what have you, makes you be more discerning. The options aren't endless. The time is not endless. You make a leaner, refined version.

Craig Silvey mixed Turn Out the Lights?

Yeah. We had a mixing day with Calvin; then he and I shot some mixes back and forth. I had very specific things I wanted out of the mix. It was really observable what Craig changed, but he didn't necessarily remove or add anything. I was amazed at how much he was able to add to the tracks. I think the people we involved on the record were all ones we wanted to use, either because of their prior work, or our prior history with them, indicated that they know how to be tasteful. Especially with Craig Silvey. I knew a few of the notable records that he had done, like Arcade Fire, but when I started to look at the breadth of the work he had been a part of, it was amazing.

Did you choose Craig, or did Matador say they wanted him?

Matador brought the idea. I was reluctant because I wanted the least tampering. They said, "We have this guy we think you'd really like. Give it a chance." I'll give anything a chance; but if I didn't like it, I was ready to say, "No." We sent a test mix, and when I got it back, I was like, "We should have the record mixed by this guy." It was ultimately a collaborative effort between Calvin being so personal and central to my life as a person and a friend, and knowing what I wanted, as well as Craig's expertise and impeccable ear. It made for a really special thing.

(link)

#this offers an interesting look at jb’s recording process #i bought this issue to gain access to the full interview so please don’t repost to twitter thx <3 #boygenius #julien baker #calvin lauber #tape op magazine #2018 #may 2018 #interview #archival

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lexreadsdiversely · 3 months ago

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Lex's October tbr 🎃

I'm leaning into the mood reading with this tbr. I intentionally put way more than I can finish to give myself room to switch it up as my mood changes. This is going to be so fun!

Books:

Physical tbr:

The Weight of Blood - Tiffany D. Jackson (210/413 pages complete)

Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield (105/223 pages complete)

The Book of Witches - Edited by Jonathan Strahan (select stories only)

The Woman in Black - Susan Hill

Library loans:

A Short Stay in Hell - Steven L Peck

Little Rot - Akwaeke Emezi

Graveyard Shift - ML Rio (finished 9/30)

Extra Salty: Jennifer's Body - Frederick Blichert (finished 10/1)

Kindle:

Eat Your Heart Out - Dayna Ingram*

My Carmilla - Anita Zara*

Lupus in Fabula - Briar Ripley Page (BookSiren - will most likely dnf)

Under Her Skin: a Women in Horror Poetry Showcase, Vol. 1 - Edited by Lindy Ryan and Toni Miller*

Fanfiction:

Read some halloween-themed fics. Link them here when finished.

Short(er) Stories

Hayseed - Holly Wilde*

Pumpkin Spice Lover - C.B. Walker*

This Pumpkin Spice Latte Gets Me Off In A Fun And Sincere Way Because It’s Okay For People To Enjoy Popular Things Without Being Shamed For The Perceived “Basicness” Of Their Beverage Choices - Chuck Tingle*

Read some Tor originals

* reads contingent on my budget

🦇 Goal: Enjoy reading! 🦇

#lex's october tbr #tbr #booklr #bookblr #bookish community #book community #book talk #book worm #reading community

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hooked-on-elvis · 3 months ago

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"Tender Feeling" (1963-1964)

Recorded on September 29, 1963 at RCA's Studio B, Nashville. Elvis' vocals recorded October 10, 1963 at MGM's soundstage, Culver City, Hollywood - CA · Released in April 1964. Soundtrack album: Kissin' Cousins.

MUSICIANS Guitar: Grady Martin, Jerry Kennedy, Scotty Moore, Harold Bradley. Bass: Bob Moore. Drums: Buddy Harman, D.J. Fontana. Piano: Floyd Cramer. Saxophone: Boots Randolph, Bill Justis. Fiddle: Cecil Brower. Vocals: Winnifred Brest, Millie Kirkham, Dolores Edgin, The Jordanaires.

Elvis Presley as Josh Morgan and Jodie Tatum in Kissin' Cousins (1964)

RECORDING SESSION Soundtrack Recordings for MGM’s Kissin’ Cousins. September 29–30, 1963: RCA’s Studio B, Nashville | Elvis' overdubs vocals: October 10, 1963: MGM, Studios, Culver City. In his business diary the Colonel wrote, “It was decided for the sake of economy and efficiency that the recording sessions for Kissin’ Cousins should be held at the RCA Victor studios in Nashville.” From MGM’s point of view Nashville might have sounded like an apt choice to cut some “hillbilly” songs, but the real reasons for the switch from Hollywood back to Nashville were obvious to all. Both the filming and the recording sessions for Viva Las Vegas had gone way over budget; more musicians than ever before had been hired for the dates, and many sat idle while others played. Since Elvis and the Colonel shared in the actual profits from the movie, these extra expenses cut into their share, and the Colonel made it clear that they wouldn’t make the same mistake with Kissin’ Cousins. In fact, his concern for “economy and efficiency” probably contributed to Kissin’ Cousins’s status as the first true “low-budget” Elvis movie, with filming lasting only four weeks. The demand for songs was now so great that Freddy Bienstock was able to collect no more than a bare minimum of material for the Kissin’ Cousins session, and half of the ten songs had a Giant/Baum/Kaye credit. To make matters worse Elvis came down with another cold come session time, so the musicians ended up recording backing tracks for Elvis to overdub later in Los Angeles. The film had Elvis playing two roles — a soldier and a hillbilly — and the title song was conceived as a duet between the two, obliging Elvis to record two sets of vocals, one in his normal voice, the other with a mock-Tennessee twang. (It was left to an engineer to splice the two versions into the required duet.) The sound was arguably better than on the previous MGM recordings, yet still nothing really sparkled.

Excerpt: "Elvis Presley, A Life in Music: The Complete Recording Sessions" by Ernst Jorgensen. Foreword by Peter Guralnick (1998)

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LYRICS — "Tender Feeling" Bill Giant/Bernie Baum/Florence Kaye

I can't conceal the tender feeling Now that you are close to me I look at you with tender feeling And can't help kiss you tenderly I offer you a true devotion All life through my love I vow For this is real, this sweet emotion This tender feeling I have now Somehow I knew from the moment our lips first met You'd be the girl I could never forget No other love could be appealing I loved you right from the start And with each kiss I'll keep revealing The tender feeling in my heart

MOVIE SCENE — Kissin' Cousins (1964) Jodie Tatum (Elvis Presley) and Midge (Cynthia Pepper)

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"Tender Feeling" LONG VERSION · Master Vocal Overdub Take 1 The official release runs 2:34, this version runs to 4:09.

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TIP: READ THE COMMENTS FOR A LOVELY SURPRISE ABOUT THE (MOST LIKELY) ORIGIN OF THE MELODY FROM "TENDER FEELING". THANKS, @deke-rivers-1957! You're the best for sharing this! ♥

Jodie Tatum (Elvis Presley) and Midge (Cynthia Pepper) from Kissin' Cousins (1964)

#yes i watched the movie again recently thanks to much discussion around jodie...#i confess i like him a little better now but it's hard to say much... poor jodie almost doesn't shine in the movie #it sucks #i'm sorry if elvis didn't like to do the mock-tennessee twang for jodie but i love how he sounds #i had this song on my list of songs to share but now i watched the movie i just had to talk about this track #it first caught my attention when i was listening to the soundtrack album alone... i didn't even remembered the kissin' cousins scene #but now i have one more reason to say... jodie > josh #don't even make me start talking about josh singing about having two girls at the same time and not being able to choose one yet #i cringed so hard at this #Spotify #elvis history #elvis music #elvis movies #elvis gems #kissin' cousins #tender feeling #1964 #elvis #60s elvis #elvis the king

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